Tag: Derek Falvey

Winter GM meetings another snoozer for Minnesota Twins fans

A sneak peak into the Twins war-room in the 2017 GM Winter meetings

The Winter GM meetings are almost over and the Minnesota Twins have done nothing to make me say “Wow” I didn’t think the Twins would do something like that. This years winter meeting were like most of the others that I have followed, high hopes going in and a snoozer coming out. 

Tyler Kinley

With the 20th selection in the Rule 5 draft the Twins selected soon to be 27 year-old right-handed pitcher Tyler Kinley from the Miami Marlins organization. Kinley has spent five seasons with the Marlins since being picked in round 16 of the 2013 amateur draft. In 2016 Kinley split his season between AA and AAA but this past season spent his time between high A and AA so he seems to be headed backwards. Kinley has been used almost exclusively as a reliever and I assume that the Twins will do the same.  

The team did however; lose RHP Nick Burdi a Twins second round pick in 2014 when the Phillies picked him with the third pick in the Rule 5 draft and then traded him to the Pirates for international bonus space. The team also lost RHP Luke Bard to the Angels with the 17th pick in the Rule 5 draft. Bard was a Twins round 1 compensation pick 42nd overall in 2012. 

The Twins did sign RHP Michael Pineda who is coming off of TJ surgery in 2017 and will miss most or all of 2018 to a two-year $10 million deal. Pineda will turn 29 years of age in a couple of weeks and has pitched for the Mariners and Yankees and has a career record of 40-41 with a 4.05 ERA. On the plus side he has only given up 652 hits in 680 innings and he has struck out 687. But he is a year away, another one of those “he will help us in the future” signings, how about signing some players to help us this year? The Twins are coming off a good year, how about making some moves to keep the fans interested? 

WAIT, hot off the press, the Twins have apparently found their closer, MLBRumors reports that the Twins and Fernando Rodney have agreed on a deal, $4.5 million plus another $1.5 million in possible incentives. Rodney will be 41 in March and will bring his 300 career saves to Minnesota, his ninth major league team. Rodney has been an interesting closer for many years and he will bring the Fernando Rodney Experience to Target Field, hopefully the arrows will be flying. Having said that, I would rather see a starter coming to the Twins.

It is still a long time before spring training starts so there is always hope that the Twins will make some moves to help their team but unless they can sign or trade for a big time starter you have to say that Mr. Falvey and Mr. Levine have under-performed.

Will the Twins ever stop being bottom feeders?

 

Time travel and baseball

I was looking at my Facebook account the other day and I saw that someone had posted a picture of a couple of old cars from the 40’s and he stated that he wished that time travel existed so that he could see some of those beauties when they were in their prime.

That mention of time travel got me to thinking about it and how cool it would be to be able to travel backwards or forwards in time in relation to baseball. Assuming  that was possible, but you could only revisit the past or go into the future, what would I choose? Would I revisit the past and see some of baseball immortals in their prime or would I choose to go into the future and see what is in store for baseball 50, 100, or 200 years from now?

I guess for me that would be relatively a simple choice as I love history so I would be off to revisit the past. I have seen the entire history of the Minnesota Twins so there is nothing more for me to see there, but to be able to see and interact with players in their prime like Babe Ruth, Cy Young, Ty Cobb, Walter Johnson, Ted Williams, Joe DiMaggio, Roy Campanella, Bob Feller, Dizzy Dean, Jimmy Foxx, Roger Hornsby, Jackie Robinson, Honus Wagner and oh so many more would be fun. What about all those great Negro League players like Cool Papa Bell, Josh Gibson, Buck Leonard, Satchel Paige and those great barnstorming black teams. How cool would it be to watch the 1919 World Series and learn what really happened. How great would it be to see all those players in their prime and really understand how they compare to the players of today. How about equipment and technology, what role have they played in baseball history. Would the players of today just be a shadow of themselves if they had to play with the ball, gloves and bats of yesterday? How about the reverse, would the great players of the past still be the stars of today with modern-day equipment? What impact did the difference in travel from trains to planes have on baseball? Who wanted to win more, yesterday’s players or today’s players or has that not changed at all with the big bucks being paid today.

As I said, I love history and I think if I could travel back in time I would not be too disappointed in what I saw. Traveling to the future however; might pose more of a risk, maybe baseball does not survive, how disappointing would that be. A world without baseball and spring arriving every year but with no spring training? As Twins skipper Tom Kelly would often say to someone who asked him a question that he deemed stupid, Oh My!

What if the game has been changed so much that I would no longer recognize it. What if the game gets taken over by technology to make sure there is never a bad call, how boring would that be? What if someone with a robotic arm wants to pitch, and the technology is there for him or her to throw it 150 MPH, what then? What if pitchers injuries became so frequent that live pitching was outlawed and pitching machines replaced them and pitching machine mechanics that had the skills to make these machines throw pitches never seen before and now these mechanics were now being recruited and signed for huge dollars. 

What if baseball priced itself out of existence? What if the cost of going to a game became so prohibitive that fans just quit going? Could major league baseball survive if they played their games and no fans showed up at the ballpark to watch?

What’s that sound? Oh crap, it is the alarm going off and it is time to get up. I slip out of bed and look out the window and I see that the thermometer reading just 11 degrees, snow covering the back yard and the pond is frozen over except for a small circle of open water around the aerator that keeps chugging along trying to keep the ice from taking over. The alarm keeps playing and now I hear Derek Falvey being interviewed and he says the Twins need pitching, particularly a front of the rotation type of starter and some bullpen help. Wait, I think I have heard that before from Calvin Griffith in 1961. Some things never change, all talk and no action. Who would have thought that baseball and politics have so much in common. But there is always hope, the baseball winter meetings start in a few days.

Back to my thoughts on time travel, where would you go? Visit the past or the future and why?

 

The 2017 Twins Turkey of the Year

It was a good year for the Minnesota Twins, an amazing 26 game improvement from their 103 loss season in 2016 and they even made an abbreviated one game trek to the playoffs, their first taste of postseason action since 2010. The much improved play of the players on the field made the team fun to watch again and the attendance increased from the previous season for the first time since the team started calling Target Field home in 2010.

All those good things happening over in Twins Territory makes it difficult to come up with a Twins Turkey of the Year but the job must get done. Just as sure as there is snow and cold in Minnesota we need to have a Twins Turkey of the Year.

The number of possible candidates for the 2017 award are few, sure we have some of the usual suspects like starter Kyle Gibson who first debuted as a Twin back in 2013 but found himself pitching in AAA Rochester after a horrible start. He finished the season with a 12-10 record but his 5.07 ERA for the second year in a row is more than disappointing.

Pitcher Phil Hughes earned $13.2 million this year and pitched less than 54 innings and had a 6.37 ERA. However; Hughes spent most of his time on the DL in 2017 visiting that list twice for a total of 105 days.

Pitcher Glen Perkins spent 117 days on the Twins DL in 2017 while recovering from shoulder surgery back in 2016. Perkins has pitched 7.2 innings in two years and banked $12.8 million.

Utility player Danny Santana appeared in just 13 games and hit .200 before the Twins traded him to the Atlanta Braves for a minor league pitcher named Kevin Chapman. Santana has appeared in 69 games and hit .203 for the Braves. 

When I have to list Danny Santana on my Twins Turkey of the Year candidate list I am really scraping the bottom of the barrel. Heck, even Joe Mauer bounced back in 2017 and had a decent year at the plate, certainly not a $23 million a year player but what is done is done. One of my favorite TTOY candidates the last few years, hitting coach Tom Brunansky was fired after 2016.

So you can see it has been a lean year for turkeys in Twins territory this season, but, since the role has to be filled I have selected not one but two Twins organization members for the award this year, for the first time ever we have a two-headed Twins Turkey of the year. 

Both of these gentlemen have been on the job for just over one year and their team made the playoffs in their first season at the helm after the team had finished with 103 losses in 2016, the worst record in baseball. It seems like we should be giving them Executive of the Year awards and not the TTOY award. Yes, they did sign Jason Castro, Chris Gimenez, Bartolo Colon (seems strange to put him on the plus side of the ledger), but they also signed a bunch of pitching stiffs and thought they could construct a bullpen while bottom-feeding. 

With the Twins in need of starting help these two guys went out on July 24 and they made a deal with Atlanta and acquired Jaime Garcia and Anthony Recker for Huascar Ynoa. Garcia started and beat the Oakland A’s on July 28 and Twins fans were delighted, that is until these two guys turned around and flipped the 31 year-old Jaime Garcia to the Yankees for pitchers Zack Littell and Dietrich Enns just two days later. Then on July 31 they traded their closer Brandon Kintzler to the Washington Nationals for pitcher Tyler Watson and cash. 

On July 31 the Twins had a 50-53 record and seven teams in the AL had better records than the Twins did. It was obvious that the Twins organization felt that the Twins had run out of steam so they started trading off pieces in hopes of landing some young pitching prospects. But who was to know that the Twins would go 35-20 during the rest of the season and score 346 runs in that stretch, more than any team in MLB while out-scoring their opposition by almost 100 runs. Only the Indians had a better record (45-13) and they had that crazy 22 game winning streak from mid-August to mid-September. When the season ended the Twins were one of the AL wild card playoff participants, who would have guessed that would happen? 

No one in their right mind, right? After all, no MLB team has ever lost 103 one season and taken part in post-season action the next. I didn’t see it coming, but I am not making a ton of money leading the Twins baseball operation either. These guys are supposed to be experts in their field and yet at the end of July they raised the white flag and not only didn’t improve the team for the stretch run but they made it weaker by trading Jaime Garcia and Brandon Kintzler. The way I see it, these two committed the cardinal sin, they gave up on their team. 

That is why the winners of the Twins Trivia 2017 Turkey of the Year award are Twins Head of Baseball Operations Derek Falvey and General Manager Thad Levine. I wish I had a picture of these two sitting in the backyard with their wine glasses in their hand pondering “what just happened?” Let’s hope that Falvey and Levine show their worth this off-season, maybe they are just slow starters. 

Previous Twins Turkey of Year award winners

2016 – The entire 2016 Minnesota Twins team

2015 – Pitcher Ricky Nolasco

2014 – Outfielder Aaron Hicks

2013 – President Dave St. Peter

2012 – Owner Jim Pohlad

2011 – Catcher Joe Mauer

2010 – 3B Brendan Harris

2009 – Pitcher Glen Perkins

 

Will Paul Molitor be managing the Twins next year?

It has been a heck of a year for the Minnesota Twins organization as they bounced back from a 59-103 season in 2016 to a 83-76 season todate and became the first team in MLB history to make the play-offs after losing 100 or more games.

No one saw this coming, if they said they did they are BSing you. I though they would improve to an 80-82 mark and I thought that was optimistic on my part. The team has had a heck of a season but there is still plenty of room for improvement.

The guys at the top, Derek Falvey and Thad Levine with a few minor exceptions have sat back, watched, and learned in their first year at the helm of the good ship Minnesota Twins. Yes, they did make some trades at the deadline that indicated the Twins were out of playoff contention but maybe that turned out to be a blessing in disguise as it seemed to rally the team and gave them a “we will show them” attitude.

Manager Paul Molitor found himself in a strange situation as he had just finished year two of a three-year deal when Falvey and Levine came on board with an edict from owner Jim Pohlad that Molitor stays as the Twins manager in 2017. I don’t think it was that big a deal for Falvey or Levine to have Molitor stay around for one more season as it appears that they had planned to sit back and watch in 2017 plus they had some don’t raid their previous organizations for one year stipulations they were abiding by. They sure weren’t expecting the Twins to make the playoffs in 2017 so they had to figure they could dump Molitor when the 2017 season ended with no problem. 

But now with the Twins heading for the playoffs and expectations even higher for the future, the pressure is going to be on Falvey and Levine to bring Paul Molitor back, after all, how do you fire a manager that took your team from 103 losses to the playoffs? A lot I think depends on the relationship that Falvey and Levine have with Molitor and I am not in a position to know how good or bad that relationship really is. But like everyone else, I have an opinion, and from where I stand, it seems that relationship is one of tolerance, as long as no one throws the first rock, the relationship will continue to co-exist.

The problem is that everyone in management wants to put their own people in positions that have an impact on their future employment. Who wants to stake their future on someone who you didn’t select for the job in the first place? On the other hand, if they send Molitor packing and the team doesn’t take the next step forward, then Falvey and Levine will find themselves with the creek rising and more rain predicted.

If Falvey and Levine decide to keep Molitor they need to give him a longer term deal after forcing Molitor to manage in his least year of a three-year contract. At least that is what I would ask for if I was Molitor. Having said, that I recently read a book by Ron Simon who was Molitor’s agent when he was a player and he stated in his book that Molitor was a very easy-going individual who was not necessarily all that confident in his ability (at least outwardly) and preferred to avoid conflict. 

So what will happen? Falvey and Levine find themselves in a damned if they do and damned if they don’t situation and we will just have to see what they do. It will be much easier to keep Molitor at the helm than it will be to fire him, that will tell us a lot about what these guys are made of. This duo has said all along that the number of wins will not be the decision maker but when it comes right down to it, what is more important than win and losses? Don’t they play this game to win?

Will Molitor be back as the Twins manager in 2018?

The All-Star game is now over and the Twins resume play on Friday against the 60-20 Houston Astros. The rumors are flying around that the Twins are looking for controllable pitching, both from a starting perspective and the bullpen. Will the Twins make any moves? Historically the organization has stood pat at the trade deadline but the Twins have a new captain at the helm so it will be very interesting to see what transpires there.

Another item not talked about much at all but that I think is very interesting and important is what will happen with manager Paul Molitor. Molitor is in year three of a three-year deal.

When Derek Falvey and Thad Levine moved to town it was apparently with the understanding that Molitor would stay on as the Twins manager in 2017. Well, 2017 is half over and the only mention I have heard about Molitor staying or leaving was a quick blurb that his situation would be resolved after the season ends.

I have stated here previously that I am not a big fan of Molitor as a MLB manager and to my way of thinking I have seen nothing after 2 1/2 years to change my mind. I see Molitor as a “Gene Mauch” type of manager, technically very bright but not a manager who can motivate today’s players, manage a winning team and sell his brand of baseball to the fans of Minnesota. To me he seems like a manager who thinks he can win with his managing skills versus letting the players play. He has to be one of the worst managers the team has ever had in terms of bullpen management and use and his line-ups have often wonder what the man is thinking . I have never heard anyone complain as much as he does about his bullpen being over worked.

I know that Molitor has worked with most of the Twins young players in the minors but what has he done in his term as the Twins skipper to take them to the next level and become big league caliber? Do the players respect him? I would have to guess the young players do but the older players, not so much. How do you explain the recent situation with Hector Santiago deciding to pitch the way he wanted versus following the game plan?

Does Molitor help sell tickets? I say no, most of the time he is unapproachable and ducks fans when ever he can, he is not one to talk baseball with the average fan. Baseball is entertainment and should be fun, Molitor makes every game look like a war.

I can’t help but wonder also how Molitor is enjoying his managing gig under Falvey and Levine. Every time I see him on TV he looks older and older and more stressed out. Does the man ever smile or laugh? 

Molitor’s future may well depend on how the Twins fare during the rest of this season, it would be very difficult for Falvey and Levine to let Molitor go regardless of what they may think of him as the Twins manager if the Twins make the playoffs in 2017 although the odds of that happening are long. If you think you know what the future holds, you should be aware that baseball odds for the MLB are available at William Hill where you can put a few dollars down on your favorite team to win it all.

I think Molitor’s days as the Minnesota Twins manager are numbered and that at the end of the season he will walk away from his current job and both sides will be happier for it. But stranger things have happened in baseball and if you think

What do you think? Does Paul Molitor deserve to be the Twins go-forward manager?

baseball odds for the MLB are available at William Hill

Trade deadline around the corner, should Ervin Santana be packing his bag?

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.

Is the Falvey and Levine draft plan conservative or are they risk-takers

The big day has finally arrived and no one has leaked who the Minnesota Twins will pick with the first pick in the 2017 June Amateur draft. Maybe the Twins don’t know that themselves as yet? But when that pick is announced we will finally get some insight into the Twins long-term plans that Derek Falvey and Thad Levine have been keeping under the covers.

There appears to be no consensus number one player to select but the top three seem to be Hunter Greene a RHP/SS from Notre Dame HS in Sherman Oaks, California, Kyle Wright a RHP from Vanderbilt and Brendan McKay a LHP/1B from Louisville. Naturally everyone has an opinion on what Minnesota should do and no matter who they pick, half the fans will say they are dead wrong and the other half will say they got the next coming of Babe Ruth.

So here is another opinion of what the Twins should do, it is out of the box thinking but I think this is a real opportunity for the Twins to get a step ahead of the rest of MLB and show that they are leaders and not followers. Both Hunter Greene and Brendan McKay are two-way players, pitchers and position players but they differ in the fact that Greene is coming out of high school and McKay is coming out of college. Most teams want Greene as a RHP and McKay as a 1B but no RHP out of high school has ever been selected number one and who wants to burn the first overall pick on a collegiate 1B? To my way of thinking picking a two-way player doubles your risk, not only might you pick the wrong player but you might also choose the wrong position for him.

I want the Twins to take a player that can help them sooner than later, I think the Twins should select RHP Kyle Wright from Vanderbilt and persuade him to sign for a bit less money so that the Twins can use those dollars for other picks in this draft. How do you convince Wright to take less? You tell him he will be the number one pick in the draft and that you will sign him to a big league contract, put him on the Twins 25 man roster, give him a Twins uniform and put him in the Twins bullpen. 

You are talking about an experienced collegiate pitcher and a Twins bullpen that in a word, “stinks”. What have you got to lose by doing this? What better way to learn the ropes than by pitching out of a big league bullpen? The twins are not a playoff team anyway, let Wright learn but pitching out of the Twins bullpen and use him to help attract fans to the stands, everyone wants to see the top pick in the draft pitch, a guy that goes from college to the bigs. 

Baseball could show other athletes that you don’t have to spend the next 3-5 years in the minors riding buses if you become a baseball player. These guys have been playing baseball their entire life, give them their due and give them a shot, if some make it right away so much the better, if they need more seasoning then so be it.

I know that some of you think I’m nuts and that service time should not be wasted, but is it really? You have a ton of money invested here, why not see if you can get a return on it right away? Let’s see what the Minnesota Twins are made of.

“Grin and bear it cause good things are a-comin”.

Like most baseball fans I can’t wait for the 2017 MLB season to begin. I have been excited for every baseball season to start for over 60 years now so that tells you that I am no rookie fan, you might compare me to the old veteran player that is looking to hang on for another season.

Spring brings hope as the weather warms, spring rains fall, the grass turns green, the leaves start to form on the trees and somewhere off in the distance you hear that yell that your ears have yearned for during the cold winter months, PLAY BALL!!

The home town Minnesota Twins ended spring training on Friday and flew to Minnesota after their final exhibition game which ended in a 3-3 tie against their AAA Rochester team. Spring training wins mean very little, in 2016 the Cubs finished their exhibition schedule with a 11-19 record and won the World Series. The 2016 Twins finished with a 19-11 record and when they looked at the standings when the season ended they saw a “59” in their W column. The 2017 Twins were 16-13 in this springs meaningless games.

This is the first season for the new Derek Falvey and Thad Levine regime and the third season as the Twins manager for Paul Molitor. Much has been said and written about Falvey and his approach to running a team and how appreciated he was in Cleveland. The consensus is that Falvey has taken over a tired old organization that time has passed by and a complete house-cleaning was in order. But Falvey and Levine have not done that, they have actually made very few moves both on the field and in the front office. I think that tells us something.

To me it sends a very clear message, the Minnesota Twins organization coming off a disastrous season in which they lost 103 games is not the pile of s*%# that everyone says it was and that the team has a bright future and all they need to do is fine tune it a bit and stay out of way to make sure they don’t screw it up. Falvey didn’t leave the Indians and Levine the Rangers to end up in some dead-end team with no hope, they came to Minnesota because they see what this team can and will be in the next few years. Believe me, the Twins organization is far from perfect and there will not be any playoff games played in Target Field in 2017 but this years team will not be the sad sack Twins of 2016.

The major weakness the Twins have is their relief pitching and Falvey and Levine did nothing to speak of to address that problem, that will come back to haunt the team this season. Can the starters be worse this year than last? I think not so I am expecting much more from that group in 2017. The young position players are just getting to the stage of realizing that they can play and compete at the big league level and they will be both fun and at times frustrating to watch. The Twins motto for this season should be “Grin and bear it cause good things are a-comin”.

My 2017 American League Central Division prediction

Here is how it is going to look after the 2017 season ends.

 

The 2017 American League pennant winners will be the Cleveland Indians and the National League pennant winning Washington Nationals will play in the 2017 World Series with the Indians winning in 6 exciting games. Enjoy the season.

59 wins and yet no starting position player battles for jobs

What is going on here? L-R – Jim Pohlad, Michael Cuddyer, Derek Falvey, and ?

The Minnesota Twins find themselves in a strange position this spring. The team is coming off a record-setting 59-103 season and yet there are really no position battles waging in Ft. Myers this spring. All the starting position players are pretty much the same as last season except for the catcher Kurt Suzuki who left via free agency and the Twins signed free agent Jason Castro to replace him and handed him the starting job.

How often does that happen? Usually you lose 103 games and everyone is fighting for a job but that is not the case in the spring of 2017 at the CenturyLink Sports complex where the Twins are preparing for the 2017 season. As I watch the team go through its spring routines there doesn’t seem to be much urgency and the players are acting as if they are all veterans just waiting for the bell to ring in a new season. I can see the players going through the drills but I just don’t see that they are working hard to get better. This team is young, and talented but have they had enough sand kicked in their face yet to really want to win? I hope so.

I am still convinced that Joe Mauer playing first base limits the Twins from taking that next step. Mauer is the grey-beard among the position players at 33 and then Brian Dozier and Jason Castro follow at 29 and the rest of the starting line-up is 25 or under. 

If you look at the spring training stats and I know they don’t mean a hill of beans when the season starts BUT this team appears to be a team that can score some runs but will hit for a lower average than what fans might expect. Mauer’s .300 plus days are in his rear view mirror and I am not expecting Jason Castro, Byron Buxton, Max Kepler, Miguel Sano, Jorge Polanco, or Brian Dozier to hit .260 or above. I expect a higher average from Eddie Rosario this year but he too is still unproven.

In spite of what I have written this team should be fun to watch but you must be prepared for those “what the hell just happened” moments. This team will continue to improve as the season progresses and but so much will depend on the teams pitching staff both from the starters and the relievers. 

I was used to seeing GM Terry Ryan out next to the fields checking out the action but this year I have not seen Thad Levine at all and Derek Falvey just once and that was this morning. A different style I guess, particularly since all I heard early on about Falvey was how closely he worked with his manager. But you are right, it is still early.

After horrible starts to the season the last two years, how will the Twins leave the starting gate in 2017? Another bad start could would be a serious problem for Paul Molitor and his boys. 

Sometimes it is hard to be a Minnesota Twins fan

I went out to the CenturyLink Sports Complex on Tuesday morning and it was pretty much what I expected with the team on the road in Port Charlotte to play the Rays in an exhibition game. The players that stayed behind went through some light workouts and I watched Jose Berrios and Trevor May throw in the bullpen for a short time. Brian Dozier and Joe Mauer stayed behind according to old baseball tradition they have earned the right not to have to travel to road games. Some things never change I guess. 

The one odd thing I noticed when I first drove into the complex was some guy flying a drone over the back fields where the minor league players who have not officially started camp yet were going through their paces. I wish I would have stopped and chatted with him to find out who he was and what he was doing but I didn’t. It did get me to thinking though about how long this kind of thing will be allowed. Who was this guy anyway? Maybe just a fan, maybe a Twins employee, maybe a reporter, or maybe a spy… We will never know unless he shows up again I guess.

Alex Kirilloff

Rhett Bollinger wrote this morning outfield prospect Alex Kirilloff, the Twins’ first-round pick in the 2016 draft suffered a partial tear of his ulnar collateral ligament and will undergo season-ending Tommy John surgery on March 8. Kirilloff is the second high Twins position player prospect in recent years to require Tommy John surgery. Miguel Sano missed the 2014 season due to the same procedure. Kirilloff was apparently injured at Elizabethton in late August and a platelet-rich plasma injection therapy was attempted but Kirilloff experienced pain again this spring. I know surgery is always a last resort but had he had the surgery right away, Kirilloff would be almost six months behind the surgery at this point. I know, easy to say now after the fact, but that is the beauty of doing this blog, it gives me the fredom to do so. Is this just a coincidence that the Twins have had two highly rated position players require TJ surgery in three years? This old guy does not believe in coincidences but I am not sure what to make of it, maybe it goes back to those trees being taken out of Target field back in 2010 when the Twins downward spiral began.

I was doing some painting yesterday at our condo and listening to the Twins play the Rays in Port Charlotte. I could not believe what I was hearing as the Rays ripped pretty much every pitcher the Twins sent to the mound. The Twins didn’t even get a hit until the 7th inning I believe. The game I was listening to was a Rays station so it was interesting to hear their perspective on things. Former player Dante Bichette who had a 14 year big league career was one of the announcers and he had some interesting thoughts and observations as the game went along, I enjoyed listening to him much more than I do to our guy Dan Gladden. But losing 19-0, how can you lose a spring training game 19 to zip and only get three hits yourself? That is dismal, actually it is pathetic, and to think the Twins had numerous Twins “regulars” playing. I am confident that the Twins will be a better team in 2017 than what they showed in 2016 but games like this won’t sell tickets and put fans in the seats. 

Manager Paul Molitor

In 2015 the Twins started the season 1-6 and last year they started 0-9 before putting a game in the “w” column. If the Twins get off to another miserable start in 2017, I am thinking that manager Paul Molitor will be looking for a new job before the end of April. The Twins can’t afford a third consecutive slow start and ticket sales certainly can’t handle that kind of stress. I find it interesting that nothing is being written about the Twins slow starts under Molitor and what happens if the same scenario takes place in 2017. Derek Falvey and Thad Levine have no loyalty to Paul Molitor and his leash could be a short one.