There has been a great deal of ridicule in my Twitter feed of the notion that Vladimir Guerrero Jr.'s fielding is/was weak enough to justify his spending the past calendar year in the minors.
I don't know. I'm fairly confident that his bat was major-league ready last year, but he certainly didn't look like a competent defensive third baseman Monday night.
Guerrero took an 0-for-3 last night at the plate, striking out twice, and is now 5-for-33 (.152) in his first nine games in the majors. Justin Morneau and Dick Bremer were speculating about a return to Triple A for him. I don't think that's going to happen. If the Blue Jays had realistic playoff ambitions, maybe. But they don't, and they may was well accept the growing pains and let the kid play.
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Jason Castro hit his fourth homer Monday night. Later he got plunked in the right arm Monday night and left the game in the eighth inning. He's day-to-day.
Willians Astudillo remains on the injured list, but he's eligible to return Wednesday.
The Twins have gotten a lot of offensive production from the their three catchers (Castro, Mitch Garver and Astudillo), and I am inclined to believe the rationed playing time has helped that. Nobody catches three days in a row, so nobody's getting too beat up back there.
Of course, if none of them were hitting we'd probably hear grousing about how playing time is so sporadic they can't get their timing down.
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The obvious, and likely, demotion when Astudillo comes off the DL is Jake Cave. Bremer and Morneau were saying complementary things about Cave during his plate appearance Monday night (he walked), but the very fact that playing time for him is so scarce indicates why he's the obvious guy to come off the roster.
He's a left-hand hitting outfielder on a team with two left-hand hitting regulars in the outfield corners. He has no real role other than waiting for someone to get hurt.
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