Beginning the roster purge

Josh Roenicke:
3-1 with one save
in 62 innings.

The subtext to Monday's announcement that Ron Gardenhire would return as manager was: The Twins' lousy record was the result of a bad roster, not the result of subpar managing.

The first purge of that roster came Wednesday, as four players were outrighted from the 40-man major league roster (in a sense, 42-man roster, since the Twins have two players on the 60-day disabled list).

Getting the ax on Wednesday were outfielder Clete Thomas and pitchers Cole De Vries, Shairon Martis and Josh Roenicke. All will be minor league free agents; I suspect the Twins will re-sign at least one of De Vries and Martis as Triple A fodder, maybe both.

The closest thing to a surprise here was Roenicke, 31, who was on the big league roster all season and made 63 appearances out of the bullpen with a 4.35 ERA. He had a poor walk-to-strikeout ratio (36 walks, 45 strikeouts) and pretty much fell apart in September (ERA of 2.91 on Sept. 3, but he closed with 12 earned runs allowed, plus an unearned one, in his final 6.1 innings). The process was ugly all year, and it finally caught up with him.

These are, again, just the first loppings. There will probably be a couple dozen players out of the 42 removed from the major league roster over the next several weeks, as Terry Ryan works against the old adage that you fire the managers because you can't fire the players. We're about to see a lot of players fired.

Ryan Pressly and bullpen roles

Jared Burton picked up the save Thursday night.

The Twins are now carrying 13 pitchers, eight relievers, on their 25-man roster, and unless the starting rotation suddenly discovers how to pitch seven innings consistently, that's probably going to be the rule the rest of the season.

We can divide the eight into two four-man groups, the guys who pitch in game situations and the guys who are there to eat innings. Then we can further break the groups down into more specific roles.

Group A has Glen Perkins, Jared Burton, Casey Fien and Brian Duensing.

Closer Perkins and set-up man Burton are reserved for the late innings. They generally don't pitch when the Twins are behind — the exceptions coming when the Twins have so seldom held a late lead that they haven't had any work for a while — and generally start innings rather than come in with men on base.

Duensing and Fien are the inherited runner specialists. Fien has inherited 22 runners in his team-leading 26 appearances; only three have scored. Duensing has inherited 17 runners with four scoring. (Burton, in contrast, has inherited three runners, with two scoring, and Perkins has inherited two runners, both of whom scored.)

Group B consists of Josh Roenicke, Anthony Swarzak, Ryan Pressly and Caleb Thielbar. These four have worked a lot of long relief and mop-up — too much of each, really, which is why there are now eight relief pitchers.

Roenicke has straddled the boundary between the two groups — he's been the alternative to Fien as the middle-innings get-out-of-a-jam rightie, but he's also been used as a long-relief alternative to Swarzak and Pressly.

Rookie Ryan Pressly
may be easing into a
more prominent role
in the Twins bullpen.

Alternatives were needed Thursday. Perkins had pitched three straight days, so manager Ron Gardenhire had shelved him for the day. Fien had pitched three out of four days, so he was also on the do-not-use list. That led to a juggling of roles, which did not go universally cleanly.

When P.J. Walters, who had a big lead, needed help in the seventh inning, it was Roenicke who got the call, not Fien. Roenicke struggled with his command. Both the inherited runners scored.

Duensing was called on to start the eighth inning, which is usually Burton's role, but he retired only one of the three hitters he faced. Pressly came in to get the last two outs (allowing the inherited runner to score). Burton had a no-drama ninth to wrap up the win.

Pressly is an increasingly intriguing bullpen option. As a rookie claimed in the Rule 5 draft last December, he has not been used often in high-leverage situations, but he gave Gardenhire two shutout innings in the 14-inning win Tuesday night and snuffed out the Brewers threat in the eighth Thursday.

He has, with the exception of Perkins, the highest velocity arm in the Minnesota bullpen. He's younger than either Fien or Roenicke. I rather expect Gardenhire to increase Pressly's role — first by supplanting Roenicke as the marginal seventh-inning jam rightie, then perhaps by challenging for Fien's role.

More bullpen depth is always a plus.

Notes from the weekend

Pedro Hernandez went five innings Sunday in his first
appearance with the Twins. He was acquired from
the White Sox in the Francisco Liriano trade last summer.

The Twins pitching staff always figured to be a work in progress this season, and the shuffling began this weekend -- not a week since Opening Day.

Tyler Robertson was optioned out a day after he threw a get-me-over fastball on the first pitch to Chris Davis (who hit it out of the park). Cole De Vries was put on the disabled list. Pedro Hernandez was called up from Triple A to make Sunday's start in De Vries' stead, and Anthony Swarzak came off the disabled list (and got the win Sunday in relief).

More shuffling awaits. Scott Diamond made what is intended to be his final rehab start Sunday; he's scheduled to start Friday when the Twins return to Target Field.

The Twins play in Kansas City today, Tuesday and Wednesday, with Kevin Correia, Mike Pelfrey and Liam Hendriks lined up. Hendriks really needs a good start Wednesday; as matters stand, he's the most likely guy to be sent out to make room for Diamond.

---

Josh Roenicke gave the Twins a very solid three-inning relief outing Saturday. That's got to be one of the longer outings for a Twins reliever under Ron Gardenhire, maybe the longest in a non-extra-inning game.

That was essentially the way the Rockies used Roenicke last season, as what they called a "piggyback" reliever, and last season was by far his most successful in the majors. The chatter this spring about him has been that the Twins had shorter outings in mind for him, but -- for what little it's worth -- he wasn't impressive in his two short relief games against the Tigers.

Having two long relievers -- Swarzak and Roenicke -- might not be a bad idea for the Twins, who don't figure to get a lot of seven- and eight-inning starts.

---

Aaron Hicks had a single Sunday. It was his second hit of the young season and lifted his average all the way to .077. Two-for-26, with 11 strikeouts.

That's a slow start. It's hardly unprecedented, however. Willie Mays famously began his career 0-for-26, and he turned out OK. (His 27th at-bat was a homer off the great Warren Spahn, who for years joked: I blame myself for Mays. If I'd gotten him out, maybe they'd have gotten rid of him.) Not that Hicks is Willie Mays, mind you, but if Mays can go 0-for-26, anybody can. Josh Hamilton came into Sunday night's game 1-for-20 with 10 strikeouts.

There wasn't good reason to expect Hicks to hit as well as he did in spring training (.370/.407/.644), and there is no good reason to believe Hicks is as bad as his numbers in the first week of play suggest. The Twins should stick with him, and I expect them to do so.

Contemplating Josh Roenicke

The Twins come out of the Thanksgiving weekend having accomplished little of their offseason shopping -- which is hardly unusual or worrisome. (It is quite unlikely that the status will remain quo coming out of the Christmas/New Years period; if it is, that will be worrisome.)

One move they have made, which flew rather under the radar, was the waiver-wire pickup earlier this month of Josh Roenicke, a move which seems increasingly curious to me.

Roenicke comes to the Twins off a 2012 season with two significant positives, at least on the surface:

• He led the major leagues in relief innings (88.2);
• He had an ERA of 3.25, which is even more impressive given that he was pitching his home games in Coors Field.

I speculated at the time that the Rockies waived Roenicke rather than pay him at the arbitration rate after this breakout season, but he's not arbitration eligible. He's 30, he's out of options, but he's still cheap.

So why did the Rox dump him? For that matter, why did everybody in the National League pass on him when he was waived? And how does he fit into the Twins scheme?

It's probably fair to say that the Rockies (and the rest of the National League) doubt that the ERA is an accurate assessment of Roenicke's talent and skill. He had a poor strikeout to walk rate and a below-average strikeout rate; those are better predictors of future ERAs than ERA itself.

Then there's the Coors Field problem. There's only one thing more difficult than having a good year pitching for the Rockies, and that's having a second. Pick through the two decades or so of the Colorado franchise's records, and you'll find that their few effective pitchers had very short runs of effectiveness, frequently due to injury.

I think the issue of recovery time in the lower-oxygen environment of Denver is part of the problem. To pitch in the major leagues is to damage the arm; to pitch at altitude is to damage the arm with less ability to recover. Eighty-eight innings of relief, as pitchers are used nowadays, is a lot; only five pitchers in the majors threw 80 relief innings last season.

The Rockies may well have figured of Roenicke: He's not as good as his ERA, and he's a good candidate to break down; let's not count on him for 2013. So they waived him to create space on their 40-man roster, and when the Twins claimed him, they figured they weren't losing much.

As for all those innings: Two of the five 80-inning relievers were Rockies, and a third Colorado bullpenner had 79. This stems from an experiment the Rox tried last summer: A four-man starting rotation with a low pitch count limit (75). Roenicke was one of three "piggyback" relievers used to get through the middle innings. This makes Roenicke's workload appear a bit less impressive -- he wasn't pitching so many innings because he was so effective, he was pitching them because it was his turn.

Which brings us to the question of how he fits in the Twins bullpen, which is run more conventionally than Colorado's was last year. Assuming everybody's healthy and at 2012 effectiveness -- never a particularly likely assumption with relief arms, but we have to start somewhere -- Roenicke has to rank under Jared Burton and Casey Fien in the pecking order of right-handed relievers. He's competing for a a role with the likes of Alex Burnett (who also had an ERA that was better than his walk and strikeout rates should support); fellow newcomer Tim Wood; and long man Anthony Swarzak. Odds are that of those six, at least one will have some sort of injury issue this spring.

Roenicke might also be seen as an alternative to LOOGY candidates Tyler Robertson and Caleb Thielbar. Roenicke was notably more effective against lefties than righties in 2012; one should be wary of assigning significance to one season of platoon splits for a reliever, but if he actually does have a pitch that gives lefties fits, all the better.

A waiver wire Friday

Alexi Casilla never took command of a regular job
with the Twins despite plenty of opportunities.

The Minnesota Twins had a busy Friday on the waiver wire.

Going: INF Alexi Casilla
Coming: RHP Josh Roenicke, INF Thomas Field
Uncertain: RHP Sam Deduno

Waiver transactions are almost always fringe-of-the-roster moves, but there are a couple of familiar names involved in these moves.

Most prominent, of course, is Casilla, who was claimed by the Baltimore Orioles. It was widely assumed last summer that the Twins would nontender Casilla, who never took control of a regular job despite a multitude of opportunities. It wouldn't surprise me if the O's wind up nontendering him themselves; he figures to get more through arbitration than a reserve infielder ought to get.

The Twins also outrighted Deduno, who spent most of the second half in the starting rotation. He can opt for free agency, but the early word was that he and his agent were leaning toward accepting a minor-league contract with Minnesota, as P.J. Walters did a few days after he was outrighted. I can't see that he can expect a major-league contract from anybody else.

Sam Deduno has a
decision to make: Stay
with the Twins on a
minor-league deal,
or try to land a job
elsewhere?

The additions both come from Colorado, one of the few teams with a worse 2012 record than the Twins.

Roenicke is a 30-year-old middle reliever who had a 3.25 ERA in 88.2 innings for the Rockies. That's good in any environment, but particularly in Coors Field. He also had 54 strikeouts and 43 walks, which is not good. The Rox apparently waived him for much the same reason the Twins waived Casilla: They didn't want to pay him at the arbitration rate.

Roenicke is said to have a good fastball. Off his numbers, I'm inclined to lump him into the same category as Jeff Gray and Alex Burnett — not enough missed bats to make up for his lack of command.

Roenicke does have interesting bloodlines: He is the son of former major league outfielder Gary Roenicke, the nephew of current Brewers manager Ron Roenicke, and the brother-in-law of Ian Desmond, the shortstop of the Washington Nationals.

Thomas Field — he'd better field, because there's little reason to believe that he can hit.  Oh, some of his minor league numbers at lower levels look pretty good, but the Rockies' farm system is pretty much all in hitters parks. He's a shortstop who'll turn 26 before the season starts.

I expect the Twins to try to get him through waivers to get him off the 40-man roster so they can assign him to Rochester and have him for the Triple A lineup — much as they did last winter with Pedro Florimon.

The Twins, as of Friday evening, had 35 players on their 40-man roster; that will shrink some more after midnight, when Carl Pavano and, I believe, Scott Baker and Matt Capps officially become free agents. (Saturday morning addendum: As of this morning, the Twins website had removed Pavano and Capps from the roster but Baker was still listed.)