Cutting Diamond

Scott Diamond went 19-27, 4.43 in parts of three
seasons with the Twins.

The move came last week while I was cavorting between Class A parks in Iowa:

Trevor May came off the disabled list for the Twins Triple A affiliate in Rochester, and to make room, Scott Diamond was released.

I am admittedly a Diamond fan, but I can't argue with cutting him loose. He fared ill this year in Rochester. A 6.52 ERA is a long way from getting it done, and 10 homers in 80 innings is too many for a guy who lives on the ground ball. There were, by the end, a lot of pitchers in the upper levels of the farm system ahead of him.

The Twins got a good year out of Diamond in 2012, but even that year, his low strikeout rate was an ominous sign of what was to come. As I noted during his 2013 struggles, for him to succeed, it wasn't enough to be good at his strengths. He needed to be the best -- the best at getting ground balls, the best at avoiding walks. He was merely a bit above average at those things last year. And it wasn't any better this season.

The Cincinnati Reds have already signed the lefty to a minor league contract. Maybe Diamond, who's only 27, can revive his flagging career with the Reds. I'll be rooting for him.

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.

Adventures in Baseball Reference sponsorships

Dedicated readers of this Internet space know that each year I sponsor the Baseball Reference page(s) of one or more Twins or ex-Twins.

The past two years I've sponsored Scott Diamond. With Diamond at this point carrying an ERA above 10 in Triple A, it's not looking good for his return. I haven't decided if I'll abandon him page, but I have picked up Glen Perkins.

Second time, actually, that I've sponsored Perkins' page. I had his page in 2012 and let it lapse after that season.

If not Pelfrey, who?

Logan Darnell has been
sharp so far at Triple A
Rochester.

Mike Pelfrey had another low-grade start Wednesday evening: Five innings, four runs allowed (three earned) with three walks and one strikeout. Even with a two-year contract, one senses that his chances are dwindling.

Imagine that the Twins decide to, as they say, go in a different direction. What are the options?

Perhaps the most obvious is to flip-flip him with Sam Deduno. Deduno has racked up an ERA of 1.80 in 14.2 innings out of the bullpen, and he was the most effective starter in the rotation for most of last season.

But ... I suspect the Twins have concluded that Deduno isn't a good fit for a starting rotation. He had shoulder surgery last year, he had Tommy John surgery before coming to the Twins, and he has had difficulty going deep into games. They're not looking for "five-and-fly."

If not Deduno, then reaching into the minors yields...

Trevor May came to
the Twins in the
Ben Revere deal.

Well, the word at the end of training camp had Scott Diamond and Kris Johnson, a pair of lefties, as the most likely early callups should rotation reinforcements be required.

Neither has overwhelmed in the early going in Rochester, however. Johnson — indirectly part of the return on last August's Justin Morneau trade — hasn't been bad: 1-2 with a 3.94 ERA in three starts, but with 14 strikeouts and no homers allowed in 16 innings. Diamond, a personal favorite, has been brutal: 1-2, 10.20 and with nine walks in 15 innings. He walked a lot of hitters in exhibition play too; this is a seriously bad sign.

Top pitching prospect Alex Meyer has been inconsistent, and while I think he's likely to get the call at some point, it's unlikely to come in May.

The two guys whose Rochester stats raise my eyebrows are Trevor May and Logan Darnell.

Darnell, a lefty who is on the 40-man roster, has a 1.80 ERA in 15 innings. More striking: 15 strikeouts as well.  May, a hard-thrower whose record indicates issues with control, has a worse ERA (2.93) than Darnell, but a sterling walk-to-strikeout ratio, three walks and 16 Ks in 15.1 innings.

If May — who issued the third most walks in the Double A Eastern League last year — has found the strike zone, he'll be in Minnesota real soon.

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.

Cutting Diamond

Scott Diamond added
a beard this spring.
It didn't help his pitching.

Scott Diamond didn't make the Twins rotation. Since the lefty is out of options, the Twins put him on waivers, and 29 teams passed.

They said, in effect, that he can't make their rotations either.

Diamond has until midday today to decline to report to Triple A Rochester and declare free agency, but my guess is that he's not going to find a major league job elsewhere.

But I'm also not sure how he fits into the Twins future either. It's a similar situation as with Vance Worley when the Twins pulled the plug on him The Rochester rotation has five guys, maybe six, without him, and there's a case to be made that all should rate ahead of Diamond.

I'm an unabashed Diamond fan, for a variety of reasons, not least of which is that I grew up in an era when several ground-ball lefties thrived without velocity. Tommy John. Scott McGregor. Geoff Zahn of the Twins.

But the game has changed. In the second decade of the 21st Century, pitchers have to be able to miss bats. The lineups are deeper, the hitters more powerful than 40 to 30 years ago. And Diamond has trouble generating swings-and-misses, not to mention strikeouts.

For Diamond to be effective, he has to be top-of-the-charts in ground ball rate and control. Not merely better than average, but best or nearly best in the league. He was in 2012; he wasn't in 2013.

And this spring, Diamond walked 10 men in 17 innings. That won't do.

Scott Diamond and ground balls

Scott Diamond had a difficult 2013.

The 2014 Bill James Handbook contains a nine-page essay by the sabermetric pioneer that digs into the "Pitcher Analysis" data. This is the segment, referred to frequently in recent weeks during posts about Ricky Nolasco and Phil Hughes, that records, pitcher by pitcher, how many strikes, how many balls, how many ground balls he got, how many swinging strikes, yada yada yada.

As one with a perhaps irrational belief in Scott Diamond — a belief that is probably a big part of my discontent with the re-signing of Mike Pelfrey, who may well keep Diamond out of the rotation —  the third part of the essay really caught my eye:

3. How important is Ground Ball Rate to success as a pitcher?

It isn't. At all.

James being James, he defends this assertion for a couple of pages. I'm not going to quote the whole thing, but his interpretation of the data makes sense. And in 2013, at least, the two groups of pitchers who had the lowest ground ball rates were the two most effective groups.

James' basic point: It's more important for a pitcher to get strikeouts than ground balls.

I believe that to be true. Yet I also believe that a ground ball pitcher — an extreme ground ball pitcher — can be effective.

Diamond was that extreme ground ball pitcher in 2012. He wasn't in 2013.

According to the Handbook: Diamond, in 2013, faced 576 batters. He got 227 ground balls (39.4 percent), 154 fly balls (26.7 percent) and 103 line drives (17.8 percent).  This appears to be on the high end of ground ball rates — the chart only gives bulk numbers — and it didn't result in a good season for Diamond.

In 2012, Diamond had 714 BF,  311 GB (43.5 percent), 149 FB (20.1 percent), 122 LD (17.1 percent). The difference is obvious. Fly ball rates up sharply, ground ball rates down sharply, line drive rate up a bit. 

What's more troublesome for the lefty: he threw just 62 percent strikes (not real high) in 2013 and had just 10 percent swinging strikes (extremely low). 

The 2013 Handbook doesn't give the same data for the 2012 season, so I can't directly compare Diamond's strike-throwing from year to year. But given the rise in his walk rate and the decline in his strikeout rate, it's a safe bet that he wasn't throwing strikes at the same rate in 2013.

None of this is really new information, of course. Diamond's 2012 success was based on doing the things he does well — throw strikes, get ground balls — extremely well, top-of-the-league well. In 2013, he declined in those things, and that won't work for him.

He doesn't have a swing-and-miss pitch. He has to work around that, and James' essay, without ever mentioning Diamond, tells us why that's not easily done.

The rotation as it stands now

Ricky Nolasco's 2012 card.

With Ricky Nolasco still awaiting his physical before he is officially in the fold, here's how I see the Twins rotation shaping up:

1) Nolasco. While he's nobody's idea of a Cy Young contender, he clearly has the best track record on this roster. A third- or fourth guy in a good rotation, such as the Dodgers last year.

2) A pitcher to be named later. The Twins will add at least one more veteran starter this offseason. Count on it.

3) Kevin Correia. He was better in 2013 than I expected, but even that level wouldn't keep him in the rotation of a playoff caliber club.

4) Kyle Gibson. It's time to see what he's got. If he doesn't come out of spring training in the big league rotation, something's wrong. Ideally, by the end of the season he will have climbed higher on this list.

5) Somebody from the grab bag of 2013 returnees. My personal favorite is Scott Diamond, but the front runner is probably Sam Deduno. Other possibilities would include Andrew Albers. Vance Worley and Liam Hendriks.

The rotation that opens isn't likely to be the rotation for 162 games, of course. If 2014 goes the way the Twins hope, Alex Meyer and/or Trevor May will push their way in at some point. I don't see either doing that to start the season.

Scott Diamond and the missing strikeouts

Scott Diamond allowed just three hits through six innings
Thursday, but couldn't get through the seventh without help.

Scott Diamond on Tuesday had his first quality start (in the majors) since July 26. He got his first win (in the majors) since June 20.

It came against the White Sox, one of the few teams indisputably worse than the Twins, but it still had the left-hander feeling a good bit better about his pitching.

Me being me, I'm struck by what didn't happen in his outing: A strikeout.

Diamond got 19 outs, and none of them on strikes. For the season, Diamond is averaging just 3.5 strikeouts per nine innings. The American League average is 7.6, so Diamond's K rate is less than half the average.

I had to laugh when I came across this phrasing in the Pioneer Press gamer: "... Diamond failed to record a strikeout for just the third time this season ..." The implication is that it's common for starters to get a zero in that part of the linescore. 

It isn't. Going K-less in three starts in a season is unusual. And not a good sign.

Scott Cubic Zirconia

Scott Diamond delivers a first-inning
pitch Thursday afternoon against Oakland.

So what are we to make of Scott Diamond, 2013? The left-hander, who had such a fine 2012 season, returned Thursday from his Triple A exile and ... wasn't good.

He was 4-0, 2.41 in August/September for Rochester and won his one playoff start as well for the Red Wings, so there was some optimism that he had rediscovered his magic.

And then Thursday against the A's: 4.2 innings, six hits, five runs, four earned, two walks and one strikeout.

The ERA went up some more, the strikeout rate went down some more.

Oh, one can argue that the Twins defense could have been better. Trevor Plouffe had a throwing error that led to the unearned run, and center fielder Alex Presley got turned the wrong way on a hard-hit ball that resulted in a two-run triple. Maybe Presley should have caught that ball.

I still come back to this: Diamond not only didn't make it out of the fifth inning, but he struck out just one of his 22 batters.

Diamond, as quoted in the Pioneer Press gamer, put it this way: "I just wasn't able to put anybody away."

Mike Bernadino, the writer whose story is linked to above, concludes the piece by noting that Diamond may have just two starts left "to prove he is still staff-fronting material." 

I like Diamond — as I wrote earlier this year, he's MFT, My Favorite Twin — but this is the hard reality: Until he finds a way to boost his strikeout rate, he's not only not "staff-fronting material," he's not mid-rotation material.

Two puzzling call-ups

Shairon Martis is 26
now, but he pitched
in the majors for
Washington at ages
21 and 22.

The Rochester Red Wings were eliminated Sunday in the International League playoffs, which (a) concluded the season for the Twins minor league teams and (b) freed up the Twins to make the rest of their September call-ups.

Seven players got the call for the season's final three weeks or so: Pitchers Scott Diamond, Cole De Vries, Michael Tonkin and Shairon Martis; infielders Eduardo Escobar and Chris Parmelee; and catcher Eric Fryer.

Most of these were pretty obvious. Diamond, demoted for his ineffectiveness, went 4-0, 2.41 for Rochester and won his playoff start. De Vries, his season wrecked by a spring training injury, got it going late. Escobar, who had no previous history of hitting well, went .307/.380/.500 for the Red Wings; it wasn't a lot of at-bats (188 plate appearances), but that's a mighty attractive slash line for a middle infielder. Tonkin has a very real chance to be a bullpen factor next season.

And some are a bit surprising. Parmelee, for example: a .231/.318/.370 line for a first baseman-right fielder doesn't scream for his recall. I wonder how much playing time he's going to get; I wonder if this isn't his last chance to impress somebody.

Martis had a 4.26 ERA in 80 innings, mostly in middle relief; I doubt there's much there.

Eric Fryer gives
the Twins four
active catchers
going on five.

And Fryer ... he hit an unimpressive .215/.339/.365. The Twins already had three active catchers in Ryan Doumit, Chris Herrmann and Josmil Pinto — and Joe Mauer supposedly making progress in his recovery from his concussion. When Mauer returns, this gives the Twins five catchers. Even granting that several of those five can do other things than catch, that's a lot. I understand that Gene Glynn, the Rochester manager, really likes Fryer, but on the surface, there's simply no way Fryer rates with the other four.

My guess is that the Twins know they won't give either Martis or Fryer spots on their 40-man roster this winter, but they really want to retain the two as minor league free agents. (The Twins created the 40-man berths for them by putting Wilkin Ramirez and Sam Deduno on the 60-day disabled list; the other five were already on the 40.) This September call-up is, in effect, a bonus for them for being good organization guys in Triple A. A few more weeks of service time, some major league pay, a gesture of appreciation.

Contemplating Scott Diamond

Scott Diamond is nowhere near
the leaderboard in groundball
rate this season.

I  may be overly stubborn about this, but I still believe in Scott Diamond. He may be a minor leaguer at the moment, but he remains MFT — My Favorite Twin.

But it's quite obvious that even at his best — his best being 2012 — his margin of error is thin.

In 2012, he was at the top of the league in avoiding walks, very close to it in ground ball rate. By being the best in the league at what he was good at, he could overcome his significant weakness in strikeouts.

In 2013? He's a bit better than average in getting grounders, a bit higher than that in his walk rate. And his strikeout rate has gotten worse — he's fallen off to about half the league rate in strikeouts.

He's exceedingly unlikely to ever approach league-average in strikeout rate, which I am becoming increasingly convinced is the most important figure in pitching. And that means league average or a little better in control and groundballs isn't going to cut it for Diamond.

So why do I still have hope for him? He's lefthanded. He's intelligent. His BABIP — batting average on balls in play, a measure of, depending on one's view of the stat, either of how much his defense is helping him or how lucky/unlucky he is — would be one of the 10 highest in the league if he had enough innings to qualify. (In 2012, his BABIP was almost exactly average.)

But the underlying point remains: For Diamond to be successful, he has to be the best at what he's good at. That's a high hill to climb, and a status difficult to maintain once achieved.

Missing the benchmarks

Aaron Hicks has had
moments of brilliance
and stretches of
failure.

Another non-competitive loss Thursday for the Twins resulted in two demotions: starter Scott Diamond and center fielder Aaron Hicks were shipped out to Triple A Rochester.

Oswaldo Arcia was called up to take Hicks' spot; no move was immediately made to fill Diamond's rotation berth. The immediate speculation had Andrew Albers (like Diamond, a Canadian lefty) getting the call. I wonder if the delay might mean the Twins have a waiver-wire pickup pending; their sinking record has them in prime position to claim players.

There's no way to argue that Diamond and Hicks deserved to stay in the majors. Neither has had a good season, and both were sliding.

But their demotions signal a discouraging reality: As promising as things are in the minor leagues, the major league roster has made almost no progress toward contention. Coming into spring training, I identified eight specific areas that figured to be priorities. Of those eight, we can see success only in the bullpen roles and maybe at shortstop and second base. As for the others:

Scott Diamond's
strikeout rate, already
low, is sinking.

Starting rotation: Success here meant establishing Diamond and Vance Worley as 200-inning guys and getting Kyle Gibson settled into the major league rotation. Diamond and Worley regressed to Triple A, and Gibson's ERA is 6.21. The rise of Sam Deduno merely puts him in roughly the position Diamond was in at this point last season.

Center field: Success here meant establishing Hicks by season's end. Obviously, he's anything but established.

Leadoff hitter: Success here again meant Hicks. Ain't happening, at least not this year.

Establishing Trevor Plouffe and Chris Parmelee: Parmelee is in Triple A (the Star Tribune's Phil Miller noted on Twitter Thursday evening that the Opening Day outfield — Josh Willingham, Hicks and Parmelee — will be playing in Rochester this weekend). Plouffe is hitting .245/.303/.404, which isn't sufficient to carry his defense at third base.

Discouraging indeed.

Late night: Twins 3, Mariners 2 (13 innings)

Chris Colabello launches his two-run homer in the
top of the 13th inning Friday night.

Box score here.

Game story here.

A couple of good games from a couple of guys who really needed something to go right for them.

Minor league slugger Chris Colabello -- a mere 5-for-37 in his brief major league career, all singles, entering the game -- hammered a two-run homer in the top of the 13th for the decisive runs.

And Scott Diamond, who came into the game with a 5.53 ERA, gave the Twins six innings of one-run ball. Ron Gardenhire had indicated in a radio interview earlier in the day that Diamond was running out of chances, but the lefty kept the Twins in the game.

Still, it's not difficult to spot the flaws in Diamond's outing. He faced 27 hitters and threw a first-pitch strike to exactly a third of them. He threw 57 strikes and 44 balls, not exactly a prime ratio. And he had just one strikeout in his six innings.

The big picture results were good for Diamond. The process, however, was not.

---

Much of the pregame chatter on the Interwebs was about the Twins announcement that Joe Mauer, whose paternity leave expires today, would not report to the Twins in Seattle this weekend but will rejoin the squad on Tuesday when they start a home series against Kansas City.

I don't have a problem with this. Yes, the Twins are a better team with Mauer playing. But no one game, or two games, is going to make or break their season. They're obviously not making the playoffs. The Mauer twins were born about five weeks premature, and if it's worth it to him to forfeit a quarter of a million dollars in salary (pro-rated, his salary is a bit more than $125,000 a day) to spend today and Sunday with his wife and daughters, who am I to argue?

His absence gives Chris Herrmann a couple more days to get at-bats. I don't regard that as a terrible thing in the long haul.

Diamond's thin margin of error

Scott Diamond in the dugout after being pulled in the
fifth inning on Sunday afternoon in Toronto.

Scott Diamond had another poor start Sunday: 4.2 innings, six runs, three homers, four walks.

Last season's rotation revelation has seen his ERA rise almost two full runs per game — 5.52 this year, 3.54 in 2012 — and he has now failed to get through six innings in five of his last six starts.

It's not easy for me to be objective about Diamond, who I declared earlier this year to be MFT — "My Favorite Twin." I have a basic liking for this ilk of pitcher: a lefty who avoids walks and homers and lives on the groundball. I've had that fondness from the days of Geoff Zahn, who averaged more than 200 innings over a four-year period with the Twins in the late '70s and went 53-53 in that span — and did so with a strikeout rate lower even than Diamond's.

Such pitchers are very team-dependent. They need infielders who can turn the double play, catchers who can help hold the running game in check (to keep the double play in order), outfielders who can cut off balls in the gap (to keep the double play in order).

Diamond's season to date illustrates how thin the margin of success is for a low-strikeout pitcher.

Diamond is walking 2.1 men per nine innings this year; a good rate, but a half-walk higher than in 2012. His strikeout rate is down from 4.7 K/9 to 4.3. His BABIP — batting average, balls in play (which takes out the home runs and the strikeouts) has risen 36 points, which suggests that year's defense behind him has been less effective. The home run rate has boomed from 0.9 HR/9 to 1.5, which is too high for any type of pitcher.

And, perhaps most telling, Diamond ground-ball to air-ball (flies and liners) ratio has fallen from 1.17 to 0.90. That's still above average (0.82), but not much above. (All those numbers are gleaned from Baseball Reference this morning.)

Diamond last year was among the very best in the majors at getting ground balls, at getting double-plays, at avoiding walks. The things that pitchers with his skill set have to be good at, he was generally very good at. This year, for whatever reason, he isn't. And for him, that's the difference between success and failure.

Shuffling the pitchers

P.J. Walters collects himself before throwing his first
pitch Wednesday against the New York Yankees.

The Twins have swapped out a starting pitcher and rebranded some bullpen roles. Let's look:

P.J. Walters designated for assignment: Mike Pelfrey is coming off the disabled list to make Saturday's start. The Twitter buzz from the beat writers this week suggested that both Walters and Scott Diamond were pitching for their jobs in the Yankees series.

Diamond went 6.2 innings, allowing three runs (two earned); he also had, according to Baseball reference, more groundballs than fly balls for the first time in four starts. Diamond lives on the grounders, and his GB rate this year is closer to average that top-of-the-charts, as it was last year.

For his part, Walters went five innings, allowing three runs, all earned. And it was Walters who lost his job.

Which, if it was indeed down to Diamond vs. Walters, the right choice. Neither man is gifted with overwhelming stuff, but Diamond has more markers in his favor (not the least of which is being left-handed).

Walters is out of options, and Diamond is not, but the call apparently wasn't close enough for that tow sway the decision. So now Walters enters the 10-day limbo of DFA and waits to see what happens.

Duensing, Burton slide down the bullpen hierarchy: The Twins eight-man bullpen has had two castes this season: The four late-and-close guys (closer Glen Perkins, set-up man Jared Burton, and middle men Casey Fien and Brian Duensing, who are generally used for fractional innings to get out of jams in the sixth and seventh), and the four longer men (Josh Roenicke, Anthony Swarzak and rookies Ryan Pressly and Caleb Thielbar).

Burton had a rough June (ERA 7.45 for the month) and he opened the new month by giving up three runs in one-third of an inning in Game 1 of the Yankees series.  So now Fien is supposedly going to be the eighth-inning guy while Burton works in lower-leverage situations.

It's less clear who gets the ball in Fien's customary role, which isn't exactly low-leverage. The Twins like a power arm in that job, and I would think that points to Pressly. But (a) they might prefer to give the veteran Roenicke the first shot and (b) Pressly hasn't been all that effective of late either.

Ideally Burton straightens things out quickly and reclaims the eighth-inning role. Fien may be just as good in that role as Burton, but the options for Fien's accustomed role are thin.

Caleb Thielbar has
walked seven and
allowed five hits
in his 18-plus innings.

Similarly, Thielbar has supplanted Duensing in the left-handed set-up role. Duensing, who has been death on left-handed hitters for most of his career, has not been nearly as effective this year (.292 batting average allowed to lefties).

Thielbar hasn't been charged with an earned run yet in the majors (18.2 innings), although he has allowed some inherited runners to score. Nor, through 16 games, has he ever been brought in with a lead.

So far, Ron Gardenhire has used Thielbar much as he used Craig Breslow in 2008. Dennys Reyes was Gardy's primary LOOGY (Left-handed One-Out GuY), and the manager wouldn't use Breslow in game situations. Pigeonholing Breslow into low-leverage situations only was one reason the Twins didn't win the divisional title that year.

The Twins aren't winning the division this year no matter how Thielbar is used. But maybe a lesson has been learned.

Notes from the weekend

Chris Colabello plays first base on Saturday. The
indy-league veteran is going back to Triple A.

The Twins sent Chris Colabello back to Triple A Rochester after Sunday's game, with a corresponding move to add someone to the 25-man active roster coming on Tuesday (off day today).

The estimable Seth Stohs suggested on Twitter that the addition might be Deibinson Romero, a third baseman not currently on the 40-man roster. I think an easier solution to the riddle is Wilkin Ramirez coming off the seven-day concussion disabled list.

Colabello was just 2-for-15 with the big league team, both hits singles, with no walks. It's one of those things — if he were in the Brewers' organization, he'd likely get a chance at regular play (he's got to be a better hitter than the shortstops they're playing at first base), but with the Twins he's behind Justin Morneau and Chris Parmelee and Ryan Doumit at first base and designated hitter.

---

Joe Mauer has caught just one game since the 14-inning affair on Tuesday in Milwaukee. Chris Herrmann caught on Wednesday, Doumit on Thursday, Mauer on Friday, Doumit on Saturday and Sunday.

The Twins have played 54 games, exactly one-third of the schedule, and Mauer has started 35 games behind the plate, which means he's on pace to catch 105 games — a good bit short of the 120 that Terry Ryan was talking about coming into the season.

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Scott Diamond's six shutout innings Sunday wasn't quite as impressive as it appears on first glance. A top-notch Diamond start has more than twice as many ground balls as fly balls. On Sunday (according to Baseball Reference) he had 9 FB and 8 GB.

He did tie his season highs for strikeouts and swinging strikes, with three and 10 respectively, and it was his first quality start since May 7. I don't know if he's solved what was wrong in his previous four starts or if Sunday's results are more because Seattle's lineup isn't particularly good.

Diamond's 4.66 ERA this year is considerably worse than his 3.58 in 2012, yet among the Twins pitchers with more than two starts, it's still the second best.

Adventures in Baseball Reference sponsorships

Scott Diamond,
MFT

Regular readers of this blog know that each year I throw a little cash in the direction of the invaluable Baseball Reference website and sponsor the page(s) of one or more Twin or ex-Twin.

Last year I sponsored the pages of Glen Perkins and Scott Diamond.

I've let the Perkins page go to free agency, but this week I re-upped with Diamond ($45). I may at a later date pick another page to sponsor.

This is the first time I've carried a sponsorship past one year. The first year I did this, I spread a limited budget around (Michael Cuddyer, Gene Larkin, Terry Steinbach). The second year I busted the budget big time and went for Joe Mauer. Last year, Perkins and Diamond.

Diamond has become the first acknowledged MFT -- My Favorite Twin -- in years. The holders of the not-necessarily coveted title have been Bert Blyleven, Roy Smalley, Gary Gaetti, Chuck Knoblauch and Cristian Guzman. Johan Santana was an unacknowledged MFT -- I didn't realize he was MFT until he left.

So unless and until BR decides to price Diamond as if he were indeed a gemstone, I'm likely to stick with him for some time.

Grading the Twins rotation

Scott Diamond shone once more in a day game; for his
short career, his day ERA is 3.32, his night ERA 4.27.

Scott Diamond had his third straight quality start Wednesday, but it was the first time this season he was truly the ground-ball machine of 2012. According to Baseball Reference, he had 13 ground balls and five fly balls Wednesday, bringing him to a 40/35 split for the season.

Diamond's breakout 2012 was all about avoiding walks and getting grounders, so Wednesday was a welcome sign. I'll pick a nit and say I'd like to see him break past six innings next time out; while the bullpen has been very good, the rotation needs to eat more outs.

The Twins have used six starters so far. Vance Worley's had six starts, Kevin Correia and Mike Pelfrey five each, Diamond four, Liam Hendriks and Pedro Hernandez two each.

I classify the starters into three camps:

1) Semi-established: Diamond and Worley. These are the guys I can envision being part of the rotation for the next contending Twins team. Worley's had a difficult go of things so far: 0-4, 7.22 with less than 29 innings in the six starts, and his strikeout rate is down almost two per nine innings.

Indications are that Worley's leash is long, and it ought to be. But he's not doing well.

I'll give Diamond a C for the season so far. Worley has to be earning an F.

2) The disposable veterans: Correia and Pelfrey, the veterans brought in a free agents. I can't argue with Correia's results, even if I doubt he can sustain them. Pelfrey's been brutal. An A for Correia, another F for Pelfrey.

3) The fifth starters: Hendriks and Hernandez. I fully expect the Twins to cycle a number of pitchers through the rotation looking for someone to break through as Diamond did in 2012. Hendriks got the first shot and was quickly supplanted by Hernandez.

I'll give Hendriks a D; he wasn't all that awful in his two starts, but he did get sent down, and unlike last year, he hasn't dominated Triple A upon his return. If and when the Twins swap out another rotation piece, it probably won't be Hendriks getting the call. Cole De Vries and Sam Deduno are more likely (not that either is ready yet).

The left-handed Hernandez has split time between the rotation and long relief since his return, a pattern imposed by the offdays and weather problems, and has put up an ERA of 2.35, which is not to be sneered at. I'll give him a B, but, as with Correia, I don't really expect him to continue at that level.

Here's a key difference between Diamond and Hernandez, at least as far as one can judge Hernandez off 15.1 innings: Hernandez does not appear to be a worm killer. Baseball Reference has him at 20 grounders and 30 fly balls so far.

Trimming the non-roster guys and other notes

Shairon Martis, who
is still playing in the
World Baseball Classic
for the Netherlands,
was one of seven
players reassigned
Sunday to minor
league camp.

The Twins bounced seven non-roster invitees from major league camp Sunday.

Only two of the seven — pitcher Deolis Guerra and first baseman Chris Colabello — ever had even dark horse status for making the 25-man roster, so Sunday's moves simply thinned the crowd from the clubhouse. The contenders for major league duty in April were essentially unaffected.

Guerra's chances of making the roster, unlikely to begin with, vanished when he was found to have a blood clot in his pitching shoulder. For a while he was in intensive care, a sign of how serious such a clot is. On Friday he had a rib removed to free up space for the artery involved, and he should be ready to pitch again sometime this summer.

As I said when the diagnosis was announced: It's a serious, even life-threatening, condition, if unchecked, and now that it's been caught, it's not career-threatening. That seems an odd juxtaposition, but it's nevertheless true.

Colabello's reassignment does narrow the field a bit for the bench hitter job. The primary candidates for that job — assuming it exists when the Opening Day roster is set — now in camp would appear to be first baseman/catcher Jeff Clement and outfielders Brandon Boggs and Wilkin Ramirez, all non-roster guys.

I'm not sure any of them are better fits for the pinch-hitting/backup DH role than Colabello, which leads me to suspect that the front office is going to be eying the waiver wire hard for a hitter these next two weeks.

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Scott Diamond is to make his first game appearance of the spring today in a minor league game, and he is apparently on track for a mid-April return to the rotation — which, by implication, means he figures to open the year on the disabled list.

Ditto Anthony Swarzak, whose marginal candidacy for a rotation job cracked with his ribs a few weeks ago. Ron Gardenhire was quoted over the weekend as saying his long man had to be stretched out to five innings, and there isn't time for Swarzak to do that before the April 1 opener.

Five innings? That's a typical start for Sam Deduno or Kevin Correia. I doubt Gardy's ever used a reliever for five innings.

DLing Diamond and Swarzak does figure to postpone a couple of roster decisions. Swarzak is among a handful of use-or-lose guys in the bullpen field (along with Tim Wood, Ryan Pressly and Josh Roenicke) who would have to clear waivers to be kept in the minors.