Twins pitching moves

Jared Burton served
as the closer after
Glen Perkins was
shut down in September.

The Twins removed two pitchers from the 40-man roster Wednesday, but as far as I'm concerned the most significant news involved a  pitcher who isn't on the 40.

That would be the bad medical news about Mason Melotakis, a left-hander the Twins took in the second round of the 2012 draft. Melotakis was a reliever in college; the Twins used him in the rotation in 2013 at Cedar Rapids, then returned him to the bullpen last year, He shot up to Double A by season's end, running his fastball velocity up to a reported 97 mph.

I had hopes that he'd power his way onto the major league relief corps next year. Won't happen; he had Tommy John surgery this month, so no pitching for him at least until late next year.

In more immediate news:

• The Twins declined the team option on Jared Burton, so the righty becomes a free agent. He spent three years in the Twins bullpen with ERAs of 2.18, 3.82 and 4.36. That's a pretty obvious pattern, and he'll turn 34 in June, so it wasn't a particularly surprising decision.
• The Twins sold Kris Johnson to the Hiroshima Carp in Japan. Good for Johnson, who will get a seven-figure salary, something that doesn't seem particularly likely for him in the States. Johnson had a fairly decent year at Triple A Rochester last year, but he figured to be a long way down the rotation depth list if he stuck around.

The Twins now offically have 35 slots filled on the 40, with Mike Pelfrey (60-day disabled list) still to be restored, I fully expect more deletions. 

The future of the rotation

Phil Hughes collects himself Sunday before his first start
in Yankee Stadium as a member of a visiting team.

The Twins starters fared pretty well over the weekend in Yankee Stadium. Working it backwards:

• Sunday: Phil Hughes went eight innings, allowing two runs on three hits and two walks. 
• Saturday: Kevin Correia, my least favored of the starters, went six innings and allowed just one run. 
• Friday: Ricky Nolasco also had six innings of one-run ball.

Nolasco did walk four with just three strikeouts and allowed seven hits, 11 baserunners in 18 outs; Correia had nine hits and one walk, 10 baserunners. So the one-run outcomes seem a bit deceptive. They didn't pitch THAT well.

Still, three quality starts in the tater haven that is the newest rendition of Yankee Stadium isn't bad at all.

Meanwhile, a few noteworthy developments regarding Twins starters past and future in the minors:

Mike Pelfrey interrupted his rehab assignment to have his arm checked out, and what is described as minor nerve irritation was found. He is to have a second exam done by the noted Dr. James Andrews. So he's not close to returning, which is probably for the better. I'm in no hurry to see him pitch again.

Prospect Trevor May, pitching for Triple A Rochester, blew away Gwinnett (Atlanta) with seven shutout innings in his most recent start. He's now 5-3 with a 2.62 ERA and a batting average allowed under .200 for the Red Wings. He's also sporting his lowest walk rate since A ball.

May isn't the only Red Wings starter impressing. Kris Johnson, who came up to start the second game of a doubleheader, has a 1.83 ERA. Logan Darnell, who also had a brief call-up, has a 2.54 ERA with more strikeouts than innings. And Alex Meyer, generally regarded as the best pitching prospect in the organization, has a 3.31 ERA while fanning 10.8 hitters per nine innings. (He's also got a high walk rate).

May, Darnell and Johnson are on the 40-man roster, while Yohan Pino is not. Poor Pino, who has picked up a handful of starts, only has a 1.73 ERA.

The Red Wings have a team ERA of 3.14, and I can only imagine how low it would be without old friend Scott Diamond's 7.51. I don't see Diamond returning to Minneapolis anytime soon. A lot of guys ahead of him.

Here's the thing: One can make a case for bringing up any of the May-Meyer-Darnell-Johnson quartet for the Twins rotation. (I'm arbitrarily leaving Pino out on the basis that the other four are younger and better prospects for the future). But for whom?

Certainly not for Hughes, who has been superb. The Twins have too much invested in Nolasco to change course on him after two months. Kyle Gibson has been up and down, but the Twins really do need to give him a clean shot.

That leaves Correia and Sam Deduno. Correia is in the final year of the two-year contract he signed before 2013, and I think he's a possible piece of trade bait in July. Or even sooner if some teams with postseason ambitions start getting squeezed by injuries. (Or if the Twins can find somebody with a spare center fielder.)

Deduno ... well, his injury history suggests he's not likely to finish the year in the rotation. I'd say keep him in the rotation until he gets hurt.

The Twins will have rotation openings this summer. But they need not be in a hurry to create them.

Thoughts on a too-long doubleheader

Kris Johnson walked six and struck out
five in 4.1 shutout innings, an odd
combination of effective inefficency.

Neither Mike Pelfrey nor Kris Johnson did their careers any favors with their performances Thursday.

Johnson wasn't going to stick around after his spot start in the night cap anyway, but six walks in 4.1 innings will not sit well. In and out of trouble; he got 13 outs and allowed 10 baserunners, but somehow no runs.

Pelfrey's issues continue, and the buzz after yet another dismal performance suggested the Twins are about ready to pull the plug on him in the rotation.

If so, the dual questions are: Who replaces him in the rotation, and what do they Twins do with him?

The two are connected. If the Twins decide to move Sam Deduno back into the rotation, they can stick Pelfrey in the long relief role and see if they can't find some value for their $11 million investment. But if they (as I've theorized based on the lack of opportunity given Deduno to make the rotation) prefer to have Deduno in the bullpen -- or if they want to slide Trevor May or Alex Meyer to the big club -- they might wind up releasing Pelfrey and eating the money.

Pelfrey apparently has an option left, but he has enough service time to reject the minor league demotion, and I suspect that would be his choice.

I didn't expect him to be great, or even particularly good, but I didn't expect him to be this bad either. The velocity is down and the command is as spotty as ever. He's a pitch-to-contact guy who pitches as if he's afraid to pitch to contact. That cannot work.

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I wasn't a bit surprised, after watching Aaron Hicks run into the centerfield fence in the second game, when he left with "concussion-like symptoms." Frankly, he looked on the TV screen like he was concussed. The surprise was that he remained in the game as long as he did.

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Drew Butera, offensive machine: The weak-hitting former Twin, effectively the Dodgers' No. 1 catcher while A.J. Ellis is on the disabled list, had two hits Wednesday in his return to Target Field. On Thursday, he hit a home run and drew two four-pitch walks.

There may be no greater testimony to the struggles of the Minnesota pitching staff than that.

A one-day pitching callup

Kris Johnson was acquired
from the Pirates for Duke
Welker, who was himself
acquired from the Pirates
in the Justin Morneau trade.

Another day, another rain out.

The bizarre decision by the schedule makers to send a southern California team for a one-shot series Minnesota in the month most likely to be disrupted by weather is apparently magnified by the fact that the Twins and Dodgers share just three mutual days off the rest of the way.

So there should be no doubt that the two teams really, really want to get these games in today and Thursday.

The Twins intend to call up Kris Johnson, left-handed pitcher, to start one of the Thursday games. Johnson would be the first lefty to start for the Twins this year.

Since I posted this piece almost a week ago about potential rotation replacements, two notable things have happened to the Triple A starters:

• Trevor May lost the strike zone in him most recent start and
• Alex Meyer appears to have found a VIP -- Very Important Pitch. Specifically, a change up.

Meyer apparently learned a different changeup grip from colleagues Yohan Pino and Deolis Guerra. He had been unable to master the circle change, a pitch beloved in the Twins organization; Pino and Guerra suggested that he try their three-fingered grip. The result: 22 strikeouts in his two most recent starts, a total of 12.1 innings, the last coming with assistant general manager Rob Antony in attendance.

Two starts are two starts, and normally nothing to get revved up about, but if Meyer really has a quality change now to go with his imposing fastball and slider, he's coming up soon. He's not on the 40-man roster yet (Johnson is, as are May and Logan Darnell), and the Twins will want to be sure he's got it before they lop somebody, but it will happen.

Scott Diamond, Ryan Pressly and the Rochester pitching staff

The Twins weren't just settling the major league roster late last week and into this week. They have four minor league teams starting play this week as well: Triple A Rochester, Double A New Britain, High A Fort Myers and Low A Cedar Rapids.

As of Sunday evening, the Rochester Red Wings website and the Cedar Rapids Kernels site appeared to have updated, accurate rosters -- at least rosters that made sense. The New Britain roster was far from complete, and the Fort Myers one appeared to have last year's pitching staff listed.

Anyway, I was struck Sunday by the Rochester pitching staff. Twelve pitchers, seven of them left-handed. All 12 were in major league camp. (The 12 does not include Michael Tonkin, who was optioned out last week and now will instead open the season on the big league roster while Brian Duensing is on paternity leave. I presume Tonkin will be sent down again when Duensing rejoins the big club, and Rochester will then have 13 pitchers -- or somebody will be sent down a notch to New Britain.)

I was poking around the roster because Scott Diamond accepted his assignment to Rochester on Saturday rather than declare free agency, and I was thinking about how he might be used.

We can count on this: Alex Meyer and Trevor May are going to be in the Red Wings rotation.

At least one beat writer said Diamond and Kris Johnson are the primary candidates should a starter be needed in the early going. (Johnson is on the 40-man roster and Diamond is not, but with two openings on the 40 at the moment, that's not a serious impediment to bringing Diamond back.) Presumably, then, those two will also be in the rotation.

That leaves one starting slot, and the Wings' roster includes lefties Logan Darnell and Brooks Raley, who have been starters for the bulk of their minor league travels.

Or ... we've heard a lot of chatter from the Twins broadcasters about the idea of returning Ryan Pressly to starting. I'm not particularly big on that notion; Pressly was nothing special as a starter in the Red Sox system and really only became a noteworthy prospect when he moved to the bullpen.

But even if the Twins aren't seriously thinking about Pressly as a big league starter, they may well figure that he has a better chance of helping the big league team in the future than either of the lefties (I think that's the case), and therefore they should funnel the innings in Pressly's direction.

The Red Wings appear to have a very deep staff, deep enough to make me wonder what they would have done had Andrew Albers not chosen to play in Korea. Of course, had Albers remained in the organization, they might not have claimed Raley on waivers just before camp opened.

Notes, quotes and comment

Odd little trade for the Twins Tuesday: They returned Duke Welker, the relief pitcher who was the player-to-be-named in the Justin Morneau trade, to Pittsburgh for Kris Johnson.

Johnson is a 29-year-old lefthander who was a first-round pick back in 2006 but has just 10.1 major-league innings on his resume, all of which came this year.

The Twins apparently revisited the trade because they were more interested in a starting pitcher candidate than a bullpen one. And the Pirates were willing to accommodate.

Unlike the Twins' other southpaw starters, Johnson has some fastball velocity. Despite that, his minor league strikeout rates are not impressive. He joins the crowd of back-of-the-rotation candidates.

Eddie Rosario
hit .327 in High
A ball in 2013,
.284 in Double A.

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Eddie Rosario may be the Twins second baseman of the future. He may be their left fielder of the future. He may wind up being trade bait.

But all that gets put off for a couple months. According to a report out of his native Puerto Rico, the 22-year-old prospect figures to open the 2014 season with a 50-game suspension after testing positive for a performance enhancer.

There's been no official announcement from MLB; that will come after every "i" has been dotted and "t" crossed. But the process will certainly be complete before training camp opens.

Rosario might have been a mid-season callup for the Twins in 2014; he ended 2013 in Double A, and the expectation here was that he'd be in Triple A Rochester next spring and in position to push his way to the majors. Now it will be midseason before he gets started.

Not good for him or the organization.

---

To go off on a tangent for a moment: This was the first indication I saw Tuesday that anything was going on regarding Rosario:

The Twins do not need an Eddie Rosario setback
— Peter Gammons (@pgammo) November 19, 2013

This is such a Peter Gammons tweet. He knows, at this moment, something significant about Eddie Rosario, something nobody covering the Twins knows. And he's letting us know he knows something. He's just not going to actually tell us what it is. It's as if reporting the fact is repugnant to him; he's said enough to get the rest of the press corps started on its trail.