Pic of the Week

Hanley Ramirez plays a fly ball into a double in
the ninth inning on Thursday.

I wrote a lot this week about the virtues of outfield defense. It is my belief that the Twins are consciously emphasizing fielding prowess in the outfield, even at the expense of offense, and that they are benefiting from that.

Many teams do not take that approach. The Red Sox chose this winter to sign free-agent shortstop Hanley Ramirez, an outstanding hitter but an indifferent shortstop, and shift him to left field. Now, if there is a team and position where it makes sense to sacrifice defense for offense, it's left field in Boston. There's simply not much room there for the left fielder to cover,

And yet Ramirez has been little short of a disaster in left. A third of the way into the season, he's already cost the Red Sox 11 runs compared to an average left fielder. Imagine how bad it would be if he had to cover actual acreage in his home games.

The speculation in the Boston Globe this week has Ramirez moving to first base next year (Mike Napoli is a free agent after this season). Or taking over DH for the aging David Ortiz.

'Risks and dangers incidental to the game of baseball'

A woman who was hit in the head by a shattered bat
Friday night at Fenway Park is taken through the field to
a Boston hospital with what police called 'life-threatening
injuries."

It's part of the pre-game routine at Twins games: the public address announcer warning fans to be aware of bats and balls flying into the stands and disclaiming any responsibility for "risks and dangers incidental to the game of baseball."

Most of us don't pay much attention to it. And in most seats, there's no need to. But Friday night, in cramped Fenway Park, a woman sitting near a dugout was hit by part of a shattered bat. Reporters tweeted that she was bleeding profusely and shrieking; police described the injuries as "life-threatening."

I've never been big on the notion of extending the backstop netting down the foul lines. But I think it's coming. This is not the first fan injury, but it might be one that creates some changes in the "fan experience."

Nolasco, Milone and Mauer's bunt

This is Ricky Nolasco's
third time on the
disabled list in
11 momths.

As it happened, it was apparently an easy call. Ricky Nolasco tried to throw a bullpen session Thursday morning in Boston and knew immediately that he can't pitch.

So the easy way to get Tommy Milone on the active roster was the way followed. Nolasco is said to be headed to a CT scan now that the team has returned to Minnesota. Given the language used so far to describe the ankle -- the word "impingement" has been used -- I won't be at all surprised if he has surgery in short order.

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Milone had a "Blackburn" in his return to the rotation -- a start without a strikeout. Not a real impressive linescore -- five innings, nine hits and a walk, four runs allowed. The defense didn't help a lot early on, but he also threw a couple of gopher balls.

He'll have better starts, I'm sure. With Ervin Santana now about a month away from returning, he'll need to. And this was actually the best of Milone's three career starts in Fenway Park, long regarded as a graveyard for left-handed pitchers.

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My Twitter feed featured a lot of commentary about the Joe Mauer bunt in the ninth inning that resulted in a Red Sox error and the first of four runs for the Twins in the inning.

It wasn't a good bunt, and as it turned out, a bad bunt was good for the Twins. The Sox botched the play, perhaps because it took them by surprise. Surprise is a stressor, and this Red Sox team is getting a reputation as a poor defensive team. Or, more broadly, a poor fundamental team; some of their baserunning Wednesday was of the TOOTBLAN category (Thrown Out On The Bases Like A Nincompoop).

I don't want to see a steady diet of Mauer sacrifices -- if that's on the agenda, he shouldn't be hitting in the top half of the order -- but I'm hardly opposed to the call, and wouldn't have been had it been a routine sac bunt. Unpredictability is an optimal strategic state.

The roster shuffle

Tommy Milone starts
today, but we don't
yet know who leaves
the active roster
to make room for him.

Between Monday's rainout, Wednesday's resultant doubleheader and the mystery of Ricky Nolasco's ankle, the Twins are in another period of roster instability.

There was another noteworthy roster move unrelated to the rainout or Nolasco's uncertainity, but I'll get to that in a moment.

Michael Tonkin -- who in my opinion ought to be on the roster anyway -- got a one-day reprieve from last week's demotion to serve as the 26th man for Wednesday's twin bill. He appeared in the day game, gave up a homer, and now returns to Rochester. As I understand the rainout roster expansion rule, the emergency callup cannot remain.

Tommy Milone -- he of the one earned run allowed in five Triple A starts -- is to be added to the roster and start today. Kyle Gibson gets his start pushed back to Friday. Nolasco is tentatively scheduled to start Saturday, but that depends on how his troublesome ankle responds to a scheduled bullpen session today. If he is deemed able to go Saturday, somebody else has to go to make room for Milone on the roster. If Nolasco goes on the DL, the question of how Milone fits on the 25-man roster is answered, but Saturday becomes a "bullpen game." Which has been known to be the case with Nolasco starts anyway.

Nolasco is said to be resistant to another stint on the disabled list, and I don't blame him. But I don't like the other choices for fitting Milone on the active roster or in the rotation. Shelving Nolasco is the simplest solution. The other routes are more complicated.

Then there's the Oswaldo Arcia move announced between games Wednesday. The slugger was officially activated off the disabled list and optioned to Triple A Rochester, where he's been on a rehab assignment and struggling at the plate.

The Twins didn't have to make that move Wednesday -- there's still time on Arcia's rehab clock -- so it raised some eyebrows. But it fit my view that the Twins are now serious about outfield defense, and that part of that emphasis involves not having a set DH. Arcia remains a poor fielder, and, as with Kennys Vargas, there's only part-time at-bats available at DH. With all the pitchers on the roster, the bench guys have to have some defensive role.

In that view, Arcia simply doesn't fit. There's another factor to this timing, however, one that doesn't involve fidelity to the notion of outfield defense. Arcia's option clock is now started, He can be recalled in 10 days, If the Twins actually want to bring him back soon but deemed him unlikely to be ready when his rehab eligibility expired, optioning him now quickens when he can return to the big club.

Ex-Twins watch: Kevin Slowey

Kevin Slowey
attended Winthrop
University on an
academic scholarship.

At the age of 31, it's on to the rest of his life for Kevin Slowey.

The former Twins pitcher was in training camp this spring with the Philadelphia Phillies and was released at the end of March. Nobody picked him up. On Tuesday it was announced that he's taken a job with the players union as a special assistant to director Tony Clark.

Slowey, who has impressive academic credentials, has a background with the union -- while with the Marlins he was placed on the pension committee as the National League representative. So it's not a huge surprise that the union found a place for him on its staff.

As a pitcher, Slowey was one of my faves, what some Baseball America writers refer to as a "personal cheeseball." In his first four seasons with the Twins, he went 39-21, 4.41, with three straight seasons of 10 to 13 wins. He had almost impeccable control and decent strikeout rates despite not really having a plus pitch.

But he sustained a broken wrist near the end of the 2008 season -- the second of those four seasons -- and didn't seem to me to be quite the same pitcher after the surgery. He never so much as qualified for the ERA title in any season (160.1 innings in 2008 was his career high). Pitchers get hurt, and that was certainly true for Slowey.

And, of course, his spectacular falling out with the Twins in 2011 is, in retrospect, emblematic of the collapse of the Ron Gardenhire era. The Twins entered that season with a seeming surplus of starting pitchers; Gardy opted at the end of training camp to move Slowey to relief; a disgruntled Slowey struggled with the transition, claimed injury, and spent much of the season on the disabled list as Bert Blyleven took to ripping him during broadcasts. Put in the rotation near the end of the year, Slowey finished 0-8, 6.61. That did for him with the Twins, who traded him to Colorado for a minor leaguer who himself didn't pan out (Daniel Turpin).

I've said many times here that both sides mishandled the situation, and nobody profited by it. I'm sorry to say that, even as a Slowey fan, it is the chaos of 2011 that I remember, not the success of the previous four seasons.

'May 32,' 2015

There was much hubbub about the Twins winning 20 games in May and exiting the month with the best record (barely) in the American League. Paul Molitor made a joke Sunday about Monday being May 32.

And then Monday turned into a rainout in Boston, and the Astros won, so now it's Houston that has the best record in the American League. Which is also a "how the lowly have risen" story, considering that the Astros have had a worse record that even the Twins each of the past four years.

Having the best record on June 1 or June 2 is better than not having the best record, but it's also irrelevant. Just one of the six division leaders last June 1 actually won their division title (that was Detroit), although two others did win wild card berths. We're roughly a third of the way through the season already, so it's no longer early, but there's still a lot of baseball to be played.

Dick Bremer spent a good bit of time on recent broadcasts complaining of a lack of national attention paid to the Twins. The post-game stories after Sunday featured quotes from players about shutting the stat guys up. Both would do well to let it lie.

There's better reason to think the Twins record a fluke than to regard it as an accurate depiction of how good they are. The linked-to piece (by Dave Cameron on FanGraphs) is a sign that, no, the stat guys aren't shutting up. More important, the numbers underlying the Twins gaudy won-lost record aren't shutting up. The Twins are tied for fourth in the AL in runs scored, but they are 11th in on-base percentage and slugging percentage. These figures do not match.

But this is also a significantly different lineup now than it was in April -- no Kennys Vargas, no Oswaldo Arcia, Danny Santana going from getting the most at-bats in the lineup to the fewest -- and it's fairly easy to imagine further personnel changes before season's end.

The early wins are in the books. Now they can try to get the middle season wins.

The defense-offense trade off

The Monday print column grapples with a seeming oxymoron: The Twins improved their defense by sending their designated hitter to the minors.

Consider the Twins' opponent this weekend. Toronto played Chris Colabello, the erstwhile Twin, in left field all three games. The Jays know this is suboptimal, but Jose Bautista has been limited to the DH role by injury. The Jays would doubtless rather have Bautista in the outfield and Colabello either at DH or first base (with Edwin Encarnacion at DH), but they are working with what they have,

Colabello's bat helped the Jays beat the Twins on Friday night; he homered in the ninth off Glen Perkins to break a tie. On Sunday, Colabello's outfielding inadequacies cost the Jays three runs in a game they lost by one.

Win by the Colabello, lose by the Colabello. Certainly the Jays calculate that Colabello's bat -- and he has hit extremely well -- makes up for his fielding. The flip side of it is that his lack of range in left field adds to the stress on their pitching staff.

The Jays lead the American League in runs scored, and it isn't close. They're also, barely, last in runs allowed. They may be inclined to believe that's all on the pitching staff. It isn't.