More minor stuff

Less than a week before pitchers and catchers report, dozens of free agents remain on the market, and the Twins are still filling out their spring training list.

Over the weekend they announced two veteran names as minor league free agents and released a list of 20 invitees:

The #MNTwins have released their full list of 20 NRIs to Spring Training.

Lucas Duda and Adam Rosales are among the more notable names on the list. pic.twitter.com/WPTyxonQXY

— Do-Hyoung Park (@dohyoungpark) February 9, 2019

Let's start with Lucas Duda and Adam Rosales, two players with resumes if not much else.

Rosales is a odd duck: He's never been a regular but he's been able to hang around the majors 11 seasons. To be sure, some of those 11 seasons are only partial, but still -- it is rare for a utility guy such as Rosales to last into his mid 30s. He typically doesn't stick around long (five seasons with Oakland, in two stints with two midseason trades invoved) and isn't much of a hitter. He has played more than a thousand innings each at second, third and short, and even had more than 500 at first.

I prefer Ehrie Adrianaza or Ronald Torreyes as  the backup middle infielder. Rosales apparently has a March 19 opt-out, so he may suspect that the odds of him making the opening day roster are slim.

Duda is a left-handed first baseman. His strong suit, other than a name that lends itself to parodies of "Camptown Races," is power.  He occasionally homers but doesn't do much else for you. Other than hitting lefty, he's pretty much the opposite of the retired Joe Mauer, who didn't homer frequently but did everything else well. I don't much care for first basemen in the Duda mold. I assume he too has an opt-out, and I hope he uses it.

A few other not-so-random observations about the NRI list:

* Tim Collins is a little lefty reliever who had four seasons of promise in the Kansas City bullpen when the Royals were building up to their two World Series appearances. Then he got hurt and disappeared for three seasons. He LOOGY'd for Washington last year -- 35 appearances, 22.2 innings -- and had the kind of strikeout rate he had in the K.C. days but also gave up too many homers. The Twins have plenty of lefty relief candidates, and I'm not sure that Collins is truly in the mix, but he's still only 29.

* Wilin Rosario, whose signing gave me momentary panic a week ago, is NOT an invitee. There are catchers I'm completely unfamiliar with on the list in Wynston Sawyer and Tomas Telis, and presumably Rosario is well down the depth chart. (The Twins may be more interested in him as a first baseman/DH than as a catcher.)

* Brent Rooker, who I regard as the first baseman in waiting, is an NRI -- and listed as an outfielder.

* Chase De Jong, designated for assignment to make room for Martin Perez on the 40, cleared waivers and is an invitee. I'm not high on De Jong, but I'd rather see the Twins pitch him than Perez.

* Ryan Eades, a second-round draft pick in 2013 whose minor league record does not make me eager to see him in Target Field, is an invitee as well. 

Where they stand: First base

Presumptive regular: C.J. Cron

Others on the 40: Tyler Austin, possibly Miguel Sano

Nonroster notables: Brent Rooker

I've put off this position for a week or so in large part because I don't really have anything new to say. Of the three position-player additions for the Twins this offseason, Cron is the one I have the most trouble with. A right-handed first baseman who hits dingers but is chronically weak in on-base percentage and spent most of 2017 as a DH ... he's pretty much the opposite of Joe Mauer.

I'm not sure he gives the Twins anything they couldn't get from Austin. Or the departed Byung-ho Park, for that matter. On the other hand, Park and Austin had have frequent injuries. Cron has had only one 500-plate appearance season as a full-fledged regular, but that's for lack of opportunity, not injuries.

Right-right first basemen don't often get repeated opportunities; some never get an opportunity. Cron got one and took advantage of it.

He's on a one-year deal here, and I think it likely that the 2020 first baseman will be Brent Rooker, who figures to open 2019 in Triple A Rochester. He didn't dominate Double A statistically in 2018 as he did High A in his limited time after being drafted in 2017, but I think he's the future at first base for the Twins. Cron is just filling the gap.

First base with and without Mauer

A year ago I figured that Joe Mauer would retire at the expiration of his contract after the 2018 season. His 2017 resurgence may change that equation, but he'll be 35, his daughters will be about ready to start school, he'll have collected more than $200 million in salary over the course of his career -- yeah, he might well decide to hang 'em up.

Then what for the Twins at first base? For that matter, who's behind Mauer for 2018?

Mauer played more than 72 percent of the team's innings at first base. Kennys Vargas picked the majority of the rest. But Vargas

• hasn't been very productive as a major league hitter
• is finally out of options
• isn't a lock to remain on the 40-man roster this winter and
• is seriously contemplating playing in Japan or Korea

Byungho Park might be seriously contemplating a return to his native Korea. He slugged a mere .415 in Triple A, and if Park ain't hitting for power, he ain't doing much. His walk to strikeout ratio with Rochester (28 bases on balls, 130 strikeouts) was ugly. He has one more year on his Twins contract, he's not on the 40-man roster and this front office has no investment in him.

In my opinion, it's likely that neither Vargas nor Park is with the Twins next year.

Many assume that Miguel Sano is destined for first base once that position is vacated (he played 65 inning there this year). My guess is that if he's too big to stay healthy at third base, he's not real likely to stay healthy at first either. The Twins have long ought to avoid a full-time DH, but that is, in my view, his more likely destination if third base doesn't work for him.

Sano is right-right -- bats right, throws right. John Manuel, for this week still the editor of Baseball America and after that a member of the Twins pro scouting department, had a recent piece about the scouting bias against right-right first basemen. (Byungho Park certainly isn't a data point to discredit the bias.)

The hitter in the system who most interests me as a post-Mauer first base candidate is also right-right: Brent Rooker, who raked at two levels in the farm system after the Twins plucked him with a supplemental pick between the first and second rounds.

He's right-right, he's probably not athletic enough for the outfield and as a college senior draft he was older than his competition at both Rookie and High A ball. These are significant drawbacks. He also hit 11 homers in 40 games in the Florida State League with Hammond Stadium as his home park, and that doesn't happen very often.

Presumably Rooker will advance to Double-A in the spring. Then we might get a better read on his future.

Draft, Day one: Twins roll with Royce (Lewis)

Royce Lewis plays third base in 2016 for
Jserra Catholic High School.

I didn't, obviously, see that one coming.

I wrote eight posts that were sufficiently draft-related that I tagged it with "2017 draft." I wrote two Monday print columns, including this week's, about the draft. Never did I mention Royce Lewis, who wound up Monday night as the Twins' selection as a top overall pick.

The basic idea -- selecting somebody who would sign for considerably less than slot to save money for later picks -- I foresaw. My error was in seeing MacKenzie Gore, left-handed prep pitcher, as that somebody. As it turned out, the Padres had Gore as their favored fall back from local prospect Hunter Greene at No. 3, and that limited the incentive for Gore to cut a deal.

Both Gore and Lewis are said to be "advised" by Scott Boras, and Boras probably figured that if the Twins took Brendan McKay, Kyle Wright or Greene first that Lewis would fall to fifth or lower.

Lewis was pretty consistently seen as the best prep position player prospect. He's "toolsy," with speed and power, and played both shortstop and outfield in high school (a private school in San Juan Capistrano in southern California).

The Twins say they think Lewis can stick at shortstop; that is not a universal assessment, and it may be tested pretty early, since he and Wander Javier, a Dominican who beat Miguel Sano's Twins bonus record, figure to be at roughly the same level. Only one of them can play short at a time.

The Twins apparently saw the top players in this draft class as essentially equal; they drafted the one who would sign for the least. That is a fairly common strategy so far in the (short) bonus pool era, which (despite the Hunter Greene hype) hasn't truly featured a "generational" prospect.

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I had expected that the Twins would take local product Sam Carlson of Burnsville if the right-hander reached them at picks 35 and 37. He did, and they didn't.

No. 35 was Brent Rooker, an outfielder from Mississippi State who dominated the difficult SEC as a hitter. The Twins drafted him last year as a redshirt sophomore but didn't sign him. Obviously they still wanted him. He's probably limited to left field or first base defensively, and he's likely to be old for the first league he's assigned to.

No. 37 was Landon Leach, a right-handed pitcher from a high school in Ontario. Presumably the Twins like him more than Carlson.

The Twins have the first pick today when the draft resumes with the third round.

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The less said about Monday's Twins game, the better. The Twins optioned out Chris Heston to reinstate Jorge Polanco from the bereavement list and probably regretted that decision before the game was over, as Adalberto Mejia didn't get through four innings.

The Twins have a doubleheader coming before they have another off day, and they burned through a lot of relievers on Monday, so they'll be going back to 13 pitchers soon. And unless its to replace somebody going on the disabled list, it won't be Heston.