Notes, quotes and comment

Trevor May, rehabbing from last spring's Tommy John surgery, apparently ran out of time on his rehab assignment. On Thursday the Twins essentially swapped him and Jason Castro's roster status -- Castro went on the 60-day DL and May came off -- and optioned May to Triple A.

May's rehab is officially complete, but he's not ready for the majors yet. He appeared in six minor league games, four of them starts, on two levels during his rehab assignment, and struck out 20 hitters in 18 innings. He also walked 12, which tells us a lot about where he's at. 

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Pedro Martinez is a hellva comp for any young pitcher, but last night, as MLB Network was showing highlights of Jose Berrios' complete game earlier in the day, the Hall of Famer said: He reminds me of me as a young pitcher.

I can see that in a few ways -- short righties with a big fastball and imposing breaking stuff. What ultimately made Martinez great was his complete mastery of the changeup. Few power pitchers develop that pitch as well as Martinez did. It's no insult to Berrios to observe that his change isn't nearly as effective.

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I listened briefly to the Twins radio broadcast while walking the dog and turned it off during a Dan Gladden rant against analytics that booth visitor Tim Laudner was subtly encouraging. First Gladden complained that the Twins based some draft picks more heavily on analytics than on eyeball scouting. Then he said he'd like to see a team turn its baseball ops over to old school guys. Laudner agreed, at which point I turned it off.

The old-school had its run. Its time as expired. We've seen what happens to old-school GMs in the era of analytics. Ruben Amaro Jr in Philadelphia. Tony LaRussa-Dave Stewart in Arizona. Terry Ryan in Minnesota. They get beat, and they get fired. Deliberate, defiant ignorance is a losing strategy.

I doubt that when Gladden needs a physician he seeks one who figures that everything he needs to know was known in John McGraw's era, or even Branch Rickey's.

Notes, quotes and comment

The Twins opened their exhibition season Friday night with a 3-1 loss to Tampa Bay. I won't put any weight on the results of a February game, but I will note that Michael Tonkin, who ought to be a borderline case to remain on the major league roster, struggled in his outing.

It was nice to hear Corey Provus on the play-by-play again. I can't say the same for Dan Gladden; his failure to command the details was in midseason form. Specifically, he called catching prospect Mitch Garver "Garvey" until Provus gently corrected him.

Someday I may find that kind of thing from Gladden endearing. I hope not.

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Ben Badler of Baseball America isn't in Arizona or Florida for spring training. He's in the Dominican watching a prospect showcase. And apparently the Twins are linked to a prominent prospect in Jelfrey Marte.



The Twins, of course, have the No. 1 overall pick in the coming June draft. It would obviously be helpful to supplement that prime position with one or more prominent international signings. As noted here earlier, the farm system is now a bit short in truly high-level prospects.

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Byung Ho Park had two hits Friday night. Both came off 93-mph fastballs. The Korean slugger struggled against velocity last year, so that is noteworthy, but not conclusive. Nothing in February should be considered conclusive.

On Chris Parmelee's defense

Chris Parmelee pursues a ball after misplaying it Saturday.

The Twins optioned Chris Parmelee back to Triple A after Monday's game to make room for Justin Morneau's return from the paternity list.

Parmelee was up for three games, and he played in only one. Even with Morneau gone, it was difficult to fit him into the lineup.

Anyway, I couldn't let him leave again without bringing this up from Saturday's game:

My wife and I were listening to the game as we navigated the various detours connecting northern Wisconsin with southern Minnesota, and at one point Dan Gladden compared Parmelee as a defensive first baseman to Wally Joyner and Mark Grace.

I immediately started snarling at the radio. Grace and Joyner were superb glovemen, with hands and range and, for the position, throwing arms. Grace won four Gold Glove awards; Joyner didn't win any of the ugly trophies but could have without disgrace.

Parmelee is not in their class. Neither is Justin Morneau, and Morneau is probably a better defensive first baseman than Parmelee.

Sure enough, a couple innings later Parmelee booted a ball — a play that cost the Twins a run — and I told the radio: Tell me again how he's as good as Grace or Joyner.

Parmelee may someday be a regular first baseman, and he may turn into a Grace or Joyner type of player. But he isn't there yet, and Gladden shouldn't pretend that he is.

Pic of the Week

Dan Gladden, motorcycle enthusiast, drove John Gordon
around Target Field before Wednesday's finale in a sidecar.
It was Gordon's final game as the Twins radio voice

I don't know: Is that joy on John Gordon's face, or abject terror?

Boneheaded broadcasters

I received a couple of e-mails during the past few days from a reader in Japan. (Ain't the Internet grand?)

Chris Oleson is, according to his messages, a former MSU J-school student roughly my age (his time at MSU corresponds closely to mine at the University of Minnesota) now in Japan. As such, his exposure to the World Series came with Rick Sutcliffe.

Message one (slightly edited), under the subject line "Rick Sutcliffe is an idiot"):

I had to relate what Sutcliffe just said on the international World Series broadcast (I'm in Japan). He said that in the National League a good manager is worth 20 or 25 games because the job is so much more difficult since it [doesn't have] the dh. He then said that [Charlie] Manuel liked managingin the league because the job was more cerebral. I [nearly] choked on my popcorn.

Message two, subject line "Rick Sutcliffe is an idiot: Redux!"

In a later game he calculated that 65% of Jimmy Rollins' game is running the bases and stealing. I'm not much of a Rollins fan, but such "math" is indeed questionable.

Yeah.

Taking the second claim first: The Baseball Info Systems baserunning analysis I wrote about in a Sunday post says Rollins (photo above) added 15 bases to the Phillies as a basestealer — and zero as a baserunner. If that's two-thirds of what Rollins does for the Phillies, he's out of a job.

Of course, it isn't. He's a former MVP; he's won (and deserved) Gold Gloves. He didn't have a real good 2009, but he contributes more than 21 bases a season to the Phillies.

As for the notion that a National League manager can be worth 25 wins a season for his tactical acumen: That's about one a week. The Phillies won 93 games last season. Does Sutcliffe really believe that if (picking on a manager who gets a lot of grief from his team's fans) Trey Hillman were managing the Phillies they'd become a 68-win team?

Nonsense. The truth of the matter is that, in terms of tactical moves — when to bunt, when to pinch-hit, when to order a steal or hit-and-run — managers are pretty much interchangeable. The DH makes a difference in how often teams bunt, but the difference is that the bunt in automatic with pitchers in the NL. Indeed, as Bill James detailed back when Sutcliffe was pitching, there is more variation in the AL about when to bunt than there is in the NL.

Sufcliffe's forte as an announcer is the totally made up stat, delivered with Olympian emphasis and self-assurance and ludicrous to anybody with a functioning mind. He is, as an analyst, worse than useless; he peddles fiction and nonsense.

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As long as I'm bleating about broadcasters making stuff up, here's a lovely nugget I've saved up from the Twins-Yankees playoff series. The glories of Skip Carey on TBS were such that I resorted for a time to turning the sound off on the TV and listening to the radio. That didn't last long, mainly because the radio description was about eight seconds ahead of the TV images.

Anyway, at one point Dan Gladden started in on Andy Pettitte and steroids. In Gladden's universe, Pettitte blamed it on tainted supplements.

Wrong! That's the excuse of Juan Rincon, J.C. Romero, David Ortiz and assorted others, including a few football players.

Pettitte, upon being implicated by Brian McNamee (once Roger Clemens' personal trainer), admitted injecting himself once with human growth hormone while dealing with an elbow injury. Then, by Pettitte's description, he thought better of it and abandoned that course of action.

There's a big difference between Ortiz's explanation and Pettitte's. And those differences aren't that difficult to find.

Radio, radio

I was stuck with the radio "description" of the early part of Tuesday's Twins-Royals fiasco. I really don't know which was worse: Nick Blackburn's pitching, or John Gordon-Dan Gladden in the booth.

Gladden's silly evaluation of Mike Jacobs (a true one-tool player — he hits an occasional long ball but can't run, field, throw or hit for average, plus he has lousy strike zone judgment, but Gladden likes him anyway and can't figure out why he's been relegated to part-time play) and Gladden-Gordon's joint misevaluation of the Marlins' home stadium (they think it's a bandbox, and it's actually one of the toughest home run parks in the National League) were bad enough. Ignorance on parade.

But in the second inning a real live professional tour golfer showed up, and as long as Hunter Mahan stuck around, whatever happened on the field was going to be classified information to their listeners.

Even after Mahan left — apparently to go distract the TV boys from their jobs — Gordo was so enthralled by the encounter that he called Delmon Young "Michael" and had Mitch Meier playing two outfield positions simultaneously for Kansas City.

I wish someone would hire Gordon to broadcast golf. It would be good for him — he clearly cares more about golf than about baseball — and it would be good for those of us who listen to the Twins on the radio.