The non-roster invitees

Earlier this month the Twins released the names of 18 non-roster invitees to spring training. While that list is certainly incomplete -- for example, Eric Fryer was then still on the 40-man roster -- it still gives some sign of the organizational depth.

And the good news is that the invitees are relatively light on major league experience.

There are no Jason Kubels or Matt Guerriers, no guys who used to be good and are now trying to squeeze one more season out of their declining talents. Only four of the 18 have any major league experience, and even there, two are still in their 20s and another turned 30 this fall. Just three were signed this offseason as minor league free agents.

This suggests that the organization is increasingly confident in the ability of its own players to fill the rosters of its upper level farm teams competently. Rochester and New Britain in recent years have relied heavily on the castoffs of other clubs to fill the rotations and lineups -- and that has shown as well on the big-league club when it reaches down for help.

Shane Robinson, who the Cardinals cut loose rather than offer arbitration, is the one guy in this list who has a real chance of making the roster out of training camp. A few -- Byron Buxton and J.). Berrios, to name two -- are prime prospects in camp to expose them to the new staff (and vice versa). Most are organizational players.

The invitees:

Pitchers

J.O. Berrios

Tyler Duffey

Mark Hamberger

Ryan O'Rourke*

Taylor Rogers*

Adrian Salcedo

* = left-handed

Catchers

Mitch Garver

Tyler Grimes

Dan Rohlfing

Stuart Turner

Infielders

James Beresford

Doug Bernier

Heiker Meneses

Argenis Diaz

Outfielders

Byron Buxton

Eric Farris

Danny Ortiz

Shane Robinson

New to the organization this winter: Robinson; Meneses, who was with Boston; and Diaz, who was with Arizona. The guys with time in the show are Robinson, Hamberger, Diaz and Bernier.

Parmelee goes, Fryer stays

Eric Fryer caught
28 games last year
for the Twins and
hit .213.

My read last week about what the two players removed from the Twins 40-man roster would do proved correct: Chris Parmelee opted for free agency, and Eric Fryer accepted his assignment to Triple A Rochester.

It's all about opportunity. Parmelee (and his agent) can't see much in Minnesota. There's Joe Mauer and Kennys Vargas ahead of him at first base and DH, Torii Hunter and Oswaldo Arcia ahead of him in the outfield corners. Fryer, on the other hand, sees an unsettled situation behind Kurt Suzuki at catcher.

Presumably Fryer will join Mitch Garver, Tyler Grimes, Dan Rohlfing and Stuart Turner as non-roster catchers invited to spring training; unlike the other four, Fryer has a chance to make the major league roster. But that he was outrighted rather than Chris Herrmann or Josmil Pinto suggests that he should not be the favorite to emerge as the No. 2 backstop.

I will be curious about where Parmelee lands. I've suggested before a parallel between him and Garrett Jones, another left-handed hitting first baseman/corner outfielder who was blocked in Minnesota by Justin Morneau and has carved out a respectable career since being axed by the Twins. (Jones was traded this winter to the Yankees, and the idea seems to be that they will find platoon at-bats for him.)

Without studying the issue in any depth, Baltimore strikes me as a possibility. The Orioles have had a knack in recent years with castoff  first basemen/corner outfielders (Steve Pearce, Delmon Young, Chris Davis, even Lew Ford) and they lost two corner outfielders in free agency (Nelson Cruz and Nick Markakis).

Obviously, nobody thinks today that Parmelee deserves a spot on a 40-man roster. He's going to have to earn one, and that means he's got to hit. I haven't given up on that possibility.

My theoretical Hall of Fame ballot

The big doings in baseball news this week is the Hall of Fame balloting, with the last of the BBWAA members taking part scrambling to meet the deadline.

I don't have a vote, because I'm not a 10-year member of the BBWAA (or any tenure member, for that matter). Which is fine, because I don't cover baseball for a living.

The thing is, neither do most of the electorate. They have, for a few years, in the past. Or they have some tangential connection to a newspaper's coverage. But this has become one (just one) of the structural problems with the selection process: The BBWAA's Hall of Fame electorate is bloated with golf writers and basketball writers and copy editors who never leave the office.

The Hall of Fame selection process, as Bill James detailed years ago, was never well thought-out and isn't well designed today, and it probably never will be. Which is part of why thinking people have issues with it, and certainly part of why there are this year 18 or so candidates on the ballot who are, by established standards, qualified (or overqualified) for election.

Another of the structural problems is the 10-player limit on ballots. Had the writers been doing their job well, it wouldn't be an issue. The limit makes it almost impossible for the writers to clear the backlog.

The Hall this year shortened the length of time a player can be on the BBWAA ballot. This appears to be designed to get such players as Alan Trammell and Tim Raines, underappreciated by the ink-stained wretches, into the jurisdiction of the veterans committees. Maybe that will work.

Anyway, my 10, in no particular order:

1) Barry Bonds
2) Roger Clemens
3) Tim Raines
4) Alan Trammell
5) Randy Johnson
6) Pedro Martinez
7) Mike Mussina
8) Jeff Bagwell
9) Craig Biggio
10) John Smoltz

The Sunday Funnies

Rube Waddell was drunk -- not that that condition was all that unusual for the great lefty fireballer -- when he insisted to his teammates that he could fly. Stepping out of his hotel window with his arms flapping, he found himself waking up the next day in a hospital.

When one of his teammates explained how Rube had wound up there, Waddell was indignant. "I coulda been killed! Why didn't you stop me?"

"What?" replied his buddy. "And lose the hundred I had bet on you?"

The shift in pitcher workloads

For reasons related to a Strat-O-Matic project I won't bore you with*, I have been preoccupied in recent weeks by the 1969, 1987 and 2009 seasons.

And I have been struck, not for the first time, by the massive shift in pitcher workloads during my time as a fan.

In 1969, 11 pitchers either threw at least 300 innings or made at least 40 starts:

Claude Osteen, Bill Singer and Don Sutton, Dodgers
Ferguson Jenkins and Bill Hands, Cubs
Larry Dierker, Astros
Bob Gibson, Cardinals
Denny McLain, Tigers
Dave McNally, Orioles
Gaylord Perry, Giants
Mel Stottlemyre, Yankees

Juan Marichal of the Giants is oh-so-close to meeting those round numbers. He had 39 starts and 299.2 innings.

It all makes the fuss over Phil Hughes' missed bonus for 210 innings look rather silly, doesn't it?

Forty starts is roughly one-fourth of the schedule; a 40-start pitcher truly works every fourth game. Three hundred innings is more than one fifth of a team's innings.

In 1987, only one pitcher in the majors -- Charley Hough, a knuckleballer with the Texas Rangers -- had 40 starts, and nobody came close to 300 innings (Hough led with 285.1). Last season, nobody in baseball reached 250 innings (the high was David Price, 248.2 innings), and the high in starts was 34, shared by 10 pitchers.

There are a lot of reasons today's hurlers don't match the workloads of four decades ago. But I can't help but notice that of the 12 1969 pitchers listed above, five are in the Hall of Fame (Sutton, Jenkins, Gibson, Perry and Marichal).

And it might also be noticed that Dierker, McLain, McNally and Stottlemyre had their careers truncated. McNally and Stottlemyre were done at 32. Dierker's last season came at 30. McLain was out of baseball before he turned 30.

Between them, Osteen, Singer and Sutton started 122 of the '69 Dodgers' 162 games and pitched 930 of their 1,457 innings. This is almost inconceivable today.

*If you're truly interested, and I don't know why you would be, visit mankatostratnerd.blogspot.com.

The wandering Pierzynski

I was reminded on Christmas Eve of the old baseball chestnut,  "The best moves are the ones you don't make."

What reminded me of that was the news that A.J. Pierzynski had signed with the Atlanta Braves.

The Twins, you may recall, were hot for their former catcher last winter, but he spurned their two-year offer to take a one-year deal with the Boston Red Sox. It was an understandable decision; Pierzynski was a well-used 36, the Sox were defending World Series champs, and A.J. was chasing another ring.

It didn't work for him in Boston. The Sox released him during the All-Star break with their typical reputation-smearing whisper campaign. He finished the season with the Cardinals and didn't hit with them either.

And now Atlanta, where he probably projects as a backup, although it's not easy to discern the Braves' direction this offseason. As I said last summer, Pierzynski's days as a No. 1 catcher appear to be over. He can probably milk a few more seasons out of his career as a backup, but he's not going to stick in any one place for more than a year.

The Twins settled last year for Kurt Suzuki, who is about six years younger than Piersynski and rewarded the Twins with the best offensive season of his career. Even so, he tailed off rather sharply in the second half, the slump seemingly coming after he signed a two-year extension, and we'll see if the Twins get their money's worth out of the new deal.

Their second choice last December was certainly better than their first choice.

Merry Christmas

Last year I linked to the Baseball Reference page for Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, er Shortstop.

This year Rudolph had a slight dip in batting average, but his home runs rose and his OPS was stable.

BR took things a bit further this year, linking to a new card set for the North Pole Reindeer of the Holiday League -- the eight reindeer named in the Night Before Christmas plus Rudolph.

Here, for example, is the card for Comet, ace right-hander for the Reindeer. The back of the card says he went 20-13 with a 2.89 ERA and 341 strikeouts in 299 innings last season.

See the starting lineup for the North Pole Reindeer here.