Notes, quotes and comment

A few interesting developments Friday involving the Twins:

While he's not on any free agent lists, Josh Kalk is joining the Minnesota Twins, and that's a really big move in the pitching-analytics world. He was on the cutting edge of PITCHf/x analysis, worked with the Rays for eight years and is really well-regarded in the industry.

— Jeff Passan (@JeffPassan) December 8, 2017

I won't pretend to know how exactly Kalk will affect the Twins pitching, but his addition certainly emphasizes the analytic bent of the new front office. 

Apparently one of his pet projects with the Rays was trying to discern when a pitcher is about to get injured. Every team would like to crack that code.

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Yunior Severino to #mntwins is official, per source. $2.5 million bonus.

— Mike Berardino (@MikeBerardino) December 8, 2017

Severino is am 18-year-old second baseman who was one of the international prospects declared free agents by MLB in the Atlanta scandal. He's said to have big power potential. The Twins gave him a bigger bonus than the Braves did in the original signing. He's a switch hitter. 

The $2.5 million is more than the Twins have left in their bonus pool after treading chunks of it to Seattle and Anaheim, so presumably they are dipping into their 2018 pool.

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Jake Mauer, who I had come to regard as the best managerial prospect in the Twins organization, will not be running any of their farm teams next year. 

Tommy Watkins has been named manager of Double A Chattanooga (Mauer's post last year), and Toby Gardenhire will be the manager in low A Cedar Rapids (Watkins' job last year). Still open are high A Fort Myers (Doug Mientkiewicz, fired) and Triple A Rochester (Mike Quade, reassigned). 

Shuffling the minor league managers

The Twins had a opening in their minor league managerial crew. They filled it in a striking way.

• Mike Quade remains the manager at Triple A Rochester.
• Jake Mauer moves from Low A Cedar Rapids to Double A Chatanooga.
• Doug Mientkiewicz moves down a rung, from Chattanooga to High-A Fort Myers, which was vacated by the elevation of Jeff Smith to the major league staff.
• Tommy Watkins was named manager of Low A Cedar Rapids.

I doubt Mientkiewicz was "demoted." I expect that he preferred to be in Fort Myers.

This is actually the second time in three years that the Twins Double-A manager went down a step. Smith made the same move. As I recall, he asked to be assigned to Fort Myers, closer to his Florida home and family. And I wouldn't be surprised if Mientkiewicz did the same this year.

I don't know how the money differs, but since Baseball Reference says Mientkiewicz made more than $13 million in his playing career, the money may not matter that much to him. Smith didn't play in the majors, so he didn't have that cushion, but he apparently made that choice anyway.

Watkins has been a coach at various levels since ending his playing career, and I am among those pleased to see him get the managerial nob at CR. "The Mayor of Fort Myers" is a popular guy in the Twins organization.

The minor league managers

The Twins on Friday announced their minor league managers and coaches, and there were quite a few changes.

The most important name: Doug Mientkiewicz will be the manager at Double A Chattanooga. There is no more important spot in the Twins farm system than this one. It should be loaded. Byron Buxton and Miguel Sano are likely to open the season there. Quite possibly J.O. Berrios also, plus Eddie Rosario, Jorge Polanco and the core of the bunch that won the Florida State League title for Dougie Alphabet last year.

Mientkiewicz was reportedly disappointed to lose out on the major league managing job, disappointed enough that there was some speculation that he might leave the organization. I regard it as good news that he's staying. I was pulling for him to get the big league job, and I suspect that he might have it in a few years.

Jeff Smith, the Double A manager he past couple of years, is moving down to the Fort Myers job, reportedly at his request. Jake Mauer will remain at Cedar Rapids, and Ray Smith at Elizabethton.

And Mike Quade, who got a year-plus as manager of the Chicago Cubs at the start of the decade, will be the successor to Gene Glynn as the manager at Triple A Rochester.

Quade became the interim manager of the Cubs in 2010, and they opted to hire him for 2011 instead of Ryne Sandberg, the Cubs legend and Hall of Famer. This displeased Sandberg sufficiently that he left for the Phillies, and he's now the manager there. Quade lasted only a year before being dumped by the Cubs.

Quade has 17 years as a minor league manager for five different organizations. He started when he was 28, and he's 57 now. (He's had some years as a major league coach interspersed with the managing gigs.) He was a roving instructor in the Yankees system last year.

I wouldn't have minded seeing Mauer get the Triple A job. Or Mientkiewicz, although I prefer him in Double A because that's where the future is, and I think he's part of that future.

Two games in Cedar Rapids: Random thoughts

Adam Brett Walker returns to the
dugout after his home run Monday.
Max Kepler (22) is about to get in the box.

Wrapping up some loose ends:

As I've mentioned at least once, Terry Ryan, the Twins general manager, attended the Quad Cities series. Here, via the Cedar Rapids Gazette, is what he had to say about some of the Twins prospects.

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Adam Brett Walker II hit his 24th homer of the season in the ninth inning Monday -- too little, too late to be a factor in the game, which the Kernels lost 6-2.

Walker was the Twins third-round pick in the 2012 draft, a big (listed at 6-foot-4, 215 pounds) right-handed right fielder who grew up in Milwaukee and went to college in Florida. He has legitimate power and runs well enough to be eight-for-eight in steal attempts.

Keith Law of ESPN has been asked about ABW2 repeatedly in his chats, and always gives the same response: He's old for the league, the Twins shouldn't be sending college players to the Midwest League, this isn't proving anything.

Beyond that, I'm wary of Walker's walk/strikeout ratio, almost 4 K's for every BB. The .282 batting average is nice, the .548 slugging percentage is very good (especially for the Midwest League), but the on-base percentage is unimpressive. This was also true for Walker in the Appy League last summer.

Jake Mauer (12) had a lengthy but
non-histronic dispute with the umpire
over an interference call Sunday.

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Jake Mauer — older brother of Joe and the Cedar Rapids manager — was thrown out of Sunday's game after Travis Harrison was called out for interfering with the catcher on a Walker steal attempt.

It wasn't until the next inning, when Tommy Watkins emerged from the dugout to coach at third base, that I realized Mauer had been tossed. True to his Mauerness, Jake even got ejected in a low key manner.

Baseball America's annual Tools issue has Jake Mauer voted as the Midwest League's best managerial prospect. I suspect he'll someday emerge onto the major league staff, although Jim Crikket is probably right that it won't happen while Joe is the centerpiece of the roster.

Still, it seems pretty well-established that the elder Mauer is not merely a nepotism hire.

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A food discovery at Veterans Memorial Stadium I'll be sure to repeat in future visits: The fried popcorn shrimp. Yum. It may not be traditional ballpark fare, but I like.

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When I went to a game in May, Niko Goodrum played first base and Jorge Polanco was the shortstop. At these two games, they were at their more accustomed positions, shortstop for Goodrum, second base for Polanco.

They looked pretty good there. Second base is almost certainly a better fit for Polanco's arm than shortstop. Goodrum — listed as 6-feet-4 himself — faces the same "is he too big for shortstop" question that I mentioned in the Correa post.

Polanco continues to keep his batting average above .300 and remains in the middle of the Kernels lineup. Goodrum's slumped of late — his average had fallen below .250 while I was in CR — and while it seems obvious that Polanco will move up to High A next year, I wonder if Goodrum might not wind up repeating Low A.