Pic of the Week

Kish wears the cup from a batting-helmet sundae while
attending the "Bark in the Park" game in Miami.

 Obligatory joke at the Marlins' expense: Attendance in Miami has gone to the dogs.

The sixth starter

P.J. Walters, having been designated for assignment, is now in baseball limbo. He's not officially in the Twins organization, but if nobody claims him on waivers, he can be outrighted to Triple A.

At the moment, the Twins' rotation features, in alphabetical order, Kevin Correia, Sam Deduno, Scott Diamond, Kyle Gibson and Mike Pelfrey. (It will be interesting to see how Ron Gardenhire lines them up coming out of the All-Star break; my guess is that Gibson will be at the end of the line.)

Considering that there's about half the season yet to play, the odds are that bunch will change. If Walters isn't a candidate to move back into the rotation, who is?

The possibilities include:

Pedro Hernandez

Status: 40-man roster, pitching in Rochester
Comment: Hernandez has made seven starts in the majors for the Twins (3-1, 5.54) and six for Rochester (2-2, 3.60). If he has a major league career ahead of him, it's probably as a relief pitcher. He'd be a safe place-holder, but that's all.

Cole De Vries was
5-5, 4.11 in his
time with the Twins
in 2012.

Cole De Vries

Status: 40-man roster, pitching in Rochester
Comment: The Minnesota native would have opened 2013 in the major league rotation but ran into arm issues. He's made nine starts in Rochester and has gone 3-4, 8.16, with just 19 strikeouts in 43 innings. Hard to see him being close to a callup.

Liam Hendriks

Status: 40-man roster, pitching in Rochester
Comment: The Aussie opened with the big club and went down quickly. He dominated the International League last year but has fallen off this year (1-6, 5.05). His status isn't high.

Vance Worley 

Status: 40-man roster, pitching in Rochester
Comment: He's 5-3, 3.81 since his demotion, which looks pretty good compared to his fellow 40-man roster mates. But it comes with just 30 strikeouts in 52 innings. I do expect him to return to the major league rotation this year, but that's more because of what the Twins have invested in him than because he's earned it.

Minor league veteran
Andrew Albers pitched
for Team Canada
in the WBC.

Andrew Albers

Status: Not on the 40-man roster, pitching in Rochester
Comment: Lefty from Canada, he was just named to the IL all-star team (8-3, 3.00 with 86 K in 99 innings). He's 27 and has spent more time in his career in relief than starting, but he's been a fixture in the Red Wings rotation and is having a fine season. I don't see him as a likely long-term rotation candidate.

Logan Darnell

Status: Not on the 40-man roster, pitching in Rochester
Comment: Another lefty, he has made one start for the Red Wings after a strong first half with Double A New Britain (6-6, 2.61). He's 24, and this is by far his best minor league performance. Probably behind Albers in terms of getting a chance.

Nick Blackburn:
Forgot he was still
around, didn't you?

Nick Blackburn

Status: Not on the 40-man roster; on rehab assignment in the Gulf Coast League
Comment: He makes the list only because he's getting $5.5 million this year, which I believe makes him the Twins' highest-paid pitcher. He's gotta do something in the minors before the Twins will consider letting him try to earn some of his pay in the majors, and I don't think it's real likely. No future benefit from his return; the Twins won't exercise his $8 million option for 2014.

Alex Meyer

Status: Not on the 40; currently on disabled list
Comment: Was shut down with a shoulder issue last month; the Twins say there's no structural damage, but caution is being exercised anyway. Probably the best pitching prospect in the organization, he's 3-3, 3.69 in Double A New Britain with 73 strikeouts in 61 innings. Won't get a callup this year. (Came to Twins in the Denard Span trade.)

Trevor May came
to the Twins in the
Ben Revere trade.

Trevor May

Status: On the 40, pitching in New Britain
Comment: Some good signs from May as he repeats Double A (6-5, 3.98 with 93 K in 95 innings). The control is improving, although his season walk rate (3.9 BB/9) is still too high. He might be a September callup, since he's already on the 40, but he's not going to be yo-yo'd up and down. Expect patience with him. 

Shuffling the pitchers

P.J. Walters collects himself before throwing his first
pitch Wednesday against the New York Yankees.

The Twins have swapped out a starting pitcher and rebranded some bullpen roles. Let's look:

P.J. Walters designated for assignment: Mike Pelfrey is coming off the disabled list to make Saturday's start. The Twitter buzz from the beat writers this week suggested that both Walters and Scott Diamond were pitching for their jobs in the Yankees series.

Diamond went 6.2 innings, allowing three runs (two earned); he also had, according to Baseball reference, more groundballs than fly balls for the first time in four starts. Diamond lives on the grounders, and his GB rate this year is closer to average that top-of-the-charts, as it was last year.

For his part, Walters went five innings, allowing three runs, all earned. And it was Walters who lost his job.

Which, if it was indeed down to Diamond vs. Walters, the right choice. Neither man is gifted with overwhelming stuff, but Diamond has more markers in his favor (not the least of which is being left-handed).

Walters is out of options, and Diamond is not, but the call apparently wasn't close enough for that tow sway the decision. So now Walters enters the 10-day limbo of DFA and waits to see what happens.

Duensing, Burton slide down the bullpen hierarchy: The Twins eight-man bullpen has had two castes this season: The four late-and-close guys (closer Glen Perkins, set-up man Jared Burton, and middle men Casey Fien and Brian Duensing, who are generally used for fractional innings to get out of jams in the sixth and seventh), and the four longer men (Josh Roenicke, Anthony Swarzak and rookies Ryan Pressly and Caleb Thielbar).

Burton had a rough June (ERA 7.45 for the month) and he opened the new month by giving up three runs in one-third of an inning in Game 1 of the Yankees series.  So now Fien is supposedly going to be the eighth-inning guy while Burton works in lower-leverage situations.

It's less clear who gets the ball in Fien's customary role, which isn't exactly low-leverage. The Twins like a power arm in that job, and I would think that points to Pressly. But (a) they might prefer to give the veteran Roenicke the first shot and (b) Pressly hasn't been all that effective of late either.

Ideally Burton straightens things out quickly and reclaims the eighth-inning role. Fien may be just as good in that role as Burton, but the options for Fien's accustomed role are thin.

Caleb Thielbar has
walked seven and
allowed five hits
in his 18-plus innings.

Similarly, Thielbar has supplanted Duensing in the left-handed set-up role. Duensing, who has been death on left-handed hitters for most of his career, has not been nearly as effective this year (.292 batting average allowed to lefties).

Thielbar hasn't been charged with an earned run yet in the majors (18.2 innings), although he has allowed some inherited runners to score. Nor, through 16 games, has he ever been brought in with a lead.

So far, Ron Gardenhire has used Thielbar much as he used Craig Breslow in 2008. Dennys Reyes was Gardy's primary LOOGY (Left-handed One-Out GuY), and the manager wouldn't use Breslow in game situations. Pigeonholing Breslow into low-leverage situations only was one reason the Twins didn't win the divisional title that year.

The Twins aren't winning the division this year no matter how Thielbar is used. But maybe a lesson has been learned.

Attendance and "dynamic pricing"

The Twins' announced attendance for the Monday and Tuesday games against the Yankees didn't reach 30,000, a fact that had Pat Reusse declaring on Twitter that "Twins fans don't give a damn about this team." (When the Wednesday night game drew 38,000 plus, Reusse credited the scheduled fireworks.)

I would think that those figures suggest more that Yankee fans in Minnesota -- and they're out there  -- don't care about their team, but never mind that.

A greater point is that in this new age of "dynamic pricing," attendance -- or, more precisely, tickets sold, since that's what is announced -- is not a particularly good measure of fan interest.

Pull out your handy-dandy Twins pocket schedule and examine the seating chart. Note the lack of specific prices. The Twins have not only a bewildering number of section classifications in Target Field, they have five different classifications for games. The Friday-Saturday games last month against Detroit were listed as "elite" games; the Sunday game of that same series was a "premium" game; when Detroit comes to Minnesota for a weekday series in the last week of the season, those games will be "extra value" games, and the tickets will be considerably lower priced.

The result that the same seat is priced differently for different games.

And the point of dynamic pricing isn't to maximize ticket sales; it's to maximize income. These are not the same.

Let me illustrate with some made-up numbers -- made up because (a) I'm not privy to the real numbers and (b) I want to keep this easy to follow.

Imagine a section of 1,000 tickets. If you price them at $10 apiece, you can sell them all for each game, $10,000. Price them at $100, you only have to sell 100 of them to get that same $10,000. Sell 500 of them at that price, you get $50,000 -- and Pat Ruesse sees empty seats.

I suspect that, had the Twins known how little interest there would be in the Yankees as an opponent -- remember, these aren't the Yankees we've come to know and loathe; no Jeter, no A-Rod, no Teixeira, no Granderson -- this series wouldn't have gotten the elite, gouge-the-buyers designation. (Even in Yankee Stadium, ticket sales are down some 6 percent, and the TV ratings are reportedly down an astounding 40 percent.)

But I don't know that for a fact. It's possible that the extra charge levied for these "elite" games against the Yankees more than made up for the fact that about a third of the tickets went unsold. I do suspect that after a few years of dynamic pricing, the Twins will have sufficiently refined the algorithm to find the sweetest spot of revenue.

That's their goal, remember. Not butts in seats, but money in the wallet.

The outfield without Willingham

Josh Willingham went on the disabled list Tuesday with a torn meniscus and a bone bruise in his knee. The problem really began, methinks, when he tried to steal second (on his own) in April and executed an awkward slide.

A bum knee goes a long way toward explaining his statistical downturn this season. Apparently he had hopes of returning soon after the 15 days, but after Tuesday's game it was announced that he will have the knee scoped..

It's now unlikely that there will be an trade market for Willingham this month. Not that one should have expected much of one anyway. He's a 34-year-old low-average slugger with limited defensive value (if any); I don't think he'd have fetched a prime pitching prospect even if he were duplicating last season's numbers.

Aaron Hicks was reinstated from the disabled list to fill Willingham's roster spot. Terry Ryan had been saying that Hicks had to produce on his rehab assignment to return to the majors, and Hicks hadn't. But here he is again anyway.

Hicks started Tuesday's game (and had a couple of hits), with Clete Thomas taking a seat. It bears watching how Ron Gardenhire handles this situation. Thomas has been more productive than Hicks, but Hicks is a more significant piece of the puzzle and needs to play. If Gardy would rather play Thomas, Hicks should be returned to the minors.

One silver lining to Willingham's injury is that it should make more playing time available for Chris Parmelee. Oswaldo Arcia has (as he should) one corner outfield job; like Hicks, there is no point to having Arcia in the majors if he's going to sit. Unlike Hicks, Arcia is producing. Center field belongs to Hicks and Thomas, of course. Parmelee came into Tuesday's game with unimpressive numbers on the season (.234/.318/.400) but he'd hit three homers in his last eight games -- eight games with a slash line of .320/.433/.800. (And then he went hitless Tuesday -- not just hitless, but with three strikeouts in his four at-bats.)

It's been a odd, frustrating season for Parmelee. He's been better defensively in right than anticipated, and he's pretty consistently going deep into at-bats. Both are pluses. But at least until the past week or so, he's come up empty too often in those at-bats. I believe that process leads to results, and based on that theory, I still have hopes for Parmelee. I don't want to see the Twins give up on him too soon.

The decline of Jared Burton

Jared Burton, Ron Gardenhire's first choice for eighth innings, had another poor performance Monday night.

He entered with a 4-3 lead, faced four batters, surrendered three hits and was charged with three runs and his sixth loss of the season.

He didn't walk anybody, but a quick look at his statistics suggests that control, or lack of same, is a significant part of his problem. Last year, in 62 innings, Burton walked 16 men; he's already walked that many this season, in 35.2 innings.

It should be noted that his walk rate this year (4 BB/9 innings) is about what he had for his career other than 2012, suggesting that last year was a bit of a fluke.

Burton was very good in April and May, but June was not kind to him (7.45 ERA) and obviously July is off to a bad start.

Which raises the question: If it's time to switch to somebody else for the main setup role, who would it be?

Burton himself has been worked at a harder pace this year than last, and he's not the only hard-used reliever in the Minnesota bullpen. Five Twins are among the top 40 in the league in relief innings, with Anthony Swarzak leading the list with 52.2 innings. Rookie Ryan Pressly, who I think will eventually take a significant late inning role, is perhaps showing some signs of wear; he's given up runs in each of his last four outings, and his ERA has more than doubled during that stretch.

Too many bad starts, too many bullpen innings. It's not a good recipe.

Ex-Twins watch: Matt Guerrier

Matt Guerrier goes into a handstand during
batting practice, to the amusement of teammate
Brandon League.

The news Sunday that Matt Guerrier had been designated for assignment by the Los Angeles Dodgers prompted me to visit his Baseball Reference page to review his career.

He had a nice run with the Twins, starting out as the long man/mop up guy and working his way into a key set-up role. He had five straight seasons (one with the Dodgers) in which he made at least 70 appearances, and he twice led the league while with the Twins in games pitched.

All that work — plus the fact that he's in his mid-30s now — probably took a toll on his arm. Guerrier spent most of 2012 on the Dodgers' disabled list, and while he was back on a 70-games-pitched pace this year, he wasn't effective (a 4.80 ERA doesn't cut it anywhere, but particularly in pitcher-friendly Chavez Ravine).

And so the Dodgers — in last place in the NL West but only four games out of first — decided to eat the remaining $2 million or so of his contract and move on.

It's possible that Guerrier will land somewhere once he's cleared waivers and been given his release; he has a track record, and the Dodgers will be on the hook for the $2 million. But it won't be in Minnesota. The Twins don't have a bullpen problem (even if the relief crew got torched Sunday by the Royals), and even if they had an opening, they have younger and presumably more talented options in their minor league system to go to first.