Five more cuts

Phil Dumatrait
has been dealing
with some shoulder
soreness of late.

The Twins on Thursday sent five non-roster invitees to the minor league camp. Nothing much here; Phil Dumatrait was the most prominent name.

The removal of Dumatrait and Terry Doyle doesn't really change COPOP, but it does eliminate the two "other contenders" I had listed for the MR4/L2 job. I will now change it to MR4, since Matt Maloney is the only lefty candidate left. For the sake of acknowledging that they're still in camp and that Maloney is merely leading, not a lock, I will put a couple of previously unlisted pitchers in the parentheses, not that I think either has much chance. A loser in the MR3 category is a better bet should Maloney slip.

Closer: Matt Capps
Setup 1: Glen Perkins
Setup 2/MR 1: Jared Burton (Alex Burnett, Casey Fien)
LOOGY 1/MR2?: Brian Duensing
MR 3: (Jeff Manship, Kyle Waldrop, Burnett)
MR 4: Matt Maloney (Jeff Gray, Brendan Wise)
Long man: Anthony Swarzak

Burton, Fien and Wise are the three remaining non-roster pitchers in camp. 

Thirty-nine players remain, so there are 14 cuts still to come. At least 14; if the Twins pick up an infielder on waivers, and I think they will, there will be a corresponding departure.

Dumatrait, Carroll and a rough draft of the middle infield

Phil Dumatrait: May
he be roster filler in
Rochester, not in
Minnesota.

The Twins last month dropped Phil Dumatrait from their 40-man roster, making him a minor-league free agent. It would appear that the lefty found nobody willing to sign him to a major league deal, so he re-upped Wednesday with the Twins on a minor league deal.

Joe Christensen says Dumatrait enjoyed his time in Minnesota. By that I assume he means Dumatrait enjoyed spending most of the season in the majors. The Twins will be best served, to be blunt about it, if the pitching staff does well enough and stays healthy enough that Dumatrait spends all of 2012 in Rochester.

---

The Jamey Carroll signing became official Wednesday. We haven't reached Thanksgiving yet, and the Twins have been shuffling their middle infield:

• Matt Tolbert was cut loose;
• Carroll was signed;
• Trevor Plouffe is to be an outfielder, and not a middle infield factor.

Brian Dozier, who had a very good 2011 split between High A (Fort Myers) and Double A (New Britain) followed it up with a good stint in the Arizona Fall League, but the Twins aren't likely to push him to the majors with just a half-season above A ball.

Brian Dozier: Don't
expect to see him at
the start of 2012.

Which means that as things stand, the middle infield figures to be made up of Carroll, Alexi Casilla and Tsuyoshi Nishioka. The Twins are hoping that Nishioka's struggles in 2011 was based on his leg injuries and that a sound Nishi will be a better Nishi.

But they're not pinning their hopes on him, as they did in 2011. The three of them -- Carroll, Casilla and Nishioka -- figure to compete during spring training for the two regular jobs, with Luke Hughes and Dozier the dark horses.

I'm not high on any of them as a shortstop right now. Nishioka can be better in 2012 than he was in 2011 and still be south of major-league quality; Casilla has never produced consistently; and Carroll is a 38-year-old utility man.

I figure by midseason there will be an obvious opening for Dozier, and he'll have a bit more experience under his belt.

Twins drop two more players

Brian Dinkleman hit
.301 for the Twins but
just .243 for Rochester.

Last week, at the end of their organizational meeting, the Twins removed four players from their 40-man roster. On Thursday, they dropped two more, Brian Dinkleman and Phil Dumatrait.

Dinkleman's fate isn't a surprise -- in fact, I wonder why he wasn't lopped last week, with Jason Repko, Rene Rivera, Anthony Slama and Matt Tolbert. While Dinkleman hit .301 in his brief major league stint, it was an empty .301 -- just one extra-base hit, that a double. He's not a good enough hitter to justify playing in the outfield, not a good enough defender to justify playing at second base.

Dumatrait, on the other hand, is a guy I could imagine the Twins deciding to keep around. His ERA (3.92) wasn't all that bad, he was effective against lefty hitters and he never coughed up a lead.

Phil Dumatrait
would be eligible for
arbitration had he
remained on the
40-man roster.

But he's really not good, either -- 25 walks and 29 strikeouts in 41 innings -- and I find it encouraging that the Twins recognize that he's easily replaceable.

So the Twins now have 36 players on the 40-man roster. That number will decline some more soon, when the World Series is over and Michael Cuddyer and others officially become free agents. If the Twins chose not to exercise their option on Joe Nathan, they could enter November with as many as eight open spots on the 40-man roster.

Those slots won't be open long. The Twins will have to add a number of players now on minor league rosters to protect them from the Rule V draft. That action will probably come next month.

Craig Breslow vs. Phil Dumatrait

Craig Breslow. In an at-bat Sunday that perhaps says
more about Jim Thome than about Breslow, Breslow
struck out Thome on nothing but fastballs. Three
swings, three misses.

Craig Breslow pitches at least once in every series the Twins play against Oakland, and even though it's been more than two years since the Twins gave him up it still bugs me that they so badly mishandled him.

To give you the quick summary: The Twins picked him up on waivers in 2008, and even though he was the most effective non-Joe Nathan reliever the Twins had that year (at least until Jose Mijares was called up), Ron Gardenhire refused to use him in game situations. Breslow got five holds and one save, but the save came in a three-inning stint in a game won 12-2. He coughed up only one lead all season, but of his 13 September appearances, nine came in games the Twins lost.

He had a 1.63 ERA in 2008, and the Twins lost out on the divisional title in a Game 163 -- a winnable division lost because of repeated multi-reliever meltdowns involving almost any arm in the pen except Breslow. Gardenhire viewed him strictly as a second LOOGY and mop-up man; he could have, should have, been more prominent.

He had a rough start in 2009, and the Twins waived him after just 14.1 innings. Oakland scooped him up, and he's been solid in their 'pen since -- 3.06 ERA in 181 appearances for the Green 'n' Gold.

Phil Dumatrait's line
against lefties:
.190/.271/.310

Move now to 2011 and Phil Dumatrait. Nothing in his numbers with the Twins suggests that he's nearly as capable as Breslow. His ERA entering today stands at 4.10. His walk rate is high, his strikeout rate is low, right-handers hammer him (.482 slugging percentage) -- yet he has already pitched in as many game situations as Breslow did in 2008.

Unlike Breslow, Gardenhire doesn't treat Dumatrait as a lefty specialist. The odd thing is that Breslow has, throughout his career, been at least as capable against righties as lefties, and Dumatrait this season has fared much better against lefties.

I don't want to overstate Gardenhire's reliance on Dumatrait. The Twins have three lefties in their bullpen, occasionally four, and there's no question that Glen Perkins is the big dog of that pack. I believe that, for all his struggles with the strike zone,  Mijares is still Gardenhire's primary LOOGY. Dumatrait is more likely to be used in long relief and mop-up roles than with games on the line.

But his workload is increasing — he had 14 innings in July, more than in May and June combined, and I do believe that Gardenhire is finding a faith in him that he never had in Breslow.

Into the bullpen

Joe Nathan's best stat this season:
17 strikeouts in 17.1 innings.

Brian Duensing left a lot of heavy lifting to the bullpen Tuesday night, and the 'pen came though.

Alex Burnett got four outs. Glen Perkins, with some help from the umpires, got two outs. Joe Nathan was impressive in the eighth, striking out two. Matt Capps wobbled though the ninth.

It totalled four shutout innings, although Perkins didn't legitimately retire any of the three men he faced. I'll forgive him, though, as he's been the best relief pitcher on the staff.

Nathan was the story there. He threw 19 pitches, 12 for strikes, and displayed better command than he had before his DL stint.

The velocity really isn't any better than it was, and I don't expect to see the old mid-90s Nathan again. If he does recover his old velocity, it certainly won't be this year.  But low 90s is sufficient if it comes with command and movement. On Tuesday, he had the command and the movement.

Tuesday's use suggests that Nathan returned to a more prominent role than I expected. I thought Burnett would remain the top right-handed set-up man, but he entered in the sixth inning, while Nathan got the eighth. I still rate Perkins ahead of Nathan in the pecking order, however:

Closer: Capps
Setup 1: Perkins
LOOGY 1: Jose Mijares
Set-up2/MR 1: Nathan
MR2: Burnett
LOOGY 2: Phil Dumatrait
Long man: Anthony Swarzak

Dumatrait has allowed six runs in his last 3.1 innings, which has taken his ERA from 2.00 to 5.84. (It's only 12.1 innings). I'm not sure why he's been ahead of Chuck James this season — he was called up before James, he was kept up when James was optioned back out, he was used in higher leverage situations when they were both on the roster — but he's got to be the bullpener on the thinnest ice right now.

Optimism and reality

The Twins have now won six of their last seven.

They still have the worst record in the majors, still sport the worst run differential in the majors, still have much of their payroll on the disabled list or obviously playing hurt. They're still 11.5 games out of first place, and 10 games behind one of the teams seen at the start of the season as a divisional contender.

They have a long way to go to realistically be back in the hunt.

More days like Wednesday -- when the Twins were the only AL Central team to win -- and I might start taking the notion seriously.

Phil Dumatrait has
pitched nine innings
with the Twins
with three hits,
six walks and two
strikeouts.

A few more comments on the Cleveland series:

* Are the left-handed components of the Minnesota bulllpen really that reliable, or are the Indians are simply that vulnerable to lefties? My guess is the latter. The biggest bats in the Cleveland lineup are either left-handed (Grady Sizemore, Shin-Soo Choo) or switch-hitters (Asdrubal Cabrera, Carlos Santana), and Ron Gardenhire leaned heavily on his southpaws. And they got outs.

Even Jose Mijares, who has had problems throwing strikes all season, was effective.

* Phil Dumatrait got the save with a scoreless 10th inning Wednesday, lowering his ERA to an even 2.00, but ... it's only nine innings, and the peripheral stats aren't that good.

* File this one under "about time": Gardenhire finally used Jason Repko as a defensive sub for Delmon Young.

* The Twins offense, productive against Kansas City in the sweep there and in the first game in Cleveland, sagged in the last two  -- not surprising considering the lineups look like spring training road games,

* The Twins have had just 21 home games so far, by far the fewest in the majors. They're scheduled to play 30 of their next 40 games at Target Field, starting tonight with the opener of a four-game series with Texas.

With no disrespect to the Cleveland Indians, the Texas Rangers right now pose a more significant challenge to the Twins newfound sense of competence.

Bullpen candidate profiles: Yorman Bazardo and Phil Dumatrait

Yorman Bazardo
pitched in 2006-07
for the Tigers.

Phil Dumatrait was
a first-round draft pick
by Boston in 2000.

Pitcher: Yorman Bazardo
Throws: Right
Age: 26
Roster status: Non-roster invitee
Chance of making team: Nil

Pitcher: Phil Dumatrait
Throws: Left
Age: 29
Roster status: Non-roster invitee
Chance of making team: Nil

Behold two examples of the "Quadruple A" pitcher: Good enough to put up decent numbers in Triple A, not good enough to make it in the majors.

Not that either man has gotten a truly clean shot at the bigs. Dumatrait -- the radio boys the other day were pronouncing it "Du-ma-trey" -- has all of 109 major league innings (and a 7.09 ERA); Bazardo just 60.1 innings (6.86).

Odds are that neither is truly that bad, but the initial results were lousy, and they aren't going to be first in line anywhere to get another chance.

The Twins signed both as minor league free agents to deepen the staff at Rochester. They're in major league camp because a non-roster invitation is a common sweetener for a minor league veteran, and they'll probably hang around longer than the younger guys who are on the 40-man roster but are clearly not making the 25-man roster (such as David Bromberg).

That doesn't mean either is a serious contender to come north. I've seen both mentioned as bullpen possibilities, but the Twins will not, and should not, bypass candidates on the 40-man roster for either.