More league prospects lists

Eddie Rosario: Can he stick at second?

Last week, as Baseball America began to roll out online its league-by-league top prospects lists, I posted about the Twins minor leaguers on two of those lists.

Today BA's website features its Top 20 for the Midwest League. Miguel Sano is No. 2, and Eddie Rosario is No. 12. Those two are the only Twins on the list.

Jim Callis wrote the MWL reports, and he's the same BA staffer who suggested in a recent online chat that Rosario did not take well enough to second base to stick there. So it should be no surprise that that evaluation is aired in the (subscriber-only) scouting report on Rosario:

While he worked diligently on his defense, scouts don't think his hands, range or throwing are good enough for second base. His average speed may not bode well for a long-term fit in center field either.

We'll learn soon enough, I suppose, if the Twins organization agrees with that assessment.

BA/Callis also suggest that Sano may become an outfielder.

Meanwhile ... the print edition arrived today, and it includes the Top 20 for all the minor leagues, and the scouting reports for the Top 10s.

Other Twins who make lists:

• 1B/OF Chris Parmelee is No. 5 in the International League (Triple A)
• OF Oswaldo Arcia is No. 6 in the Eastern League (Double A) and No. 7 in the Florida State League (High A)
• OF Aaron Hicks is No. 8 in the Eastern League

And, as noted in the previous posts, OF Byron Buxton was No.1 in both the Appy League and the Gulf Coast League, and OF Max Kepler was No. 7 in the Appy League.

Seven unique players, two of them (Buxton and Arcia) on two lists. No pitchers, and its possible (but I think unlikely) that all seven will wind up as outfielders. The lack of sure-thing infielders is discouraging.

One note on the Parmelee ranking: The IL is described as unusually weak in true prospects:

The talent craters quickly after the trio of Matt Harvey, Sterling Marte and Chris Archer at the top. For a Triple-A league, there's a glaring lack of future starting major league position players. ... Most of the hitters on this list profile as complementary players or even reserves.

The actual report on Parmelee is quite positive, however.

Eye on 2013: Trevor Plouffe

Chris Parmelee greets Trevor Plouffe (24) at home plate
after Plouffe's home run Monday.

Trevor Plouffe hit his 24th home run of the season Monday night in Toronto. He also doubled in a run and drew a walk, giving him three straight games with two hits.

He also had his adventures defensively at third base. In the sixth inning, with the bases loaded and one out, he threw home on a ground ball and got one out. The next batter then doubled between Plouffe and the line — Plouffe's range to his right has been an issue — for two runs.

Ron Gardenhire's take on the inning, via Rhett Bollinger of MLB.com:

I think a failed double play hurt us. We went home with it, but in my opinion we had to turn two there, and it ended up costing us to let them get in striking range.

Highs and lows. That's been Plouffe's season, and it's not certain that 26-year-old former first-round draft pick is going to be a regular for the Twins next year.

He had a monster run at the plate in mid-season. From May 13 (Mother's Day) through July 20 — 54 games, one third of the season — he hit .293/.345/.610 with 18 homers and 11 doubles.

Then he hurt his thumb, a "day-to-day" injury that ultimately kept him out of the lineup for three weeks and perhaps should have kept him out longer. Once he returned Aug. 13, he didn't hit: .188/.241/.312 through Sunday. As unimpressive as that slash line is, it's better than the .130/.277/.204 he compiled leading up to Mother's Day.

That roller coaster makes him a prime candidate for the misevaluation I call "Dick Bremer Disease," the tendency we tend to have of judging a player's talents by what he does at his best. Plouffe's not a .610 slugger. For the season, he has an on-base percentage under .300 and a slugging percentage under .450, and I think that's closer to his reality.

Defensively, Plouffe has not been good at third base. Baseball Info Solutions' plus-minus and runs saved metrics — explained here — put him near the bottom of defensive third basemen. Of the 20 men with at least 700 innings at the hot corner, Plouffe is tied with Miguel Cabrera for 17th in plus-minus and is 18th in runs saved.

Combine the lousy defense with the underwhelming offensive totals for the season, and Plouffe appears ripe for replacement. With whom is another matter; the Twins lack an obvious in-house alternative.

Eye on 2013: Matt Capps

Matt Capps' 2012:
30 games, 14 saves
and about half a
season on the
disabled list.

Matt Capps, semi-official whipping boy of the Twins Internet, opened the season as closer and was OK in that role — not great, but acceptable — into June.

He picked up saves on June 2, 3, 4 and 6 and a win on June 8— five games in seven days, throwing a total of just eight pitches in two of those outings — and at that point things appear to have started to splutter physically. He was given a week between appearances between June 15 and 23, then went on the disabled list for almost three weeks. He came back, made two appearances in three days, went back on the DL, and didn't return until last week.

It's the second year in a row that Capps has experienced arm issues that emerged soon after a period of daily work. That doesn't work well with modern bullpen usage, which tends to lean heavily on the idea that relievers can be used often in short bursts.

Glen Perkins is now in command of the ninth inning job, and nobody seriously believes that the Twins will pick up Capps' $6 million option for 2013. Capps is back, in reality, to audition for  the other 29 teams. He wants to show that his arm is sound going into the offseason and his expected free agency.

But he hasn't gotten much showing in. When he was reactivated, Ron Gardenhire made it known that

• Capps wouldn't be used on consecutive days and
• Capps had been told that he wasn't coming back to make one appearance and go home.

Capps returned for two series against teams in the playoff hunt — the Yankees and Tigers — and while the Twins didn't win either series, they were generally playing close games. He has made one appearance, mopping up a loss to the Yankees on Sept. 26, and as far as I know hasn't even warmed up since.

The Twins have a 10-man bullpen right now — well, call it nine, because one of them (probably Brian Duensing) will be called upon to start Tuesday in Sam Deduno's stead — and everybody else is a possible contributor to the 2013 Twins. Gardenhire took the games against the Yankees and Tigers seriously, not as a time to experiment, and right now Perkins, Jared Burton and Casey Fein are the top dogs in the bullpen.

So Capps' idleness last week is explicable. There are three games left, on the road against the non-contending Toronto Blue Jays, and if Capps goes unused in those games, I will be curious about why he was reactivated last week. One isolated appearance wouldn't seem to be much assurance to potential employers.

Pic of the Week

Seattle center fielder Franklin Gutierrez takes an
extra-base-hit away from Mike Trout of the Angels
Thursday in Anaheim.

Some weeks this is an easy decision, some weeks not so much. This week had a number of strong contenders, including shots from the Homer Bailey no-hitter Friday night. While none of the individual photos from the no-no were unique, I do tend to note the accomplishment in Pic of the Week.

But this one — with the outfielder's shadow and the Angels' logo combining to make an arrow — appealed to me more. I love baseball's autumnal shadows.

A farewell to Nishi

Tsuyoshi Nishioka's dream of playing in the United States
turned into a nightmare, and he surrendered more than
$3 million to end the torment.

Tsuyoshi Nishioka on Friday turned his back on the final $3.25 million the Twins owed him. The Twins granted his release, and he presumably will resume his career in Japan.

I will probably never really understand what went wrong here. Nishioka should never have been expected to be a star, but there was good reason to expect him to be a competent regular. The Japanese majors aren't that much softer than the American majors.

But he was a complete and utter disaster in the states.

The only theory I can offer is that Nishioka somehow, for some reason, never really believed he belonged. I tend to scoff at the players-turned-broadcasters who credit every achievement to confidence -- it's a chicken-or-the-egg proposition -- but still ...

I think of Nishioka's now-infamous self-isolation at Fort Myers in the days before his first spring training with the Twins -- solo workouts on a back field in non-team attire while his future teammates worked out together at the main fields. I think of how quickly he got hurt when the season began, how long he was out, and how each struggle, each failure seemed to lead to the next.

I see in that a player who began with a core of self-doubt, and every day seemed to add to that doubt.

And then his marriage fell apart.

Professionally and personally, it's been a miserable two years for Nishioka. Miserable enough to renounce more than $3 million in order to put an end to it.

I would go through a lot of misery for $3.25 million. Most of us would. Nishioka's agents advised him against  this move, but he decided a third year wasn't worth it. Maybe the decision was easier because he'd already gotten $6 million out of his U.S. venture, but it still can't be easy to turn down that much money.

As a Twins fan, I'm glad he's officially out of the picture. As a fellow human, I feel some pity for him.

Eye on 2013: Sam Deduno

SaM Deduno has stuck out 57 and walked 57 in 79
innings for the Twins this season.

It was pretty obvious Wednesday afternoon that (a) Sam Deduno couldn't see the ball coming when it was thrown back to him and that (b) that meant he had to come out of the game for his own protection.

It's also easy to understand why he was so reluctant to leave the mound. This season has been the chance Deduno's spent years waiting, working and hoping for, and it's ending on a down note. He'd had two poor starts in a row entering Wednesday's game, and he didn't last long enough against the Yankees to make any judgments. While the Twins have six games left, there's no guarantee he'll be allowed to start in the final series against Toronto.

One more start may not matter in terms of evaluating him. Deduno's 29; he's been in the Minnesota rotation since July 7. He is what he is, and is what he's always been: A guy with outstanding stuff and very little command of it. He's had 15 starts for the Twins; eight have been quality starts, and he didn't make it through five innings in five of of the other seven.

What that says to me is "back of the rotation." The Twins have plenty of guys who would be passable as fifth starters. They need some guys who are better than that. Right now, they have Scott Diamond and the Void.

John Sickels posted this piece Wednesday on Deduno's long journey to the majors and his outlook; Sickels' take on him is pretty close to mine. There MIGHT be a usable starter there, but the Twins can't afford to stake their rotation on it.

Joe Posnanski on Glen Perkins on closing

This would be worth reading if it weren't about Glen Perkins, but I probably wouldn't link to it in that case.

But it is about Perkins, and so here it is.

It's Perkins through Pos going pitch-by-pitch through the ninth inning of Tuesday's save against the Yankees — how he warms up, how he approached the hitters, how he dealt with the home run he gave up.

Almost a throwaway, but very much worth mentioning, is Perkins talking about the value of the closer role.