Ryan Pressly and bullpen roles

Jared Burton picked up the save Thursday night.

The Twins are now carrying 13 pitchers, eight relievers, on their 25-man roster, and unless the starting rotation suddenly discovers how to pitch seven innings consistently, that's probably going to be the rule the rest of the season.

We can divide the eight into two four-man groups, the guys who pitch in game situations and the guys who are there to eat innings. Then we can further break the groups down into more specific roles.

Group A has Glen Perkins, Jared Burton, Casey Fien and Brian Duensing.

Closer Perkins and set-up man Burton are reserved for the late innings. They generally don't pitch when the Twins are behind — the exceptions coming when the Twins have so seldom held a late lead that they haven't had any work for a while — and generally start innings rather than come in with men on base.

Duensing and Fien are the inherited runner specialists. Fien has inherited 22 runners in his team-leading 26 appearances; only three have scored. Duensing has inherited 17 runners with four scoring. (Burton, in contrast, has inherited three runners, with two scoring, and Perkins has inherited two runners, both of whom scored.)

Group B consists of Josh Roenicke, Anthony Swarzak, Ryan Pressly and Caleb Thielbar. These four have worked a lot of long relief and mop-up — too much of each, really, which is why there are now eight relief pitchers.

Roenicke has straddled the boundary between the two groups — he's been the alternative to Fien as the middle-innings get-out-of-a-jam rightie, but he's also been used as a long-relief alternative to Swarzak and Pressly.

Rookie Ryan Pressly
may be easing into a
more prominent role
in the Twins bullpen.

Alternatives were needed Thursday. Perkins had pitched three straight days, so manager Ron Gardenhire had shelved him for the day. Fien had pitched three out of four days, so he was also on the do-not-use list. That led to a juggling of roles, which did not go universally cleanly.

When P.J. Walters, who had a big lead, needed help in the seventh inning, it was Roenicke who got the call, not Fien. Roenicke struggled with his command. Both the inherited runners scored.

Duensing was called on to start the eighth inning, which is usually Burton's role, but he retired only one of the three hitters he faced. Pressly came in to get the last two outs (allowing the inherited runner to score). Burton had a no-drama ninth to wrap up the win.

Pressly is an increasingly intriguing bullpen option. As a rookie claimed in the Rule 5 draft last December, he has not been used often in high-leverage situations, but he gave Gardenhire two shutout innings in the 14-inning win Tuesday night and snuffed out the Brewers threat in the eighth Thursday.

He has, with the exception of Perkins, the highest velocity arm in the Minnesota bullpen. He's younger than either Fien or Roenicke. I rather expect Gardenhire to increase Pressly's role — first by supplanting Roenicke as the marginal seventh-inning jam rightie, then perhaps by challenging for Fien's role.

More bullpen depth is always a plus.

Where to hit Joe Mauer

Chris Herrmann got his first
major-league action of the season
Wednesday and picked up an
RBI single.

Joe Mauer is the Twins' best No. 3 hitter. He's their best No. 2 hitter. And, really, he'd be their best leadoff man, best cleanup hitter, best No. 9 hitter. He's their best hitter, period.

If the Twins had nine Joe Mauers in the lineup, they'd score (using his career stats) a bit more than seven runs a game (eight runs with 2013 stats). They only have one Mauer, however, and so they're scoring 4.28 runs a game, 11th in the American League.

Until this week, Mauer had been hitting second all season. Ron Gardenhire moved him back to his accustomed third spot on Monday. On Wednesday night, the Twins led off with Eduardo Escobar (career OBP .275, 2013 OBP .271) and followed with Brian Dozier (career OBP .266, 2013 OBP .255).

It worked, more or less; the two outmakers opened the game with base hits and scored first inning runs, and the Twins won 4-1.

But over the long run, giving guys like that extra at-bats is suicidal.

There's a growing sabermetric consensus that one's best hitter should hit second. I suspect the improvement is only marginal. I would prefer that Mauer hit second, but I don't think there's a huge difference between hitting him second or third.

There is, however, a larger difference between hitting somebody like Dozier second or sixth (or preferably lower). Each lineup slot, over the course of the season, represents a difference of a couple dozen plate appearances. Hitting Dozier second all year as opposed to sixth means giving him about 100 more trips to the plate — and at a .255 OBP, that means he's making about 75 more outs.

The specific problem with the lineup Wednesday wasn't so much the batting order as the personnel. The Twins had three established major league hitters (Mauer, Josh Willingham and Ryan Doumit) in the lineup (and two of the three have not performed to their usual levels this year). The other six have career OPS (on-base plus slugging) of .570 (Escobar); .582 (Dozier); .722 (Chris Parmelee); .232 (Chris Herrmann); .563 (Aaron Hicks); and .619 (Pedro Florimon). Parmelee's figure is a touch below league average; the rest, albeit in limited at-bats, are far below average.

It doesn't really matter if Mauer-Willingham-Doumit hit 2-3-4 or 3-4-5 when they're surrounded with that level of hitters.

Late night: Twins 6, Brewers 5, 14 innings

Aaron Hicks is greeted in the Twins dugout after scoring
the eventual winning run in the 14th inning. Hicks had
a home run and a double Tuesday.

Box score here.

Game story here.

The Twins and Brewers rode the see-saw Tuesday night.

Highlights for the Twins included a homer-saving catch by Aaron Hicks off Carlos Gomez (and Gomez' cheerful doffing of his batting helmet in salute of the play, another example of Gomez' endearing enthusiasm); homers by Hicks, Josh Willingham and Ryan Doumit; and Ryan Pressly's three-strikeouts-in-two-innings relief stint for the win.

And Milwaukee shortstop Jean Segura deserves notices for his six hits (seven at-bats). Segura is now hitting .365; the first five men in the Brewers batting order Tuesday left the game hitting .301, .365, .309, .311 and .326. Batting average is just part of the offense, but a string of .300 hitters isn't a bad foundation to build on.

Still, one marvels at the inadequacy of the Milwaukee first basemen. To be sure, the Brewers have lost Corey Hart and Mat Gambel to injuries, but still ... they've been playing shortstops at first most of the season, Alex Gonzalez and Yuniesky Betancourt. Neither is a particularly good hitter for a shortstop, and as first basemen they are simply pathetic.

A major league organization ought to be able to do better than that at first base.

Ex-Twins watch: Carlos Gomez

Carlos Gomez celebrates his second home run of the game
Monday in the Milwaukee dugout.

With free agency and arbitration and ever-shifting budgetary concerns, it makes sense for teams to limit their future focus to five years. Five years is the period of team control for a rookie.

This is the fourth season since the Twins traded away Carlos Gomez, the sixth since the Twins acquired him in the Johan Santana trade.

Only now is the outfielder emerging as a legitimate star. It took Go-Go years to find the key to his toolbox. Could this have happened while he was with the Twins?

In retrospect, I see these problems with how the Twins handled/developed Gomez:

• He was up too soon;
• They tried to force him into a role he wasn't fit for;
• There may have been a language barrier.

Go back to spring training 2008. The 2007 Twins had one good outfielder, Torii Hunter (Michael Cuddyer had missed much of the season with injury), and Hunter had left as a free agent. The Twins traded for Delmon Young to fill one outfield spot, and had a spring training competition for center field among farm system product Denard Span trade acquisitions Gomez and Jason Pridie.

Span was the best of the three that spring, but it was Gomez who came away with the job, probably because the front office wanted something immediate on the field from the Santana trade.

Gomez was just 22, and he had been pushed too quickly up the Mets system before the Twins got him (a chronic problem with Mets farmhands at the time). He wasn't ready to deal with major league pitching.

The Twins compounded the problem by forcing him into the leadoff slot. Span's skill sets lend themselves to a table-setter role; Gomez's do not. (Even now, Gomez has drawn just nine walks this season.) This just increased the frustration felt by team management with Gomez, who was being asked to do something he wasn't likely to succeed at.

Span came up in midseason and gave the Twins a legitimate leadoff hitter. By midseason 2009, Gomez was clearly on the outs with Ron Gardenhire, who was more willing to live with Young's flaws than Gomez's.

That, I argued at the time, was a mistake. Gomez's defensive skills more than made up for whatever offensive difference there was between the two — and the hitting stats at the time weren't that far apart.

I continue to wonder how much of the difficulty the Twins have had developing Latin players in recent years can be traced to the lack of Spanish speakers on the coaching staff. Gomez. Francisco Liriano. Alexi Casilla. Only through the offseason shakeup of the coaching staff this year have the Twins added a Spanish-speaking coach (Bobby Cuellar), and even he's out in the bullpen during games.

The Twins traded Gomez soon after the 2009 season for J.J. Hardy, and Gomez was the same frustrating player for the Brewers for two years that he had been with the Twins. Just as he had lost the center field job in Minnesota to Span, he lost the job in Milwaukee to Nyjer Morgan.

But Morgan wasn't/isn't as good as Span, and last year Gomez reclaimed the center field job. And now he's clearly a better player than Span, or Young, or anybody else who was taking playing time from him earlier in his career.

It was a long time coming — more time than the Twins expected six years ago, arguably more time than they could afford to invest in him.

Joe Benson, failed prospect

Joe Benson during spring training this year, when he
was one of three contenders for the Twins center field job.

Baseball is a difficult sport to master. High draft picks in the other major team sports routinely step immediately into starting lineups; in baseball they universally spend time, often years, in the minor leagues honing their skills.

And some of them, a lot of them, never make it.

That Joe Benson was a highly regarded prospect is obvious; he was the Twins second-round draft pick in 2006 (Chris Parmelee was their first-rounder), and he twice cracked Baseball America's Top 100 prospects, albeit barely (No. 100 in 2011, No. 99 in 2012). 

After his September 2011 callup, it seemed just a matter of time before he became a fixture in the Twins outfield.

Last weekend, the Twins needed a spot on the 40-man roster so they could activate P.J. Walters to make Saturday's start. They got that spot by waiving Benson, who was claimed by the Texas Rangers. 

Benson almost cleared waivers; Texas was the next-to-last team in the progression. Only St. Louis didn't have the opportunity to claim Benson.

Benson's 25 now, and he still possesses the athletic gifts that made him a high draft pick. But he's made almost no progress in the last couple seasons turning his speed and strength into usable baseball skills.

He left Rochester, the Twins' Triple A affiliate, with a slash line of .192/.256/.285; this follows an injury-plagued 2011 in which he combined at four levels for .202/.288/.336. This season he had 10 walks and 51 strikeouts in 165 plate appearances.

The Rangers shipped him down a level, to the Double A Frisco Roughriders of the Texas League, and he hit a home run Sunday in his first game there. He also struck out once. 

He's still young enough to find the ballplayer in the talent. But he has a long way to go, and it was increasingly obvious that it wasn't going to happen with the Twins. I don't blame them for pulling the plug.

Pic of the Week

A ball bounced under the mask of Cubs
catcher Dioner Navarro on Friday and
hit him in the chin.

Ah, the joy of being a catcher. All that padding, all that protection, and the ball still finds a way through.

Demoting Oswaldo Arcia

Oswaldo Arcia figures to be a big part of the Twins future,
but he's returning to Triple A this weekend.

No matter which stat you want to lean on, Oswaldo Arcia has been one of the better hitters in what has been a rather punchless Twins lineup.

Ten hitters have had more than 100 plate appearances for Minnesota this season. Arcia, whose 107 plate appearances is lowest on that list, ranks third in batting average (behind Joe Mauer and Justin Morneau) and on-base plus slugging (behind Mauer and Josh Willingham), second in slugging percentage (behind Mauer), tied for second in home runs (behind Willingham).

And Friday night, after the Twins were one-hit in Detroit by Anibel Sanchez (Arcia was 0-for-3), Arcia was optioned out to Triple A Rochester, one of the roster moves necessary to activate P.J. Walters to make the start today. (As of early this morning, the Twins had yet to clear a spot on the 40-man roster for Walters.)

Demoting Arcia is probably for the best.

Arcia had just one hit in his last 18 at-bats, three hits in his last 29. Pitchers had essentially stopped throwing him fastball strikes, and he wasn't adjusting well to the steady diet of breaking balls and changeups. And, to be blunt, if he ain't hitting, he ain't helping. His defensive skills are not strong; Chris Parmelee is a better defensive outfielder.

Arcia's a good hitter, or at least he's going to be a good hitter, and he'll adjust. He'll get his at-bats in Triple A, and the Twins will save on his service time while he's getting those at-bats. He'll be back.