Feeling a draft: End of May

Baseball America on Friday issued Mock Draft 4.0. It still has the Twins selecting high school shortstop Nick Gordon with the fifth overall pick.

What's more intriguing to me is the growing sense I'm picking up, from BA and elsewhere, that the Houston Astros — picking first for the third straight year — don't see a $6 million talent in the draft field. If so, that suggests that the Astros may do as they did in 2012 — strike a pre-draft deal with someone projected to go a good bit lower at a price well below slot and aim to spend the surplus on more difficult signs in later rounds.

One of the names bandied about as a potential target for such an approach is ... high school shortstop Nick Gordon.

Baseball America says the Twins are also considering college left-handed pitcher Sean Newcomb of Hartford with the fifth pick. I would have thought Aaron Nola of LSU, a right-handed pitcher, would be more in the Twins wheelhouse.

For what it's worth, Keith Law of ESPN, in his weekly chat, dismissed the notion of the Astros going for Gordon.

---

This from the esteemed Jim Crikket in Cedar Rapids, Iowa:

Twins GM Terry Ryan is in the house. Hearing he may be here in CR through this homestand. Really good to see him.
— JimCrikket (@JimCrikket) May 29, 2014

I've been wondering about Ryan's status. It was reported a couple weeks or so ago that he had finished his radiation treatments for his cancer but had yet to regain his appetite and was not ready to return to full duty as general manager.

And Rob Antony, the assistant general manager, continues to be the front office guy doing the regular press briefings.

That Ryan is in Cedar Rapids this weekend is noteworthy on this point: This is the time when the scouting department gets serious about its draft list. It is my understanding that Ryan makes a point of staying out of the way in this process anyway — as general manager, he might make a trip to see somebody for the first round, but he's not seeing the kids who might go in Round 8 or 18. With the cancer thing going on this spring, he probably is even more out of the loop on the prospects than usual.

Contemplating Eduardo Escobar

Eduardo Escobar has taken over the shortstop job.

By the raw percentages, the Twins' best hitter this year has been Eduardo Escobar, hitting .324 even after taking a 0-fer Thursday afternoon.

It hasn't been all singles, either; he's cracked 15 doubles, which is just shy of making the top 10 in MLB — not bad for a guy whose at-bats for the first month were severely limited.

It could be said that the difference in Thursday's game was that when the Rangers loaded the bases, Shin-Shoo Choo blooped a three-run double; when the Twins loaded them, Escobar hit a line drive at the first baseman for a double play.

He's had just 117 plate appearances, so all the usual caveats about small sample sizes apply. That said, he did hammer International League pitching when he was playing regularly there last season (.308/.380/.500), and he did hit for some respectable batting averages (but without much power) in lower levels of the White Sox chain before getting a big league bench job at age 23.

So far this year, the switch-hitting Escobar has been markedly better as a left-handed hitter (OPS .949 left-handed entering Thursday's play, .709 as a right-handed batter; figures from Baseball Reference). But over his career — which is still less than a full season of plate appearances — he's been better right-handed.

He's an intriguing figure in terms of evaluating his future. The White Sox hurried him into a major league utility infielder job, and he was pigeonholed early into that role. Perhaps he would have been a more highly regarded prospect had the Sox given him time to play in the minors. Instead, he got little playing time in his age 23 and 24 seasons (at least until the Twins sent him to Triple A at the All-Star break last year).

He's getting his chance now, though. And doing something with it. He might not be as good a hitter over a long haul as he's been so far, but he doesn't have to be a .330 hitter to keep the job.

The wasting of Josmil Pinto

Josmil Pinto last DHed
on May 16, almost
two weeks ago.

The Twins lost 1-0 Wednesday night. They played the game, as they have seven of their last eight, with one of their better hitters riding the pine.

Josmil Pinto figures to be in the lineup for today's nooner; he has become Sam Deduno's personal catcher, and that works on a variety of levels. It gives Kurt Suzuki a game off once every five games, and it's good for a catcher to sit that often. It also spares the hard-working Suzuki the physical beating Deduno's wildness figures to produce for the catcher. This battery pairs the rotation's one native Spanish speaker with a native Spanish speaker.

But Pinto should be playing more often than once every trip through the rotation. Maybe not at catcher -- Suzuki is clearly the more polished backstop, and he has, despite signs that his magic is wearing off, been a more productive hitter over the first two months of the season than could have been expected.

But still ... Pinto's got to play. The Twins, who in April had one of the highest runs scored totals in baseball, have sagged to the middle of the pack now, and part of the problem is that Pinto isn't getting the DH time he had been.

He isn't DHing because he's the backup catcher and Ron Gardenhire is loathe to play without a bona fide catcher on his bench.

Gardenhire's thinking on that specific aspect doesn't bother me nearly as much as it does several Twins bloggers on my Twitter feed. Catching is a unique position.

Sitting Pinto because the roster is without a third catcher is good reason to have a third catcher on the roster. Especially when one of the roster spaces is being wasted on Jason Kubel.

The Twins currently have on their roster Oswaldo Arcia, Kubel and Chris Parmelee -- three left-handed hitting corner outfielders of dubious defensive value. To be blunt, if they can't hit, they can't play.

And Kubel hasn't hit. His current OPS+ (On-base Plus Slugging compared to league average) is 84, meaning he's 16 percent below league average. (Pinto's, in contrast, is 125, 25 percent above league average.) An OPS+ of 84 is acceptable from a high-quality defensive shortstop; if Pedro Florimon had an OPS+ of 84, Eduardo Escobar would still be looking for playing time. It doesn't fly for a corner outfielder-designated hitter.

Kubel's slash line in May: .188/..297/.188. That's unusable, all the more so since Arcia and Parmelee make him redundant.

The argument against bringing Chris Herrmann back might be stated thusly: He's only here as an insurance policy. The Twins don't want to actually use him. 

And I agree with that. But they should want to actually use Pinto. And there's little reason for them to want to use Kubel. Herrmann's not a great hitter, but neither is Kubel these days.

Dump Kubel. Bring back a third catcher. And stop letting Pinto rot four games of five.

What is Aaron Hicks' ultimate role?

Aaron Hicks, no longer a switch hitter, went 0-for-2 Tuesday with a strikeout and was pinch-hit for in the eighth inning..

He also played a big role in keeping the Twins in the game, turning a potential three-run homer by Texas' Donnie Murphy into a sac fly. The catch was a useful reminder of the athletic tools Hicks has.

He just needs to turn those tools into skills. That's more difficult than it sounds.

Right now, Hicks is the best (only) center fielder the Twins have. But that won't last long. Byron Buxton, still sidelined by his bum wrist (with no timeline to return to action, it was reported Tuesday) is, without a doubt, the center fielder of the future.

And where does that leave Hicks?

He has not hit well enough to justify being a regular centerfielder, much less a regular corner outfielder. He's been a better hitter from the right side -- hence the decision to quit hitting left-handed -- but even his numbers against lefties are poor.

The Twins would doubtless love to see Hicks find a groove from the right side. If he can hit .260 with 20 homers, 20 steals and 80 walks (plus his center-field caliber range and cannon arm afield), they can justify making him a corner outfield regular.

That's a big IF, though. If the shift to hitting right-handed full time doesn't result in a rapid growth in results, he's a fourth outfielder -- at best.

A switch-hitter's switch

Aaron Hicks makes a diving catch in center field
during Monday afternoon's game.

The latest touch of the bizarre for the Twins outfield came Monday morning when Aaron Hicks announced that he is giving up on hitting left-handed.

It's easier to understand Hicks' surrender than to be optimistic about it, even after he collected two singles off a right-handed pitcher Monday. He is a natural righty, and he has a long-standing pattern, majors and minors, of hitting better from the right side.

The problem: Hicks is 24 and has been a switch-hitter since childhood; he has never before seen a slider break away from him.

To put it bluntly, Hicks is in a career crisis. It is not going to be an easy transition, and I doubt the Twins management encouraged this move -- at least not in midseason in the majors. Giving up switch-hitting may be the right move for Hicks, but doing so at the highest level is not the right place.

And yet there is no real alternative. The Twins, through misfortune and their own mistakes, have no real option for center other than Hicks.

I'm quite certain they figured during the winter that if Hicks repeated his 2013 failure they would have Byron Buxton straining at the leash to come to the show by midseason. But Buxton has spent most of the season on the shelf with a wrist injury. Eddie Rosario would have been a plausible option, but he's wrapping up his 50-game drug suspension and has yet to play outside of extended spring training.

The Twins brought in no minor league free agents who can play center. (That may not have been entirely the Twins' decision; such players and their agents look at the roster depth of teams and try to find the place that gives them the best shot at the majors. Buxton would be a major reason for such players to sign elsewhere last winter.) The Twins also lost two marginal center fielders, Alex Presley and Darin Mastroianni, on waivers as a direct result of a misplaced fascination with Jason Bartlett.

The result is that at both Triple A and Double A, the Twins' highest minor league affiliates are playing career infielders in center.

So the Twins are stuck with Hicks and his not-a-switch-hitter experiment for the foreseeable future -- unless they decide to swing a trade. (There are indications, by the way, that the Phillies are getting frustrated with Ben Revere.)

In the abstract, trading for a center field alternative, and giving Hicks a chance to cope with this drastic change in the minors, is the thing to do. But, of course, when you get to specifics, the question is: What are you getting, and what are you giving up?

The Twins outfield mess

Chris Parmelee heads back to the dugout Sunday
after another strikeout, one of four from the Twins
outfielders for the game.

Ron Gardenhire on Sunday deployed an outfield of infielders — two shortstops and a first baseman — all of whom opened the season in the minors. Eduardo Nunez, Danny Santana and Chris Parmelee combined to go 2-for-10 at the plate and make a hash of several catchable flyballs.

It was just another day in the continuing disaster that has been the Minnesota outfield, which has been rangeless and mistake-prone in the field and punchless at the plate.

Today the Twins get back their "regular" corner outfielders, Josh Willingham and Oswaldo Arcia.

Willingham and Arcia aren't a defensive upgrade, but at least they figure to hit. Minnesota's outfielders have been abysmal at bat, a truth that has been largely overlooked amid the well-based complaints about the slipshod fielding.

According to Baseball Reference on Sunday evening, the average American League outfielder has a slash line of .255/.322/.395, an OPS — On-base Plus Slugging — of .717. (This is referring to players who are playing left, right or center; it would include, for example, Chris Colabello's at-bats as a right fielder but not his at-bats as a first baseman.)

The Twins' outfield slash line: .214/.301/.298, OPS .599.

The Twins' left fielders (mostly Jason Kubel) entered Sunday hitting .250/.340/.331 — a solid on-base percentage, but little power. The AL left field average is .262/.327/.416.

The Twins' center fielders (mostly Aaron Hicks) were hitting .190/.306/.225. There's no way to find a positive in that slash line. The AL average: .251/.326/.379.

The Twins' right fielders (Colabello with the most PT in a very divided field) were hitting .202/.260/.303. That's almost as bad as the center fielders. The AL average: .253/.314/.391.

The outfield production has been so bad that all three positions have a lower OPS than shortstop (.678) — and shortstop for much the season was Pedro Florimon making outs.

---

Colabello and Chris Herrmann were optioned out to make roster space for Arcia and Willingham. The Herrmann demotion led to this tweet from the Pioneer Press's Mike Berardino:

Gardy said Chris Herrmann will play center field in games this time for @RocRedWings. Herrmann asked if he's still a catcher. He is.
— Mike Berardino (@MikeBerardino) May 25, 2014

Great. Playing shortstops in center hasn't worked, so let's try a catcher.

It's easy for me to excuse Herrmann's confusion. He's spent most of the season so far on the big league roster but he hasn't had even an inning behind the plate. And now he's going to spend time in center field.

Pic of the Week

President Obama contemplates a Jackie Robinson
jersey during the president's visit to the Hall of Fame.

President Obama on Thursday became the first sitting president to visit the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y., a visit intended to provide visuals for touting the economic value of tourism.

This photo came from the substantial exhibit at the museum on the Negro Leagues and the breaking of the color barrier, and this jersey is not usually so exposed. (The president was photographed holding a Babe Ruth bat and a Joe DiMaggio glove, relics the normal visitor doesn't get to touch; the Hall obviously set things up specially for the presidential tour.)

The blackball exhibit is one of the focal points of the museum, and the symbolic connection between Robinson and Obama is pretty obvious. No. 42 is one of the many giants on whose shoulders Obama stands.

And this statement seems to me self-evident: Racism didn't disappear from American life when a black man was elected president any more than it disappeared from baseball when a black man played for a major league team.