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.

Notes, quotes and comment

Nick Blackburn's
ERA since signing his
four-year contract:
5.56.

Catching up on a baseball weekend:

Outrighted: The Twins on Monday outrighted both Nick Blackburn and Tsuyoshi Nishioka to Rochester.

This move takes both men off the 40-man roster. At this point, no corresponding 25-man roster move for Blackburn has been announced, although I suspect Liam Hendriks is the likely call-up; he could make the start on Wednesday that Blackburn had been scheduled for.

Nishioka was already in the minors on option; Blackburn had been optioned out earlier this summer. So the purpose in outrighting them was to take them off the 40 -- which serves two purposes.

First, it makes it possible to return (if and when healthy and ready) P.J. Walters and/or Carl Pavano from the 60-day DL, or to call up a minor leaguer not now on the 40.

Second, it signals that neither is in the plans for at least the remainder of 2012.

For 2013? Well, Blackburn and Nishioka are owed a total of some $8.5 million next year, or (easy math here) about 8.5 percent of the current payroll budget. That's a lot to walk away from. This move signals that it just might happen.

Curdled Melk: The Melky Cabrera suspension has turned into something more than our standard athletic-corruption story.

Turns out the surprise star and his cronies set up a fake website peddling a non-existent product in a failed attempt to establish that he had tested positive inadvertently.

Now federal investigators are involved. This one isn't going away anytime soon.

Affiliation preserved: The Twins and the Rochester Red Wings extended their working agreement for two years.

Keeping their Triple-A affiliation with the Wings was an under-the-radar priority for the organization this year. Mission accomplished.

With top affiliates Rochester and New Britain retained, the only expiring minor league affiliation left for the Twins is with low-A Beloit. Beloit is said to have the worst facilities in the Midwest League, and I don't think the Twins are adverse to shifting locales in this case.

Back in the cellar again: On Aug. 8, the Twins were in position to pull into a tie for third place in the AL Central. All they had to to was beat Cleveland.

They lost. And they've kept on losing -- they've dropped nine of 10 starting with that game. In those 10 games, the Twins have scored 33 runs and allowed 58.

Cleveland has been passed in the standings, but by Kansas City.

Day-to-day to the power of infinity: Denard Span last played Aug. 12, when he injured his collarbone/shoulder in an outfield tumble.

As of Sunday, he was still unable to take batting practice, so a return to action is nowhere in sight. Yet the Twins have not seen fit to put him on the disabled list. Assistant GM Rob Antony's rationale for this doesn't satisfy me.

Notes, quotes and comment

The Tsuyoshi Nishioka farce will continue,  more or less.

Terry Ryan told the beat writers Thursday that Nishioka is staying despite the horror show he put on in Cleveland:

"He had a very difficult game yesterday and we all saw it but the only way to find out how he’ll respond up here is to play him."

Ryan went on to:

• imply that Nishioka's status depends on Trevor Plouffe's availability; Ryan appears inclined to send Plouffe on a rehab assignment before activating him. (This would allow Plouffe to test the thumb under game conditions without restarting the disabled list clock if the thumb needs more time);
• deny that Ron Gardenhire was under orders to play Nishioka;
• insist that Nishioka got the call-up not because the Twins have so much invested in him as because he was the most logical player to fill the spot. (Sean Burroughs and Pedro Florimon were injured, and Eduardo Escobar, acquired in the Francisco Liriano trade, couldn't be recalled because he had been optioned out less than 10 days earlier and there was no injury involved.)

The beat writers have interpreted all this as: Nishioka's on the roster, but only until Plouffe returns, and he's not going to play. We'll see; that phrase about the only way to find out is to play him suggests something different to me. 

---

Baseball America has this piece about possible affiliation changes in Triple A, with the Rochester-Minnesota connection prominent.

In a nutshell: The Red Wings like the way the Twins deal with them but isn't happy with the teams they've been given in recent seasons. So they're keeping their options open.

Here's the fear for the Twins: Buffalo (now affiliated with the Mets) is expected to hook up with Toronto (which is now affiliated with Las Vegas). The Mets would doubtless rather shift to Rochester than Las Vegas, which has a number of drawbacks and may be the least attractive of all the Triple A affiliations.

Working in the Twins favor: The reason Buffalo is eager to cut ties with the Mets is that the Mets haven't provided winning teams, so Rochester isn't necessarily improving its chances of having a quality squad by changing affiliates. 

BA figures the Red Wings will stick with the Twins for two more years. And the Mets will wind up with Vegas.

A matter of credibility

Tsuyoshi Nishioka committing his error in the second
inning. He had two other misplays, neither of which was
ruled an error, but both of them adding to the evidence
that he's overmatched by major league ball.

The previous post was composed during Wednesday's game with the intent of publishing it overnight.  But as the game progressed and the tweets from the beat writers and the commentary from the broadcasters added up, I became convinced that overnight would be too late — that Tsuyoshi Nishioka would be deleted from the roster before the team got back to Minnesota. So I published soon after the final out and headed to work.

By the time I got there, it was apparent that Nishi wasn't an immediate goner after all. Ron Gardenhire declined to comment in any depth on Nishioka's problems after the game. Terry Ryan — this was one of the road trips Ryan did not make — declined via email to comment to the Star Tribune on Nishioka. Glen Perkins, bless his teammate-loving soul, defended Nishioka to the media.

And Nishioka was dashing off from Cleveland back to Rochester, N.Y., to gather his belongings to take to Minnesota. He's expecting to stick.

Sheesh.

If Ryan, Gardenhire and Co. didn't discuss the Nishioka Follies on Wednesday, I'm sure they will today.

I don't know if they see this the way I do: It's a crisis. Playing Nishioka at this point undermines the organization's credibility. There are plenty of debatable decisions involved in shaping a roster and running the games, and those of us watching the games but not making the decisions can disagree with the decisions — but we can generally grasp the reasons behind those decisions.

This is the exception. This is the case when the decision is so inexplicable, so utterly and obviously wrong, as to defy rationalization.

I know: the Twins invested $14 million in Nishioka. That money's gone.  It was wasted, and acting differently isn't going to change that reality. The money is not a good reason to play Nishioka.

The money is not a good reason, but it is the closest thing to a reason. Nishioka was awful last year; he did nothing in Triple A to justify bringing him back; he was, if anything, worse in the Cleveland series.

Playing him at second base this weekend in Target Field will be an insult to the paying customers, and don't imagine that the insult will be overlooked. Anybody listening to Dick-n-Bert, or reading the tweets from Joe Christensen, John Shipley and Rhett Bollinger, knows that those observers were appalled by what they saw in Cleveland.

The Twins have spent the summer making an honest effort to get better after a terrible 2011 and a horrible first six weeks, and they've made genuine progress on that.

Nishioka's presence undermines that progress. He's got to go. The longer it takes management to figure that out, the worse this farce will be.

Pull the plug already

The Twins, by any measure, just completed a good road trip, winning three of four in Boston and two of three in Cleveland.

And I can't get past the utter incompetence displayed in the three Cleveland games by Tsuyoshi Nishioka.

By now you probably know how Nishi sabotaged the Twins on Wednesday afternoon -- a second inning error that let to two unearned runs, a sixth inning popup that he turned into a double, a high throw home that let a run score later in the inning. And he took another 0-fer making him 0-for-12 with a walk and a sac fly.

But hey, he hit a line drive, and he managed to turn a double play pivot without breaking his leg.

I have no wish to turn this blog into a Nishioka watch. I'd rather think, and write, about other issues and questions about the Twins. But the decision to bring him up and jam him into the lineup has moved the focus from everything else. He does not belong in the major leagues, and it has become painfully obvious.

This isn't on him anymore. It's on the Twins.

A few days ago, Thomas Boswell, the veteran baseball writer for the Washington Post, recounted an exchange he had years back with Earl Weaver, the Hall-of-Fame manager of the Orioles. Boswell wanted to know how long Weaver was going to stick with a struggling relief pitcher. Weaver's response: Until the general manager gets tired of watching him lose games.

It's your move, Terry Ryan. Make it.

Two days of Tsuyoshi Nishioka

Tsuyoshi Nishioka started a double play on this
first-inning ground ball Tuesday night.

The best I can say about the return of Tsuyoshi Nishioka is that the Twins are undefeated with him in the lineup. This says more about the Cleveland Indians at this point in the season than it does about Nishioka.

Nishioka went 0-for-8 with a walk and a sac fly in the two games. He committed two errors in the first game, started a pair of double plays in the second. I don't believe he's had to turn a double play as the pivot man yet.

It's two games, but ... I don't see any real reason to believe that Nishioka belongs in the major leagues. If he does, it's not apparent in his Triple A stats, and it hasn't shown in these first two games.

And it certainly didn't show at any point last season, which is the real reason his call-up has sparked so much outrage on talk radio and the Internet.

The loudmouths of radio, blogs and Twitter are not necessarily representative of the people sitting in the seats, but I don't expect Nishioka to be warmly welcomed by the paying customers at Target Field when the Twins open their next homestand later this week.

I continue to believe that he's up because the organization is preparing to pull the plug on him. Call it a final piece of due diligence, or perhaps the vain hope that he'll do something well enough to entice somebody else to take his contract off the Twins hands. (Ain't gonna happen.)

Ron Gardenhire said when Nishi returned that he was going to play. The manager also said that this was no three-day call-up, that somebody else would be sent out when Trevor Plouffe is reactivated after the road trip.

Maybe so. But I don't know what else Gardy would say. And if somebody else is sent out so that Nishioka can remain in the lineup, I won't be happy about it.

Danny departs, Nishi returns

Danny Valencia:
Major league averages
went from .311 to
.246 to .198.

Just before game time Sunday Minnesota traded Danny Valencia to Boston for minor league outfielder Jeremias Pineda. During the game the Twins announced that Tsuyoshi Nishioka was being recalled from Triple A to fill Valencia's spot on the 25-man roster.

Start with the new guy. Pineda, a switch-hitter, has a .421 batting average in the Gulf Coast League this year. That's good. The bad news is, he's old for the entry-level league at 21. I'll regard him as a marginal prospect until he does something at higher levels. Hitting .400 gives him the opportunity to move up.

It's not a shocker that the Twins moved Valencia. After an impressive rookie season in 2010, he regressed in 2011 and was awful this season. Trevor Plouffe has clearly moved ahead of him at third base, and Miguel Sano is on his way sooner or later. Valencia doesn't figure in the Twins' long-term or short-term plans, so they used him to buy a Pineda lottery ticket.

I'm not sure why Boston put in a claim on Valencia. He doesn't figure be a threat to Will Middlebrooks' job, and he lacks the kind of statistical markers that appeal to the usually stat-savvy Red Sox. Perhaps they just felt the need to plug a hole at their Triple-A affiliate, to which they immediately assigned Valencia.

Tsuyoshi Nishoka
hit .245/.309/.301
in Rochester this year,

Valencia was back in the majors for the past week-plus filling in for the injured Plouffe, even though he hadn't done much in Triple A to warrant his return. There's not much in his minor league stats to suggest Nishioka has merited a return either.

Which makes me wonder if this is a one-last-look thing. The Twins having been paying Nishioka $3 million to play in Rochester, and they are on the hook for another year of that salary. If Nishioka doesn't give Ron Gardenhire reason to want to keep him around (or another team reason to want to assume his contract), the logical options are to either release him or work out some sort of buyout to send him back to Japan.

The Twins aren't going to cost themselves a playoff berth by taking a fresh look at Nishioka now. As a prelude to eating the rest of his contract and moving on, it makes sense.

Trading Valencia opened a spot on the 40-man roster. We'll see what if anything the Twins do with that vacancy. They do have two starting pitchers, Carl Pavano and P.J. Walters, currently on the 60-day DL and thus not on the 40, beginning rehab assignments. Reactiving either will require spots on the 40.

Interpreting Monday's cuts

Tsuyoshi Nishioka
is now Gene Glynn's
problem in Rochester.

As expected, the Twins had their second round of cuts Monday, sending out 12 more players to their minor-league complex.

We'll start with the headline: Tsuyoshi Nishioka optioned to Rochester.

My take: There are two primary possibilities here:

• Brian Dozier winds up the starting shortstop, with either Jamey Carroll or Alexi Casilla shifting to the utility role;
• The Twins pick up their utility guy on waivers late in camp.

There are other possibilities, such as Pedro Florimon, but they seem less likely than those two. My bet is on the waiver-wire move. Dozier is going to start wherever he is; I can't see the Twins carrying him as a one- or two-games-a-week guy.

I saw a quick piece of speculation about Luke Hughes as the sole utility infielder, or Trevor Plouffe returning to the infield. But nobody's ever accused Hughes of being a shortstop, and Plouffe has been emphatically cleared of those charges.

Carlos Gutierrez optioned out. He was one of the bullpen candidates who most intrigued me coming into camp, but he's not in the running now.

He and Kyle Waldrop are redundant: Right-handers, former first-round picks, who rely on groundballs and get few strikeouts. Gutierrez has superior velocity; Waldrop has better control. Waldrop's still around.

Luis Perdomo has
55 strikeouts in
61 major league
innings, all with
San Diego.

More hard throwers cut. I speculated Monday morning that all four of the relievers who finished Sunday's one-hitter could be cut; in the actual event, only one was. That was Luis Perdomo, who also happened to be the one guy who allowed a hit.

Perdomo was also one of the highest-velocity arms, if not the highest, in camp. Also leaving: power arms Jason Bulger and Esmerling Vasquez. (And some softer throwers as well, in P.J. Walters and Daryl Thompson).

Scott Baker insurance: Liam Hendriks is still in camp, implying that if Baker's balky elbow keeps him out to start the season the Aussie might get the rotation slot. Also still around are the use-or-lose guys who might factor in the 2013 rotation (Terry Doyle, Matt Maloney, Anthony Swarzak). Of those latter three, only Doyle has been pitching as a starter in camp; it will be interesting to see if Maloney in particular starts getting stretched out.

Back to the Basics (Blame Nishi)

Tom Kelly recently cited players from outside
the Twins system as a reason for the misplays of 2011.
Tsuyoshi Nishioka was the most prominent of them.

We're less than a month away from the opening drills of the Twins spring training. Let the fundamentals hype begin.

The organization's "play-the-game-the-right-way" mantra tends to stick in the craw of the blogosphere, but I have no doubt that Ron Gardenhire and Co. are sincere in prioritizing that approach. And after the debacle that was 2011, there is no dispute that the Twins have fallen off in that department (as in many others).

The question becomes: What are they going to do about it?

Here's Gardy, as quoted earlier in the week by LaVelle Neal (Star Tribune), raising more questions than he answers:

I've talked to (Tom Kelly) at long time on the phone. Conversations I thought I could never get into with T.K. We spent an hour on the phone one day, talking about different things we should do in spring training, which way to go and how I should have done different things. It's actually been good. Tom has helped me out a bunch.

A fascinating paragraph there, with potential followup questions springing from every sentence. As curious as I am about what spring training changes loom, as interesting as Kelly's critique of Gardenhire may be, I find myself stuck on the second sentence. Gardy was Kelly's right-hand man for more than a decade, T.K.'s designated successor. Kelly's been a prominent presence at spring training throughout the Gardenhire years. They are mentor and protege. And there were baseball conversations Gardy didn't think they could ever have? Really?

Kelly may be an even more prominent figure in Fort Myers this spring. This Tom Powers (Pioneer Press) column certainly implies so. 

It also contains a phony scrapegoat for 201l's sloppy fundamentals -- too many players from outside the organization:

In the past, the Twins were fortunate to have fairly stable batches of minor leaguers who played together, learned together and advanced together. Last year, there was a huge influx of players from other organizations. All those new guys, with all their different ways of doing things, struggled to mesh. They reverted to their old ways too many times.

"All this mixing and matching was too much," Kelly said. "You take Nishi (Tsuyoshi Nishioka). He was learning everything from scratch. It was all really different for him. We don't know what he's going to do. Is he going to revert back like he did things in Japan?"

That sounds logical. It isn't factual, at least not for the major league team. That "huge influx" of players from outside the Twins system simply didn't happen. The Twins used 22 position players in 2011 (counting Jim Thome, who was strictly a hitter). Only Nishioka and two catchers, Rene Rivera and Steve Holm, were new to the Twins organization. Of the rest, only Drew Butera, Alexi Casilla, Jason Repko, Thome and Delmon Young have ever played for any other organization, majors or minors, and Butera, Casilla and Young had been in the Twins system for at least three years apiece entering 2011.

Kelly cites Nishioka as an example, but when you really look at it, you discover that Nishioka is really the only available example. The vast majority of playing time went to players theoretically well-steeped in The Twins Way. 

The fundamental failures of 2011 -- the sloppy rundowns, the dumb baserunning, the given-away at-bats -- are better laid to a rot in the organization, or to a lack of talent, than to too many outsiders. It is to be hoped that Kelly and the others recognize that but are merely unwilling to publicly criticize the minor league staff. 

Dissecting the Bill Smith era: Tsuyoshi Nishioka

Bill Smith looks on as Tsuyoshi Nishioka dons
his Twins jersey during his signing press conference.

When: December 17, 2010
What: Completed the acquisition of infielder Tsuyoshi Nishioka from the Chiba Lotte Marines of the Japanese Pacific League. The Twins paid the Marines $5.3 million in a posting fee for the rights to negotiate with him, and signed Nishioka to a three year deal worth $9.25 million, plus a fourth-season option.
Value: He had 3 win shares and a WAR of -1.8 in an injury-shortened 2011.
Twins motivation: They were looking for a cheaper, long-term anchor for their middle infield.

Many things went desperately wrong for the Twins in 2011. One of the biggest was the failure of the Nishioka signing.

As I said at the time, he wasn't going to be a star. But he was simply not close to a quality major league regular. He didn't hit; he lacked the arm strength to play shortstop; he suffered a broken leg in the first week of the season on the double play pivot as a second baseman.

Terry Ryan has said frequently since assuming the general manager's job that the Twins were giving Nishioka a mulligan. He had the early injury, he had the cultural transition, he had a hamstring problem in September. It was a lost season -- but the Twins still have an investment in him, and some $6 million yet to pay him. So they'll hope that a winter's rehab will solve the leg problems that bedeviled him last year, and that a sounder leg will mean a sounder player.

The Twins allowed him plenty of leeway in 2011. They treated him as an established star, which he was in Japan. I doubt he'll get the same hands-off treatment this time around. The financial investment probably means he'll open the season on the major league roster, but he'll enter camp behind newcomer Jamie Carroll and holdover Alexi Casilla -- and if he plays to last season's low level, he won't keep even the bench job all that long.

The malign influence of Tsuyoshi Nishioka

Tsuyoshi Nishioka may have done more than anybody
to make American teams wary of Japanese players.

Nobody involved in it is a fan of the posting process by which Japanese players generally come to the States. It remains largely because nobody's come up with an alternative that (a) gives the player involved some say before uprooting his career/life to another culture on another continent and (b) protects the Japanese team, which stands to lose a presumably valuable on-field asset.

Quite a few Japanese stars have migrated to the U.S. side of the Pacific over the past couple of decades, lured by the combination of better money and tougher competition. Some -- Ichiro Suzuki being the primest of examples -- have been outright stars in the States. Several have been useful regulars, at least for a few years, even if more was originally expected of them. Some have been outright busts.

Tsuyoshi Nishioka's one season in the United States was not merely a notable bust. It appears to have changed the way American teams deal with posted players in ways other disappointments (such as Kenji Johjima and Kei Igawa) did not.

A couple of examples being played out this offseason:

• The Milwaukee Brewers won the posting rights to outfielder Norichika Aoki but, with time dwindling to sign him, won't get serious about it until after they've run him through a private workout in Arizona this weekend. The front office, we can assume, doesn't want to commit the money until they've seen something of his skills with their own eyes.
• The Yankees and infielder Hiroyuki Nakajima failed to come to terms at all. (The Yankees posting rights expire today, but they announced Thursday that talks were ended). Nakajima, 29, is a career .302 hitter in Japan, but the Yanks viewed him as strictly backup material behind Derek Jeter and Robinson Cano, and a rumored sign-and-trade deal never materialized, probably because there was no American team that thought him worth installing as a regular.

Nishioka's failures in 2011 are reflecting back on his peers. Had Nishioka been the competent major league regular I anticipated, the American teams might not be this cautious. Teams aren't looking at Nakajima as the next Taz Iguchi or Akinori Iwamura, both of whom were second base regulars for World Series teams; they're fearing the next Nishioka.

Most disappointing Twins

Joe Mauer's lost season was, at least in the eyes of USA Today,
not as disappointing as the seasons of Pedro Alvarez,
Jason Hayward or Brian Matusz. Really.

USA Today on Thursday printed a list of the 10 most disappointing players of the 2011 season. (The link is to a slideshow.) Incredibly, none of the paper's 10 are Twins, and I therefore regard the list as fatally flawed. None of the 10 had good seasons, none lived up to expectations, but ... I'm much closer to being a Joe Mauer apologist than critic, but he has to be one of the top two or three disappointments in all of MLB.

The Twins 2011 season -- only seven games to go -- has been so dismal that one can make a Top 10 disappointments list for the team that would stack up pretty well to the USA Today list.

10) Danny Valencia: Lower in every percentage from last season, and a brutal season in the field by the defensive metrics. He leads the team in RBIs, but WAR (Wins Above Replacement) says he's easily replaceable.

9) Denard Span: Was the team's best player until his concussion. Since then, he's either been out of action or completely ineffective -- so ineffective that he now has the lowest batting average, on-base percentage and slugging percentage of his career.

8) Brian Duensing: 5-1, 2.73 as a starter in 2009; 7-2, 3.05 as a starter in 2010; 9-13, 5.29 this year.

As difficult a season as Matt Capps
has had, he's not nearly the most
disappointing Twin of 2011.

7) Matt Capps: Didn't thrive in the closers role, and his strikeout rate dropped sharply this year.

6) Justin Morneau: He's not ranked higher because nobody was really sure what to expect from him in his return from 2010's concussion. As we wind up 2011, nobody can be sure what to expect from him in his return from 2011's concussiion.

5) Kevin Slowey: As a starter, he was always flawed by a lack of durability, but he was still generally effective. Shifting him to the bullpen this spring didn't work, and the failure brought on an avalanche of other problems. He's been in the rotation in September, and that isn't going well either.

4) Delmon Young: The Tigers apparently are delighted with Young, but he followed last season's 21 homers, 112 RBIs and .294 batting average with 4, 32 and .266 before the Twins dumped him -- and a lower slugging percentage than Alexi Casilla.

3) Tsuyoshi Nishioka: Even discounting his stellar 2010 season in Japan, it seemed reasonable to expect him to provide league-average play at second base. He broke a leg in the first week of the season, played shaky defense at both second and short, and didn't hit at all.

Far too many walks for Francisco
Liriano this season to maintain
2010's success.

2) Francisco Liriano: Yes, he had a no-hitter. He also went from 14-9, 3.63 to 9-9, 4.77 -- which understates how poorly he pitched.

1) Joe Mauer: Career lows in virtually every category, excluding his 2003 rookie season -- and even then he had better slash stats. His absence behind the plate, I believe, played some unmeasurable part in the decay of the pitching staff.

Coming up short

Baseball Info Systems's
advanced metrics suggest
Trevor Plouffe is the worst
defensive middle infielder
in the American League.

I have this season periodically dug into the advanced fielding metrics designed by Baseball Info Systems, and after seeing Ron Gardenhire promise "a lot of research and a lot of digging on what's going to make us better in the infield," I returned to my iPad app this morning to see what it tells me.

And the top take-away: The best way to "make us better in the infield" might be to stop playing Trevor Plouffe.

By BIS's "plus-minus" and "runs saved" measurements, no team in the American League is getting worse shortstop play than the Twins.

Derek Jeter has the worst individual totals; the Yankee captain is at -22 in plus-minus, -18 in runs saved. (I write in present tense, but the app appears to be about four games behind on the Twins, so the numbers here are not up-to-date.) But Jeter complied those numbers over 969 innings.

Tsuyoshi Nishioka is -10 and -11 in 508 innings; Plouffe is -13 and -9 in 247 innings (and, since that certainly doesn't include his performance in Kansas City this week, that understates how poorly he's played). That makes the Twins duo -23 and -20, worse than Jeter in almost 200 fewer innings.

And Plouffe isn't merely a dismal shortstop. He's even worse, on a per-inning basis, at second base (-9 and -8 in just 127 innings there.) In fact, he has the worst totals at second base in the AL, in about one-tenth the playing time of a regular second baseman. The Twins' second base play, by these metrics, have been about average if you take Plouffe's innings out.

Now the disclaimer: Even Baseball Info Systems is wary of putting a lot of weight on one year's numbers, much less one year of part-time play. But these figures jibe with what we think we see. If Trevor Plouffe isn't the worst defensive middle infielder in the AL, he's in the running.

And Nishioka isn't much better. The more we see of this defensive duo, the better Brian Dozier looks — and we haven't seen him yet.

Contemplating Tsuyoshi Nishioka

Tsuyoshi Nishioka struggled defensively on Friday.

The good news for Tsuyoshi Nishioka on Friday: He had two RBI singles.

The bad news: He gave away a run in the field. And that understates his problems, as LaVelle Neal details here.

I opined at the end of June that Nishioka is a better defensive shortstop than Trevor Plouffe. I still believe that to be the case, but the margin is shrinking the more I see Nishi play short.

For what it's worth, the Baseball Info Systems metrics available to me through an iPad app says Nishioka, through 48 games at short, is -5 in plus-minus and has given away seven runs. Plouffe is -5 and -4, but his numbers were compiled in just 15 games. Sample sizes matters; those figures, in and of themselves, don't mean much. Our eyes agree with the numbers, however; the Twins have not gotten good shortstop play this season.

Nishioka is hitting a bit better  now — he has an eight-game hitting streak going this month, which isn't quite the same thing as hitting well (.321/.321/.357 in that stretch with five strikeouts and no walks)— and the birth of his son last week is probably good for him emotionally. But just as Plouffe's defensive woes made him unplayable at shortstop, games like Friday's suggest the same about Nishioka. His arm strength makes him a marginal shortstop at best; if he's going to combine that with bobbles and mental errors, it's a problem.

I'm not sure at what point the Twins write off their investment in him and move on to the next middle infielder. One factor is that he's 27 and a star in his native Japan; he was supposed to be a finished product, not a work in progress.

My expectation is that he'll get the rest of 2011, at least, to try to establish himself. The returns to date have been discouraging.

The shortstop mess

Tsuyoshi Nishioka has generally appeared
overmatched at the plate this season,  and his
slash line of .208/.259/.233 agrees.

Tsuyoshi Nishioka now leads the Twins in playing time at shortstop— 42 games, 41 starts, 355.1 innings.

Alexi Casilla has 306.2 innings, Matt Tolbert 174 and Trevor Plouffe 133. Adds to to 969 innings, with Nishioka getting about 37 percent of the playing time, Casilla 32 percent, Tolbert 18 percent and Plouffe 14. (Rounding error means those figures add up to 101 percent.)

Offensively, Casilla is the only one who approaches acceptable. (His OPS — on base plus slugging — is .691, which ranks 62nd among the 83 American League players who qualify for the batting title and is roughly the same as Derek Jeter's and Torii Hunter's. Seven of the players behind him are are also middle infielders.) Plouffe has five homers, yes, but his batting average is below .200, his slugging percentage below .400.

Defensively, they all rate below average. The most recent set of the Baseball Info Systems metrics I have  shows Nishi as -2 in plus-minus, -4 in runs saved; Casilla at -4 and -2; Tolbert at -1 and 0; and Plouffe at -5 and -4. (Those numbers are shortstop specific.)

Tolbert may not be the best defensive shortstop on the roster — clearly Ron Gardenhire doesn't believe so — but, for what it's worth, he also comes off best of six men who've played second base in those metrics. Nobody's been quite the blooming disaster at second that Plouffe was at short, but if Michael Cuddyer (-3, -3 in 115 innings) gets enough playing time there, that can change.

The Twins spent last offseason trying to find multi-year solutions to their middle infield. At this point, Nishioka has hardly established himself as part of the solution. The ever-inconsistent Casilla, maybe.

I am growing ever more curious about Brian Dozier, who opened the season at High A Fort Myers and hit .322/.423/.472 there, then moved up to Double A New Britain, where he is hitting .307/.374/.458.  He turned 24 in May, so he's not particularly young for those levels (Plouffe is 25 and has tons of time in Triple A, a level Dozier hasn't touched yet).

Dozier may not be an answer. But I'm seeing increasing evidence that the players ahead of him aren't either.

Nishioka or Plouffe? It's an easy call for me

I'm going to chalk this one up to the shortened attention span of the wired generation.

It hasn't always been pretty, but Tsuyoshi
Nishioka has played a better shortstop than
Trevor Plouffe.

There's a growing demand by Twins bloggers (some of whom are smart enough to know better) for the Twins to recall Trevor Plouffe and reinsert him at shortstop in Tsuyoshi Nishioka's stead.

Plouffe is hitting well at Rochester. Fine. Maybe the Twins will find some sucker to take him off their hands.

The truffe about Plouffe is that, hot streak aside, he's not a good enough hitter to play any position other than shortstop, and he can't play short worth a summary sentence to Hades.

I'm not declaring Nishioka to be the answer at shortstop. I am declaring that Plouffe has, in roughly 700 professional games at the position, conclusively proven that he's not the answer.

The assertion, made in two of the above links, that Nishioka is at least as poor defensively as Plouffe is simply preposterous. Yes, Nishioka has made errors. My eyes tell me Nishi's range is visibly superior to Plouffe's. I believe that two of Nishka's boots came on balls up the middle that Plouffe would simply never have touched.

More objectively — and this is a very slender reed to put any weight on — the metrics agree with me. The Bill James Match-ups widget on my iPad says that in his 15 games at short, Plouffe was -5 in plus-minus (meaning he was giving away a play as compared to the average shortstop every three games), -4 in runs saved. Nishioka, in his first eight games at the position (for some reason the stats haven't been updated this week) is 0 in plus-minus, -1 in runs saved.

Again: These numbers don't mean much. It's 15 games for Plouffe, eight for Nishioka, and even the most devoted adherent of defensive metrics will say you need three years of them to draw conclusions.

But the Twins have seen Plouffe for more than those 15 games. Remember: He's been in their farm system since he turned pro in 2004. They know what he is better than the rest of us do. And they know what he isn't.

They don't have that history with Nishioka, which is reason to remain patient with him.

Degrees of embarrassment

Losing is bad.  Losing six straight is worse. Maybe losing 15-0 is worse yet.

This play was the difference between
trailing by 10 runs and trailing by nine. 

It's impossible to lose 15-0 and yield 25 hits and look good. The Twins on Monday night didn't look professional. Or even attentive.

It was back to the days of April and May, when ground balls rolled through the infield, the baserunners were prone to blunders and more rundowns were botched than productive.

Getting thrown out at home when down 10-0? What's the point, Alexi Casilla?

Then there was the first-inning rundown that took forever. The infielders were so wary of getting close to Matt Kemp that I figured he had some communicable disease. The rundown problem had disappeared during the hot streak — remember when the Twins won 15 of 17? — but it sure looked bad again Monday.

Tsuyoshi Nishioka was charged with one error. He was, for a while, charged with a second, but the ruling was changed after the game. Having watched the replay, I don't really understand changing the ruling. Yes, the ball was hit hard, but (a) he didn't field it cleanly and (b) made a bad throw.

Whether it's a hit or an error, that play underscores the issue for a shortstop with a less than optimal arm. Shortstops have the infield's longest throws, so there is a premium on fielding the ball cleanly. When Nishioka played that hard hop off his chest, he had little chance of getting the out because his arm isn't good enough to make up the difference.

Tuesday is another day. May the home team not fleece the paying customers again.

Late night: Giants 5, Twins 1

Bobble, bobble, boot and trouble: Cody Ross is safe
at second base as Alexi Casilla fails to catch a throw
from Tsuyoshi Nishioka.

Box score here

Game story here

The sloppiness returned, at least for one game.

The Twins infielders committed three errors, two of which created unearned runs — and that understates the damage done.

In the second inning, with one on and one out, Brandon Crawford — the former Mankato MoonDog -- hit what appeared to be a double play ball to Tsuyoshi Nishioka. But Alexi Casilla dropped Nishioka's flip, and instead of being out of the inning, Nick Blackburn had two on with one out — and promptly surrendered a triple.

The scoring rules being what they are, only one run was unearned (the rules say you can't assume the double play). But really, neither should have scored.

Then in the eighth inning, Nishioka (who had played a fine game in the field to that point) bobbled a slow grounder with two out and a man on third. That error created an unearned run charged to Jim Hoey. It also makes three errors charged to Nishioka in six games at shortstop.

Even if we could wipe all three runs off the ledger, the offense mustered only one run itself, and that came on what was originally scored as an error. (The ruling appears to have been changed after the game.)

So the winning streak ends. And the three teams ahead of the Twins (Detroit, Cleveland and Chicago) in the AL Central all won. Not a good night for the Twins.

Shortstops past, present and future

At most positions, the first question about a prospect is: Can he hit? At shortstop (and catcher, and to a limited extent center field) the question is: Can he handle the position?

Tsuyoshi Nishioka
dodges a San Diego
baserunner.

Shortstop in particular is seen as the athlete's position. The best athlete on a high school team is probably going to be the shortstop. He needs the quickness to get to balls, the hands to field the grounders cleanly, the arm to make the infield's longest throws, the grace and body control to put it all together. And, to top it off, he needs the intelligence/instincts to know what the play is.

It's a high set of standards, and it's worth remembering that Greg Gagne — probably the best defensive shortstop the Twins have ever had and certainly the most reliable — was not certain to stick at the position as he made his way through the Twins system, that there were those in the organization who thought he should be a third baseman.

Tsuyoshi Nishioka has played four games at short for the Twins. To the naked eye, he has displayed impressive range and a suspect arm. He's been charged with two errors — one on a bobbled grounder, the other on an off-target throw — which gives him an ugly fielding percentage. To the (very limited) extent that the defensive metrics have anything to tell us, he's an average shortstop (0 in plus-minus, 0 in runs saved), which still puts him ahead of the other three men who've played shortstop for the Twins this season. Realistically, the stats from four games tell us nothing. Subjectively, he appears capable of handling the position.

Levi Michael was the 30th
overall pick earlier this month.

Also over the past few days, we've had an opportunity to observe Levi Michael, the Twins first round draft pick, playing short for North Carolina in the College World Series. The Twins say they expect Michael to stick at short; I suspect that's a minority opinion.

I haven't drawn any conclusion from what I've seen about Michael's shortstop future. I did see him come in for a grounder and make the play to first — a truly routine play, except that I have three times this year (once in spring training, twice in regular season) seem Trevor Plouffe play such balls into infield singles.

Michael knows how to come in grounders? Hey, right there he's ahead of Plouffe.

Nishioka at shortstop, Game 1

I watched a good bit of Tsuyoshi Nishioka's Target Field and shortstop debut Thursday, and the Japanese import got quite a few chances.

My take on his performance:

He bobbled one grounder, a routine double-play chance, and didn't even salvage one out on the play.

He showed a lot of range to both the left and right. Going left — behind second — is probably his strong suit as a shortstop.

Tsuyoshi Nishioka takes the field for
his home debut. I don't know what the leap's
about.

The acid test for a shortstop's arm — which is the scouting rap on Nishioka as a shortstop, that his arm is a bit weak—is the backhand play in the hole between third and short. Nishioka got to those balls well, but after that ...

The first one was a grounder by Paul Konerko, a slow right-handed hitter. Nishioka skipped the throw to first, and Konerko beat it out. It looked to me as if Nishioka was trying the "turf throw" popularized in the 1970s by Davy Concepcion, who figured that artificial turf added velocity to the first bounce. He would throw the ball to get one long bounce to the first baseman, counting on the turf to provide a true bounce. Most of the stadiums in Japan have artificial turf, and Nishioka may have had the turf throw in his repertoire.  It's not going to work in Target Field.

He had another backhand play in the hole later in the game — Carlos Quentin — and made the throw in the air. It was a close play; the ump ruled Quentin safe, but the replay suggested the throw beat him. Still, it was easy to see why Nishioka's arm strength has been questioned.

There was a third play that impressed me. In the ninth inning, Alex Rios chopped a grounder to Nishioka's right, not so far as to demand a backhand play. Nishioka did a good job of "getting around" the ball so that he was to the right of the ball and had his momentum going in the direction of the throw.

It's a subtle play, one that Greg Gagne excelled at, and one that seems to elude Trevor Plouffe.

My sense off this one game: He appears to have the range for shortstop. He doesn't have Cal Ripken's arm, but neither did Ozzie Smith,  and nobody complained about Smith's defense.  I think he throws better than David Eckstein, and the Angels won a World Series with Eckstein at short.

I'm  not sure he's a better shortstop than Alexi Casilla (at least the Casilla of the past two weeks), but if this keeps him from getting blindsided by baserunners, it's a worthwhile tradeoff.