Minor moves

Some more Twins minor league signings: Jordany Valdespin, Wilin Rosario, Pat Dean, Adam Atkins and Kevin Comer.

— Betsy Helfand (@betsyhelfand) February 4, 2019

A few names there I recognize, but none I hope to see at Target Field this summer. All look like -- and should be -- organizational depth, although I have some fears about Rosario.

Pat Dean is starting his second stint in the organization. The lefty reached the majors in 2016 without noticeable success -- 16 games, nine starts with the Twins and an ugly 6.28 ERA -- and spent the past two seasons pitching in Korea. His team won the Korean title in 2017 and he got paid more than $1.8 million for the two seasons, so good for him.

Jordany Valdespin has also been out of organized ball for two seasons. He had major league time in the four previous years but saw his playing time shrink with each season, He had a notable run-in with then-Mets manager Terry Collins, a notorious HBP in the crotch from Justin Verlander and a 50-game suspension in the Biogenesis PED scandal. He played, and quite well, for the Long Island Ducks in the independent Atlantic League in 2018 and was named Independent League player of the year by Baseball America.

Kevin Comer is a right-handed reliever who has yet to see any MLB time. Most of his minor league service has been in the Houston organization, but he was with Detroit's Triple A team last year. He's shown pretty good strike-out rates but still gives up lots of hits and runs.

Adam Atkins, another righty reliever, is a bit young for a minor league free agent. This will be his first time out of the Mets chain, and he has just two games above A ball. His stat line looks a lot more usable than Comer's, but the lack of upper-level experience works against him.

Finally, the guy who's probably the biggest name of these five: Wilin Rosario. He's a catcher who had a pair of 20-plus homer seasons with the Rockies -- 28 bombs in 2012, 21 in 2013. He is not, however, regarded as a good defensive catcher, and he's had some astoundingly bad walk-to-strikeout rates (15 walks and 109 strikeouts in 2013). Like Valdespin and Dean. he's been out of organized ball the past two seasons; in his case, one year in Korea, one in Japan.

The Twins have been collecting this kind of hitter during the offseason -- Jonathan Schoop, C.J. Cron, now Rosario. To be sure, Rosario is on a minor-league deal, and the Twins always figured to add at least one minor-league free agent catcher. On the other hand, this front office's previous forays into the catching market have emphasized defense. 

If having him at Rochester makes it possible to have Willians Astudillo in the majors, that's acceptable. Anything more significant than that is not.

The first (player) move of the offseason

With or without Derek Falvey on board, with or without an announcement, the Twins made some moves:

It appears #MNTwins have outrighted Milone, Beresford, Albers, Dean and Schafer off 40-man roster. No longer listed on team web site.

— Mike Berardino (@MikeBerardino) October 17, 2016

No surprises there, really, not even Tommy Milone, who Berardino later tweeted will declare himself a free agent rather than accept the assignment to Triple A Rochester. The veteran cleared waivers during the season, which suggests that trade interest in him was nil; he spent September in the Twins bullpen; and he's arbitration eligible.

So the Twins officially now have 35 players on their 40-man roster, but there are three players who have to be brought off the 60-day disabled list and restored to the 40 -- Phil Hughes, Glen Perkins and Danny Santana. And Kurt Suzuki, free-agent to be, technically remains on the roster until after the World Series. So realistically, the Twins now have three open roster slots.

It's a good bet there are more minor leaguers they want to protect than that, so there will be more deletions to come. These were the most obvious ones.

Twins can't stand Pat (or at least his pitching)

Tommy Milone's
major league numbers
for his career:
41-29, 4.04.

A newsroom colleague and I agreed Friday afternoon that among the Twins' problems is a lack of quality nicknames. I promised that if Pat Dean had a good outing that evening I would launch a campaign to dub him "Ditsy Dean" in tribute to Dizzy Dean and Daffy Dean.

Alas, the contemporary Dean didn't make it out of the third inning, allowing eight hits, three walks and seven runs in 2.1 innings. I won't insult the Gashouse Gang aces by implying that Pat Dean is on their level.

Pat Dean, his ERA having ballooned to 5.54, was shipped back to Triple A Rochester after the game, and Tommy Milone -- remember him? -- was summoned. The Twins waived Milone in early May after four starts and one relief outing in which he compiled a 5.79 ERA; I was surprised when he went unclaimed and the Twins got to stash him in Rochester.

He dominated the International League -- 4-0, 1.66 ERA in seven starts, 48 innings with 41 strikeouts -- and so now the finesse lefty gets another shot in the Minnesota rotation, although he is going to be on call for long relief duties the next couple of days.

And so the roster shuffle continues. Milone, of course, fills the 40-man roster slot vacated on Thursday when Oswaldo Arcia was designated for assignment. I'm glad he's back; there was never any serious reason to believe that Dean was a better starter than Milone, assuming that Milone was physically sound. Waiving him on the basis of 23 ineffective innings was something of a panic move. The Twins simply decided they couldn't stand pat, then and now.

Contemplating Pat Dean

Pat Dean 's strikeout
rate in the minors was
5.3 per nine innings.
He has 20 Ks in 21
innings so far with
the Twins.

Pat Dean made his second start for the Twins on Friday night in Seattle and handcuffed the Mariners for his first major league W -- seven innings, four hits, two runs, no walks, eight strikeouts. One of those runs was the result of a leadoff "triple" that Danny Santana really should have corralled.

Last Saturday, Dean went six innings against Toronto, allowing two runs in a no-decision that the Twins ultimately won. Add in two relief outings, and he has a 3.43 ERA in 21 innings.

So who is Pat Dean, and what should we reasonably expect from him?

Lefty, 26 years old, third-round draft pick in 2010, worked his way up the minor league ladder without any real success until last season, when he put up a 2.82 ERA in 179 innings at Triple A. Dick Bremer last night was calling it a breakthrough season, but the underlying stats really didn't change for him. He still had a poor strikeout rate, still had a very good walk rate. He was, presumably, either lucky or had a better defense behind him, or both.

He is, to slap a label on him, a finesse lefty, and we've seen this act a few times before: Scott Diamond, Andrew Albers, Tommy Milone. They had some success when they located their mediocre fastballs exceptionally well, and failed when they didn't. They have very little margin of error, and that more often than not results in brief careers.

Dean right now has an opportunity and is doing something good with it. The Greg McMichael Rule again: If you get outs, they'll find a role for you. Right now that role is starting rotation, but that could change really fast.

Kyle Gibson had a rehab start the other day in Fort Myers (with Terry Ryan in attendance), and it's possible that he'll return as soon as this week. Who would Gibson dislodge from the rotation? There's a dilemma. The three veterans with fat contracts (Ervin Santana, Ricky Nolasco and Phil Hughes) aren't doing well, and the two young guys with flexible roster status (Dean and Tyler Duffey) are getting outs and working innings.

Bottom line: Dean can't afford a slip up, and there's reason to expect that he will, eventually, slip up.

Contemplating Jose Berrios

Jose Berrios leaves the game Monday after just two outs.
He was charged with seven runs in one of the shortest starts
in Twins history.

Maybe Monday night will finally put the grumblers to rest.

Last August the Twins bypassed Jose Berrios to fill a rotation hole. Instead of finding a way to put the prospect on the 40-man roster and bring in to the majors, they brought up Tyler Duffey and, for one start, returned Trevor May to the rotation. In September they again opted not to push Berrios up to the bigs. And all offseason and into this year, there have been voices insisting that Berrios could have gotten the Twins into the playoffs.

Monday, I think, we saw why the Twins decided against using him in the majors last year. Berrios is undeniably talented, and undeniably still raw. On Monday in Detroit he threw 39 pitches to get just two outs. He walked four, allowed a homer and a long double and threw just 18 strikes. It's not as if the home plate umpire, Doug Eddings, was calling a tight strike zone, either -- none of the other five pitchers the two teams used walked a man.

Berrios' rotation spot comes up again Saturday against Toronto, and the Blue Jays have a lineup that is rather similar to Detroit's: right-handed, experienced and powerful. There is a genuine sense that not only is Berrios not ready to be the rotation savior but that the Twins dare not expose him to the Jays.

If not Berrios, who? Kyle Gibson isn't coming off the disabled list this month. Pat Dean did a fine job of eating innings Monday, but he's left-handed and, well, on Monday he allowed 10 hits to the 24 men he faced. I don't think he's any better a match against the Blue Jays than Berrios is,

But more important that the matchup against Toronto this weekend is Berrios' development. The 22-year-old had to have his confidence dented Monday night. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but the Twins cannot afford to have his confidence smashed. In the next few days the Twins need to take Berrios' emotional temperature and determine if he's better off back in the minors with the need for improved command of his stuff freshly emphasized.

Catching up on the roster shuffle

I took a rather skeptical view in the Monday print column of the effectiveness of the Twins roster shuffle. To catch up on what's happened:

• LHP Tommy Milone, waived, went unclaimed and was assigned to Rochester. 
• RHP Casey Fien, waived, was claimed by the Los Angeles Dodgers and remains in the majors.
• C John Ryan Murphy was optioned to Rochester.
• SS Eduardo Escobar went on the disabled list.
• LHP Ryan O'Rourke was designated for assignment and remains in limbo.
• RHP J.R. Graham was designated for assignment and remains in limbo.
• RHP Ervin Santana was activated from the disabled list.
• OF Darin Mastroianni was added to the 40-man roster and to the 25-man roster.
• C Juan Centeno was added to the 40-man roster and to the 25-man roster.
• LHP Pat Dean was called up.
• RHP Brandon Kintzler was added to the 40-man roster and to the 25-man roster.

That adds up to six of the 25 roster spots, or 24 percent of the roster turned over between the end of Wednesday's game and the beginning of Saturday's. But it only involves one lineup regular (the freshly injured Escobar) and one rotation slot (Santana).

I am, obviously surprised that Milone passed through waivers and Fien did not. I was pretty certain that somebody would think Milone can help their rotation. As I said in the linked column, I'm not pleased with the selection of Kintzler over a higher-profile bullpen arm. (In Thursday's post I mentioned Nick Burdi as a possibility, but he went on the disabled list at Chattanooga with what is being described as a bone bruise on his upper arm.) And while I probably shouldn't make another prediction after getting Milone and Fien wrong, I expect both Graham and O'Rourke to clear waivers and remain in the organization.

And as for the catcher swap-out,  I can only note sourly that the third White Sox run on Sunday was set up when Tyler Duffey struck out a White Sox hitter with a curve in the dirt and it got away from Centeno. That makes 21 wild pitches for the team already. Tim Laudner, on the FSN postgame, made the same point about wild pitches that I have -- they're often partly the catcher's fault, and he clearly was not impressed with Centeno's inability to corral that pitch.

Setting the stage for Rule 5

Friday was the deadline for teams to protect their current minor leaguers from the Rule 5 draft by putting them on the 40-man major league roster. The Twins elevated seven prospects -- and lost two players with some major league time, catcher Josmil Pinto and right-hander A.J. Achter, on waivers, Pinto to the Padres and Achter to the Phillies.

I'll probably write something in more detail about the Pinto move next week. Achter is a marginal reliever who had another good season in Triple A last year -- he has a 2.69 ERA in 99 Triple A appearances -- who might be able to wander into a decent major league season if given a chance, but lacks the dominant pitch to force a career. Good luck to both of them.

The seven additions include several pitchers who emphatically have that dominant pitch. I see four categories in the seven:

Hard-throwing right-handed relievers: J.T. Chargois and Yorman Landa.

Left-handed Triple A starters: Pat Dean and Taylor Rogers.

Left-handers with Tommy John surgery: Mason Melotakis and Randy Rosario.

Outfielder: Adam Brett Walker.

Landa and Rosario spent 2015 at low A Cedar Rapids, and I saw both pitch during my handful of Kernels games last August, Rosario as a starter and Landa as a reliever. I didn't write about Landa, but he did show some serious velocity; I wrote instead about Luke Bard, who wasn't put on the 40 and is eligible for Rule 5. Anyway -- while Landa and Rosario will be in major league camp, I don't think the Twins will elevate either to the majors this year.

Dean and Rogers are slightly surprising protects to me. I don't see either as a particularly likely candidate to ever be starters for the Twins. There are certainly a lot of rotation guys ahead of them.

Walker's protection illustrates the importance of the power tool. ABW has serious power -- and, like Oswaldo Arcia, little else to recommend him. I'm not particularly enthused about Walker's chances.

Melotakis missed 2015 with Tommy John surgery while Chargois returned from two years on the shelf. These two guys each have pitched in Double A and have realistic chances to be part of the reconstructed 2016 bullpen, although I doubt the Twins would graduate Melotakis in particular to the majors out of spring training.

The Twins now have 38 player on their 40-man roster. One of the open slots is slated for Byung Ho Park; the other may well go to a Rule 5 selection.