Another trade: Hicks for Murphy

John Ryan Murphy homers in a September game
against the Baltimore Orioles.

Another day, another move by the Twins: On Wednesday they traded outfielder and former first-round pick Aaron Hicks to the Yankees for catcher John Ryan Murphy.

I like this trade for both teams, and for both players. The Twins are spilling over with outfielders and lacked catching depth; the Yankees have an established (and highly paid) veteran catcher as a starter and a promising prospect pushing for the backup job, while their outfield core is aging and brittle.

Yankees-Twins trade: Hicks has more upside than Murphy, but Murphy is at harder position to find. A trade that makes sense.

— JJ Cooper (@jjcoop36) November 11, 2015

Cooper, the managing editor of Baseball America, goes into a bit more detail on Murphy here.

I thought that Hicks was destined in Minnesota for a fourth-outfielder role, with Byron Buxton, Eddie Rosario and Max Kepler all higher-ceiling guys than him. I don't have to buy into the Miguel Sano as an outfielder notion to see little room for Hicks in the Minnesota outfield. I also think Yankee Stadium might help mask Hicks' flaws as a left-handed hitter by turning a handful of flyballs into homers.

And, to be blunt, the Twins really needed somebody who can be an alternative to Kurt Suzuki, who did not have a good 2015 and who is, as a catcher above the age of 30, has the arrow pointing down. Murphy isn't a budding star, but he might be a four-or-five year regular at a difficult position to fill. With Brian McCann ahead of him, he wasn't going to get that chance in New York.

More on Hunter and the outfield choices

The Monday print column examined Paul Molitor's September reliance on Torii Hunter and the possibility that the veteran's resurgence would result in his return in 2016.

On Sunday, the Boston Globe's Nick Cafardo's notes column contained this paragraph:

7. Torii Hunter, RF, Twins — He has said he’s going year to year, but the Twins want him back for at least one more season, according to a team official. The impact Hunter has made in the clubhouse and leading a team featuring some younger players has been off the charts. Hunter, 40, is hitting .242 with 20 homers and 74 RBIs. He also has played a good right field.

I would dispute the last sentence, but the rest is plausible -- especially if Molitor, Terry Ryan and the other evaluators doubt that Bryon Buxton is ready to hit major league pitching. Plausible but essentially self-defeating, unless (as I said in the column) there is an explicit understanding that Hunter is not expected to be a regular.

It's a numbers game. Leaving Hunter out of the 2016 equation for now, the Twins have Buxton, Aaron Hicks and Eddie Rosario as presumptive regulars, plus Southern League MVP Max Kepler pounding on the door. The four young guys have their flaws, but so does Hunter -- and the foursome have futures. I want them to play. Hunter, if he expects to be in the lineup six days a week, is in the way.

It may well be that Hunter's two-month slump in July and August was connected to a shoulder injury, and some may argue that his season stats should be discounted as a result. I would say otherwise. Injuries happen, and they happen more often to, and persist longer for, 40-year-olds than for 25-year olds. (I would also suggest that if Hunter hit .130 in August because of an injury, playing with the ailment hurt the club.)

Contemplating the center field situation

Aaron Hicks' remarkable over-the-head
grab off former Twin Chris Parmelee
on July 6.

Center field has been another kaleidoscope position for the Twins this season. Aaron Hicks has started 38 games. Jordan Schafer (released) started 20, Shane Robinson 14, Byron Buxton 11 before his injury. Eddie Rosario and Danny Santana drew a sliver of starts as well (three apiece).

When Buxton arrived about a month ago, I figured Hicks had gotten his last shot at the job. But three things happened: One, Buxton did not immediately shine. Two, Buxton sprained his thumb. Three, Hicks has been a sharply better player since stepping back into the lineup.

It's not just a small sample size, but a tiny one: 10 games, July 3 through July 12. Ten games in which Hicks has put up a slash line of .323/.436/.645. And it's not that he's been abnormally lucky: his batting average on balls in play is a normal .296 in that stretch. We know he's not that good -- nobody is -- but I'll guarantee he hasn't had a comparable 10-game stretch in his career.

His two homers this month came right-handed, no real surprise, but he's also crushed a pair of doubles left-handed that could have gone out of some more friendly yards than Target Field. He's drawn seven walks and fanned only three times in those 10 games.

Power and a batting eye. He sure hasn't demonstrated those skills in the majors before. He just looks like a different hitter, one who has a clue from at-bat to at-bat.

Hicks' slash line for the season, .266/.333/.387, is not eye-popping, but it's close to league average, and that's sufficient for a good-glove center fielder. He's pushed his way out of the very bottom of the lineup, hitting seventh most games, and right now there's a good case for him to move ahead of Rosario as well.

It may be another month before Buxton is a factor again, and Hicks may well revert to the weak hitter he's been until July. (He was hitting .247/.293/.301 coming into the month.) But if Hicks settles into a .270/.340/.400 groove (slightly better than his slash line to date), the Twins may well opt to give Buxton some Triple A time when his thumb is healed.

This doesn't change the long-term status of the two. Buxton is still the center fielder of the future. Hicks, however, now has his best claim ever as the center fielder of the present -- and in a pennant chase, that matters.

The roster shuffle: Hicks, Thompson, O'Roarke, Pressly, Robinson

The Twins moved some bodies around the past few days while I was writing about other stuff. Assuming everything is settled in, they've cut the staff back to 12 pitchers and re-inserted a genuine centerfielder into the lineup. Let's review:

Reserve outfielder Shane Robinson was absent a few days on family emergency leave, his second such absence of the season. I don't think I've described his situation before, but this Derek Wetmore piece from last month does a pretty good job of explaining why Robinson comes and goes.

Robinson's brief departure opened the door for Aaron Hicks to return from his rehab assignment. Hicks not only made a spectacular catch Monday night, he homered in consecutive games (both from the right side). Power is something that's been missing from his game the past year-plus.

Robinson's return coincided with Ryan Pressly's trip to the disabled list. The right-handed reliever felt something give in the back of his shoulder Saturday. He has had a quietly good stat line (2.93 ERA with the bullpen's second-highest strikeout rate) despite occasional control hiccups.

The upshot: The Twins have replaced Pressly, the bullpen's No. 3 righty, with Hicks.

The other shuffled was LOOGY for LOOGY: Aaron Thompson down, Ryan O'Roarke up.

Ryan O'Roarke has
a career ERA of
4.15 in the minor
leaguers.

I vaguely remember seeing O'Roarke in Beloit in 2012, and I mentioned him in passing in the blog, but I can't recall any specifics. He was one of seven lefties on the Snappers roster when I saw them (that was their final season affiliated with the Twins), and he didn't hold any special interest for me. The idea that he'd be in the big league bullpen before fellow southpaw Corey Williams, a recent third-round pick, would have been ludicrous. But here he is, and Williams is in the process of recovering from Tommy John surgery.

There's not a lot in O'Roarke's minor-league numbers to excite you. He's been used in an emphatic one-out role for the past year and a half in Double A and Triple A. This season, for example: 22 appearances but just 15 innings, with an ERA of 5.40. He's had excellent strikeout rates in that role, but he pretty clearly has some trouble with right-handed hitters.

Which is what did in Thompson, that and, arguably, overuse in the first two months. He leaves leading the American League in appearances but with an ERA of 5.01, this despite still having an impressive slash line against left-handed hitters (.189/.262/.264). The underlying point to Thompson's struggles: Even a left-handed specialist winds up facing more right-handed hitters than left-handed ones, and they have to have something to combat them with.

That will be the challenge for O'Roarke. It does seem noteworthy, however, that he got the call instead of Caleb Theilbar, who spent much of the previous two seasons sharing LOOGY duties with Brian Duensing.

Ranking the Twins outfield priorities

Byron Buxton was 0-for-4 in his debut Sunday with a
pair of strikeouts and a failed sac bunt attempt.

Other than his highly anticipated and greatly heralded presence, Byron Buxton didn't have a great impact on Sunday's game in Arlington, Texas. Yes, he scored the winning run, but scoring from first on a two-out gapper would be routine for most baserunners. He ran down a potential gapper in the field, but I suspect Aaron Hicks would have made that play also, if not as easily.

Hicks, of course, wasn't available Sunday; the Twins put him on the disabled list as the move to get Buxton on the active roster. With Torii Hunter serving Game Two of his suspension, Paul Molitor deployed an outfield of Shane Robinson in left, Buxton in center and Eddie Rosario in right, and that is a pretty close to optimal defensive alignment.

The Twins have a bunch of outfielders now -- on the active roster, on the disabled list, and in the minors but still seen as significant pieces. Let's sort through the priorities.

1) Buxton. Yes, he has all of one game in the majors. He's still the single most important piece of this team's puzzle, the cornerstone player for the anticipated success ahead. He's here; he's playing.

2) Hunter. He's 39, but the team didn't commit $12 million to him to sit on the bench. I'd prefer to see him DHing than playing right.

3) Rosario. Debuted May 6 and has played in all but a handful of games since. Has so far lived up to his minor league billing, with arguably more power (three homers in his first 100 at-bats) than should be expected. Between his youth/developmental needs, his bat and his defensive skills, he should be in the outfield on a near-daily basis. Despite being in the running in training camp for the center field job, he has been strictly in the corners since his call-up, which is proper.

4) Oswaldo Arcia. Spluttering with a .167/.189/.229 slash line in Triple A, he appears to have been eclipsed by Rosario in the corner outfield plans. He's a better hitter than that .418 Rochester OPS suggests, but so what? His fielding woes negate the hitting, and between Hunter and Kennys Vargas, there's not much room available at DH. He's still only 24, but he's out of options after this season. A trade seems inevitable, and right now his value is probably as low as it's ever been.

5) Hicks. Buxton pushes him out of the center field job. His bat pushes him out of a regular corner outfield role. That makes him a fourth outfielder, which is not what he was drafted in the first round to be. Is the organization willing to accept that, or will they dump him? He's also out of options after this season.

6) Shane Robinson. Too flawed to be an outfield regular, but he does enough things well to use him. A prototype reserve outfielder.

7) Jordan Schafer. Rosario has already garnered 40 more plate appearances than the Opening Day center fielder. Schafer wasn't anywhere near the player this year that he was in August-September last year, and I don't see a role for him after he comes off the disabled list. Hicks and Robinson rank ahead of him as reserve outfielders, and nobody needs four center fielders on the roster.

8) Eduardo Escobar. I'll list him here because Baseball Reference has him as the regular left fielder so far. If he's still so listed after the All-Star break, Molitor is doing it wrong. Even if the Twins decide to turn to Jorge Polanco or Danny Santana at short, Escobar shouldn't get outfield time ahead of the first five on this list. He's an infielder. Use him as such.

Start the Buxton countdown

Even before Aaron Hicks misplayed an eighth-inning flyball/line drive into the winning runs for Texas on Friday, the social media chatter about calling up Byron Buxton was reaching new heights.

Aaron Gleeman perhaps started it a little after noon:

Byron Buxton's first 12 games at AA: .180 AVG, .241 OBP, .300 SLG Byron Buxton's last 45 games at AA: .306 AVG, .373 OBP, .541 SLG He's 21.

— Aaron Gleeman (@AaronGleeman) June 12, 2015

Then Seth Stohs predicted that Buxton would be called up within two weeks.

It can happen any time, as far as I'm concerned. Hicks has dragged his OPS+ up since the last time I wrote about his offensive inadequacies, but .256/.302/.311 is still south of adequate, even for a stellar defensive outfielder. Which, to be fair, Hicks has been, Friday night's error not withstanding.

But I don't think the Twins are going to be knee-jerk about bringing Buxton up. For one thing, he's not on the 40-man roster, so it's not a simple matter of optioning somebody down. They'd have to cut ties to somebody. For another, because he's not currently on the 40, they will want to avoid yo-yoing him up and down. If he comes up next week and struggles, it will cost one of his three options to send him down. They have good reason to want to be as sure as possible that he's going to stick at least through this season.

I've had the All-Star break in my head as the target for Buxton. If the timeline moves up, I certainly won't complain. But I'm not exactly calling for it either.

Contemplating Aaron Hicks

Aaron Hicks makes one of his diving catches in center
field. This one came May 23 on a drive by Chicago's
Adam Eaton.

In Wednesday's post, I referred to Aaron Hicks' "balsa-wood bat," a metaphor for his light hitting. That afternoon, Hicks hit a home run.

Which still leaves the 25-year-old center fielder with a lowly slash line on the season of .240/.269/.320. His OPS+ at this point is 63 percent of league average -- and while those figures come for just 52 plate appearances, they are in line with his career figures to date. Nothing appears to have changed for him as a hitter.

I can, and will, concede that he's flashing some serious leather in center field. But even a Gold Glove centerfielder has to hit better than Hicks has.

And, of course, Hicks isn't going to be the long term center fielder for this team. Byron Buxton will be, and I hope sooner rather than later. 

A couple of years ago, I could envision Hicks as a 20-plus home-run guy with 80 or so walks and 20 to 30 steals. Even with a low batting average, those numbers and strong defense would certainly play in center fielder and possibly in an outfield corner. But he has yet to show genuine power, and the walks have disappeared.

Buxton has hit nine triples in May for Double A Chattanooga; the entire major league roster has nine triples for the season. He's had his ups and downs for the Lookouts, but the talent is inescapable. My expectation is that Hicks will continue to play center in June. And in July, Buxton will get the call. Whether there will be a role for Hicks depends in large part on whether he shows something more at the plate.

A theory of first-round busts

Nobody uses a first-round draft pick on a prospect projected to be a back-of-the-rotation starter or a fourth outfielder. Very few guys expected to be relief pitchers go in the first round, even late in the first round, and those who do are expected to be dominant closers.

First rounders, especially early first-rounders, are supposed to be potential stars, or at least solid regulars. Players with "upside." Joe Mauer, first overall in 2001. Torii Hunter, 20th in 1993. Trevor Plouffe, 20th in 2004. Those three, right now, are the Twins 2-3-4 hitters.

But not every first-rounder reaches their expectations. Some never make it at all; others wind up as bit players. They help, but they don't star. And it's my theory that those guys seldom find that level with their drafting team, because their drafting team is too invested in the idea that he's supposed to be more than he is.

That's what I think is happening now with Aaron Hicks. The Twins took him with the 14th pick in 2008. They expected him to be the successor in the center field chain -- Kirby Puckett to Hunter to Denard Span to Hicks. It's pretty clear now that the successor is Byron Buxton. If Hicks is going to be an outfield regular, it will be in an outfield corner, and I doubt he'll hit enough for that.

His destination may well be as a fourth outfielder. And if so, he'll probably achieve that elsewhere, for a team that never invested money and hopes in a different outcome for him.

A mixed bag of Aaron Hicks

This awkward moment: Aaron Hicks is tagged out on
his 10th-inning steal attempt Tuesday night.

Aaron Hicks started in center field Tuesday. He had a very nice catch in right-center at the wall, a play I'm willing to assume the other center fielders the Twins have deployed this year wouldn't have made; he made; he beat out an infield hit in four plate appearances; he twice made outs with men in scoring position (hardly unique); and he was thrown out on a "steal attempt" that was actually a failed hit-and-run with Brian Dozier.

Hicks is filling the roster spot created when Shane Robinson went on family emergency leave, which lasts three to seven days, That's a short-term situation, but Hicks's status might not be short term. The Twins have a lot of outfielders on or just off the major league roster right now plus Eduardo Escobar playing a lot of left field.

I can't presume to know how this is going to shake out over the next few days, but I would think that the guys on the shakiest ground are Eddie Rosario and Jordan Schafer, two left-handed hitters who sat against a right-handed starter on Tuesday while Escobar and Hicks started.

One other observation: Tuesday's game was a lot of regression going on. The Twins -- who had been hitting .310 with runners in scoring position -- went hitless in RISP situations. And Kyle Gibson, who had just 11 strikeouts on the season entering the game, fanned six men in seven innings. He had, and used, a good change-up to get those whiffs; he either doesn't have that change-up most starts or doesn't trust it enough. But that's the pitch that can solve his strikeout problem.

The apparent return of Aaron Hicks

Aaron Hicks gets
one more (final?)
shot.

The word out of Rochester Monday night was that Aaron Hicks had been called up. There was no official announcement by the Twins, and no report on what the corresponding move would be.

Hicks is sporting impressive numbers in Triple A with a slash line of .330/.412/.553. Those numbers don't tell us how much of that is coming from the left side of the plate, long a problem for the switch-hitter. Nor do they tell us whether he's gotten better about such details as remembering how many outs there are or which base to throw to.

Presumably this is his last chance with the Twins, and the leash is likely to be, and should be, short. He's out of options after this season, and no matter what he does in this go-around, he's not the Twins center fielder of the future. That's Bryon Buxton's role, and Buxton's time might come around the All-Star break. In the long run, Hicks is competing with Oswaldo Arcia and Eddie Rosario. In my mind, he's already lost that competition.

My opinion (which is not infallible): Hicks won't hit enough to be a regular center fielder in the majors -- and certainly not enough to be a regular corner outfielder. If he pulls the kind of rocks he did in spring training, he won't even stick as a fourth outfielder.

As for the corresponding move, there are plenty of possiblities. Jordan Schafer's been playing on a bad leg since the season started, and maybe he's going on the DL. I can imagine the Twins shipping Eddie Rosario back to Rochester after his fielding woes on Sunday, Dropping Shane Robinson is a possibility, since he and Hicks are somewhat redundant, but the fact is Hicks has never looked as good in the majors as Robinson has in the first five weeks. What Hicks does well, Robinson does just as well, and more consistently.

My predictions: Schafer's going on the shelf. Rosario will stay until Arcia is ready to return. Hicks will play himself completely out of the Twins plans in the next month. And Buxton will arrive in July.

Rosario vs. Hicks

Eddie Rosario got the
call Monday and
arrived at Target Field
during the game.

The Twins put Oswaldo Arcia on the disabled list Monday and called up Eddie Rosario. The choice of Rosario over Aaron Hicks was loudly questioned in the Twins blogosphere/social media, with the critics noting that Hicks' slash line at Triple A Rochester is .289/.375/.495 to Rosario's ,242/.280/.379.

But there's good reason for going with Rosario.

As I see it:

• Arcia hits left-handed; so does Rosario. Hicks is a switch hitter, but he's much better hitting right-handed than left. If you want an outfielder to play against righties, Hicks is a poor fit.
• One month's numbers aside, I don't believe anybody in the organization believes Hicks is a better hitter than Rosario. Nor should they.
• Hicks, I suspect, made a bad impression in spring training with repeated lapses in concentration. In this piece on the reasons for going with Rosario, Terry Ryan offers a set of generic questions about call-ups, including these: "How's he going about his business? Is he listening?" He doesn't specifically rap Hicks on any of these points, but one can safely assume Ryan and Paul Molitor haven't forgotten March.
• This figures to be a short-term stint. There's a line of thought that the Twins want Hicks' next return to the majors to be lasting, not a yo-yo.

That last really doesn't matter to me. I don't envision Hicks ever hitting well enough to be a regular center fielder, much less a regular left or right fielder. I think his ceiling is reserve outfielder, as is the case with Jordan Schafer and Shane Robinson. That's not the role Rosario is being called up to fill.

'Clarity,' indeed

Tommy Milone
gets the fifth
slot in the rotation.

I suppose I could have waited a couple hours to post.

The Twins this morning optioned out Aaron Hicks, Eddie Rosario and Trevor May and reassigned Mark Hamburger. They also announced that Tommy Milone will be the fifth starter.

This sets up a center field platoon of Jordan Schafer and Shane Robinson, which I saw coming a few days ago. I'm fine with this. After the last two springs, nothing Hicks did in Florida was going to sway my view of him, and while I have high hopes for Rosario, I don't think center field in April 2015 is the right job at the right time for him. Schafer and Robinson aren't much of a much, but that just makes it easier to decide that it's Byron Buxton's time in June or July.

Ron Gardenhire would have made a different decision. Gardy never ran a true left-right platoon for more than a month or so. He'd have picked one center fielder to open the season, probably Hicks, and changed to somebody else in late May when Hicks didn't hit, and we've seen this movie before.

Hamburger's departure was also foreseeable. He opened eyes early in camp but faded late; he didn't make either of my bullpen projections this week. He's got a real good chance of coming up at some point this season, though.

I'm glad Milone is in the rotation, even more pleased that Mike Pelfrey isn't, and a bit discouraged that May is not. As I said earlier this morning, May probably needed some veteran injuries to get a rotation spot. The front office stacked too many contracts in front of him. Milone is a good starter with a better track record than Pelfrey or Ricky Nolasco. We didn't see him pitch that way last year.

So what decisions still await? The backup catcher has yet to be determined. One or two or even three bullpen jobs are still in question. We know Glen Perkins, Casey Fien and Brian Duensing are safe, and it would be a shocker if J.R. Graham didn't come north. That leaves three jobs for Tim Stauffer, Caleb Thielbar, Pelfrey, Blaine Boyer and maybe somebody not currently in the Twins organization.

Center field revisited

Aaron Hicks' stat line
is less impressive than
it was a week ago.

When I wrote here last week about the center field competition, Aaron Hicks was sporting a .330 spring training average. He had maybe one hit since then and dropped to .207 -- which, really only illustrates the silliness of relying on spring training stats to evaluate players. The sample sizes are small, the competition is uneven, the numbers are essentially meaningless.

Even if he were still hitting three-something, so what? He did that in spring trainings 2013 and and 2014, and it didn't prove indicative of anything. Hicks has 150 regular season games, 538 regular season plate appearances, in which he's hit .201. Letting a couple dozen spring training at-bats outweigh that would be silly.

Meanwhile, Eddie Rosario's spring training stats display a red-flag glitch: 40 plate appearances, no walks. He still has a batting average (.256 per Baseball Reference) higher than his on-base percentage (.250). His minor league stat line hardly reveals a Kevin Youkilis-type base-on-balls machine, but it's not that bizarre.

My take on this is that he's trying too hard to impress. There used to be a cliche about Dominican players and their hacking tendencies: You can't walk off the island. The idea was that these players were encouraged to swing at everything because they had to hit the ball to get the scouts' attention. Rosario is from Puerto Rico, not the Dominican, but the concept holds.

Hicks and Rosario are the two young guys in camp who can be seen as full-time center fielders. Veteran fringe players Jordan Schafer and Shane Robinson are more likely to be platoon mates, and that increasingly looks like the direction the Twins will take. Terry Ryan doesn't sound very enthused by that prospect, while Paul Molitor this week expressed openness to platoons and invoked the success Earl Weaver had with platoons back when Molitor was a young player.

One difference, of course, is that Weaver platooned aggressively. His Orioles collected players like John Lowenstein and Benny Ayala specifically to use in such roles. A Schafer-Robinson platoon would be more a passive platoon, chosen out of a lack of better options not for a strategic advantage. Robinson's career splits actually suggest he's a bit "backwards," meaning better against right-handed pitchers, although I don't think 200 or so plate appearances over five seasons each way proves a whole lot. He's probably not the right-handed outfielder you'd pursue if you wanted to build a center field platoon.

Still, Schafer-Robinson is more palatable to me this spring than either Hicks or, I'm sorry to say, Rosario. (If Rosario does come north, I will not complain, but I won'be have high expectations; if it's Hicks, I will complain.) Schafer-Robinson are acceptable until Bryon Buxton arrives, and I hope that's sooner rather than later.

The center field competition

Shane Robinson was
a popular player among
Cardinals fans.

First there were three genuine candidates for the Twins center field job. Now there are four. The winnowing process, it would appear, is going in the wrong direction.

There remains more than two weeks of spring training, but the indications are that Paul Molitor wants to use the last week of camp to "practice manage" game situations, not evaluate talent. Remember, he's never run a game on any level. So the expectation is that that Twins will look to essentially set their Opening Day roster in 10 days or so.

Let's look at the candidates in alphabetical order:

Aaron Hicks is, for the third spring in a row, putting up good spring training numbers (slash line .330/.400/.500). Call him Mr. March.

Twenty at-bat sample sizes are meaningless to begin with, and particularly so in spring training, and even more so with Hicks. This kind of thing has fooled the decision makers each of the past two springs. I've said this before: I don't know what Hicks can do this spring to convince people that he's better than he's been. He certainly didn't help himself with his wool gathering early on.

He's 25, so growth is possible if  unlikely. Molitor says in this story that Hicks is too young to be a bench guy, that he should play everyday. My take is that Hicks is never going to be more than a fourth outfielder/platoon candidate.

Roster status: 40-man roster, has an option left.

Shane Robinson, 30, split the past four seasons between St. Louis and its minor league affiliates. He's a right-handed hitter, no power, with some speed -- classic fourth- or fifth-outfielder tools. I may be wrong, but he seems to have mainly played corner outfield this spring.

Roster status: Non-roster invitee, but he has, as many non-roster veterans do, an opt-out clause -- if he's not on the 40 by a specific date (in his case, apparently, April 2) he can declare free agency and walk away.

Eddie Rosario, 23, is the guy who wedged his way into the conversation. He has an odd set of splits, .276/.267/.586; he has an on-base percentage lower than his batting average because he has literally never walked but has picked up a sac fly. Patrick Reusse's kind of hitter line, I guess.

Rosario is the only one of the four without major league experience; in fact, he's not played above Double A, and he didn't do much at that level. He is also, presumably, the weakest defensively of the four.

Jordan Schafer is
a .229 lifetime hitter
in  more than 1,300
plate appearances.

Rosario is definitely what Molitor says Hicks is: A young guy with a high ceiling who needs to play every day at some level. He only makes the big league roster as the regular center fielder.

Roster status: 40 man roster, has all three options left.

Jordan Schafer, 28, is the one guy most certain to make the roster, either as the backup behind Hicks or Rosario or in a platoon with Hicks or Robinson. Left-handed hitter who fared better in his 41 games with the Twins late last season than he did in any previous stretch in the majors. Another guy with reserve outfielder tools.

Roster status: On the 40, presumably out of options, has a $1.55 million contract for 2015.

These are the realistic choices for the Molitor and general manager Terry Ryan:

• Hicks as the regular, Schafer as the backup, Rosario to the minors, Robinson gets to make his choice.
• Rosario as the regular, Schafer as the backup, Hicks to Triple A, Robinson gets to make his choice.
• Schafer platoons with Robinson, Hicks and Rosario to the minors.
• Schafer platoons with Hicks, Rosario to the minors, Robinson gets to make his choice.

My impulse is to vote for the second option, Rosario as the regular. It's consistent with my wish for the organization to push the talent and find reasons to play them. But ... I am also a firm believer that the outfield defense is a bigger problem than the Twins acknowledge, and Rosario as a center fielder doesn't figure to be a defensive asset.

I want him up, but the positions that fit him best aren't available. My guess is that the Twins will opt to follow the same logic that they are following with Byron Buxton and Miguel Sano and send him down.

In which case, I'd say go with option 3, a Schafer-Robinson platoon. There can be no illusion there: These are two low-ceiling players whose purpose is to fill the position until somebody better is ready. Having them in center will give the front office incentive to decide that somebody better -- be it Buxton or Rosario -- is ready.

What's most likely, I fear, is option 1, Hicks as the regular. The definition of insanity, doing the same thing over and over while expecting a different result.

The center field competition

Byron Buxton chases down a ball
in an early spring training drill.

Aaron Hicks has legitimately been the best outfielder in the Twins spring training the past two years. Not just the best centerfielder, the best outfielder, period.

And once the season began, it meant nothing.

So I'm not sure what the Twins are looking for from Hicks this spring to convince them he's the man for the center field job. I'm quite sure that it isn't the vapor lock he's exhibited the past couple of games.

The other day Hicks was picked off first and saved by a balk call, which moved him to second -- where he promptly got picked off again.

On Tuesday Hicks lost track of the outs, and Paul Molitor pulled him from the game and inserted Byron Buxton.

Buxton drew a pair of walks and pulled off a Buxton baserunning move, going first-to-third on a single to left that the Toronto broadcasters described as a "looping liner." Baserunners generally don't make that play work -- the throw to third is a short one -- but Buxton motors. I don't know that he's the fastest guy in baseball, as Tom Kelly suggested in the summer of 2013, but he's close. Hicks is fast. Buxton is faster.

Meanwhile, Shane Robinson, the former St. Louis Cardinal reserve, committed an error in right field.

I know full well this isn't going to happen, but I will again say: Buxton is probably the best bet, right now, for center field in the Twins camp. I know he barely played more than two weeks at a time last summer, and I know he has one game above A ball on his resume. Put him in the lineup, and he'll provide Gold Glove defense, steal some bases and outhit Hicks, not that that last is all that impressive.

The Twins by position: Center field

Jordan Schafer hit .285 for the Twins
in the last two months of 2014.

If we ignore Danny Santana, who enters spring training a presumed shortstop, the Twins will open camp with three center fielders with multiple seasons of major league experience: Aaron Hicks, Shane Robinson and Jordan Schafer.

Hicks is 25 and a .201 career hitter in 538 plate appearances spread over two years.

Robinson, a non-roster invitee signed after the Cardinals let him go, is 30 and a .231 career hitter (five seasons, less that 500 plate appearances)

Schafer is 28 and a .229 hitter (five years and nearly 1,400 plate appearances).

You can draw up various platoon possibilities out of these three. Schafer is left-handed, Robinson right-handed, Hicks a switch hitter. You might still envision Hicks as a regular, although that notion is increasingly dubious. No matter how you deploy this group, you get inadequacy. These are, at best, bench guys,

The best center field talent in camp (and this is true even if we count Santana as a center fielder) are two prospects coming off disappointing 2014s and ticketed for Double A: Byron Buxton, who had repeated injuries, and Eddie Rosario, who served a 50-game drug suspension.

Despite his 2014 stall, I still believe that if the Twins simply handed the center field job to Buxton this spring and let him play all year, his floor is something like .260 with 10 homers, 30 steals and Gold Glove caliber defense (assuming, of course, that he stayed intact). Rosario would probably put up a better batting average but with fewer steals and lesser defense.

You know to a dead certainty that the three "major leaguers" aren't going to come near those numbers. Not a dead certainty, but close to it, is that the Twins front office won't let Buxton sniff the majors until the second half of the year at the earliest, and Rosario isn't going to be fast tracked either.

The Twins have reasons to slow play Buxton and Rosario. They would do better to look for reasons to play the kids, not to look for reasons to keep them in the minors. Let the kids play.

Looking for meaning in a minor signing

OK, it's a minor transaction -- specifically, a minor league transaction. But it still says something about a particular problem in the upper levels of the Twins farm system.

The Twins on Thursday signed outfielder Shane Robinson to a minor-league contract with an invitation to spring training.

Robinson has been with the St. Louis Cardinals since he was drafted in 2006 and has been a reserve outfielder for the big-league club for most of the past three years. He's a little (5-foot-9) guy who can run well enough to be used in center field, and he has a career MLB average of .231.

The Cardinals cut him loose rather than risk going to arbitration with him. The Twins got him to sign in a hurry, probably because there's a fairly obvious chance to be on the major league team. While the corner outfield starters are set (Torii Hunter and Oswaldo Arcia), center field is open.

Aaron Hicks? Jordan Schafer? Robinson? As matters stand, at least one, probably two, of these guys are going to be on the 25-man roster. Somebody has to play center field, at least until Byron Buxton establishes that he can stay in one piece for a month.

The Twins had the opportunity to do unto Schafer as the Cardinals did to Robinson, but they lack any sort of depth in center field-competent outfielders. So Schafer, a .229 lifetime hitter, figures to pull in well over $1 million next year, while Robinson will do well to get half that.

At the very least the Twins have now the option of platooning in center. Schafer hits left; Robinson hits right. Robinson has actually shown a backwards platoon split in his limited major league playing time, but if Paul Molitor has any inclination to platoon, this might be a reasonable pair to do it with.

Hicks, a switch hitter who is stronger from the right side, also offers a platoon option, but I doubt the Twins would do that with Hicks, who is considerably younger than Schafer and Robinson and is still seen as having a higher ceiling.

Contemplating Aaron Hicks

Aaron Hicks: His OBP
for the season is .341, but
his SLG is a dismal .275.

Aaron Hicks has had just 25 plate appearances since his recall, which is hardly a sound basis for drawing conclusions.

Plus, it's September, and there's an adage that claims the worst times to evaluate a player are September and spring training.

Still, that's what we have to work with in gauging Hicks' status. And it's worth noting that this September for the Twins has not been filled with series against other out-of-the-chase teams playing out the schedule.

At any rate, Hicks is 7-for-23 this month, a .304 average, with a couple of walks tossed in to boost the on-base percentage to a healthy .360. He has raised his major league average for the season above the .200 mark -- not good, certainly, but somewhat less embarrassing than the .180-something he has generally carried.

And the switch-hitter has had, in his limited left-handed at-bats -- his pronounced weaker side -- three RBI hits, notable for their previous rarity

It's a small sample size, to be sure, but there may be hope yet for the outfielder. Nobody who has seen him can doubt the tools, but he was, in retrospect, not ready to hit the majors last year, and his premature rise appears to have been a significant detriment.

Still, the Twins have openings for him to fill. The one certainty about their 2015 outfield plans is Oswaldo Arcia in right field. Danny Santana might be an outfielder next year or he might be a shortstop or he might continue to be a combination of the two.

And then there's Hicks and Jordan Schafer and Chris Parmelee -- and, although not a likely Opening Day candidate, Byron Buxton. The Twins might bring in a veteran outfielder this offseason, but right now I'm optimistic enough about Hicks that I hope they stick with the current bunch and go young. Whether I'll still be inclined that way by November is another matter.

A night at Target Field

Oswaldo Arcia was charged with an
error in the fourth inning on a ball hit
by Kole Calhoun that resulted in a run
for the visiting Angels.

Here's one bright side to the Twins' low status: Good tickets can be had reasonably on the resale market.

My wife and I darted up to Target Field with lower-deck home plate box seats. We didn't make it through the entire 10-inning, four-and-a-half hour game; it may have been a Friday night, but there was a long drive home and things to do today too. So we missed Trevor Plouffe's game-tying double with two outs in the ninth -- and Jared Burton surrendering the winning run in the 10th.

A few observations, on and off the playing field:

* Danny Santana got the start at shortstop. In the second inning, with a man on first, Brennan Boesch hit a one-hopper just to Santana's right; he tried, a bit awkwardly I thought, to backhand the ball only to have it go off his glove. I marked it an error on my scorecard; the official scorer ruled it a hit.

Still, it was a play I expect a major league shortstop to make; indeed, it was a ball I expect a major league shortstop to turn into a double play. The failure to make that play resulted in a run.

That was the extent of Santana's defensive involvement for four innings. He had four routine plays in the fifth and sixth inning and cleaned them all up.

*Aaron Hicks had a pair of two-out RBI base hits -- left-handed, his weaker side. He's hitting over .200 now.

*Josmil Pinto had a pair of doubles and a walk and scored twice (on those Hicks hits). He also had a passed ball and saw a pair of Angels steal second, although I'm inclined to blame the pitchers more for those steals. Terry Ryan said when they recalled Pinto that his defense had improved; it's hard for me to see the difference.

* Oswaldo Arcia had an impressive home run in the second inning. And in the fourth inning he had an outfielding misadventure (see photo) that cost the Twins a run. Actually, he had another misplay of a ball off the wall in the first inning -- rule a triple rather than a double and error -- that led to yet another run. The slugger giveth and he taketh away, and on the whole in this game, he gaveth too much to the Angels.

* Ricky Nolasco wasn't particularly good, but as you've noticed already, his defense didn't help him much. He went five innings and allowed three runs, two earned; with spotless defense behind him, no runs score. He struck out five and only walked one.

That's the glass half full. On the other hand, he didn't have a one-two-three inning (the fourth would have been had Arcia corralled the Calhoun drive), and the Angels had the leadoff man on in four of the five innings, so he spent most of his time pitching out of the stretch. The misplays didn't put all those leadoff men on, they just moved them along the route home.

* Matt Shoemaker, who started for the Halos, has had a fine season (14-4, 3.14 coming into the game with 115 strikeouts in 117 innings), but he struggled to throw strikes in this one. He threw a lot of offspeed and breaking stuff and only got through four innings. I wasn't impressed, but he's obviously been better.

* This game marked my first encounter with the much-praised rib tips from the Butcher and the Boar stand (near Gate 34). They are not over-rated. Between that and my addiction to the Kramarczuk bratwurst, my carnivore cravings were more than satisfied.

The September call-ups

Doug Bernier, who
spent half the 2013
season with the Twins,
was named MVP of
the 2014 Red Wings.

The Twins on Monday morning announced eight callups for the expanded September roster, names familiar and otherwise: A.J. Achter, Doug Bernier, Logan Darnell, Chris Herrmann, Aaron Hicks, Lester Oliveros, Josmil Pinto and Michael Tonkin. They were all with Triple A Rochester, which was eliminated Sunday from playoff contention, and will join the Twins today.

As surmised here earlier, three of them -- Achter, Bernier and Oliveros -- had to be added to the 40-man roster. Of the eight -- nine if you want to count Aaron Thompson, called up during the weekend -- only Achter has never appeared in the majors before.

This collection is heavy with minor league veterans and light on true prospects.The Twins did not call up anybody who is to be first-time eligible for the Rule 5 draft and thus likely to be added to the 40 early in the offseason. That would include Eddie Rosario, who didn't play well enough this year to be rewarded with a month of major league pay and perks but is too good a prospect to expose, and Alex Meyer, who went on the minor league disabled list during the weekend.

Lester Oliveros
will audition this
month for a bullpen
role next year.

The most interesting of the nine, as I look to 2015, are Hicks, Oliveros and Tonkin.

Hicks needs to have a strong September, as I see it. He's twice won jobs in spring training only to flop in the regular season, and I can't see a good reason for the Twins to let him do that a third time.

Oliveros and Tonkin are a pair of hard-throwing righties, either of whom might be a successor to Jared Burton (whose contract is expiring) in a set-up role next year. Oliveros, as you might recall, came to the Twins in the Delmon Young trade in 2011; he's had some injury issues and has returned from Tommy John surgery. (Achter might be put in this group, but his stuff is a notch behind the others.)

Chris Herrmann hit
.304 for Rochester
but just .143 with
the Twins.

Darnell and Thompson are showcasing themselves as potential replacements for Brian Duensing and Caleb Thielbar as lefty specialists.

Pinto and Herrmann ... I think their purpose is to lighten the load on Kurt Suzuki, who has taken a beating behind the plate in recent days. Theoretically either could push out Eric Fryer as the backup catcher in 2015, but Fryer is the superior receiver, and a reliable backstop seems to be Ron Gardenhire's preference in that role. (Assuming, of course, that Gardy is back next year.)

Herrmann would have a better chance at a backup job with a manager inclined to use the backup catcher in platoon situations -- meaning, to look to give Suzuki his days off against right-handed pitchers and fit the left-handed Herrmann in then. Gardenhire is not such a manager.