A game in Cedar Rapids: J.O. Berrios

Jose Berrios delivers what appears from
his grip to be a change-up.
(Photo by Linda Vanderwerf)

My wife and I are in Cedar Rapids, where we saw the Kernels pull out a 3-2 win Sunday. We plan also to see the same two teams tonight. (Another guy who was there: Twins general manager Terry Ryan, who sat behind home plate taking copious notes)

We got to see Jose (or J.O.) Berrios, generally regarded as one of the Twins' top pitching prospects, on Sunday. Berrios turned 19 in May; he was taken in the supplemental round in the 2012 draft and utterly dominated the rookie leagues in the 30 or so innings he got to pitch. He was effective enough in winter ball that he was selected to pitch for Puerto Rico in the World Baseball Classic, although his innings were limited.

Things have been a bit more difficult for him in the Midwest League. Not that he has pitched poorly, but he's been challenged.

On Sunday, Berrios worked six innings of one-run ball. That sounds better than it was; he allowed five hits (all singles), walked five, committed an error on a pickoff throw, and got just three strikeouts. Pitching coach Gary Lucas had to visit him in the first and fourth innings.

Berrios was in and out of jams in the first four innings, including two with the bases loaded, and didn't have a 1-2-3 inning until his final frame. He didn't record a strikeout until the fifth.

What I saw: Fastball in the low 90s, a breaking ball (I assume a slider) in the mid 80s, and a change in the mid 70s. (Those velocities come off the stadium scoreboard, and Cedar Rapids regular Jim Crikket tells me it's a slow gun). Berrios' command Sunday was inconsistent, obviously.

But the opponent -- a good Quad Cities (Astros) team featuring Carlos Correa, who is probably the best player in the Midwest League now that Bryon Buxton is in Fort Myers -- really didn't square up many balls. Several of the hits were grounders that found a  hole. Berrios got 18 outs; only four were outfield flies. He threw two double play balls, and got 10 outs on grounders.

Berrios is, by the standards of pitching prospects, short (6 feet); he is "non-projectable", a scouting term that means that physically, he's as good as he's going to get.

What I saw suggested that he has the arm and the moxie to pitch in the majors, but not the command to succeed. Which makes sense, since (Bert Blyleven notwithstanding),19-year-olds who are ready to succeed in the majors are exceedingly rare.

Pic of the Week

Houston second baseman Jake Elmore tries to
shoo away a bird that was hanging around the
infield at Target Field Friday night.

Friday's bird-on-the-field during the Twins game reminded me of the "Kirby the Kestrel" sightings at Target Field in 2010. If that bird ever showed up again, I'm unaware of it.

Maybe it's been repelled by the bad baseball being played by the home team since then.

Contemplating Scott Diamond

Scott Diamond is nowhere near
the leaderboard in groundball
rate this season.

I  may be overly stubborn about this, but I still believe in Scott Diamond. He may be a minor leaguer at the moment, but he remains MFT — My Favorite Twin.

But it's quite obvious that even at his best — his best being 2012 — his margin of error is thin.

In 2012, he was at the top of the league in avoiding walks, very close to it in ground ball rate. By being the best in the league at what he was good at, he could overcome his significant weakness in strikeouts.

In 2013? He's a bit better than average in getting grounders, a bit higher than that in his walk rate. And his strikeout rate has gotten worse — he's fallen off to about half the league rate in strikeouts.

He's exceedingly unlikely to ever approach league-average in strikeout rate, which I am becoming increasingly convinced is the most important figure in pitching. And that means league average or a little better in control and groundballs isn't going to cut it for Diamond.

So why do I still have hope for him? He's lefthanded. He's intelligent. His BABIP — batting average on balls in play, a measure of, depending on one's view of the stat, either of how much his defense is helping him or how lucky/unlucky he is — would be one of the 10 highest in the league if he had enough innings to qualify. (In 2012, his BABIP was almost exactly average.)

But the underlying point remains: For Diamond to be successful, he has to be the best at what he's good at. That's a high hill to climb, and a status difficult to maintain once achieved.

Missing the benchmarks

Aaron Hicks has had
moments of brilliance
and stretches of
failure.

Another non-competitive loss Thursday for the Twins resulted in two demotions: starter Scott Diamond and center fielder Aaron Hicks were shipped out to Triple A Rochester.

Oswaldo Arcia was called up to take Hicks' spot; no move was immediately made to fill Diamond's rotation berth. The immediate speculation had Andrew Albers (like Diamond, a Canadian lefty) getting the call. I wonder if the delay might mean the Twins have a waiver-wire pickup pending; their sinking record has them in prime position to claim players.

There's no way to argue that Diamond and Hicks deserved to stay in the majors. Neither has had a good season, and both were sliding.

But their demotions signal a discouraging reality: As promising as things are in the minor leagues, the major league roster has made almost no progress toward contention. Coming into spring training, I identified eight specific areas that figured to be priorities. Of those eight, we can see success only in the bullpen roles and maybe at shortstop and second base. As for the others:

Scott Diamond's
strikeout rate, already
low, is sinking.

Starting rotation: Success here meant establishing Diamond and Vance Worley as 200-inning guys and getting Kyle Gibson settled into the major league rotation. Diamond and Worley regressed to Triple A, and Gibson's ERA is 6.21. The rise of Sam Deduno merely puts him in roughly the position Diamond was in at this point last season.

Center field: Success here meant establishing Hicks by season's end. Obviously, he's anything but established.

Leadoff hitter: Success here again meant Hicks. Ain't happening, at least not this year.

Establishing Trevor Plouffe and Chris Parmelee: Parmelee is in Triple A (the Star Tribune's Phil Miller noted on Twitter Thursday evening that the Opening Day outfield — Josh Willingham, Hicks and Parmelee — will be playing in Rochester this weekend). Plouffe is hitting .245/.303/.404, which isn't sufficient to carry his defense at third base.

Discouraging indeed.

The end of the Drew Butera era

Drew Butera leaves
the Twins with a
lifetime slash line of
.182/.230/.263.

In the end the Twins did make a deadline deal Wednesday: They shipped catcher Drew Butera to the Dodgers for the proverbial player to be named later. Or cash. My guess is that, as with Jim Thome a couple years ago, it will wind up being cash, and not a lot of it.

Butera has serious defensive skills behind the plate, but he is well short of being a major-league hitter. If one could combine his defense with Ryan Doumit's bat — at least the Doumit of previous seasons — you'd have a star. Heck, if he could just hit like Brian Dozier, he'd be a legitimate regular somewhere.

The Dodgers apparently picked up Butera because they intend to carry three catchers after the rosters expand in September and they like Butera more than their current options for catcher No. 3. As anemic as Butera's bat is, he might be better than their current No. 2, Tim Federowicz, who is hitting .204/.243/.347.

Butera's future once past this season isn't particularly bright. I believe this was his final option season, which means teams will be reluctant to sign him to major-league contracts unless they expect to carry him on the 25-man roster. He's probably now looking at a series of minor-league deals and seasons at Triple A waiting for a gap to open on the big club.

As for the Twins, they still have four catchers on their 40-man roster — Joe Mauer, Doumit and Chris Herrmann on the major league club and Josmil Pinto, who's been hammering the ball in Double A. Mauer is Mauer, Doumit has another year on his deal, Herrmann is a rookie and Pinto has yet to make his debut, so there really wasn't much room or need for Butera, especially with his roster flexibility vanishing this winter.

Trade deadline day

The Twins put on a big on-field production well before
the gates opened to unveil this. An emailed press
release would have sufficed.

Three things happened Tuesday that have me believing this morning that this will be a quiet trade deadline day for the Twins:

• Justin Morneau took part in the Tuesday press conference that revealed the logo for the 2014 All-Star Game;
• Mike Pelfrey had a poor start;
• Brian Duensing was even worse in relief.

Morneau, Pelfrey and Duensing are three veterans on expiring contracts. The Twins might be interested in retaining any of the three for 2014, but they might not — and there doesn't appear to be a great deal of demand for any of them.

That Pelfrey merely made his scheduled start suggests that he's unlikely to be moved. If a Pelfrey trade were truly in the works, the Twins would probably have used the offday to work around him, thus saving a start for the team trading for him.

The big right-hander is the one of the three who would most fit the 2014 Twins, and Tueday's clunker aside, he's been pretty good since coming off the disabled list this month (2.28 ERA in his four previous starts). Plus he's said for public consumption that he'd like to stay here.

But he also has Scott Boras as his agent, and Boras seldom skips an opportunity to take his clients into free agency and into the arms of the highest bidder. "Winning" a bidding war for a non-star is akin to losing.

So it would make sense for the Twins to trade Pelfrey now. Of course, that requires a trading partner. That may not exist at the moment.

Waiver-wire deals next month — akin to the move that brought Carl Pavano to the Twins in 2009 — are more likely than straight forward trades today for the Twins.

And now that I've said that, watch the Twins make some deals this afternoon, which would serve to illustrate how little I know.

Minor (league) stuff

This is the kind of thing that happens when a farm system is loaded with talent that is truly developing: The Twins minor league affiliates— at least the full-season ones — are sporting some impressive records in 2013.

Triple A: The Rochester Red Wings (60-51) won Monday and are now in first place in the North Division of the International League. It's the weakest of the three first-place records, but the Wings are certainly surging — 19-7 in July, and they were 11 games out of first place on July 2.

Double A: The New Britain RockCats (49-59) are the exception to this brag. They were off Monday. On Sunday they broke a long losing streak that included the controversial Miguel Sano homer run pimping and benching.

High A: The Fort Myers Miracle (65-38 for the full season, 20-16 in the second half) beat former Twins pitcher Scott Baker 5-0 on Monday. (Baker's on a rehab assignment; I think it's safe to say his return from Tommy John surgery has not gone as well as he or the Cubs had hoped). Miracle manager Doug Mientkiewicz earlier this season compared his squad (which at the time included Sano and Eddie Rosario) to a Ferrari; now he has Byron Buxton on his team, and the consensus top prospect in baseball was just named player of the week in the Florida State League.

Low A: The Cedar Rapids Kernels (65-39 for full season, 25-11 in second half) have a reshuffled roster from the team I saw play back in May. No Buxton, no D.J. Hicks, no J.D Williams now — but the Kernels,who finished second in their division in the first half, now have the best overall record in the Midwest League. I expect to see them again next week, and I'll (of course) file reports.

Rookie: The Elizabethton Twins (18-19 after a loss Monday) generally dominate the Appalachian League, partly because they tend to have older players than many of their rivals. (While every franchise has one Triple A, Double A, high A and low A affiliate, there are diverse setups in the lower levels between the short-season A leagues, the rookie leagues and the complex leagues. The Twins have no short-season A team.) In that context, records and stats lose much of their meaning, but it's safe to say that this is not one of the better collections of talent the Twins have had in E-town.

Complex: If the numbers generated by games in the Appy League mean little, multiply that for the Gulf Coast League, an assemblage of players just entering professional ball leavened with established major-leaguers beginning rehab assignments. The GCL Twins — who have had both Nick Blackburn and Kohl Stewart pitch for them — are 15-17.