The catcher shuffle

With Joe Mauer on the shelf, the spring training question of "who is the Twins No. 3 catcher" has taken an importance that wasn't fully appreciated in March.

Rene Rivera was the
Mariners' 2nd-round
draft pick in 2001,
the same year the Twins
signed Joe Mauer.

It also, it would appear, wasn't correctly answered.

The answer the Twins came up with in Fort Myers was Steve Holm. The 31-year-old career minor leaguer got the call, went 2-for-17 and failed to throw out a basestealer. He started five games; the Twins lost four of them and gave up double-digit runs in the last two.

To say that Holm wasn't the correct answer to the question implies that there was a correct one. Rene Rivera is getting his chance now; there's little reason to believe that he's any better than Holm.

Of the three upper level catchers who got serious looks in spring training, the one who has the best chance of carving out a career in the majors is Danny Lehmann, who is younger and less experienced than Rivera and Holm. And Lehmann profiles as a Drew Butera type — a catch-and-throw guy without much to offer at the plate.

The Twins this spring made a pair of moves — Pat Neshek to the Padres and trading for Scott Diamond's Rule V rights — designed to open a pair of spots on the 40-man roster. The catcher moves have filled both those slots — Holm remains on the 40-man roster— and that seems a high price to pay for misjudging the quality of Holm as a hitter. Ron Gardenhire said Holm "can swing it," as assessment that had to have been based on 15 spring training at-bats rather than totality of his record.

A cold afternoon at the ball park

With the confluence Thursday of a furlough day for me, a Twin Cities meeting for my wife and a noon Twins game with available tickets, I went.

Brrr. And. as a Twins fan, Grrr.

Taking the tarp off the
field on a cold, damp day.

I don't mind confessing that I didn't make it though the whole fiasco. For that matter, most of the people in my section -- section 319, with an excellent view down the right field foul line -- didn't make it through all nine innings (although it's quite possible that some of them either took shelter in the nearby Twins Pub or under the radiant heaters).

A few thoughts:

Jim Hoey impressed me more than his line score would suggest. He was lit up for three runs when the Twins tried to get eight outs from him, but he was very good for the first time through the order. (Ben Zobrist's three-run homer was immediately preceeded by a hit-and-run single on which I'm sure Matt Joyce broke his bat.)

Jose Mijares was not good. He got just two outs and needed 37 pitches to do so. (In comparison, Hoey got his eight outs on 44 pitches.) And the less said about Nick Blackburn, the better. Like Liriano the night before, Blackburn couldn't or wouldn't throw strikes.

The Rays abused the battery of Blackburn and Steve Holm on the bases. It's a very fast team -- at least three men in their lineup for the nooner are faster than anybody the Twins have (B.J. Upton, Sam Fuld and Sean Rodriguez) -- and Holm's arm doesn't impress me.

Rene Tosoni was probably the only Twins player who could be happy with that game. Two hits in his major league debut.

Notes, quotes and comment (catcher division)

A s a general thing, backup catchers aren't asked to win games so much as they are expected to avoid losing them. 

Steve Holm takes that concept a bit further:

"I think most people are realistic in knowing that no team has someone who's going to replace Joe Mauer," Holm said. "It's not like I'm trying to actually do that. ... You don't try to duplicate that.

"Like the old adage, you don't want to be noticed. You just want to do your job, and at the end of the day, don't do anything noticeable."

The first part, about not trying to replace Mauer, is eminently sensible. The part about not doing anything noticeable ... well, that might be part of why Holm's spent so much time in the minors. Drew Butera, after all, had three RBIs Monday night, which is certainly noticeable.

---

We're more than a week from this becoming an issue, but I'm wondering what Holm's option status is. My assumption with a 31-year-old player with his tenure in the minors is that he's out of options, but Holm may not be. He does have two partial major league seasons, so I'm sure at least two of his three options are gone. 

This becomes relevant when Joe Mauer is ready to return to action. If Holm is out of options, the Twins would have to waive him to send him back to Rochester. If the Twins don't want to risk losing him, their alternative is to instead option out Butera.

---

Jose Morales, traded during the winter to Colorado, is the Rockies backup catcher. I got to see a few innings of the Rox' win against the Cubs on Sunday with Morales behind the dish. He's hitting .273 in 14 at-bats, which seems about right.

I wrote about this at the time, but given the Twins' current catching situation it's worth repeating: The Twins traded Morales because he was out of options and behind Butera on their depth chart, the Twins having decided they prefer Butera's superior defense to Morales' batting average. They used the roster spot opened by the trade to sign Jim Thome.

Had they kept Morales and dumped somebody else to make room for Thome, they still would have had to move Morales at the end of spring training (unless they decided to keep him over Butera). So I don't fault the Twins for trading him.

Meanwhile, the minor league pitcher the Twins got in the deal, Paul Bargas, is apparently in tough shape with an unspecified neurological condition. 

Mauer, Holm and Eli Whiteside

Assuming that the current Joe Mauer diagnosis is correct -- that his "bilateral leg weakness" comes from a viral infection, not from a ruptured disk or Lou Gehrig's Disease or any of the other, life-altering possibilities -- we've had a lot of angst for nothing.

Which is better than having legitimate angst.

I don't, off what is currently known, foresee an imminent position shift for Mauer. Nor do I think it advisable. While Mauer's bat will play at any position, and while he would likely be in the lineup on a more regular basis were he an outfielder or third baseman, his value to the Twins is immensely increased by the fact that he is not only a catcher, but a very good catcher.

The time for a position change will come before his contract expires, but the longer Mauer can remain behind the plate, the more likely the Twins are to get their money's worth out of his contract.

---

Steve Holm probably
isn't going to match
his career major-
league average.

I heard Ron Gardenhire on the radio talking about his current catching tandem of Drew Butera and Steve Holm. Butera, Gardenhire said, is the better defensive player, but Holm "can swing it."

Holm is likely a better hitter than Butera, but that doesn't make him a good hitter. Yes, his major league average is .264, but that's in just 91 official at-bats. Of more relevance, I think, is that in 500 Triple A at-bats (spread out over four seasons), he's hit .248 -- this despite the fact that most of that playing time has come in the hitter-happy PCL.

Gardenhire's only seen Holm this spring, and Holm hit .400 -- six hits in 15 at-bats, hardly the basis for a sound judgment.

One thing I find intriguing: In 2008, the Twins had a catcher named Eli Whiteside in camp (I remember seeing him catch in spring training that year). Whiteside caught that season for a month in Triple A for the Twins before being released, then moved on to San Francisco, where he won the backup job in 2009 and has held it since.

One of the guys Whiteside beat out for the job: Steve Holm.

The Twins' Thursday curse

When and if Joe Mauer moves to another position,
the odds are back problems will be a catalyst in the shift.

Another Thursday, another Twins loss, another key injury.

Last week it was Tsuyoshi Nishioka's broken fibula; yesterday it was Joe Mauer's "bilateral leg weakness." He was put on the disabled list and is to see the specialist who treated his sacroiliac joint in 2009.

This diagnosis was a new one to me, but the more I learn of it the more concerned I become. Presumably this is rooted in his back, and it is back issues that generally sabotage the careers of tall catchers. Mauer is listed at 6-foot-5 and may be taller than that; he is definitely a tall catcher.

I've been dismissive of the chronic talk of moving Mauer to another position, and I would like to continue to be dismissive of that notion. Two disabling back injuries in a little more than two years (if that's the cause) makes that a difficult position to maintain.

There is much unknown about the outlook, including the exact cause and even when Mauer will see the specialist. so it's premature to declare that his catching days are numbered. What we do know for a fact is that he won't be catching for at least two weeks, and we also know that the Twins, having traded both Wilson Ramos and Jose Morales in the past year, are not particularly deep in catchers now.

Presumably Drew Butera will be the primary catcher while Mauer is sidelined. Steve Holm, a 31-year-old minor league veteran who hit .400 (in 15 at-bats) in spring training, has been called up to serve as the backup. Holm has all of 53 major league games on his resume -- which is what Butera has after Thursday's game.

There is, obviously, a big drop off from Joe Mauer to Butera and Holm. If Mauer's going to be out for a prolonged period, the Twins may have to shop for outside help.