Notes, quotes and comment

Getting blown away by the Kansas City bullpen isn't embarrassing. Getting just one hit off Chris Young should be.

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While the Twins were being baffled by Young, the word leaked on social media that Jorge Polanco was coming up. The speculation about the corresponding move raged. I found the notion of calling up Polanco puzzling. Why would they bring him in after just two days of Eduardo Escobar at shortstop?

Then the game ended, and the official announcement was made. Eddie Rosario is going on paternity leave, reportedly for just one game. Polanco takes his place, and returns to Double A Chattanooga when Rosario is back. (You can tell Rosario is a rookie, just leaving for one day.) 

This ignited another social media furor from fans who don't understand the option rule. The Twins burned Polanco's 2015 option long ago. They can yo-yo him up and down all year and it won't matter. 

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Tuesday was Day Two of the draft. The Twins drafted a pair of left-handed hitting high schoolers who project to be third basemen in the third and fourth rounds, Travis Blankenhorn and Trey Cabbage. I wonder how the Twins will work out the playing time for them; they would figure to start on the same level. I suppose they'll split time at third base and try some first base and Dh some as well. 

The fifth round pick was another left-handed college reliever, Alex Robinson of Maryland. This is certainly a unique pattern the Twins have going here.

I'm not going to go into great detail of any on them, or discuss at all the rest of the second day picks. This was reckoned to be a pretty mild draft field from the beginning of the cycle, and it thinned out with injuries as the spring wore on. I'm sure somebody will emerge as a bona fide talent, but I'll let him emerge before I get interested.

Feeling a draft: The Twins on Day One

Tyler Jay pitches for Illinois in the Big Ten tournament
last month in Target Field.

The Twins's selection of Tyler Jay with the sixth overall pick fits two recent patterns in their drafting style:

• He's a pitcher from a Big Ten school (in the past decade they popped Matt Bashore and Aaron Slegers of Indiana and Alex Wimmers of Ohio State; Bashore is out of baseball, Wimmers is in Double A and Slegers in High A).
• He was used in college primarily as a reliever but is viewed by the Twins as a potential starter.

Sixth overall is too high for a straight-up bullpen guy, but it appears that there was an industry consensus that Jay was the best lefty in the pool. Some mock drafts I saw had him going as high as third overall.

While Terry Ryan downplayed the notion during his appearance on the Twins game broadcast, there was a buzz about the possibility of Jay getting to the big club this year, a la Brandon Finnegan last season with Kansas City.

And Ryan did say that he expects to keep Jay in the bullpen this year in the minors and begin the process of making him a starter next year, This would fit the hurry-him-to-the-majors theory. And watching Aaron Thompson and Brian Duensing struggle of late does prompt thoughts that the Twins need some southpaw help in the bullpen.

That kind of ambitious timeline can only work if Jay cooperates -- sign quickly and dominate from the get-go. And it will also require that the Twins remain in contention. There's no point in putting him on the 40-man roster for a late-season callup if the team's out of the running; that would start his option clock early and, perhaps, impede the long-term goal of making him a starter.

There's an obvious reason Jay was expected to be an early pick. He's a left-handed power pitcher, and there aren't a lot of those guys around. The perceived drawback is that he hasn't been a starter, but there's a plus to that as well: He hasn't been burdened with high pitch counts and lots of innings.

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The Twins lost their second round pick by signing Ervin Santana, but they did get a "competitive balance lottery" pick at the end of the second round, 73rd overall. They used that pick on Kyle Cody, right handed pitcher from the University of Kentucky. Which is another school the Twins have dipped into for pitchers quite a bit. Cody's a big guy with velocity.

They've drafted a lot of power arms in recent years. They haven't -- yet -- seen fit to bring them up to the big club.

Santana, Vargas and draft day

Danny Santana has a batting average of .218 at the plate
and 12 errors in the field.

The Twins demoted Danny Santana after Sunday's game and recalled Kennys Vargas.

I suspected from the get-go that Santana wasn't going to retain the shortstop job. He displayed this season the flaws his minor league stats and reputation indicated: Erratic in the field, lacking in strike-zone judgment at the plate.

So Eduardo Escobar gets the everyday job at short, at least for now. He hasn't hit as well this year as he did last season, and it's entirely possible that in a month or so Jorge Polanco will get a trial. Or they may try again with Santana.

Recalling Vargas doesn't do much for me. Vargas as DH means Torii Hunter in right field, with either Eddie Rosario or Shane Robinson in left (supplanting Escobar there.) Hunter's been doing a lot of DHing lately, including four times in the past five games (with a misplayed fly ball in the one game he was in the field).

Ultimately, and obviously, Vargas has to hit. My opinion remains: the Twins are better off using the DH spot to hide Hunter and deploy a superior defensive outfield.

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Today begins the annual draft. Baseball America has consistently projected the Twins to take a high school outfielder with the No. 6 overall pick, but which one (Dez Cameron or Kyle Tucker) has fluctuated.

A lot depends on who goes ahead of the Twins, of course, and this is regarded as a particularly difficult draft to handicap. There's no real consensus about who should go first, so the teams at the top are believed to be trying to pre-negotiate below-slot deals with possible candidates. Mike Berardino of the Pioneer Press:

Asked at midday Sunday if he knew yet who the Twins would pick, general manager Terry Ryan shook his head. 

“Not yet,” he said. “Somebody is going to fall.”

Notes, quotes and comment

Tim Stauffer has
a job but not a role
in an eight-man bullpen.

Good: Casey Fien was activated from the disabled list Friday. A healthy Fien is an asset to the Twins relief corps.

Bad: Michael Tonkin, dubbed "the Strand Man" by the Pioneer Press's Mike Berardino, was sent back to Rochester. Tonkin has a rather odd set of stats: just seven innings in 11 appearances, and a 5.14 ERA while stranding 10 of 13 runners. Basically, Paul Molitor was using Tonkin for one or two outs with men on base. Tonkin entered five games in save situations and departed having held the lead all five times. In short, he had a useful role.

Worse: Tim Stauffer remains on the roster, to what purpose none can tell. He came off the disabled list a week ago after several ineffective rehab appearances and went unused until getting a one-out mopup appearance Friday. Which is understandable, since the Twins were winning games, and Stauffer has done nothing -- in spring training, in the regular season, on rehab -- to make anybody believe that he can help.

Keeping Stauffer over Tonkin suggests Terry Ryan and Co. are more concerned with getting something for the $2.2 million the veteran will be paid this year than with giving Molitor a useful relief pitcher. It's a regrettable decision.

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Baseball America issued Mock Draft 4.0 on Friday. Unlike the previous three attempts, this one does not project the Twins taking Dez Cameron with the No. 6 overall pick. That's because they now project the Houston Astros to take the son of former Gold Glove center fielder Mike Cameron with the fifth overall pick.

The current projection is another prep outfielder, Kyle Tucker of Tampa.

There have been reports elsewhere that Cameron's asking price has discouraged the Twins, but BA says Cameron remains the team's "chosen target."

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I am an unabashed admirer of Mark Buehrle, pitcher of baseballs. Friday he gave up four runs in the first inning and the Twins hit everything hard. Then he faced the minimum in the next eight innings.

Kenny Rogers, another lefty who won far more games than one would imagine possible with so little velocity, pitched one year for the Twins, 2003, going 13-8 in 195 innings. Time and again I heard him say in postgame interviews: I'm not afraid to go out there with nothing. Buehrle could say the same thing.

Buehrle got career win 205 Friday. (Rogers retired with 219.) They didn't all come against the Twins, but it sure feels like it.

Notes, quotes and comment

Baseball America on Friday released its second try at a mock draft. It had considerable movement at the top, but stuck to the same pick for the Twins at No. 6, high school outfielder Dez Cameron.

BA's comment:

If (Dillon) Tate keeps falling, he’ll stop here. Minnesota remains linked to Cameron, but if the Twins want a college pitcher, they’re said to be intrigued by (Walker) Buehler, who throws harder than UCLA’s James Karpielian and Missouri State’s Jon Harris. The Twins also will scrutinize (Tyler) Jay here.

Dillon Tate is a right-handed pitcher from UC Santa Barbara who's been in the running for the top overall pick. Right now BA has him going fourth (to the Rangers. Buehler is a right-handed pitcher from Vanderbilt; BA currently has him going 10th. And Jay is a lefty from Illinois who is said by BA to be rising; this mock draft has him going eighth, but warns that he might be destined for the bullpen.

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This tweet Friday afternoon from AP's Dave Campbell:

Just can't make this up. Twins are 2-7 vs. Tigers, outscored 56-23. Twins are 17-9 vs. rest of AL, outscoring those teams 136-104.

— Dave Campbell (@DaveCampbellAP) May 15, 2015

And now you can make the numbers in the last sentence 18-9 and 139-106, but ... to call it the "rest of the AL" is misleading. The Twins have played almost all their games against the AL Central. One series versus Seattle, one with Oakland, and now one game against Tampa Bay.

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Miguel Sano homered twice Friday for Double A Chattanooga. The slugger is hitting a mere .231, but he has eight homers and seven doubles plus 18 walks, so his OPS is .831. That's not a player being overwhelmed by the competition.

Feelin' a draft: May edition

We are roughly one month away from the June draft, in which the Twins will pick sixth. (It would have been fifth had the Astros not alienated Brady Aiken last summer, but they did, and their reward for failing to sign 2014's top overall pick is 2015's second overall pick, which nudges everybody else down one spot.)

I haven't posted much, if anything, about the 2015 draft class, partly because nothing's been very clear to me about it. The spring has been marked by a string of severe injuries to consensus top players (including Aiken, who had Tommy John surgery in March), and Arizona, which has the top pick, appears confounded by the task of winnowing the field. (Dave Stewart, the D-backs' general manager, has reportedly seen 30 prospects himself this spring, a ridiculously high figure for a GM.)

But on Friday Baseball America posted its first mock draft of the year, which it describes as "futile" but "fun." Mock Draft 1.0 projects Daz Cameron, high school outfielder and son of 17-season outfielder Mike Cameron, going to the Twins.

BA's editor in chief, John Manuel, had this paragraph in his column in the most recent print edition (talking about the lack of consensus among teams in this year's draft):

Other teams will prefer Daz Cameron out of Georgia, the son of ex-big leaguer Mike Cameron, who seems to suffer in comparison to his tooled-up father. Cameron is more of a well-rounded prospect with good but not great tools, somewhat resembling 2014 first-rounder Nick Gordon, in that his savvy can be underrated and his tools overrated at times.

Nick Gordon, of course, was the Twins' top pick last summer.

Draft order set

James Shields came to terms with the San Diego Padres, which means the order for June's draft is set.

The Twins draft, as detailed here by Mike Berardino of the Pioneer Press, 6, 73 and 80. They surrendered the 47th pick when they signed Ervin Santana.

Also via  Berardino, Baseball America estimates the Twins will have a draft pool of $7,691,684. They figure to have the 12th largest pool.

Berardino echoes the conventional wisdom, that giving up that second round pick is worthwhile if Santana stays healthy. That's a sizable if. Santana is 32 and has quite a bit of mileage. Long-term contracts for pitchers have a tendency to sour quickly. I was neutral on the signing at the time but concerned about the number of veterans blocking the prospects. Nothing's happened this winter to change that.