Plouffe, there he goes

Trevor Plouffe had
a series of injuries
that limited him to
less than 350 plate
appearances in 2016.

Friday was the deadline for teams to add Rule 5-eligible prospects to the 40 man roster.

In a related development, it was also the day the Twins released veteran third baseman Trevor Plouffe.

They also outrighted catcher Juan Centeno and lost slugging prospect Adam Brett Walker on waivers to the Milwaukee Brewers.

These moves opened three more slots on the 40-man roster, The Twins filled six of the seven vacancies with prospects: catcher Mitch Garver; outfielders Daniel Palka and Zack Granite; shortstop Engelb Vielma; and right-handed starters Fernando Romero and Felix Jorge.

Plouffe's departure is the biggest news, if only because manager Paul Molitor -- and Ron Gardenhire before him -- made the one-time first round draft pick a fixture in the middle of the lineup. He was always an ill fit in a key lineup role, with low on-base percentages and mediocre slugging percentages. He had made himself into a above-average defensive third baseman, but his varied injuries last year slowed his reaction to batted balls.

Presumably the new brain trust found little interest in Plouffe as trade bait, and the roster spot was deemed more valuable than the veteran. Certainly, with Miguel Sano's outfield venture deemed a failure last season, there wasn't an obvious role for Plouffe on the 2017 Twins. Sano's going to be the third baseman in Minnesota now.

Plouffe, who turned 30 in June, will land somewhere. I certainly don't wish him ill, but it was clearly time for him to move on.

Setting the stage for Rule 5

Friday was the deadline for teams to protect their current minor leaguers from the Rule 5 draft by putting them on the 40-man major league roster. The Twins elevated seven prospects -- and lost two players with some major league time, catcher Josmil Pinto and right-hander A.J. Achter, on waivers, Pinto to the Padres and Achter to the Phillies.

I'll probably write something in more detail about the Pinto move next week. Achter is a marginal reliever who had another good season in Triple A last year -- he has a 2.69 ERA in 99 Triple A appearances -- who might be able to wander into a decent major league season if given a chance, but lacks the dominant pitch to force a career. Good luck to both of them.

The seven additions include several pitchers who emphatically have that dominant pitch. I see four categories in the seven:

Hard-throwing right-handed relievers: J.T. Chargois and Yorman Landa.

Left-handed Triple A starters: Pat Dean and Taylor Rogers.

Left-handers with Tommy John surgery: Mason Melotakis and Randy Rosario.

Outfielder: Adam Brett Walker.

Landa and Rosario spent 2015 at low A Cedar Rapids, and I saw both pitch during my handful of Kernels games last August, Rosario as a starter and Landa as a reliever. I didn't write about Landa, but he did show some serious velocity; I wrote instead about Luke Bard, who wasn't put on the 40 and is eligible for Rule 5. Anyway -- while Landa and Rosario will be in major league camp, I don't think the Twins will elevate either to the majors this year.

Dean and Rogers are slightly surprising protects to me. I don't see either as a particularly likely candidate to ever be starters for the Twins. There are certainly a lot of rotation guys ahead of them.

Walker's protection illustrates the importance of the power tool. ABW has serious power -- and, like Oswaldo Arcia, little else to recommend him. I'm not particularly enthused about Walker's chances.

Melotakis missed 2015 with Tommy John surgery while Chargois returned from two years on the shelf. These two guys each have pitched in Double A and have realistic chances to be part of the reconstructed 2016 bullpen, although I doubt the Twins would graduate Melotakis in particular to the majors out of spring training.

The Twins now have 38 player on their 40-man roster. One of the open slots is slated for Byung Ho Park; the other may well go to a Rule 5 selection.

Minor league all-stars

Josmil Pinto
is the catcher on
Baseball America's
minor-league
all-star team.

The dead-tree edition of the Baseball America issue in which Byron Buxton was named minor league player of the year arrived in my mailbox this week. Buxton's honor was announced almost two weeks ago, so the cover story was hardly a shocker.

I was briefly surprised by the cover image, however — Buxton running the bases in the Twins' major league uniform. It must have been made during his one-day spring-training call up back in March.

The same issue includes BA's minor league all-star team from all levels — four Twins farmhands are among the nine position players — and its classification all-stars, selected from the six levels of minor league ball.

The four on the overall all-star team: Catcher Josmil Pinto, first baseman Chris Colabello, third baseman Miguel Sano and center fielder Buxton. That's a pretty impressive share of the roster, and it would be carping (if accurate) to note that none of them are pitchers. Yes, the Twins need pitchers, but there are plenty of holes in the lineup too.

Colabello is the one guy on the roster who isn't a prominent prospect. He's also by far the oldest player on either the first or second teams on BA's list. There's no question that he had a big year in Triple A — .352/.427/.639 — but major league pitchers have carved him up pretty well.

The Twins were well represented on the classification teams as well.

Triple A: Colabello, who was the Triple A player of the year.
Double A: Pinto
High A: Sano and Buxton, with Sano the High A player of the year.
Low A: Buxton and outfielder Adam Brett Walker, with Buxton the Low A player of the year.
Short-season: The Twins don't have a short-season affiliate.
Rookie: Shut out. (Kohl Stewart, the Twins' first round pick, didn't have enough innings to qualify).

And here I don't think it's unfair to note the lack of pitching on the list. BA is saying that on no level of the minors did the Twins have one of the four best starters or the best reliever. The Twins farm system had a very good year with position players, less so with pitchers.

On Adam Brett Walker

Adam Brett Walker at the plate.

By the Triple Crown stats, Adam Brett Walker is having a very good season in low-A Cedar Rapids: .284 batting average, 26 home runs, 106 RBIs.

But it's pretty clear this late in the minor league season that the 2012 third-round pick isn't going to move up a level this year. His two outfield mates in the first half of the Midwest League season, Byron Buxton and J.D. Williams, are in Fort Myers now; Walker is still in Iowa.

The issue of Baseball America that arrived in my mailbox this week contains a lengthy piece by J.J. Cooper on Walker and his conflicted status with scouts. (I don't think it's online yet, and when it is, it may be behind their paywall.)

Boiled down: Big time power, dubious hit tool.

The story quotes a pro scout for an American League team:

Walker is a great mistake hitter. ... For me, he's still a slow-twitch guy. The jump to the Florida State League is where it comes out ... I don't know if he can catch up to good fastballs. He can hit the cripples, no doubt. He hits them a long ways.

The story also tells of a massive slump Walker had in 2011 while playing in the heavily scouted Cape Cod League: 45 at-bats in which he hit .089/.180/.156 with 23 strikeouts. That month left many scouts soured on the idea that he'd make contact often enough to let his power play.

Power is the most important tool in the box for an outfielder, and Walker has that. A walk-strikeout ratio of 27 walks, 109 strikeouts underlines the question about his ability to put the barrel on the ball consistently enough.

At best, he's on a slower track than Buxton or Miguel Sano.

Two games in Cedar Rapids: Random thoughts

Adam Brett Walker returns to the
dugout after his home run Monday.
Max Kepler (22) is about to get in the box.

Wrapping up some loose ends:

As I've mentioned at least once, Terry Ryan, the Twins general manager, attended the Quad Cities series. Here, via the Cedar Rapids Gazette, is what he had to say about some of the Twins prospects.

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Adam Brett Walker II hit his 24th homer of the season in the ninth inning Monday -- too little, too late to be a factor in the game, which the Kernels lost 6-2.

Walker was the Twins third-round pick in the 2012 draft, a big (listed at 6-foot-4, 215 pounds) right-handed right fielder who grew up in Milwaukee and went to college in Florida. He has legitimate power and runs well enough to be eight-for-eight in steal attempts.

Keith Law of ESPN has been asked about ABW2 repeatedly in his chats, and always gives the same response: He's old for the league, the Twins shouldn't be sending college players to the Midwest League, this isn't proving anything.

Beyond that, I'm wary of Walker's walk/strikeout ratio, almost 4 K's for every BB. The .282 batting average is nice, the .548 slugging percentage is very good (especially for the Midwest League), but the on-base percentage is unimpressive. This was also true for Walker in the Appy League last summer.

Jake Mauer (12) had a lengthy but
non-histronic dispute with the umpire
over an interference call Sunday.

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Jake Mauer — older brother of Joe and the Cedar Rapids manager — was thrown out of Sunday's game after Travis Harrison was called out for interfering with the catcher on a Walker steal attempt.

It wasn't until the next inning, when Tommy Watkins emerged from the dugout to coach at third base, that I realized Mauer had been tossed. True to his Mauerness, Jake even got ejected in a low key manner.

Baseball America's annual Tools issue has Jake Mauer voted as the Midwest League's best managerial prospect. I suspect he'll someday emerge onto the major league staff, although Jim Crikket is probably right that it won't happen while Joe is the centerpiece of the roster.

Still, it seems pretty well-established that the elder Mauer is not merely a nepotism hire.

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A food discovery at Veterans Memorial Stadium I'll be sure to repeat in future visits: The fried popcorn shrimp. Yum. It may not be traditional ballpark fare, but I like.

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When I went to a game in May, Niko Goodrum played first base and Jorge Polanco was the shortstop. At these two games, they were at their more accustomed positions, shortstop for Goodrum, second base for Polanco.

They looked pretty good there. Second base is almost certainly a better fit for Polanco's arm than shortstop. Goodrum — listed as 6-feet-4 himself — faces the same "is he too big for shortstop" question that I mentioned in the Correa post.

Polanco continues to keep his batting average above .300 and remains in the middle of the Kernels lineup. Goodrum's slumped of late — his average had fallen below .250 while I was in CR — and while it seems obvious that Polanco will move up to High A next year, I wonder if Goodrum might not wind up repeating Low A.