Baker goes Cubbie

Scott Baker during spring training 2012:
His elbow didn't like this very much.

Well, so much for this pitching possibility for the Twins.

Scott Baker, who early this offseason appeared likely to remain with Minnesota, wound up signing a one-year deal with the Cubs on Tuesday. He gets $5.5 million guaranteed and $1.5 million in incentives (incentive clauses are limited to "useage" stats, such as starts and innings pitched, not "results" stats such as wins or ERA).

Baker did good work for the Twins, but not a whole lot of it. He reached 200 innings just once in eight seasons (including 2012, in which he did not pitch). Durability has never been his strong suit.

Much as I would have liked to see Baker remain, $5.5 million is a lot for a guy who had Tommy John surgery around opening day. 2013 is going to be a rehab season. He's talking about being ready to start major league games by the time the season begins, but it's at least equally possible that he won't be ready until May or even June. I don't think he's likely to top 140 innings, no matter when he's ready to pitch.

The speculation is that Terry Ryan and Co. were unwilling to go just one year for that kind of money. The Twins wanted an option for 2014 if they were to go that high for next year; Baker and his agent wanted both the money and to be assured of free agency after 2013.

The Cubs went there. I am not upset that the Twins declined.

And at least we won't have to listen to Bert Blyleven whine that Baker doesn't "pitch down in the zone."

Three pieces of pitching news

The Twins on Monday had three pitching related news items. None of them moved the process forward significantly, but in the absence of anything bigger to chew on, we'll chaw on them:

Nick Blackburn in
2012: 4-9, 7.39.

Scott Baker. The Twins formally declined his option Monday, which means he'll be a free agent on Friday. There is open and mutual interest in Baker remaining with the Twins, and I expect it will happen.

Nick Blackburn. The Twins had indicated at season's end that he was having his elbow checked out, and on Monday they announced that he had it scoped. Minor surgery, in the sense that it happened to somebody else and isn't expected to keep him out of spring training.

Nobody's blaming Blackburn's horrid 2012 on his elbow, but it couldn't have helped either. I remain wary of him, and I think that the Twins would be willing to hand him off for either payroll relief or a minor prospect. I also think nobody else will give them either for him.

P.J. Walters, outrighted last week, quickly signed a minor league contract with the Twins with spring training invite.

He rejoins the cast of characters I project to be in the running for the fifth starter spot, with Blackburn, Sam Deduno, Cole De Vries, Liam Hendriks and probably Brian Duensing. My guess is that, as was the case last year, he'll open in Rochester and hope for another opportunity.

The ruins of a rotation plan

When the Twins this week outrighted Nick Blackburn to Triple A, removing him from the 40-man roster, it meant that the all five members of the projected rotation were gone.

"The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry," but the question rises: Were the Twins rotation plans all that well made to begin with?

Scott Baker is coming
off ligament replacement
surgery and will be a
free agent this winter.

Scott Baker was the first of the five to fall; he didn't make it out of spring training. He'd had elbow problems last year, didn't have surgery, couldn't muster his usual velocity in camp, had surgery -- and once the surgeon opened the elbow, he found more damage than expected, and performed Tommy John surgery.

Fairly or not, this fit an apparent pattern of missed diagnoses and undertreatment. We'll see this again.

Next out was Jason Marquis, signed in the winter to a one-year deal as a free agent. He was awful with the Twins -- 8.47 ERA in seven starts with more walks (14) than strikeouts (12), and the Twins released him. He signed with San Diego, and he's had an ERA of 4.04 in 15 starts with a BB/K ratio of 28/78.

Marquis seemed a curious addition at the time of his signing, and I never really viewed him as anything more than a pricey holding piece. Nobody should have expected him to be as bad as he was before the Twins dumped him; even with his competent numbers with the Padres, his overall numbers aren't all that good.

Carl Pavano went on the disabled list after 11 starts; his ERA was an even 6.00, and his velocity was missing from the time camp opened. He was moved to the 60-day disabled list (and off the 40 man roster) in late July, and his hopes of pitching again ended this month with a new diagnosis of a bruise on his humerus bone.

Francisco Liriano, the Twins big tease.

Pavano had been a durable workhorse for the Twins since they acquired him in 2009 despite a lengthy injury history. I can't fault the Twins for expecting another season of 200-plus innings from him, but ... all pitchers are injury risks by definition, and 36-year-old pitchers with marginal stuff are probably more vulerable than most.

What stands out, again, is how long this lingered. Pavano voiced some frustration this month that it took three months to find the problem.

Francisco Liriano was, again, Mr. Inconsistent. He had an excellent spring training, stunk in the early part of the season, spent some time in the bullpen, returned to the rotation, pitched better, got traded in late July.

He's done well with the White Sox. Good for him. I have to believe the Twins aren't going to be free-agent suitors for him. Counting on him in the past hasn't yielded much but headaches.

And finally, Blackburn. Those of us who believe in what the leading indicator stats say about pitchers knew when the Twins signed him to a four-year contract that it was a bad bet. And so it has proven.

The failure of any one of these five cannot really be called a surprise. They all carried their individual risk, be it injury histories or performance track records. That all five collapsed so utterly -- the lowest Minnesota ERA in the group was Liriano's 5.31 -- is.

One could reasonably have anticipated going into training camp that one, two, even three of these guys weren't going to succeed. All five? That seems extreme even for a confirmed pessimist.

On Liriano, Pavano and Baker

Francisco Liriano has an ERA above 11
after three starts.

Francisco Liriano was impressive during spring training. But his first three starts of the regular season have been nothing short of disastrous.

On Tuesday night in New York, he threw 76 pitches — 37 strikes, 39 balls —in the process of getting just seven outs.

Aaron Gleeman notes the decline in Liriano's velocity over the years,  but 91 mph is still plenty — if you know what to do with it. Liriano clearly does not.

The contrast between Carl Pavano on Monday and Liriano on Tuesday is rather stark. Pavano gave up two home runs in his first four pitches on Monday, and the Yankees tacked another run on in the first inning. He then found something that worked and shut the Yankees out for six innings before turning things over to the bullpen.

Pavano pitched. He survived rather than dominate. Liriano, if he doesn't dominate, is helpless.

I said in the Monday print column that pitching coach Rick Anderson, in trying to teach Liriano the techniques of pitching (as opposed to throwing) in 2006, was giving the wrong reasons at the wrong time. He was selling the idea on the basis that it would make Liriano even better, and that simply wasn't possible.

Maybe, had Anderson sold it to Liriano (and the public) as survival skills against the inevitable decline in his raw talent, it would have taken root.

Or maybe not. The voice of experience is often ignored by impatient youth.

At any rate, Liriano appears to be at a career crossroads. If he remains a thrower, he won't last much longer. And he's given little reason to believe he can change.

Scott Baker is looking
at at least a year's
rehab before he can
pitch again.

---

Scott Baker's tendon surgery morphed Tuesday into full-blown ligament transplant surgery, something that was publicly unforeseen but had been anticipated by the surgeon as a possibility.

This is hardly unprecedented — there have been other cases in which a lower-level operation is planned, with the surgeon only discovering after opening the elbow that the ligament is more damaged than could be discerned from the MRIs.

Still, this sequence of events will doubtless bring a fresh wave of skepticism from outside the organization (and maybe even inside it) about the Twins medical staff, which didn't see a need for any surgery. I'm hardly competent to critique the work of orthopedic surgeons, but the Twins' recent history contains a series of undertreatments and apparent failed diagnoses.

Scott Baker and the $9.25 million option

Scott Baker has been effective
when available, but he won't
be available at all in 2012.

When the Twins announced that Scott Baker was to have surgery to repair an elbow tendon and would miss the entire 2012 season, I (and others) immediately figured that the Twins would not pick up his 2013 option, worth $9.25 million.

LaVelle Neal offered a different opinion in Sunday's Star Tribune. His take, boiled down, is

• In a baseball environment in which Edwin Jackson is getting $11 million on a one-year deal, $9 million-plus for Baker isn't an overpay;
• The surgery should fix Baker's problems;
• Somebody's gotta pitch for the 2013 Twins.

Neal hasn't completely convinced me. Taking the above points in the order I've listed them (which is different than the order in his piece):

• The three pitchers he names as comparisons have all been more durable than Baker;
• Surgery is no guarantee. Baker, as I recall, had elbow surgery after the 2010 season; he still had elbow problems in 2011;
• Yes, somebody's gotta pitch. 

It does seem likely to me that the Twins will retain at least one of their potential free agent starters (Carl Pavano, Francisco Liriano, Jason Marquis and Baker). It's difficult for me to imagine that Baker at $9.25 million after missing a full season will seem the best buy of that lot, but perhaps absence will make the heart grow fonder.

After Baker: Hendriks or Swarzak?

Jason Marquis was slated to pitch the third game
of the season. Then Liam Hendriks was. And when
game time arrived, it was Anthony Swarzak who got the ball.

A very minor silver lining to Scott Baker being out for the season: We won't have to listen this year to Bert Blyleven complaining that Baker doesn't pitch "down in the zone."

Would that we could. 

A healthy Baker -- not that he's had a healthy season since 2009 -- figured to be the best starter in the Minnesota rotation. He and Francisco Liriano were the only members of the projected rotation with an established strikeout rate above average, and Liriano is maddeningly inconsistent.

The assumption here in the wake of Baker's loss was that Liam Hendriks is in line for the rotation berth. He was, after all the man designated to fill in for Baker when the Twins thought it would be a relatively short-term opening.

Jason Marquis paid
for a steak and lobster
post-game spread
for his short-term
teammates in
New Britain this week.

But multiple reports Thursday had it as a competition between Hendriks and Anthony Swarzak, who stepped in for Hendriks in Baltimore when the Aussie went down with food poisoning.

Swarzak is to start today against Texas; Hendriks is scheduled to face the Rangers on Sunday. Jason Marquis is expected to return from his minor-league sojourn next week to reclaim one rotation spot, leaving one spot for the other two.

Had the rotation been sound coming out of spring training, Hendriks would certainly have been optioned out to Rochester. It may be that he — and in the long run, the Twins — would benefit if he were still in the minors. Hendriks has a higher ceiling than Swarzak, but I'm not sure that he would be immediately superior.

When Marquis is brought up, somebody has to lose his spot on the 25-man roster. If Swarzak wins the rotation spot, it's a pretty easy call — Hendriks goes down to Triple A, where he was expected to be anyway. If Hendriks is in the rotation, Swarzak goes to the bullpen, and displaces probably either Alex Burnett or Jeff Gray.

Burnett has an option left; Gray does not. That might be all the front office needs to know on this decision.

What will happen when Kyle Waldrop is ready ... well, that's a bridge to cross when they get there.

Contemplating Scott Baker

A glum Scott Baker with Terry Ryan at Wednesday's
announcement.

All spring, Terry Ryan kept saying of Scott Baker: He's not injured. He just needs to cut it loose.

And on Wednesday the general manager and the pitcher announced that Baker is to have season-ending elbow surgery.

I again fall back on this foundation opinion: The athletes who reach this level didn't get there by looking for reasons not to play. Nobody else is in his body, nobody else knows what pain or discomfort he experiences. When a player says he can't perform, I have to believe him.

---

Back during training camp I put up a post speculating on the makeup of the 2013 rotation. Some commenters said then that the Twins would pick up Baker's $9.25 million option for that season. I dare say that this injury forecloses that possibility. If Baker returns, it will be for considerably less.

---

Liam Hendriks was designated to fill Baker's rotation spot when the season opened, although his bout of food poisoning kept him from making his first start. Hendriks now figures to get a clear shot at a full season in the big-league rotation, and Anthony Swarzak becomes the first option if and when a new starter is needed.

Liam Hendriks and the 30-start rule

Scott Baker made just 11 pitches Thursday for the Fort Myers Miracle before abandoning the effort with a still-sore elbow.

Liam Hendriks has
a career strikeout rate
in the minors of
8.2 per nine innings.

Scott Baker last year
had a career-high
strikeout rate.

Baker's problems bode ill for the Twins, as he is one of just two starters they have with an established ability to miss bats (the other being the inconsistent Francisco Liriano). It does offer Liam Hendriks an opportunity to get his career going and establish the Brad Radke comparison as more than a theory.

Hendriks made four starts for the Twins at the end of 2011's death march, and his numbers were not impressive. If he stays in the rotation all season -- hardly a safe bet if the five veterans get and remain healthy (which is hardly a safe bet itself) -- his numbers may still look ugly.

Which won't disturb me. Look at Radke's first year: A 5.32 ERA. Or, on higher career level, Greg Maddux: 5.52 ERA in a five-start cuppa coffee, followed by a 5.61 ERA in 27 starts the next year.

I call it the 30-start rule for young pitchers: It's what they do after they've gotten 30 major league starts that matter, that establish whether they belong in the majors.

Just making 30 starts without breaking down physically is a substantial achievement; just look at Liriano. But for many pitchers, and particularly those who -- like Radke, Maddux and Hendriks -- lack overwhelming velocity -- those 30 starts are a learning experience. They've had sufficient success in the minors to get the chance; now they have to learn how to make their stuff work at the game's highest level.

This is a big reason why contenders are reluctant to trust rookies with starting rotation berths. If you need 95 wins, it's difficult to turn a fifth of your games over to on-the-job-training. At this point, the Twins have little choice. Indeed, I'd rather take my chances on Hendriks than on Nick Blackburn or Marquis.

The strike-throwers (or not)

It is a time-honored managerial approach to winning baseball games, from Charles Comiskey and the St. Louis Browns of the 1880s through Frank Chance and the Cubs of the early 1900s, Pat Moran in the teens, Bill McKechnie with the Pirates, Cardinals and Reds in the '20s, '30s and '40s, Billy Southworth's St. Louis Cardinals in the '40s, Al Lopez with the Indians and White Sox in the '50s, Earl Weaver's Orioles in the '70s ... and best represented over the past decade by Ron Gardenhire's Twins:

Play good defenders in the field and throw strikes.

As much attention as the Twins' inept middle infield defense drew during last season's disaster, an overlooked problem was on the mound -- which is odd because while defense remains difficult to reliably quantify in the stats, command and control isn't.

The Twins, and in particular their starting pitchers, simply didn't command the strike zone as reliably in 2011 as they had in the past.

As a staff, the 2011 Twins walked 3.0 men per nine innings. In 2010, it was 2.4; in 2009, 2.9; in 2008, 2.5.

Check out these starters:

• Nick Blackburn went from 2.2 walks per nine innings to 2010 to 3.3 in 2011.
• Brian Duensing went from 2.4 to 2.9.
• Francisco Liriano went from 2.7 to 5.0.

Not all the starters were that bad.

• Carl Pavano went from 1.5 to 1.6 -- essentially unchanged, and very low to boot.
• Scott Baker went from 2.3 to 2.1 (and had a second straight decline of 30 innings in his workload; one of the typical benefits of avoiding walks is durability, but Baker's only reached 200 innings once).

But on the whole, the Twins pitchers didn't hold up their end of the organization's core philosophy. That has to change if the team is to rebound in 2012.

Elbow room

Kyle Gibson slid in the
2009 draft because of
a stress fracture in his
forearm. Now he has
a partially torn ligament.

Scott Baker. Kyle Gibson. Anthony Slama.

Three right-handed pitchers, three elbow injuries, and — at least for now — three rehab projects without surgery.

All three are said to have strained flexor muscles in the right elbow. Gibson also has ligament damage.

I'm not orthopedic surgeon, but given the description of Gibson's injury in particular — a partial tear of the ulnar collateral ligament — I'm not optimistic that rehab is going to be the solution. It depends, as I understand such things, on where in the ligament the tear is (and now big the tear is). The ligament is at its thickest closest to the muscle, and has a better chance of holding together there.

I know that Nolan Ryan pitched for years with a partial tear in the ligament, and that Andy Pettitte was described for years as a potential Tommy John candidate. Neither ever went through the ligament replacement surgery. But most pitchers who have a partial tear wind up having the surgery.

Timing matters. If Gibson has the surgery soon, he'll miss the 2012 season but should be at full speed for 2013. If he spends the winter trying to rehab the injury only to get to spring training and find that it didn't work, he'll still miss 2012, and (like Pat Neshek and Joe Nathan) probably won't be ready to roll at the start of 2013.

Kevin Slowey returns
to the starting rotation.

I understand the reluctance to have the surgery. But it sure seems that the Twins often take the conservative rehab approach only to find weeks or months later that surgery was needed after all.

---

Baker's spot in the rotation will be filled by Kevin Slowey, not Anthony Swarzak. This is absolutely the right choice. While Swarzak has done well as a spot starter-long reliever, his strikeout rate remains down in the Nick Blackburn/Carl Pavano range — too low.

Even setting aside the whole issue of Slowey's inability/unwillingness to work out of the bullpen, the records of both men say Slowey's the better starter.

And even if the Twins would prefer not to have Slowey be part of their future, they're still going to be better off if he rebuilds trade value — and returning him to the rotation is a step in that direction.

Shine on, you crazy Diamond

Interesting choice made Sunday by the Twins, although that choice may have been dictated by circumstances and timing:

Scott Diamond has
a 4-8, 4.70 record in
17 starts for Rochester,
but has decent
walk and strikeout
rates.

They had indicated that they would bring up a pitcher from Triple A Rochester for today's doubleheader. Scott Baker was to start the afternoon game and Anthony Swarzak the evening tilt; the idea was to add an arm for the bullpen. The immediate thought here was that Chuck James would be the choice, but there was a hint that the Twins wanted a stretched-out arm for long relief purposes, and James doesn't really fit that description.

But then Baker reported, apparently during the game Sunday, that he didn't think his elbow was ready. Remember, he missed his scheduled start exactly a week earlier. So the Twins put him on the disabled list (backdated as far as allowed), and brought up two pitchers, Scott Diamond and James.

So now it's Swarzak this afternoon, Diamond tonight, and if there's a short start they'll have to cobble things together with James, Phil Dumatrait and the rest.

They didn't call up Kyle Gibson, who was scheduled to start Sunday evening in Rochester. It would seem possible to have done that; the decision to sideline Baker probably came before the Triple-A game began. (Gibson got pounded for nine runs in four innings.) Kevin Slowey, still on rehab in Rochester, started Friday and wasn't a consideration.

The Twins went with the lefty Diamond instead, and here's a possible reason why: Cleveland's power dries up against southpaws. For the season, the Tribe is hitting .250/.321/.406 against right-handed pitchers, .253/.321/.367 against left-handers. Same batting averages, identical on-base percentages, and a big drop in slugging percentage.

If they wanted a long man for the Cleveland series, Diamond may have been the original intention, and it may be that it is James who got the call because of Baker's belated decision.

Gibson is clearly the better prospect, and if the Twins needed a multi-start rotation fix, he or Slowey would be superior choices to Diamond. But for this spot start, the numbers break in Diamond's favor.

Momentum, starting pitchers and Slama time

Silence any babble about momentum after Sunday's comeback. Inertia was the ruling force Monday, with Scott Baker's season continuing in the direction it's been taking — down.

The only encouraging thing from his outing was the post-game report that his elbow was not sore. But he certainly didn't pitch well — 13 baserunners and 14 outs.

Still, his leash has to be longer than Nick Blackburn's, and probably longer than Kevin Slowey's. Slowey starts today. If he gets shelled again, he's probably just as much at risk of being pulled from the rotation as Blackburn is, and I really hope that Blackburn doesn't start Friday at Baltimore.

But there's only one Brian Duensing on the roster. If Duensing takes Blackburn's place, does Jeff Manship take Slowey's? Glen Perkins has been reportedly pitching better in Triple A Rochester in recent outings, but his ERA is still north of 7 — and almost any callup will make him arbitration eligible, so the Twins have a real financial incentive not to bring him to the majors unless and until they're sure he's going to stick.

Plans B and C for the rotation are in the major league bullpen. If Ron Gardenhire waits another week to move Manship into the rotation, he's going to encounter the same "stretch him out" issue with Manship that he has with Duensing. I'm sure he'd rather fix Blackburn and Slowey, but that seems increasingly unlikely.

---

Alex Burnett, who earlier this season was pitching his way into a key bullpen role, has now pitched his way off the roster. His ERA, which a month ago was under 2.5, has risen to 4.39, so it's not any surprise.

Anthony Slama (pictured), long a favorite of the blogosphere, got the call. Slama has been successful in the minors, at least by such traditional measures as ERA, but the Twins have not treated him as a true prospect. Two issues: He doesn't throw hard, and he walks people.

I'm a skeptic.

Twins win (Tuesday night) and draft Gibson

10-5, Twins, despite a lousy mop-up job in the ninth inning, when Scott Baker, Jesse Crain and Jose Mijares wouldn't or couldn't throw strikes and Alexi Casilla couldn't pick up a ground ball. Mijares in particular — six strikes, nine balls.

Don't let the box score line fool you: Delmon Young had an RBI single and an RBI double, but the single didn't leave the infield and the double — just his third extra base hit of the season — was a soft-hit blooper down the right field line. In other words, he wasn't stinging the ball.

Scott Baker had his third quality start in his last four outings, but two of them — this one and his previous start against Cleveland — came against teams that are having trouble scoring runs.

Now, on to the first day of the Twins draft: The pitcher in the picture is Kyle Gibson of Missouri. The Twins landed him with the 22nd pick after he dropped out of the Top 10 — possibly top five — with what is reported to be a stress fracture in his forearm.

Baseball America had regarded him as the "safest" pick among pitchers, including the much-hyped Stephen Strasburg: He relies on two-seam fastballs rather than four-seamers, usually pitching at 88-91 mph with good sink and tailing action, though he can reach back for 94 mph when needed. He has two of the better secondary pitches in the draft, a crisp 82-85 mph slider and a deceptive changeup with fade that can generate swings and misses.

Then came a sudden loss of velocity and the report on Monday of a stress fracture. He may not pitch again this summer, but considering his collegiate workload, that might have been the plan anyway. Certainly without the injury, he wouldn't have made it to the Twins.

The Twins followed this pick with three more collegiate pitchers: LHP Matt Bashore of Indiana with the supplemental pick for losing Dennys Reyes; RHP Billy Bullock of Florida in the second round; and RHP Ben Tootle of Jacksonville State. All three are said to have power arms, particularly Bullock and Tootle, and fastball velocity is something the organization was out to emphasize after a few years of drafting toolsy outfielders and command specialists early.

Warning, however: Gibson, Bashore and Tootle all slipped because of injury/illness concerns.

Bullock was most successful in college out of the bullpen, and Tootle is seen as a relief pitcher also.

The draft continues today.