A one-day pitching callup

Kris Johnson was acquired
from the Pirates for Duke
Welker, who was himself
acquired from the Pirates
in the Justin Morneau trade.

Another day, another rain out.

The bizarre decision by the schedule makers to send a southern California team for a one-shot series Minnesota in the month most likely to be disrupted by weather is apparently magnified by the fact that the Twins and Dodgers share just three mutual days off the rest of the way.

So there should be no doubt that the two teams really, really want to get these games in today and Thursday.

The Twins intend to call up Kris Johnson, left-handed pitcher, to start one of the Thursday games. Johnson would be the first lefty to start for the Twins this year.

Since I posted this piece almost a week ago about potential rotation replacements, two notable things have happened to the Triple A starters:

• Trevor May lost the strike zone in him most recent start and
• Alex Meyer appears to have found a VIP -- Very Important Pitch. Specifically, a change up.

Meyer apparently learned a different changeup grip from colleagues Yohan Pino and Deolis Guerra. He had been unable to master the circle change, a pitch beloved in the Twins organization; Pino and Guerra suggested that he try their three-fingered grip. The result: 22 strikeouts in his two most recent starts, a total of 12.1 innings, the last coming with assistant general manager Rob Antony in attendance.

Two starts are two starts, and normally nothing to get revved up about, but if Meyer really has a quality change now to go with his imposing fastball and slider, he's coming up soon. He's not on the 40-man roster yet (Johnson is, as are May and Logan Darnell), and the Twins will want to be sure he's got it before they lop somebody, but it will happen.

Radio, radio Vol. 2

It's up a day later than I expected, but here's a link to my KMSU stint Monday on "Southern Minnesota Midday" with Jim Gullickson.

Enjoy.

Notes, quotes and comments

Tough times for those of us needing our Twins fix: Rained out on Sunday, scheduled day off Monday, and a weather forecast that suggests it will be difficult to get the Dodgers series played.

(They probably will play the games anyway, because it's darn difficult to reschedule these interleague series — and why do the schedulemakers give the Twins home interleague series in April against teams like Miami and Los Angeles anyway?)

Let's poke around for stuff for today's post:

* The Twins' TV broadcast crew came in seventh in the Awful Announcing website's fan poll. That's considerably higher than I would have expected, and indeed, the writer found it odd:

This rating is a little puzzling, because many of the negative comments were directed towards the regular crew of (Dick) Bremer and (Bert) Blyleven, and most of the praise was devoted toward part-time analyst Tom Kelly.

I'm always disappointed when I'm working during a game for which TK's in the booth.  I don't know that a dozen games or so of Kelly's work balances out the dreck from Blyleven.

I find myself muting the TV more often than I used to — such as when Blyleven launches into his daily pitch count rant — and the overall lack of comprehension among the broadcasters (radio and TV) of where analytics are taking the game does the audience a disservice. Blyleven (and Dan Gladden on the radio side) really need to modernize their thinking, or at least understand what they're railing against.

* Peter Gammons wrote this piece on Chris Colabello. I recommend it not only because it's about a Twins player, but because it is so Gammons-esque: Overwritten and sentimental, with a lengthy extraneous Dylan quote stuck in the middle. Gammons has been a great baseball writer for decades, but he needs an editor.

* This chart has Trevor Plouffe seventh in the majors at hard-hit ball rate so far this year, a very good sign for the Twins third baseman.

A change at shortstop?

Eduardo Escobar:
Is he about to claim
the shortstop job?

The Twins lineup for Sunday's game was posted before the postponement was announced, and I noticed that Eduardo Escobar was at shortstop for the second straight game.

Escobar for one game — especially a day game after a night game, as Saturday's start was — would be nothing out of the ordinary. Two games in a row suggests something else in play.

Ron Gardenhire has made his discontent with Pedro Florimon's anemic offense known the past few weeks, but most of the speculation about who would take over the position seems to have centered on Eduardo Nunez, picked up on waivers from the Yankees.

The problem with that notion: Nunez hasn't played a lot of shortstop at Triple A Rochester since the Twins picked him up. Danny Santana is there, and the Twins imagine a future with him securing the shortstop position for several years at least. I'm not as optimistic, but the point is: Developing Santana is a priority.

Plus, Nunez has pretty well established in New York that he's not a quality defensive shortstop, and the Minnesota pitching staff needs all the help it can get from its infield, especially considering the limited range of the outfielders.

Escobar is a more logical alternative if the Twins are about to pull the plug on Florimon as the regular. For one thing, while nobody should expect Escobar to be an offensive force, he has done some hitting in the minors — including a .307/.380/.500 slash line last year in Rochester (just 188 plate appearances).

Unlike Nunez, he is regarded as a capable defensive shortstop (he won the Gold Glove in the Venezulean Winter League during the offseason). I don't know how he compares to Florimon, but presumably the Twins think more highly of Florimon's defense. But no shortstop fields well enough to get away with hitting .115 for April.

I can foresee the Twins bringing Nunez up to take Escobar's utility role, with Escobar taking the regular shortstop job from Florimon. I can't see Nunez getting the shortstop job straight up.

---

Today is the fourth Monday of the month, so it's time for my scheduled stint on KMSU's Southern Minnesota Midday show with Jim "Gully" Gullickson, talking baseball and the Twins at 1 p.m. For those of you within range, KMSU is 89.7 FM (91.3 out of Austin); for those out of range, we'll put a link to a recording on the Free Press website later in the afternoon.

Pic of the Week

The crowd waits to enter Wrigley Field in Chicago Wednesday.

The Cubs celebrated the centennial of their home field last week.

Wrigley has a different name, a different look, even a different team from when it opened in 1914 to house the Chicago Chi-Feds, a team in the Federal League.

The Federal League lasted just two seasons, 1914 and 1915, but its brief life reverberated in baseball history for years. Two obvious legacies remain: major league baseball's federal anti-trust exemption, established in a Supreme Court ruling in a case rooted in the failure of the Federal League; and Wrigley Field, which was then called Weeghman Park, for the owner of the upstart team.

The park's iconic scoreboard, its even-more iconic ivy, the bleachers — all those came decades later.

And, of course, the park is still waiting for its first World Series championship.

Campaign reform

Chris Colabello, write-in
candidate.

Voting (or ballot-box stuffing) for the All-Star Game formally opened Friday, and with the game being held in Target Field this year, the Twins were heavily involved in the promotion of this non-event.

One of the more newsier items tweeted out of the Target Field press conference was the unsurprising news that neither Josmil Pinto nor Chris Colabello are on the ballot. This is unsurprising because the ballot's nominees are decided before the season began, and neither was expected to get this much playing time. It took injuries to Oswaldo Arcia and Josh Willingham to get Pinto and Colabello into the lineup.

Right now, Colabello leads the American League in RBIs (27) while bopping .318/.355/.523, and Pinto's .224 batting average is spiked with 16 walks for a .400 on-base percentage. But a month ago, it wasn't clear either would be on the major league roster, much less playing regularly.

I imagine that a write-in push for Colabello is coming. I'm not sure if it will be as an outfielder or as a DH. I do know the Twins aren't going to have their broadcasters urge us to write him in as a first baseman.

And a lot depends, too, on how Ron Gardenhire handles the lineup as Arcia and Willingham return. (Arcia is to begin a rehab assignment this weekend; Willingham is further away from playing.) There's no obvious candidate in the left field-right field-first base-designated hitter-catcher nexus to sit, but Arcia is a more important piece of the future than most of the current regulars.

Such problems have a way of working themselves out, and I don't imagine Gardenhire's losing any sleep over it yet.

DFA'd outfielder musical chairs

It started when the Oakland Athletics designated Sam Fuld for assignment. The Twins put in a waiver claim and landed the 32-year-old outfielder.

To make room on both the 25-man and 40-man rosters, the Twins designated Darin Mastroianni for assignment. Toronto — the organization from which the Twins landed Mastroianni to begin with — claimed him on waivers. To make room on their 40-man roster, the Blue Jays waived Kenny Wilson.

And the Twins claimed him on Thursday. Wilson, 24, takes the 40-man roster spot opened by the official retirement of Jason Bartlett; that paperwork hadn't gone through in time for the spot to be used to add Fuld.

Wilson's been assigned to Double A New Britain, where he'll play center field until Byron Buxton gets there. The RockCats have apparently been limping along with Mike Kvasnicka and Corey Wimberly in center. Kvasnicka is a part-time catcher and Wimberly is a 30-year-old who has played mostly second base in a decade of minor league ball, so odds are neither belonged in center defensively.

Wilson does. The problem is, he hasn't hit on any level. He was at .210/.239/.306 in 15 games for the New Hampshire FisherCats when the Jays waived him.

This year's Baseball America Prospect Handbook voices some optimism about Wilson. It has him as the Jays' 22nd prospect:

Wilson has developed at a slow pace but began to turn his tools into baseball skills in his fifth pro season ... an electric athlete who is a plus center-field defender ... Wilson, who switch hit earlier in his career, is now hitting only righthanded, his natural side, and his bat has improved enough that he could be a fringe-average hitter with continued development ...

BA gave him a grade of 45 High, which would put him in a clump of Twins prospects from 21 through 30 or deeper. I don't know that he'd rate that high in the Twins system; frankly, the fact that Toronto waived him this early in the season suggests that they weren't sold on the 2013 "improvement" as a hitter.

If Wilson has a major league future with the Twins, it will be as a reserve outfielder. (Like Sam Fuld, who started this whole sequence.) I wouldn't bet on that happening either, but for a couple weeks he'll shore up center for the RockCats — who are, like everybody else in Twins Territory, waiting for Buxton.