Goodbye, Deduno

Sam Deduno had
 a 16-18, 4.26 record
with the Twins.

The Twins' second-half roster churn continued during the weekend with Sam Deduno going to the Houston Astros on outright waivers.

Deduno spent most of the season in the bullpen and was better in that role (3.21 ERA in 22 outings, 53.1 innings) than in his eight starts (6.52 ERA in just 38.2 innings). It seems safe to infer that the Twins figured they have better choices for the 2015 bullpen, and I think that's true.

Deduno spend bits of the past three seasons with the Twins, and always seemed more interesting as a rotation candidate. He had a couple of stretches in which it seemed he might finally have tamed his self-described "crazy fastball." But those stretches never lasted. His lack of command and injury history meant he wasn't capable of working deep into games.

Aaron Thompson had
an ERA of 3.98 for
Triple A Rochester
this year.

When the Twins waived Deduno, they already had two openings on the 40-man roster. They filled one with Aaron Thompson, a left-handed reliever who entered the organization the same winter Deduno did and in the same manner (as a minor-league free agent). Thompson was added to the 25-man roster Sunday and made his first major-league appearance since 2011, when he worked four games for Pittsburgh.

Thompson's September trial appears to indicate a dissatisfaction with the left-handed set-up men, Brian Duensing and Caleb Thielbar. I don't expect Thompson to be any improvement on them, and I expect the Twins to look for more lefty bullpen alternatives this winter. (Neither Duensing nor Theilbar are eligible for free agency this winter.) Or the Twins could consider giving one or more of the lefties in the upper minors a shot. (Mason Melotakis, headed to the Arizona Fall League, comes promptly to mind.)

One such lefty, Edgar Ibarra, was dropped from the 40 on Sunday, once again creating three openings. So I suspect that the Twins plan to add three players now off the 40-man roster for the season's final month. That fun can begin today, although the call-ups probably won't happen until Rochester and New Britain end their seasons.

Pino up, Deduno shifted, unknown move to come

Yohan Pino is to
start Thursday against
the White Sox.

It starts with Sam Deduno's string of poor starts. In his last four starts, he went a total of 16 innings, allowing 18 runs -- an ERA of 10.13. Since he's pretty much a marginal rotation guy anyway, there was no reason to stay the course with him. And the Twins announced Monday that he's returning to the bullpen.

What's interesting is who the Twins will pluck from Triple A to take his place: Minor-league journeyman Yohan Pino. I wrote about this earlier this month: The Twins have a flock of pitchers at Triple A who would make sense for a call up. A quick update:

• Alex Meyer, their top pitching prospect, is 4-3, 3.62 in 64.2 innings while striking out more than 10 men per nine innings.
• Trevor May is 7-4, 2.77 in 77.2 innings, striking out more than nine men per nine innings.
• Logan Darnell has a 2.75 ERA in 11 starts with an 8.6/9 K rate.
• Kris Johnson is 6-2, 2.60.

May, Darnell and Johnson are all on the 40-man roster. Meyer is not, and the Twins are probably going to limit his innings after an injury-shortened 2013. Darnell's rotation turn is Thursday, so he lined up with the first start Deduno isn't going to make. He would have been my choice to supplant Deduno.

Instead, the Twins selected Yohan Pino, a 30-year-old with more than 1,200 minor league innings and a fast ball that tops out in the upper 80s. Pino is best known, if known at all, as the guy the Twins sent to the Cleveland Indians in 2009 in the trade for Carl Pavano.

My issue with this choice is not that Pino is pitching poorly for Rochester. He's 9-1, 1.92, with 61 strikeouts in 61 innings and a wonderful 3.81 strikeouts for every walk he's surrendered.

It's that there is no future here. Meyer is an important piece of the future. May and Darnell might be. Pino is not.

But there's another aspect to this: How the Twins open the necessary roster spots for Pino. They need a spot on both the 40-man roster and the 25-man roster. They could get the first by moving Mike Pelfrey to the 60-day disabled list, but not the second.

The two most likely possibilities in my mind:

• Designate Matt Guerrier for assignment and clear out the last of the Nostalgia Boys. Guerrier has a solid 2.81 ERA, but his supporting stats are considerably weaker. 
• Designate Chris Parmelee for assignment and go with a 13-man pitching staff. Parmelee cleared waivers at the end of spring training, mashed at Triple A, got a new chance in the majors and ... is hitting .174. 

My guess is Guerrier gets the ax. But my guess would have been Darnell for the open rotation slot.

Deduno in the bullpen

It was an ugly way for the Twins to lose Wednesday: the stoppers at the back end of the bullpen combined to surrender a three-run lead, and the long reliever threw two wild pitches and committed a balk in the bottom of the 11th.

Ron Gardenhire grumped some after the game about the lengthy review in the top of the seventh, but I'm not buying the notion that had the game flowed at its usual pace that Kevin Correia was going to pitch into the eighth. Gardy would probably have gone to Jared Burton in the eighth, and certainly would have brought Glen Perkins in for the save in the ninth. It's what Gardy does. It didn't work Wednesday.

(MLB blamed the delay on two simultaneous challenges, but I sat through a couple of way-too-long replay review delays at Fort Myers last month. When the second one began, the fans started booing. I expect longer delays when an out call is overturned and the umps have to figure out where to put the baserunners.)

And then there was slingin' Sam Deduno unloading a couple of wild pitches in the bottom of the 11th. Deduno is wild. He's difficult to catch. That's who he is and what he does. Letting him pitch with the winning run on third base is a baseball version of Russian roulette; sooner or later the gun's going to fire.

In retrospect, I don't think the Twins were ever particularly serious about Deduno as a contender for the rotation this spring. As far as the public knew, Deduno was competing with Scott Diamond, Vance Worley and Kyle Gibson for the fifth starter job. Gibson won, as he should have -- he has the highest ceiling of the four -- but while Deduno pitched quite well during exhibition play, he never actually started, and frequently got his innings after the established hitters in the opposing lineup had been removed. The others all got multiple starts.

I now think the Twins -- quite aware that Deduno had had shoulder surgery at the end of the 2013 season and Tommy John surgery years before he came to the organization, and also mindful of the difficulty he has had going even six innings -- wanted him in the bullpen more than as a starter. Perhaps Deduno would have gotten the job had Gibson struggled as much as Diamond and Worley did, but it was only going to happen as a last resort.

The problem is that a reliever with his lack of command is likely to have trouble pitching out of other people's jams. I kept hearing the announcers this spring talking about Deduno being the guy brought in to get a strikeout, but the truth is (a) he doesn't have a good strikeout rate despite his movement and (b) he's a real risk for a wild pitch.

He wasn't asked to clean up somebody else's mess Wednesday. He created his own, and didn't get out of it cleanly. That's something a starter can get away with. A reliever, not so much.

The rotation as it stands now

Ricky Nolasco's 2012 card.

With Ricky Nolasco still awaiting his physical before he is officially in the fold, here's how I see the Twins rotation shaping up:

1) Nolasco. While he's nobody's idea of a Cy Young contender, he clearly has the best track record on this roster. A third- or fourth guy in a good rotation, such as the Dodgers last year.

2) A pitcher to be named later. The Twins will add at least one more veteran starter this offseason. Count on it.

3) Kevin Correia. He was better in 2013 than I expected, but even that level wouldn't keep him in the rotation of a playoff caliber club.

4) Kyle Gibson. It's time to see what he's got. If he doesn't come out of spring training in the big league rotation, something's wrong. Ideally, by the end of the season he will have climbed higher on this list.

5) Somebody from the grab bag of 2013 returnees. My personal favorite is Scott Diamond, but the front runner is probably Sam Deduno. Other possibilities would include Andrew Albers. Vance Worley and Liam Hendriks.

The rotation that opens isn't likely to be the rotation for 162 games, of course. If 2014 goes the way the Twins hope, Alex Meyer and/or Trevor May will push their way in at some point. I don't see either doing that to start the season.

The five seasons of Sam Deduno

Sam Deduno's walk rate in 2013
is much improved over 2012.

Sam Deduno was pulled from Thursday's game after three innings. It was the second time in two weeks that he had complaints of shoulder soreness, so I rather expect the Twins will shut him down for September. (Update: The Twins this morning put both Deduno and Wilkin Ramirez on the disabled list and recalled Pedro Hernandez and Darin Mastroianni).

If so, it caps a weird year for the right-hander, a five-part roller coaster that leaves his career perhaps no better off than when 2013 opened:

Season 1: The WBC. Deduno was a non-roster invitee to Twins camp and left early as a belated addition to the Dominican Republic pitching staff for the World Baseball Classic. I doubt anybody connected with the Twins expected Deduno to be the anchor man of the Dominican rotation. He went 3-0 and started the championship game for D.R.

He wasn't perfect in the WBC, but the event was a better platform for his rotation candidacy than the Grapefruit League would have been. Had he remained in Fort Myers, he might not have gotten enough work to win a spot. As it was, the WBC resume was strong enough that Deduno might even have gotten the Opening Day assignment, except that he returned to the Twins with a strained groin.

Season 2: Disabled list and minors. Deduno sat out April to let the groin heal, then made three starts in May for Rochester. He had a 2.70 ERA in those starts, and the Twins brought him back to Minnesota before the month ended.

Season 3: The ace. Through his first 13 starts with the Twins, Deduno was 7-4, 3.17. It wasn't a great BB/K ratio (33 walk, 47 strikeouts in 82.1 innings), but he kept the ball in the park (four homers allowed) and was easily the Twins most effective starter into August

Season 4: The August slump. The next five starts (including Thursday's) didn't go so well: 1-4, 5.96. Oddly, the walk/strikeout ratios were much better in this stretch (8 BB, 20K); but the BABIP -- batting average, balls in play -- went up about 90 points and the home run rate went from one long ball every 20 innings to one every six innings.

Season 5: The presumed shutdown. This is hardly official, but likely. We don't know if there's damage that will require surgery or if rest and rehab will fix the shoulder, but either way, I don't expect to see Deduno again this year. If he's done, he's done with an 8-8, 3.83 season in 108 innings over 18 starts — six innings a start.

And if the coming medical exams (LaVelle Neal of the Star Tribune predicted Deduno will have a MRI done) lead to surgery, it's entirely possible that the Twins will again remove him from the 40-man roster. Shoulders are tricky things to cut on.

Hiding the hurts

Joe Mauer during pregame workouts Tuesday. He was
to have played first base Tuesday, but admitted feeling dizzy
during batting practice. He was scratched from the starting
lineup and ultimately put on the seven-day concussion
disabled list.

The Twins on Tuesday had a problem: Players hiding their hurts from the manager and trainers.

The most prominent case was Joe Mauer. The franchise player had an obviously painful day behind the plate on Monday — Ron Gardenhire said early Tuesday that Mauer would not catch any of the three games in Detroit — but when he was missing grounders at first base during batting practice, old buddy and veteran of concussions Justin Morneau urged him to get checked.

The result: Mauer was pulled from the lineup and put on the concussion list.

This is the second time this month that a Twins catcher has been sidelined by a brain injury. Ryan Doumit was out for eight days or so. Unlike Mauer, he tried to catch and finally reported his problems in the course of a game. That followed an admittedly difficult flight (flying and concussions are apparently a bad mix). By Mauer's account, he had no problems with the flight on Monday.

Let's consider what the Twins knew Tuesday. They knew Mauer had taken some foul tips to the face mask and helmet on Monday, including one off the bat of Ike Davis that caromed some distance and drew comment from the radio crew. They knew Mauer had a bruise on his forehead.  They knew enough that they were going to avoid having him catch for several days.

They also knew that he said he had no issues on the flight; if they read the Pioneer Press, they knew he had been quoted at length and coherently on the problems Kyle Gibson had in the Monday game.

Concussion symptoms don't necessarily emerge immediately after the blow. It's quite possible Mauer believed he was fine until he started making the quick movements involved in playing first base during Tuesday's batting practice. And he until he reported his ill effects, how were Gardenhire and the trainers to know?

Also adding to the medical mysteries: pitcher Sam Deduno and outfielder Oswaldo Arcia. Deduno, who has been ineffective his last three starts, now concedes that his shoulder is bothering him. He is apparently vague about it, and Gardenhire grumped to reporters that he's not convinced Deduno is being honest about his condition.

Deduno is to throw a bullpen session today; I suspect that he won't convince the bosses that all is well, and the Twins will need to find a starter for Friday as well as for Saturday (Friday is Deduno's start, Saturday is the vacated spot left by Kyle Gibson's demotion).

Arcia apparently jammed his wrist diving for a ball during the weekend but has been afraid to seek treatment for it. He was held out of Tuesday's game. With both Mauer and Arcia out of action, the Twins had just Doug Bernier available off the bench. Chris Colabello is on his way back to take Mauer's roster spot, so that should help the depth issues a little.

Kyle Gibson, Sam Deduno, P.J. Walters and "consistency"

P. J. Walters is 4-2,
3.31 in Rochester.

Word trickled out Thursday evening that P. J. Walters will inherit Vance Worley's rotation spot on Monday. How the space will be cleared (on either the 25-man active roster or the broader 40-man roster) is unclear; the Twins still have to make room on the 40-man roster for Sam Deduno, who is to start tonight in Detroit, much less make room for Walters.

The Twins' public rationale earlier this week for going with Deduno over Kyle Gibson — that Deduno has a good record against the Tigers and that Gibson needs to show more consistency — was a bit baffling.

Deduno started twice last season against Detroit and came away with a 9.64 ERA, which is neither good nor sufficient statistical evidence to make a judgment on. As for the consistency issue: Is there any pitcher anywhere more consistently inconsistent than Sam Deduno?

Giving Deduno the chance over Gibson doesn't really disturb me. Deduno's raw stuff is intriguing, and he probably would have been in the opening rotation had he not injured his groin in the championship game of the World Baseball Classic.

But going with Walters over Gibson ... that's another matter.

Gibson is supposed to be, eventually, a rotation anchor. Walters is back-of-the-rotation filler at best, more likely a "Quadruple-A" guy — good enough to thrive in the upper minors, not good enough to survive in the majors.

One of the top goals this season for the Twins has to be establishing Gibson in the major league rotation. This would seem a good opportunity to start on that project. Instead, the Twins are going with a low-ceiling alternative. They must have a reason for that, but I really don't see what it is.

Walters and Gibson have very similar records in Rochester this year. Gibson is 3-5, 3.25 with 52.2 innings in nine starts and 7.9 strikeouts per nine innings; Walters is 4-2, 3.31 in 54.1 innings in nine starts and 7.6 strikeouts per nine innings. In total, there's isn't much difference between the two state lines.

Gibson has alternated brilliant starts with short, dismal ones. Perhaps the basic stuff is different from game to game, which would suggest lingering physical issues related to his rehab from Tommy John surgery. If that's the consistency the Twins refer to — being able to bring the same velocity and movement to each game — then I can grasp the point in leaving him in the minors. If the argument is that the results aren't consistent, I'm not buying it.

Plenty of roster moves, with more coming

Vance Worley leaves the field Wednesday — and heads
to Triple A Rochester.

I've spent the last few days writing about the talent on the Cedar Rapids Kernels, and it's certainly been more fun thinking about that team (hey, Byron Buxton hit a triple Wednesday!) than about the Twins.

Monday's post, written in a Cedar Rapids hotel room after an afternoon spent driving and listening to the Sunday game/rain delay, anticipated a coming roster shuffle.

Changes have come, and more will, because the active roster is a starting pitcher short.

Follow the bouncing changeup:

Pedro Hernandez demoted, Caleb Thielbar promoted. Fifth starter out, eighth reliever in. I've always expected the Twins to shuffle through fifth starters in search of somebody who might emerge; I didn't expect Hernandez to get his opportunity as early as he did. Thielbar quickly joined the ranks of overused mop-up men in the bullpen.

Trevor Plouffe took Dan Uggla's shin in the temple
Tuesday night while breaking up a double play.

Trevor Plouffe put on concussion list; Darin Mastroianni put on 60-day disabled list; Chris Colabello put on 40-man roster and on the 25-man roster. The Twins' recent history with concussions — Justin Morneau and Denard Span — has not been a happy one, and the sight of Plouffe taking a shin to the temple raised too many bad memories for Twins fans. Nobody really knows what to expect from concussions, so there's no point in me speculating about how long Plouffe may be out.

Colabello gives the Twins right-handed power, but he's a first baseman-DH, and as such an ill fit on the major league roster as constituted. If he remains, Chris Parmelee or Oswaldo Arcia are likely to get shipped back to Triple A. Third base figures to be handled by a combination of Jamey Carroll and Eduardo Escobar, neither of whom offers Plouffe's pop. I wrote about Mastroianni's status in the Monday post.

Vance Worley demoted, Sam Deduno to be promoted. Worley has gone from Opening Day starter to Triple A in less than two months, which is what a 7.21 ERA can do to a fellow. "The Vanimal" has been the biggest disappointment in a rotation that has been almost completely disappointing.

Deduno has been slated all week to fill Hernandez' rotation slot but hasn't been officially added to the roster yet. One aspect here is that the Twins need another spot on the 40-man roster as well. This may well be found by moving Tim Wood to the 60-day disabled list.

All this still leaves the Twins a starter short. Somebody has to take the ball in four days, when Worley's turn comes around again. My guess: Kyle Gibson. It might have been Gibson for Friday's game except that they don't want to debut him against Detroit.

Mike Pelfrey and the Potential Replacements

Mike Pelfrey struck out seven batters
Sunday, doubling his season total.

Mike Pelfrey had his best start of the still-young season Sunday, and he did so against a Cleveland team that is producing runs with anybody in the league.

He needed that strong outing. He entered the game with an ERA of 7.66, and pitchers with that kind of stat tend to lose their jobs. Even his six-inning, one-run Sunday left him with a 6.35 ERA, and that's not good either.

Pelfrey's potentially shaky status made all the more intriguing the list of starters working Sunday in the Twins minor league system:

• For Triple A Rochester, the starter was Sam Deduno, hero of the World Baseball Classic. 
• For Double A New Britain, it was Alex Meyer, the return in the Denard Span trade and generally regarded as the Twins top pitching prospect
• For high A Fort Myers, it was Cole De Vries, who figured to be in the opening rotation before being injured at the end of spring training. (De Vries is on a rehab assignment.)
• For low A Cedar Rapids, it was J.O. Berrios, the Puerto Rican teenager who is close to Meyer in status.

Berrios isn't going to pitch in the majors this year, but the other three all are real possibilities ... and having them aligned with Pelfrey makes it theoretically easy to flip any of them into his place if and when the Twins pull the plug on the veteran.

For the record:

• Deduno went five innings, allowing one run. Four walks, four strikeouts, 89 pitches, 51 strikes. 
• Meyer was knocked out of the box in the fifth inning, allowing five runs in 4.2 innings.
• De Vires, making his first start since training camp, went just four innings. He allowed six hits and one run and was reportedly hit hard in the final inning.
• Berrios went six innings, allowing two runs and striking out eight (no walks).

Even if the Twins were ready to pull the plug on Pelfrey, none of these guys are ready to step in right now. In a couple of weeks, it will be another story.

Sam Deduno and the fifth starter job

Sam Deduno reacts after striking out
Angel Pagan to end the fifth inning
Tuesday night in the WBC final.

Sam Deduno had an impressive World Baseball Classic: Three starts, 13 innings, one run allowed, 17 strikeouts. He was one of many reasons the Dominican squad went undefeated in the tournament.

He also showed the flaws that led the Twins to drop him from the 40-man roster, and that led the rest of baseball to let him pass through waivers. He has great movement on his pitches but little command.

In his start against the United States, he needed 80 pitches to navigate four innings -- 20 pitches a frame. In the championship game Tuesday night against Puerto Rico, Deduno was dominant for four innings, wild in the fifth, and done after five. Seventy-six pitches, 46 for strikes, 30 for balls.

Five and fly is not a characteristic of good starting pitchers, and that's what Deduno was in his half-season in the Twins rotation last year: 15 starts, 79 innings, just over five innings a start. In the limited pitch-count world of the WBC, Deduno went four innings, four innings, five innings.

So I can hardly blame the Twins if they remain skeptical of Deduno as a rotation option. They should be skeptical of everybody who was part of last season's rotation disaster.

Still, 13 innings of one-run ball -- in games played with a purpose -- stands out when compared to the starts the Twins have been getting in Grapefruit League play, and even though one shouldn't put any weight on spring training numbers, it gets noticed.

Deduno went five innings Tuesday against a lineup with five major league regulars. I'm not sure any of the rotation guys the Twins are counting on have done that.

The WBC and the Twins roster

Sam Deduno celebrates getting out of a first-inning jam
Thursday against Team USA. He did walk in a run in that frame,
but that was all he gave up in four innings.

Sam Deduno is having a whale of a World Baseball Classic: Two starts for the undefeated Dominican Republic, eight innings, 12 strikeouts, two walks and just one run allowed.

It was easy to discount the first outing, since that came against Spain. But Thursday night he gave Team USA fits, and that is a much more imposing lineup.

I don't know that his WBC exploits are helping him win one of the spots in the Twins rotation, however. As I said here after his Spain game, he's a non-roster guy who slotted in no higher than eighth on the Twins starting pitching depth chart entering camp.

Even with Kyle Gibson demoted (more on that later) and Scott Diamond possibly headed to the disabled list for the season's start, Deduno still ranks behind Kevin Correia, Mike Pelfrey, Vance Worley (three sure pieces of the rotation given continued health) and Cole De Vries and Liam Hendriks, who have both been better in exhibition games than the first three.

It's also worth noting that the same pitch-count issues that made Deduno a master of the short start in his major league stint showed against Team USA. He threw 80 pitches in four innings — 20 pitches an inning. That's a problem. Nobody, including the Twins, should be eager to turn over a rotation spot to a guy who struggles to go six innings.

Personally, I'd much rather give the opportunity to Deduno than Correia, but the Twins have invested $10 million in the latter.

---

Kyle Gibson was
optioned out on
Thursday.

Gibson's not involved in the WBC, but since I mentioned his demotion, a quick word on the topic:

I'm not surprised Gibson didn't make the roster, and it has nothing to do with holding back his service time. He's struggled with his command this spring, which is not unusual for Tommy John patients. Velocity and movement come back first; location often lags.

He's still a vital piece of the puzzle. He's just not going to be put into place next month.

---

This may fall into the category of reading too much into developments, but ...

The Twins have signed Curt Smith, the first baseman for the Dutch team, to a minor league contract. Smith is a 26-year-old right-hander from Curacao — much of the Dutch squad is from the Caribbean — who spent three seasons in the Cardinals system, one in independent ball and one in the Marlins system. He's had a couple years in Double-A.

Not a real hot prospect, but he's had a strong showing in the World Baseball Classic.

So has Chris Colabello, another right-handed hitting first baseman with an indy league background. Colabello led Team Italy in homers (2), RBI (7), and total bases (12) while hitting .333 in Italy's five games.

Colabello is a dark-horse candidate for the major-league roster as the Twins consider carrying a pinch-hitter on their bench. Signing Smith adds some first-base depth to the upper levels of the system and makes it a bit easier to promote Colabello.

Easier, but hardly certain.

The Twins and the WBC

J.O. Berrios —
or is it Jose?

Today's print column was a general look at the World Baseball Classic, but it hardly exhausts the topic.

The Twins had 13 players — from former MVPs to teenagers — in the WBC. No organization provided more participants. Here's a few comments:

* How raw is J.O. Berrios? So raw there's no consensus on what he's to be called. The Star Tribune is going with Jose on first reference; Baseball America uses the initials; Baseball Reference at one point used the initials and now has gone with the first name. So far I've gone with the initials.

Berrios (and fellow Puerto Rican Eddie Rosario) was in the Twins major-league camp before the WBC only because of the event; both prospects took advantage of the opportunity to catch the attention, and imagination, of the big-leauge staff. 

Rosario got a lot of playing time in the early exhibitions, Berrios did not. But Berrios pitched Sunday in relief against the Dominican Republic in a game aired by ESPN. (The broadcast was in Spanish, which means I understood only occasional words of the commentary, such as beisbol; this was a vast improvement over the likes of Rick Sutcliffe and John Kruk.) 

Deolis Guerra pitches for
his homeland.

Berrios had a rough outing — two runs, both earned, in 1.2 innings, and he was charged with the loss — but it was still easy to be impressed. The kid (still only 18) blew a high fastball past Robinson Cano for strike three. He throws from a lower arm angle than I had expected to see, and the motion looks easy.

He needs, obviously, experience and good health. That's not an easy combination to achieve. But he can be a good one.  

* Deolis Guerra was pitching for Venezuela but left in mid-round with what was initially described as a pectoral injury. It turned out to be a blood clot in his shoulder. He's to have part of a rib removed to free up space.

This was a potentially serious development, but since it's been caught it's not a career-threatening one. There's no reason Guerra shouldn't be able to pitch again. Still, it's a blow; most of this season is lost for him.

It seems like we've been waiting for him forever; he was the high-ceiling piece of the Johan Santana trade, made just before spring training in 2008. He'll never be the stud starter envisioned at the time, but he's still only 23.

* It's easy to criticize the game strategy Team USA manager Joe Torre employed in the first round. 

Sam Deduno struck out five and walked
none in his start against Spain.

The Americans attempted four sacrifice bunts Sunday against Canada. Now, I love the bunting game, but I love it in its place. Torre has a lineup filled with legitimate All-Stars, and — no offense to the Team Canada pitchers — they're facing moundsmen of much lesser accomplishment. Giving away outs with guys like Adam Jones and Ben Zobrist is just silly.

But in another light, Torre is in a unique situation. He's got a roster of All-Stars, players who left their jobs to play for this team, and none of them came to park their butts on the bench. Torre made a point of getting everybody some playing time in the pool games. Ego massage comes with the territory, and perhaps all the bunting is a way of reminding them that the ego massage only goes so far. 

*Sam Deduno was a late addition to the Dominican roster, and when he opted to pitch in the WBC I saw some muttering from the metro media that he was hurting his chances of making the Twins rotation and wasn't likely to pitch for D.R. anyway.

He started the second game of pool play for the Dominican — four shutout innings against Spain for the win. Yeah, it was Spain, the weak sister of the San Juan pool (Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Venezuela and Spain), but Deduno did pitch. 

And, realistically, he wasn't making the Twins rotation out of camp even had he stayed. Do the math: There's Scott Diamond, Vance Worley, Mike Pelfrey and Kevin Correia, all of whom will either be in the rotation or on the DL. Then there's the contenders on the 40-man roster — Kyle Gibson, Cole DeVries, Liam Hendriks — all of whom rank ahead of Deduno. 

When Plan B comes before Plan A

The Minnesota Twins have lined up their Plan B options for the starting rotation.

Plan A? That's another matter.

The Twins ended the 2012 season with a starting rotation of Scott Diamond, Sam Deduno, P.J. Walters, Liam Hendriks and Esmerling Vasquez. Cole De Vries would have been part of that group but for a broken rib.

Sam Deduno chose
to stay with the Twins.

Diamond is a certainty for the 2013 rotation. He's part of Plan A; none of the other five are.

Deduno, Walters and Vasquez were all cut loose in the weeks since the season ended -- and all three have agreed to return on minor-league deals. (De Vries and Hendriks remain on the 40-man roster.)

The return of the outrighted trio is noteworthy. Usually a pitcher who can't keep his spot on the 40-man roster goes off in search of another employer.

That these three opted to remain, and that the Twins are letting them remain in the system, tells us a few things:

• They believe they got, and will get, a fair shake from the Twins;
• They believe there's better opportunity with Minnesota than elsewhere;
• The Twins don't see better alternatives pushing their way up to the higher levels of the the farm system.

I do not believe the Twins are re-signing them with intent to have been in the major league rotation. They are Plan B guys, fall-back options, rotation filler for Triple A who can step in for the big club if and when.

But for them to be Plan B, somebody else has to be Plan A. And that is the key to the Twins offseason, finding the pitchers who make De Vries, Hendriks, Walters, Vasquez and Deduno the Rochester rotation next spring.

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.)

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.

Notes, quotes and comment

Commissioner Bud Selig had a backdrop of former
All-Stars for the announcement Wednesday that
Target Field would be the site of the 2014 All-Star game.
Behind the commish: Tony Oliva, Rod Carew, Roy Smalley
and Paul Molitor.

 

This was the least-well-kept secret in sometime, but it's official: The 2014 All-Star Game will be played in Target Field.

Call me jaded, but in this era of interleague play and cable, the All-Star Game itself doesn't interest me as much as the Futures Game does. The All-Star Game is now a promotional vehicle for Fox; the Futures Game is a glimpse of, yeah, the future.

---

Also not a surprise: Scott Diamond on Wednesday dropped his appeal and began serving his  suspension. By dragging the process out beyond his Tuesday start, he pushed the time of his next start into September, when the rosters are expanded.

---

What is a surprise: San Deduno didn't walk a man in his seven shutout innings Wednesday. Ninety-eight pitches, 68 strikes — better than two strikes for every ball. I didn't think that kind of performance was possible from him.

Until he does it regularly, though, I'll consider this one a fluke — a fluke that had some help from the Seattle hitters.

---

Jeff Gray was outrighted to Triple A on Wednesday, which opened a spot on the 25-man roster for Chris Parmelee, who promptly stepped into the lineup as the right fielder. (He went 1-for-5 with two runs scored.) With Denard Span again day-to-day with his shoulder/collarbone issue, I would expect Parmelee to get a lot of playing time in right field (with Ben Revere playing center).

The Twins now have three openings on their 40-man roster. One will certainly be filled come September by P.J. Walters, who is apparently about ready to come off the 60-day disabled list.

As with Nick Blackburn, I don't see the Twins outrighting Gray only to turn around and restore him to the 40-man roster so that they can have him in the majors in September. I would think they could find something else to try.

---

Lester Oliveros, the hard-throwing relief prospect acquired last year in the Delmon Young trade, had elbow surgery Wednesday that blew into something more than removing bone chips. It turned into Tommy John surgery, which pretty much wipes out his 2013 season.

BABIP-ity Deduno

San Deduno on Monday walked five and struck out six.
He also won. Again.

Sam Deduno has made seven starts for the Twins. He has a 4-0 won-loss record with a 3.38 ERA, and the Twins have won six of his seven starts.

That's the good stuff. On the other hand, he's averaging less than six innings a start (40 innings) and he's walked more men (30) than he's struck out (28). You have to go a long ways back into baseball history to find effective pitchers with that kind of BB/K ratio.

He's gotten away with it because he's not giving up a lot of hits. On Monday, he yielded five hits in seven innings; he has yet to allow more than six in any of his starts.

His BABIP — Batting Average on Balls In Play — is .252, which is absurdly low. It has become a basic tenant of sabermetrics that pitchers have relatively little control over BABIP, that over time, pretty much every pitcher's BABIP will be around .300. (Randy Johnson, to pick on a hard-to-hit pitcher, had a career batting average allowed of .221, but a BABIP of .295.)

What pitchers can control: Walks, Strikeouts, Home Runs. Deduno is weak on the first, mediocre on the second, acceptable on the third. All of which suggests that his success will be short-lived.

If we're looking for reasons to believe, however, I'll offer this thought: Knuckleball pitchers tend to be an exception to the BABIP principle. (Tim Wakefield's career BABIP was .276, Charlie Hough's .253. These are guys with long enough careers that those numbers are no flukes.)

Deduno doesn't throw a knuckleball, but by all accounts his fastball acts like one — it moves in different directions and he doesn't know which way it's going when he throws it. As with a knuckleballer, his catchers are setting up in the middle of the plate and trying to react to the movement.

The Twins are desperate enough for starters that they will certainly keep giving Deduno chances to fail. Even if his success is sustainable — and that's hardly proven — he'll need to work deeper into games to be more than a rotation filler.

Contemplating Sam Deduno

Sam Deduno reacts as left fielder Ryan Doumit makes
a catch to end the sixth inning Thursday in Boston.

Results matter. Wins, losses, runs allowed, runs scored, runs denied. The outcomes are the point of the games.

How one gets those results matter too, because the process is predictive.

Sam Deduno threw six shutout innings Thursday evening in Fenway Park. He is now 3-0 with a 2.48 ERA.

And he's doing it all wrong.

On Thursday, Deduno allowed just two hits. He also walked four and struck out just one. In his five major league starts, a total of just 29 innings -- yes, he's averaging less than six innings per start despite that gaudy ERA -- he has walked 20, struck out 19. More walks than strikeouts.

This is not sustainable. No pitcher can maintain that low an ERA while walking more men than he strikes out. No pitcher can maintain that kind of ERA walking more than six men per nine innings.

And the problem for Deduno is that this is who he is. This is why he's a 29-year-old who has kicked around the minors for eight seasons. His minor league walk rate for his career is 5.1 BB/9.

The walk rate by itself tells us that he's not exactly pounding the strike zone. By my calculations, Deduno has thrown 492 pitches for the Twins. Just 288 of them have been strikes (called, swinging, fouled off, put in play), while 204 have been called balls: roughly 58 percent strikes, 41 percent balls (rounding error). In contrast, Scott Diamond has thrown 66 percent strikes.

The buzz phrase has been "effectively wild." That can work for an individual game, for a month's worth of starts. It's not the basis for sustained success.

What the Win stat tells us

Sam Deduno pitched 6.1 innings
Sunday to get his first MLB win.

Sam Deduno on Sunday became the 17th Twins pitcher this season to be credited with a Win.

There are some prominent bloggers — the esteemed Aaron Gleeman among them — who ridicule the Win statistic. It is a rare day now when I don't encounter an online opinion saying, at least implicitly, that the W is useless and should be abandoned.

I see things a bit less black-and-white. All stats, to some degree, are flawed. Nothing stands perfectly alone. Hit a fly ball in Wrigley Field one day, it's a home run; on another day, with the wind blowing in, it's an out. Hit a grounder in the hole with Luis Aparicio at short, it's an out; hit the same grounder with Ron Washington at short, it's a base hit.

And all attempts to winnow out the various biases that infect the traditional stats depend so heavily on assumptions and formulas as to resist understanding or audit. There are at least two different formulas for WAR — Wins Above Replacement, a favorite of the current generation of sabermetricans — and those formulas can come up with drastically different results depending on how they "measure" defense and how they weigh home field biases.

The Won-Loss record has this advantage to it: If a pitcher is credited with the Win, his team won the game. If he's charged with the loss, his team lost the game. Winning and losing is the whole point of the competition. It's simple, it's easy to understand, and it's directly tied to the outcome.

The pitcher's win stat isn't as meaningful as it once was, and it was probably never as meaningful as the consensus once held it to be. The rise of bullpens, the coming of the five-man rotation, the monitoring of pitch counts -- all these changes have whittled away at the innings worked by starting pitchers, and the fewer innings worked by the starters, the less significant the Win becomes.

So the Win's meaning is fading. But discarding information, even if it's flawed, does nobody any good. Understanding the limitations of the information is the key.

So ... we look today at the Twins wins this season, and we see that Scott Diamond leads the team in Ws with eight. Next comes middle reliever Jeff Gray, 5-0 despite an ERA of 4.73. He's followed by Nick Blackburn, who has four wins and a bloated 7.46 ERA. Two have three wins (Francisco Liriano and Alex Burnett) and then 12 others have either two or one.

And I do see some significance to this. That the team's scarce wins are so spread out, that two of the top five in wins are middle relievers, are symptomatic of the failure of the starting rotation. There are other markers telling us that the rotation has been horrid, of course, but this is an obvious one.

Plan H (for Horrible)

Sam Deduno has
pitched 5.2 innings
in the majors, but
this will be his
first start.

Today Sam Deduno is to be the 11th starting pitcher deployed by the Twins this season.

Eleven starters before the All-Star break. That's probably not a record, but it's hardly a characteristic of winning teams.

Plan A was a set of five veterans, each making a minimum of $3 million -- Carl Pavano, Scott Baker, Francisco Liriano, Nick Blackburn and Jason Marquis. That plan didn't make it out of Fort Myers. Between injury and ineffectiveness, the only one of that five now in the rotation is Liriano, and he was displaced himself for a while.

Plan B was Liam Hendriks, and he has been twice demoted to the minors. Plan C was Anthony Swarzak, and he pitched his way into a bullpen role (which he's filled nicely). Then came Scott Diamond (yeah!), P.J. Walters, Cole DeVries, Brian Duesning and now Deduno.

That makes Deduno, a 29-year-old Dominican, Plan H. Nobody is deep enough in pitching to have ... wait for it ... preparation H.

To be fair to him, he probably isn't, and wasn't, the 11th best starter in the organization. He was a non-roster  invitee to spring training, and guys on the 40-man roster logically get the first crack. He was on the minor league disabled list when DeVries was called up, might have been when Walters was too.

Deduno is out of a different mold than most of the right-handers the Twins have trotted out. He is said to have a good fastball, an even better curve, and control issues. In 42 innings in Rochester (nine starts) he has 46 strikeouts and 22 walks, a 2.14 ERA. He also spent some time on the disabled list.

I would expect to see better stuff than from Walters or DeVries, but less idea of how to use it.

If nothing else, Deduno is something different than Blackburn throwing batting practice. But how, or if, he'll fit into the rotation plans after the break remains to be seen. I assume he's out of options, as is Walters, who made his second (and final scheduled) rehab start Friday. If the Twins don't want to waive either, DeVries is the most likely demotion possibility.