Can Dozier, Plouffe & Colabello Avoid Cooling Down After Strong April?

The Minnesota Twins’ offensive production early in the season caught everyone off-guard — even team management.

“I don’t know if I can say I was confident we were gonna score a ton of runs after we didn’t score a lot last year,” Twins Assistant General Manager Rob Antony said. “We didn’t do a lot in Spring Training, but I’m pleasantly — I wouldn’t say pleasantly surprised, but pleased with guys we were hoping would step up and are stepping up.”

Leadoff man Brian Dozier and the 3, 4 and 5 hitters Trevor Plouffe, Chris Colabello and Jason Kubel produced at the plate in April and allowed Minnesota to play .500 ball after the loss of Josh Willingham and Oswaldo Arcia to injury. The catching tandem of Kurt Suzuki and Josmil Pinto have hit well in place of Joe Mauer, who moved to first base in the offseason, and the former catcher appears to be returning to form after a slow start.

May has been a little tougher on the lineup, however. Dozier still needs to raise his average, Plouffe and Kubel have cooled down a little bit and Colabello has come back to earth. Some of this is expected and some of it can change, but Minnesota needs to make sure this is only a temporary power outage for their men in the middle, especially with Willingham and Arcia still battling injury.

Everyone in the clubhouse expected Mauer to return to a .300 hitter, Suzuki has had success in the majors before and is in the prime of his career and Pinto raked in his limited plate appearances this year, so there aren’t many surprises there.

Dozier’s sudden power surge, however, and the production from the heart of the order — Plouffe, Colabello and Kubel — was less anticipated. Dozier had trouble defensively as a shortstop two years ago and was converted to a second baseman and Plouffe also did a stint as a shortstop, but was moved around the field in order to keep his bat in the lineup. Dozier improved last season but had a rough rookie year, Plouffe took a big step back, Colabello hit below .200 after crushing Triple-A and Kubel signed a minor league deal after sitting out most of last season with an injury.

In the first month of the season, however, Plouffe hit .307/.415/.477 in the 3-hole, Kubel hit .288/.360/.425 in the 5-hole and Dozier led the team with seven home runs. Colabello was most impressive. Signed out of the Canadian-American Baseball Association as a free agent in 2012, his 27 RBIs in April are more than Kirby Puckett’s 26, not a bad number for an erstwhile independent league player.

“These guys feel pretty good about themselves swinging the bats,” manager Ron Gardenhire said, “you’re gonna see good pitching and you can expect it every night, but we’ve got some guys that can hit a little bit.”

Ask the players and they will tell you that the key to success comes down to three things: familiarity, player development and clubhouse culture. For example, it was difficult for Colabello to perform last season because everything was new to him. He was not drafted by the Twins, only knew the big league players who had been on his team in Double-A and Triple-A and had never played a major league game despite being 30 years old.

“Any time you get a little more comfortable in the environment you’re in and the people you’re around, it’s a lot easier for your persona to come out,” he said. “When you’re around people for the first time, not necessarily new people, but people you want to make an impression on, it’s pretty natural to try and do more than you have to, and, in a game like this, you’re in trouble if you try and do that.”

Colabello admits that he was swinging more aggressively than he was in Rochester. It was his .352/.427/.639 stat line and 24 home runs that forced Minnesota’s hand. In the offseason, he reduced the amount of moving parts in his swing and reoriented himself at the plate.

The problem is that teams have adjusted to him, and his average has dropped to around .250 after a red-hot April. An explanation for this is that teams tend to use data from the year before for the first month of the season and then begin using new data after that. The reason is that they want a large enough sample size to see trends, but players make adjustments in the offseason and, in Colabello’s case, they can be rather dramatic.

Colabello reduced the moving parts in his swing, realigned himself in the batter’s box and has used the combined instruction of hitting coach Tom Brunansky, assistant coach Paul Molitor and his friend Bobby Tewksbary, who runs a hitting clinic in Worcester, to improve his production at the plate in the offseason. This worked to his advantage early on, but teams have adjusted to him, and he’s going to have to adjust back quickly in order to avoid cooling off too much.

“It all starts coming together where you have enough info after the first three weeks to a month of a season, that you can forget about 2013, and now it’s all new info, and that’s what teams are going to be getting now,” said Gardenhire at the beginning of May. “There’s advance scouts that are going to be seeing and passing stuff along: ‘This is what we did.'”

Colabello said he has not reflected on his incredible first month and won’t do so until the end of the season. This is for the better, as he and Dozier have become leaders in the locker room. They are two of the most outspoken players in the clubhouse and with their success, have started to take on leadership roles. “It’s just about how much time you have in,” said Dozier, “and obviously leadership comes with being a little bit successful.”

Centerfielder Aaron Hicks, who is a quieter guy, says that he was immediately drawn to Dozier and Colabello and sees them as team leaders. “It’s really uncomfortable because if you’re a guy who’s not really outspoken, it’s really hard to get used to certain guys on the team,” he said. “For me, I feel more comfortable because I’ve got Colabello and Dozier here, and I have played with them before. It makes things a lot easier on me when you can relax and just be yourself and know the guys you came up with.”

Dozier and Colabello both struggled as rookies, but became productive players during their sophomore season. For Hicks, who was hitting below the Mendoza Line when he got concussed on May 1, the hope is that he, too, will reach his potential once he becomes more comfortable in the clubhouse.

“The sky is the limit with him,” Colabello said. “He’s a pretty quiet guy for the most part, not really emotional, but he cares. He cares a lot.”

Instead of taking on a traditional mentorship role like Dozier and Colabello, Plouffe brings energy to the clubhouse. He’s been with the organization for 10 years and knows just about every player that was drafted and developed by the team. He can be seen holding raffles for team events, offering random compliments (“You’re dressed like an ace today!”) and standing amongst the media pretending to hold a recorder during scrums, only to go and jokingly make fun of the player being interviewed for something he said on camera.

There was no guarantee that he was going to be in the major leagues, however, despite being a first-round pick in 2004 that was just as capable with the bat as he was on the mound. Had the Castaic Lake native chosen to go to nearby USC, he would have both pitched and played in the field for the Trojans.

He entered the Twins organization with the promise of being a power-hitting shortstop, but was incapable of fielding the position in the major leagues and moved around the field frequently during his first few years in the major leagues.

Two years ago he hit 24 home runs, showing promise at the plate, and undertook the difficult task of learning the hot corner. Although he was not projected to be a third baseman and has been a sub-par defensive player to this point, he has made noticeable improvements this year.

“He’s playing good defensively,” said manager Ron Gardenhire, “offensively he’s really relaxed right now. I don’t think he’s worry about too much. He’s comfortable.”

His revitalization as a hitter came after his initial call up in 2010 when he changed his batting stance and swing, going from a ground-ball hitter to a fly-ball hitter. It has been a process, but his production in 2012 indicates that he is capable of being a major league hitter. He has begun to hit to all fields and has been more productive with runners on base, a good indication that he is improving despite his setbacks in 2013.

Last year he only hit 14 home runs while battling a calf injury and suffering a concussion. Injuries hampered him in 2012 as well, when a thumb injury slowed his torrid production at the plate. The injury lingered on for weeks, then he reinjured his thumb taking batting practice, and when he got back, his power did not return.

This year he says he is feeling healthy. In the offseason he had his plantaris tendons removed, ligaments that are only found in 7-20 percent of human bodies, and hasn’t shown any indication that the previous injuries sapped his power.

“I’m healthy now,” he said. “I want to stay healthy.”

The Twins have been patient with Plouffe and it appears to be paying off.

They easily could have written him off as a “Quadruple-A” player — a guy that’s too good for Triple-A, but not good enough for the majors — and either dealt him or released him, only to have their first rounder go and rake for another big league team.

Similarly, Dozier was an underwhelming shortstop two years ago, but he displayed the ability to hit for power and had incredible range. A move to second base allowed him more time to make decisions and allowed an easier throw to first while emphasizing his range in the field.

“In Dozier’s case, he’s the kind of guy that’s kind of laid back,” said Gardenhire. “He lays back on balls. He did it at shortstop and every play was boom-boom, boom-boom. So moving him onto this side, he was comfortable.”

And in Colabello’s case, he easily could have been written off as a fill-in for the minor leagues. He played Division II baseball at Assumption College (Mass.), Indy ball in the nondescript Can-Am league and was never drafted. Instead, they gave him a chance to become a bona fide major leaguer, and it paid off. In the offseason he could have chosen to sign with a team in Korea, but the Twins allowed him to make the decision himself, and he went to Spring Training with Minnesota, was their most productive batter, and took over as the clean-up hitter.

The Twins’ willingness to stick it out with prospects through their development has worked out in the case of Dozier and Plouffe, while Colabello has also benefitted from their patience. The key, of course, is keeping all three of them — and any other productive players that the Twins either draft or acquire — in Minnesota through their prime years. That familiarity and clubhouse chemistry that drove each player’s production this year will only evolve as they spend more time together.

In the short term, however, the key will be getting the team to find that magic they had in April and allow it to carry them throughout the rest of the season.