Notes, quotes and comment

During my truncated biweekly appearance on KMSU Thursday, I volunteered the notion that Kyle Gibson was the key figure in the Twins push for the wild card.

He gave us reason to beleive that Sunday, both pro and con.

His first two innings were SOG -- Same Old Gibson. Four walks and four runs in the first inning, five runs -- including two homers -- in the first two innings. And then, four innings practically without blemish, the good Gibson of his previous five starts.

Gibson has had remarkable run support all year, and particularly of late. Five runs allowed in six innings is not a great start, but with 13 runs of support, it was good enough.

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Last week the Twins designated Engelb Vielma for assignment. The San Francisco Giants claimed him on waivers.

Last winter, the Giants waived Ehire Adrianza, who was initially claimed by the Milwaukee Brewers, to tried to get him through waivers themselves only to see the Twins claim him. Adrianza has stuck all year, starting games at five different positions. He's been the gloveman I expected (easily the best defensive shortstop on the roster) and a more productive hitter than anticipated.

In a very real sense, the Twins traded Vielma for Adrianza, just about seven months apart. They;re rather similar players -- switch-hitters, shortstops, some speed, glove-first. Vielma has options left, and Adrianza does not, and Adrianza has more pop in his bat, but in the main, they're the same guy.

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Adrianza has picked up a good bit of playing time in left field since Robbie Grossman's thumb injury in a platoon with Max Kepler, who has struggled at the plate against lefties. (Eddie Rosario shifts to right when Adrianza is in left.)

It's only 53 plate appearances, but Adrianza has slashed .298/.340/447 against southpaws. And he hasn't embarrassed himself in the outfield despite little previous experience out there. (There have been too few innings for the metrics to be definitive, but they show him as a very good defensive outfielder.)

Grossman, whose splits last year showed more power right handed, has been the opposite this year. He's slugging just .355 as a right-handed hitter, .412 from the left side -- but his on-base percentage as a right handed hitter is a stellar .406, markedly better than his still-useful .355 as a lefty.

I know there are those who want to see more Kennys Vargas as DH and less Grossman, but one long ball a week really doesn't make up for the all the extra outs Vargas would make.

Paul Molitor has this month largely limited his lineup juggling to the outfield corners and DH. I certainly didn't expect Adrianza to emerge as a viable outfielder, and I do believe that platooning Kepler now is detrimental to his future, but Molitor has gotten immediate benefits from this approach.

Notes, quotes and comment

That was quite the power display the Twins put on Tuesday night. Seven homers, one apiece in each of the first seven innings -- the first time, we are told, that's happened in a major league game.

Two of the homers came from Jason Castro. I had been looking at his numbers earlier in the day and thinking that he was a little light on the homers. I expected him to get into double digits this year. Now he's at nine with more than two weeks to go, so he's not far off the 11 he hit each of the last two years -- and he's got his best batting average and on-base percentage since his All-Star year, 2013.

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A few weeks ago I posted about Amaurys Minier's floundering career. Cedar Rapids' season ended Monday night when Quad Cities eliminated the Kernels in the Midwest League playoffs.

On Tuesday morning, from a Baseball America scribe:

#Twins release 21-year-old switch-hitting Dominican 1B Amaurys Minier, who signed for $1.4MM in 2012. Topped out at Low A this year.

— Matt Eddy (@MattEddyBA) September 12, 2017

Message: Don't let the door hit you on the way out.

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The Twins did indeed add Gabriel Moya to the 40-man roster and the bullpen Tuesday. To make room they designated shortstop Engelb Vielma for release or assignment.

The Pioneer Press' Mike Berardino called that a surprise on Twitter. I'm not sure why. There's always been a question about Vielma's bat, and he hit .206/.233/.260 in more than 300 plate appearances at Triple A.

He had Jorge Polanco, Eduardo Escobar and Ehire Adrianza ahead of him and Nick Gordon on his heels -- plus some interesting shortstop prospects in at the A and Rookie levels.

Moya threw a scoreless ninth inning under essentially no pressure, so he got his feet wet.

Whether he'll see any leverage situtations is uncertain, My guess is not; Paul Molitor needed a month or so to start trusting Trevor Hildenberger, and we'll run out of time before Moya gets there. Even if he does earn a prominent role in the bullpen by season's end, Moya's ineligible for the postseason as he wasn't on the 40 before September.

Notes, quotes and comment

The #Twins still are undecided but now leaning towards passing on HS pitcher Hunter Greene and taking Louisville 1B Brendan McKay w 1st pick

— Bob Nightengale (@BNightengale) May 15, 2017

No link, no indication of source. Noteworthy, however, for the identification of McKay not as a pitcher but as a first baseman.

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A few Twins roster moves of late that I hadn't noted:

Michael Tonkin passed through waivers Saturday, indicating that (unlike Danny Santana) nobody thought him worth a roster spot, and has been reassigned to Triple A Rochester. So he remains in the organization.

Normally retaining a player is better than losing him, but I fear that Tonkin's availability might result in him getting another opportunity over one of the younger relief prospects.

Engelb Vielma and Nick Gordon had been splitting time at shortstop and second base with each other at  Double A Chattanooga. Indeed, as of this morning the Lookouts team page at Baseball Reference had each with 19 games at short and 14 at second, an even split.

But Vielma has been moved up to Triple A after slashing ,286/.362/.328 for Jake Mauer's team. Gordon (.317.,380/.472) remains in Chatanooga. This presumably opens the door for each to revert to his usual shortstop position, probably more so for Gordon than Vielma.

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In all of American League history dating back to 1901, more games have now been played with the Designated Hitter Rule than without it.

— Bill James Online (@billjamesonline) May 15, 2017

The AL inflicted the DH rule on itself in 1973 (as my verb choice implies, I'm not a fan), so there are still fewer seasons with it than without, but the seasons are longer now than for most of the time pre-DH and there are more AL teams than pre-DH, so there are more games per year.

Guess Who, part six

We'll wrap up this silly little series with a two-fer -- a pair of good-field, no-hit shortstops, Ehire Adrianza and Engelb Vielma.

No more than one of these guys will be on the Opening Day roster, and probably neither. A bit more than a week into the Grapefruit League season, it appears that Jorge Polanco is likely to open the season as the shortstop. Polanco is, as a shortstop, good-hit, no-field -- the opposite of these two glovemen. And veteran Eduardo Escobar is the shortstop in the middle -- a better hitter than Adrianza and Vielma, a better fielder than Polanco, and apparently not good enough at either to get and keep the starting job.

Adrianza is presumably out of options; Vielma, while on the 40 man roster, is assuredly not. So Adrianza has the advantage this spring. But he's been waived twice since the 2016 season ended -- first by the Giants, then by the Brewers -- and it's certainly possible that the Twins will try to sneak him through waivers themselves before the season begins. He probably didn't help his cause earlier this week with a mental error.

If the Twins do get Adrianza through waiver, they will have a pair of very similar players vying for the shortstop time in Triple A. Certainly Nick Gordon should be the Double A shortstop this spring, so Chattanooga is not a genuine possibility.

The Engelb Vielma solution (which isn't a solution)

Every once in a while as I consider the Twins shortstop conundrum, I think of the example set by Earl Weaver in the 1970s with the Baltimore Orioles.

He had a shortstop, Mark Belanger, who was a marvelous gloveman but simply could not hit -- career batting average of .228, career slugging percentage .280. But The Blade was a fixture in Weaver's lineups for more than a decade because he helped keep guys like Jim Palmer, Dave McNally and Mike Flanagan in the game for seven innings.

If the O's had the lead late, great; if not, Weaver had a raft of pinch-hitters he could deploy.

One could imagine the Twins trying the same approach in 2017, with Engelb Vielma in the Belanger role. Vielma is a scrawny gloveman -- everybody who has been exposed to him raves about him as a fielder -- who last year hit .271 at Double-A Chattanooga, albeit with no power (just 11 extra base hits). He was added to the 40-man roster this offseason,

The Twins have, depending on how one views Danny Santana, three or four shortstop options on their 40 -- Eduardo Escobar, Jorge Polanco, Vielma, maybe Santana (listed on the team website as an outfielder). I'm confident that Vielma is the best defensive player of the four, and just as confident that he is by far the weakest hitter.

You may remember that last month I published a post about a Baseball America piece about the growing demand for power from shortstops. The idea was that a major league regular has to project to "45" power, fringe average on the 20-80 scouting scale. Vielma, listed at a mere 155 pounds, is almost certainly a 20.

Paul Molitor has shown in his two years as manager little inclination to shake the glove tree. He plays guys he thinks can hit for him. But he's also managing in a different era than Weaver. There were a lot of shortstops in the 1970s with 20 power. That's not the case today. Playing Belanger then wasn't sacrificing as much offense relative to the league as playing Vielma would today.

Plouffe, there he goes

Trevor Plouffe had
a series of injuries
that limited him to
less than 350 plate
appearances in 2016.

Friday was the deadline for teams to add Rule 5-eligible prospects to the 40 man roster.

In a related development, it was also the day the Twins released veteran third baseman Trevor Plouffe.

They also outrighted catcher Juan Centeno and lost slugging prospect Adam Brett Walker on waivers to the Milwaukee Brewers.

These moves opened three more slots on the 40-man roster, The Twins filled six of the seven vacancies with prospects: catcher Mitch Garver; outfielders Daniel Palka and Zack Granite; shortstop Engelb Vielma; and right-handed starters Fernando Romero and Felix Jorge.

Plouffe's departure is the biggest news, if only because manager Paul Molitor -- and Ron Gardenhire before him -- made the one-time first round draft pick a fixture in the middle of the lineup. He was always an ill fit in a key lineup role, with low on-base percentages and mediocre slugging percentages. He had made himself into a above-average defensive third baseman, but his varied injuries last year slowed his reaction to batted balls.

Presumably the new brain trust found little interest in Plouffe as trade bait, and the roster spot was deemed more valuable than the veteran. Certainly, with Miguel Sano's outfield venture deemed a failure last season, there wasn't an obvious role for Plouffe on the 2017 Twins. Sano's going to be the third baseman in Minnesota now.

Plouffe, who turned 30 in June, will land somewhere. I certainly don't wish him ill, but it was clearly time for him to move on.

From the Prospect Handbook: Five shortstops

Of the 31 Twins prospects ranked by Baseball America, five are shortstops: Nick Gordon (4), Jorge Polanco (6), Wander Javier (11), Engelb Vielma (18) and Jermaine Palacios (19).

That sounds like a lot, but it really isn't.

It's not that unusual for teams to have a lot of shortstops on such lists, because most amateur position players who get pro contracts were shortstops in amateur ball. A player with the physical gifts to someday play major league baseball is probably the best athlete on his high school or college team, so they play short. A lot of them get sorted out to other positions early, of course, but the best talents open at shortstop and play their way off the position.

This list of five is quite heavy with players at the low levels of the system.

Javier, who was signed out of the Dominican last summer as a 16-year-old (breaking Miguel Sano's record for the biggest bonus the Twins have given a Dominican) hasn't played an inning yet. Presumably he'll start in the Dominican Summer League this year; if he dominates there, he might emigrate to the complex team in the Gulf Coast League. We are years from Javier making an sort of impact.

Palacios started 2015 at the GCL and moved up to Elizabethton in the Appy League. He hit well, but that doesn't mean a whole lot, especially in E-Town. My guess is that if Palacios makes it to the majors, it will be at another position, but that's purely a guess. He's all of 19, so there's plenty of time.

Gordon had a fine season at Cedar Rapids, and figures to open 2016 at Fort Myers in the Florida State League. That's still A ball, still a step south of the levels of the farm system from which a player might reasonably get the call to the majors. We're still a year or two (or more) from the 2014 first round pick challenging Eduardo Escobar for the big league job.

Vielma was the shortstop at Fort Myers. People rave about his glovework. From the BA writeup:

... the organization's best defensive infielder ... Vielma has soft hands, smoth actions and outstanding footwork to go with a plus arm and jaw-dropping range.

The question is: Can he hit? He's apparently a bit bigger than he was when I saw him sitting out with an injury in Cedar Rapids in 2014, and his numbers didn't take a noticeable hit when he moved from the hitter-friendly environment of CR to the pitcher-friendly FSL, and those are both encouraging facts. On the other hand, he doesn't have much strike-zone discipline. He'll go as far as his bat can take him.

And that leaves Jorge Polanco, who is more likely a second baseman. I'm slightly surprised he's still in the organization; management seems committed to Brian Dozier at second base and Polanco is an ill fit at short. It's quite possible that he will be an in-season trade chip. This figures to be Polanco's final option year. His bat is as major-league ready as it will ever be.

Minor league trip: Additional observations

Engelb Vielma was limited to
coaching first base during my visit.

The Cedar Rapids Kernels take their home field to a song whose lyrics promise: And the world's gonna know your name.

In truth, even if Kohl Stewart matures into Jim Palmer, there will be millions of people who won't know the difference. And the bulk of the players in the Midwest League will never even  reach the major leagues, much less become stars.

This is particularly true of  the 2014 Cedar Rapids Kernels, a sub-.500 team in a low A league. As I said in an earlier post, there's aren't a lot of prime prospects among the position players. This team is all about the pitching.

There are a few guys of interest. "Jim Crikket," the CR blogger whose Knuckleballs blog is linked to on the siderail, is very impressed with Engelb Vielma, a scrawny 20-year-old shortstop who sustained a concussion in a collision with an outfielder a few days before I arrived.

I did notice Vielma in spring training, particularly as the second base partner to Jorge Polanco when Tom Kelly and roving instructor Sam Perlozzo were working Polanco as a shortstop on a side field. I figured at the time that Vielma was just there to give Polanco a second baseman to work around and with on double play drills.

It's entirely possible that the Kernels have some bats bigger than Vielma, but Crikket loves his defensive range and says Vielma, after not hitting at all in April, has started squaring some balls up.

There's not a lot of evidence in the stats to suggest that Vielma will hit, but Crikket tells me the Twins brain trust thinks very highly of the kid.

Mitch Garver is probably a
better hitter than receiver right now.

Mitch Garver, a catcher, was one of three backstops the Twins took in the first nine rounds of the 2013 draft. Stuart Turner, the third-rounder, is playing for high-A Fort Myers and sixth rounder Brian Navarreto is at Rookie ball Elizabethton. Garver, the ninth-rounder, is in between.

Garver hit cleanup in all three full games I saw, and he's hit quite well. His defense behind the dish apparently leaves something to be desired, however.

There are probably good things to be said about Chad Christensen, a first baseman-corner outfielder, and Alex Swim, another catcher who's getting considerable time in the outfield, but both are a bit old for the Midwest League. So is Garver, for that matter. All of them are 23.

This team has a lot of college guys for a Midwest League team, and several of them -- Christensen and Swim fit this description -- were signed after their senior seasons, not their junior seasons, as is common among collegians.

It's not a promising sign to have a lineup whose most productive hitters are old for the league and still be sub-.500.