Wrong again, Eddie

It says something that no team thought Tyler Jay was worth a Rule 5 selection. I was pretty sure that he would be too attractive a target, that somebody would take a flier on him.

It's not that his work in the minors has justified the opportunity. It's that the talent -- a live, left-handed arm -- to be at least a LOOGY is there.

So Jay remains in the Twins organization. And we have to consider his drafting -- the sixth overall pick in 2015 -- a painful mistake. After all, the next man taken, by the Boston Red Sox, was Andrew Benintendi.

Anyway: the Twins took nobody in Rule 5, as anticipated. And they lost nobody either. That was not what I expected.

---

Another missed call: I correctly anticipated that Seattle would send Carlos Santana on his way. I hardly expected it to be back to Cleveland, which made little obvious effort to retain him as a free agent last offseason.

It was a three-way trade that sent Edwin Encarnacion to Seattle, Santana and Jake Bauers (from Tampa Bay) to Cleveland and a hard-hitting Cuban infielder named Yandy Diaz to Tampa Bay.

Encarnacion may not be long with Seattle either. But remember my complaint about the C.J. Cron and Jonathan Schoop additions: they lack the ability to reach base consistently. Encarnacion is of the same ilk.

Santana is much more the kind of hitter the Twins need than Encarnacion is. Or, for that matter, Nelson Cruz, who has been linked to the Twins all week in the rumor mill.

Thinking first base

I doubt that the Twins view C.J. Cron as their 2019 first base solution. This may be wishful thinking, but I doubt it anyway -- first, because he's not the kind of hitter a analytically inclined operation should be coveting anyway, second because adding him while subtracting Robbie Grossman (nontendered), Joe Mauer (retired) and Logan Morrison (free agent) leaves them short an established bat to share first base and the DH slot.

Yes, they have Tyler Austin still, and yes, they have Brant Rooker in the farm system, but

• Rooker needs more minor league time and
• Between Cron, Miguel Sano and Austin, there is way too much right-handed swing-and-miss going on. Too much of the same set of tools-and-flaw for one lineup.

Morrison ended his 2018 season early for hip surgery. He had a disappointing season and there's no telling from the outside what his medicals look like, but he hits left-handed, and that's at least a different ingredient for the mix. I don't really expect the Twins to re-sign him, but I wouldn't rule it out.

So I expect the Twins will do something, either in trade or free agency, to acquire a left-handed (or switch-hitting) first baseman/DH. One of the names that came readily to mind as I pondered this while dealing with a weekend virus was Carlos Santana. The Phillies shipped the former Cleveland standout to Seattle on Monday, but he's probably still available, as the Mariners are selling pretty much any player of immediate value. 

I really like Santana. Even whne hitting a disappointing .229 in 2018, he still popped 24 homers and took 110 walks. I am surprised, looking at his career stats in the above link, that he's never hit for average. But he's never been a truly poor hitter, and he's become a good defensive first baseman after years of being a bad catcher and a truly misbegotten attempt to play third base.

There are two drawbacks to Santana: He turns 33 in April and he's got some $40 million coming over the next two seasons. 

Still, considering the obvious teardown in Seattle, his main purpose with the M's is as to be turned into something of future value. There is a deal to be made there.

The Sunday Funnies

Welcome back to the Sunday Funnies, this blog's weekly offseason recounting of funny, or at least slightly amusing, stories and quotes. As always, I make no guarantee of the literal accuracy of these tales. I also now will not guarantee that these are fresh; I've been doing the Funnies since, I believe, the offseason of 2012-13. Some unintended repetition is likely to creep in.

But I know this one is new, because I heard it this season:

Paul Molitor, now the Twins manager, was on the Twins coaching staff in 2014, Ron Gardenhire's last as manager. Joe Vavra, the first base coach that season, had surgery in midyear and Molitor wound up spending about half the season handling the first base coaching chores during games.

So Molitor is standing in the coaches box as Cleveland Indians first baseman Carlos Santana is tossing the warm-up grounders to his infield teammates, and Santana is chatting with Molitor, unaware that the first base coach was elected to the Hall of Fame on the first ballot.

"Did you play?" Santana inquired.

"A little bit," Molitor deadpanned.

My guess is that the umpire overheard the exchange and leaked like a faucet. For the rest of the season, first basemen jokingly asked one of baseball's all-time greats: Did you play?

Pic of the Week

Carlos Santana kisses the pate of manager Terry Francona
before Saturday's playoff game in Cleveland.

Ah, the goofy things players will do before games. (Or during them. Or after them.)

Puffs of white smoke

Word on the interwebs Monday was that the Twins had settled on Derek Falvey, 32-year-old assistant general manager of the Cleveland Indians, as their new president of baseball operations.

The Twins haven't announced such a hire; they haven't even scheduled an announcement. One genuine possibility for delay is that Falvey's current team was in a pennant race. (The Tribe clinched the AL Central title last night.) Another may be that the Twins intend to announce other changes -- such as the new general manager -- at the same time.

Here's Cleveland.com, the online arm of the Plain Dealer, on Falvey's many-faceted role with the Indians. The importance of connecting the work of the analytics people with that of the manager, coaches and players was a major theme of "Big Data Baseball," the 2015 book on the Pittsburgh Pirates, and seems to be a major part of Falvey's duties with the Tribe.

---

Derek Falvey's first meeting as new #Twins boss (I hope): "Ok, which one of you thought it would be a good idea to put Miguel Sano in RF?"

— Cory Hepola (@CoryHepola) September 26, 2016

Well, there's an interesting thing about the rise of the Cleveland Indians. In 2014, by the defensive metrics to be found on Baseball Reference, they were an awful defensive team. In 2015 they moved more or less to the middle of the pack, and this year they are at or near the top.

There are a lot of factors involved in that; the arrival of Francisco Lindor at shortstop certainly didn't hurt. But one of them was moving a third baseman, Lonnie Chisenhall, to right field. Another was undoing their own version of the Sano fiasco. in which they attempted to install Carlos Santana at third base. That 2014 experiment lasted about as long as Sano lasted in right field this year.

I won't pretend to know what Falvey's role was in any of those decisions. He probably wasn't an innocent bystander. But the notion that a front office exec coming out of the Cleveland Indians culture is going to be fervently anti-experimentation is simply silly. There may be no operation in the game more willing to try something different than Cleveland.

Bunting against the shift

Carlos Santana drops one down for a single Tuesday.

Top of the third inning, two outs, nobody on. Carlos Santana, the Cleveland cleanup hitter, steps up to the plate against the pronounced shift he typically sees when hitting left-handed and promptly pushes a bunt to the vacated third base position.

Easy base hit.

In the Twins TV booth, Bert Blyleven is critical of Santana for bunting. The old pitcher's analysis: With two outs, Santana should be looking for extra bases. A bunt single doesn't put him in scoring position for the next guy (Lonnie Chisenhall in this specific example). The unspoken next step of this line of thought -- unspoken, at least, by Blyleven -- is that the bunt is a selfish play, executed less to help the team than to fatten Santana's meager batting average. (Santana is having the kind of season at the plate only a stat nerd can love: He leads the American League in walks and he has 15 homers, but he entered Tuesday's game batting just .205. He left it hitting .214.)

Later in the game, I am listening to the radio guys, and the Santana bunt comes up. Dan Gladden is almost enthusiastic about the bunt. Santana got on base, he kept the line moving. An unspoken thought in defense of the bunt: Beyond doubt, part of Santana's meager batting average is the heavy use of infield shifts against him. Some bunt singles might discourage teams from shifting.

There's merit in both viewpoints. Blyleven's right in this: Santana's three other hits Tuesday (a home run and a pair of doubles) did more to help Cleveland score runs than the bunt did. On the other hand, had Santana lined a single to the outfield, nobody would criticize him for merely getting a one-base hit. Hitting is difficult.

Personally, I'm fine with the play. It's not the optimal time for Santana to take a bunt hit (leading off the inning would be), but he's got to do something to get the third baseman back on left side of the infield and open up the right side. And he's got hitters behind him who can do some damage. Getting on base -- not making an out -- is the goal of hitting.

Moving beyond this specific case to the abstract: There appears to be a brainless dispute within the game about when it's appropriate to bunt against a shift.

Earlier this year, the Houston Astros and Oakland Athletics got into a plunking war that was rooted in a bunt attempt by the A's Jed Lowrie with a 7-0 lead. The Astros responded by throwing at Lowrie.

This weekend, Colby Lewis, Texas pitcher, griped at Colby Rasmus, Toronto outfielder, for a bunt in essentially the same situation as Santana's bunt. (I can't resist; what's with these cheesy first names?)

My opinion: If it's appropriate for the defense to put on an exaggerated infield shift -- which are designed to take away singles; no infield shift is going to keep a home run ball in the park -- then it's appropriate for the batter to bunt against that shift.

The hitter is under no obligation to cooperate with the defense. Or the pitcher.

I suspect the pitchers unhappy with the opposition bunts are, in truth, unhappy with the shifts being deployed behind them. But they can't publicly vent about the manager giving away the bunt hit, so they direct their frustration at the guy taking what is given them. (Let it be noted that Lewis' ERA this year is 6.37, and Paul Clemens, the Astros pitcher who used Lowrie for target practice, has been up and down with an ERA of 6.08 in the majors. They can give up runs without their manager giving away the bunt.)

I know Tom Kelly thinks the shifts are overdone. But they are prevalent in today's game because they work. When enough hitters do what Santana did Tuesday often enough, the shifts will fade.