TWINS TRIVIA is hopefully a fun and informative site that will help you to better enjoy the Minnesota Twins and their wonderful history. “History never looks like history when you are living through it” – John Gardner, former Secretary of Health
The International League office announced on Saturday that Rochester Red Wings (AAA) outfielder Zach Granite has been named the International League Player of the Month for June.
Granite led the league with a .470 batting average, 55 hits, 16 extra-base hits, 23 runs scored, 78 total bases, a .527 on-base percentage and a 1.193 OPS in June, the 24-year-old was rewarded with his first mid-season All-Star selection earlier this week. Granite reached base safely in all 29 games he played in June, tied for the longest on-base streak in the league this season. For the season, Granite paces the league with a .367 batting average and a .419 on-base percentage. His batting average is 50 points higher than any other qualified IL batter and ranks third among all minor leaguers. Granite is the first Rochester player honored as league Player of the Month since Chris Colabello in June of 2013.
I am a day late with these guys but they made their major league debuts as Minnesota Twins on July 2.
Miguel Sano,
Miguel Sano (3B/OF) – July 2, 2015 – Signed by the Minnesota Twins as an amateur free agent on October 9, 2009. Debuted as the DH going 1 for 4 in a Twins 2-0 win over the Royals as Kauffman Stadium.
Jarvis Brown (OF) – July 2, 1991 – Drafted by the Minnesota Twins in the 1st round (9th pick) of the 1986 amateur draft (January). Player signed May 23, 1986. ) for 2 in his debut at the Skydome in a 4-3 loss to the Blue Jays.
Gary Serum (P) – July 2, 1977 – Signed by the Minnesota Twins as an amateur free agent in June 1975. Debuted as a reliever at Met Stadium in a 6-2 loss to the Angels pitching 2 innings and striking out 2 while giving up just one hit and no runs.
Elizabethton Twins (Rookie League) outfielder/3B Trey Cabbage has been named Twins minor league Player of the Week. In seven games, the left-handed swinging Cabbage hit .333 (9-for-27) with two doubles, two home runs, nine RBI, eight walks and had a .486 on-base percentage. Cabbage was headed for the University of Tennessee before the Twins persuaded him to sign a professional contract for $760,000 and nice bump over the $517,900 slot amount.
Vargas, 6-0 in June, wins 12th and evokes Saberhagen
Jason Vargas
A much-anticipated pitching duel between the Royals’ Jason Vargas and the Twins’ Ervin Santana turned out to be no contest, as Kansas City scored seven runs off Santana en route to an 8-1 win. Vargas had entered the game at 11-3 and Santana at 10-4, in what was only the second matchup of pitchers with double-digit wins totals before July 1 over the last 20 seasons. (The other such meeting came on June 16, 2002, in a Red Sox-Braves game in which Derek Lowe, at 10-2, opposed Tom Glavine, 11-2.)
Bret Saberhagen
Vargas secured his 12th win on Friday night, becoming only the second pitcher in Royals history to win 12 games before July 1 (Bret Saberhagen stood at 13-2 entering July in 1987). Vargas finished off a clean sheet for the month of June: six starts and six wins. The last Kansas City pitcher to win six games in a month was Saberhagen in September of 1989, after Bret had earned seven victories in August of that year!
Cedar Rapids Kernels (Low A) right-handed pitcher Tyler Wells is the Twins minor league Player of the Week. The 6’8″ Wells made the start for the Kernels last Saturday, against Clinton, allowing one run on four hits in 8.0 innings pitched, earning the win with 10 strikeouts and no walks.
Late News: Cedar Rapids placed Tyler Wells on the DL yesterday. This is the second DL stint this season because of a shoulder issue for Wells, who is 4-2 with a 2.21 earned run average in 11 starts. He has allowed just 45 hits and struck out 82 in 61 innings.
David Price allowed no home runs in seven innings, improving his record to 3–2 in Boston’s 6–3 home win over Minnesota last night. In 114? career innings against the Twins, Price has surrendered just five home runs, a rate of one every 22.9 innings. That’s the seventh-best rate by any active pitcher with at least 100 innings pitched against a particular opponent.
Kyle Gibson (P) – June 29, 2013 – Drafted by the Minnesota Twins in the 1st round (22nd) of the 2009 MLB June Amateur Draft. Gibson earned a “W” in his major league debut as a starter against Kansas City with 6 inning pitched, 8 hits allowed and 2 earned runs. A “quality” start.
Mike Dyer (P) – June 29, 1989 – Drafted by the Minnesota Twins in the 4th round of the 1986 amateur draft (January). Player signed May 15, 1986. A tough way to start in the big leagues with a 2 inning start and 6 runs allowed on 6 hits and 3 walks and charged with the loss.
Andre David (OF) – June 29, 1984 – Drafted by the Minnesota Twins in the 8th round of the 1980 amateur draft. A home run in his first big league at bat off Jack Morris at Tiger Stadium but sadly that would be the only home run of his short 33 game career in the majors.
Jerry Fosnow (P) – June 29, 1964 – Acquired from the Indians in 1960. MLB debut in relief for the Twins at Memorial Stadium in a loss to Baltimore. Fosnow pitched 2 innings allowing 2 hits, 2 walks and 2 runs.
The MLB non-waiver trade deadline of July 31 is coming up fast, just slightly over a month away. I am an old-timer, I admit it, I miss the good old days when baseball trades were made based on the skills of the players and the needs of your ball club. Today it is about the money, how long you can control the player, no trade clauses, free agency and who knows what else. Today’s star players are often traded for minor league players with potential for the future. I hate those kind of trades because you are giving up a known commodity for a player or players that might be a star in the future, you are giving up a sure thing for a maybe. But that is baseball today so we need to accept it and move on.
What about our Minnesota Twins, what will they do? I think the Twins find themselves in a very difficult position. The team is winning just enough to stay in the weak AL Central Division race but yet I think management realizes that this is not a playoff team. On the other hand, their attendance and fan interest has been falling since 2010 and they can ill afford to send up the white flag and signal the start of another rebuild process. So what do you do, buy, sell, or do nothing? So what are the odds that the team will make some moves prior to the trade deadline?
Ervin Santana
This will be the first trade deadline for the Twins under the Derek Falvey and Thad Levine regime so there is no real track record to go on. The Twins have players that would interest other teams and they also have players like Miguel Sano, Max Kepler and Jose Berrios that they won’t trade. The team listened to offers for second baseman Brian Dozier all winter and when all was said and done and decided to keep him. The ace of the starting staff Ervin Santana, 34, would be a nice pick-up for a contender but can a team as pitching starved as the Twins afford to give him up? Some would argue that the Twins can’t afford not to trade him because he is having a great season, maybe a career season and he is signed at a very team friendly deal through 2018 with a team option in 2019.
No matter who the team trades they need to get pitching in return and acquiring pitching is such a risky proposition. It is almost a damned if you do and damned if you don’t scenario.
So what is my best guess? I would say that the team will move Ervin Santana, Robbie Grossman and probably some minor league players for pitching. If you go by what Falvey and Levine did this past winter, they will do nothing and wait for their young players to get better.
