Written By Tom Schreier
This isn’t exactly the blueprint that we had in mind, going out and signing a guy to [a] $55 million [contract], the ideal is to have them keep coming through the system.
— Twins GM Terry Ryan after signing Ervin Santana, 12/15/14
The Minnesota Twins have been a 90-loss team for four straight years, and when a baseball club isn’t performing at the major league level, fans and media alike start to focus on the minor league system. It’s something that general managers and team officials don’t particularly care for, but for the Twins, hope often resides in Ft. Myers, Fla., Chattanooga, Tenn. and Rochester, N.Y., when the club isn’t winning in Minneapolis.
Specifically, people are talking about Byron Buxton and Miguel Sano. Pegged as franchise-changing players by Albert Chen of Sports Illustrated, Buxton and Sano will be expected to help take Minnesota from worst to first. Chen compared Sano and Buxton to Mike Trout and Bryce Harper, two of Major League Baseball’s brightest stars, and suggested that they could revive a team that lost its way in the Target Field era. “Barely a year removed from his senior prom, Buxton is already being called, among other things, a baseball phenomenon, the savior of Minnesota baseball, the Next Mike Trout,” wrote Chen in August of 2013. “And yet, Byron Buxton may not even be the most talented prospect in the Twins system.”
Everyone knows how it went from there — Sano had Tommy John; Buxton was injured in a collision — and neither player made the major league team out of camp this year. Nor was expected to. Instead, Twins fans wanted to see Alex Meyer or Trevor May demand a spot in the rotation, Aaron Hicks to take a step forward after a pair of false starts and, in general, the team to start looking more and more like one that could compete for an AL Central title after years of sitting in the division cellar.
Instead, Minnesota opted to go with a veteran-laden team, sending much of its young talent to Rochester as Ryan and Co. whittle the roster down in preparation for Opening Day. There’s two ways to interpret these moves: 1) The Twins prospects aren’t as good as we were led to believe, and the road to winning might be longer than expected (after already being delayed for quite some time), or 2) That Ryan wants his young players to prove themselves after years of calling up young players early and seeing them flop in the majors over the long term (Chris Parmelee, Joe Benson, Hicks).
In truth, both angles could be true. But the key here is not to rush to judgment. Spring Training is a small sample size consisting of players of various ability in an environment (small Florida towns, sparse crowds compared to MLB parks) that is not consistent with the regular season. As much as management throughout the league likes to turn Spring Training into a battle royale for a roster spot, a more measured approach that forces young players to perform at Triple-A in order to reach the majors might be the right approach for a team that has brought up position player prospects at a young age in the past.
The Pitchers: Meyer and May
[It’s] always nice to have that one guy that you can count on in, for instance, a sudden death play-in game, stuff like that, but you can still get the job done if you’ve got quality — you don’t necessarily have to have a No. 1.
— Ryan at the Santana presser
Meyer and May will always be inexorably tied to Denard Span and Ben Revere, respectively, so long as they are in a Twins uniform. Minnesota dealt Span, a fan favorite, to the Washington Nationals for Meyer, a 6-foot-9 pitcher out of the University of Kentucky, who was projected to be ace material in the major leagues in after the 2012 season. They also traded Revere, a center fielder like Span, to the Philadelphia Phillies for May and Vance Worley that year. Worley was the Opening Day starter in 2013, but was sent down in late May with control issues, ultimately outrighted off the roster in March and later traded to the Pittsburgh Pirates for cash considerations.
May struggled in a few starts last season but finished the year strong and showed enough promise that then-pitching coach Rick Anderson felt he had the physical ability to eventually be a pitcher like Phil Hughes. “What Hughes did this year is unbelievable, but again if you look at May’s minor league numbers this year, he didn’t walk a lot of guys,” Anderson said in September of last year. “He walked a lot of guys early trying to do too much, but now he’s settling in and … once he settles in, he’ll be like the rest of the guys — strike-throwers.”
May’s struggles were a result of the nerves he felt pitching in the major leagues. He only went two innings in his first start at Oakland but finished the year by going at least five innings in four of his five starts in September, including two wins over the Chicago White Sox and one over the Cleveland Indians. He said that eventually his competitive drive overrode his nervousness, allowing him to come closer to reaching his physical abilities. “If you’re a guy that’s going to be nervous all the time and can’t fire yourself up to pitch in the big leagues,” he said in mid-September, “then there’s something wrong with you.”
It’s hard to argue with the Twins’ handling of May: They called him up, threw him into the eye of the storm, let him sort things out mentally, and then are now asking him to earn a spot in the rotation this season while allowing him to begin the year against inferior competition. This is the advantage the team has when they go out and sign free agents: Phil Hughes, Ricky Nolasco and Ervin Santana are taking up three roster spots to start the season. And, with homegrown Kyle Gibson taking up the fourth, it essentially came down to a competition for the fifth spot, which was likely Tommy Milone’s to lose since he was the lone lefty — meaning that May would have to replace an incumbent this year instead of being forced to start in order to have any semblance of a major league rotation on Opening Day.
On the other hand, Meyer — arguably the better prospect — hasn’t taken the mound at Target Field since being traded for in 2012. He spent 2013 in New Britain, then the Twins Double-A team, and was 7-7 with a 3.52 ERA in 27 Triple-A starts last year, but was not called up in September. “We’re right where we want to be with him. We had a plan with him, and it’s worked,” Ryan said at the time. “It’s important when you bring a guy up that is prepared to pitch at this level. We’ll see how prepared he is.”
Meyer, 25, will not break camp with the Twins, causing fans and media alike to question whether or not he’s as good of a prospect as he appeared to be when he was in the Nationals organization. If he was so good, the reasoning goes, why isn’t he prepared to make a big-league roster yet?
Meyer, for his part, has kept his head up, telling Mike Berardino of theSt. Paul Pioneer Press that Randy Johnson, another tall pitcher, was called up at age 25 with the Montreal Expos in 1988. “If I could have half that career …” he said. And while Johnson went on to become a Hall of Fame pitcher, Meyer, who wears his No. 51, is just hoping to make the roster at some point this season. “Now that I’m 25,” Meyer told Berardino, “hopefully that means I’ve had enough seasoning and enough molding to where I’m able to go up there (to the majors) and make an impact right away, whenever they call upon me.”
Twins fans are hoping that time will come sooner than later.
The Position Players: Hicks, Buxton and Sano
We’ve got a couple guys that are on the verge of making this club [that] we have high hopes for, everybody knows that, we’re going into a situation where we’ve got a pretty good group around the diamond.
— Ryan at the Santana presser
The Twins appear pretty content with their position players. Their infield is coming together, with Joe Mauer at first, Brian Dozier at second, Danny Santana at short and Trevor Plouffe in the hot corner. Mauer basically just needs to hit .300, get on base and drive in runs. Dozier got a 4-year, $20 million contract, which signs him through his arbitration years but not free agency, because of his stellar defense, display of power (23 home runs last year) and ability to get on base (.345 on-base percentage) despite a .242 average last year. Santana had a .319/.353/.472 line last year and played well in center field despite never playing the position before. And Plouffe came up as a shortstop, was sent to the outfield and eventually landed at third base a few years ago. The learning curve has been steep for the 2004 first-round pick, but he’s become an average defensive player while being productive from the plate (.258/.328/.423 line, 110 OPS+).
There are knocks on all these guys, however. Mauer’s injuries have piled up recently and, at a $23 million annual salary, was paid to be a catcher, not a first baseman (the move, of course, coming due to a concussion sustained at the end of the 2013 season); the Twins now have to pay Dozier $20 million, including $9 million at the end of his contract, instead of going year-by-year, possibly handcuffing themselves in a Nick Blackburn-type contract with another late-round pick; Santana played in the outfield, not at short, last year and may suffer a major regression at the plate due to a small sample size (430 plate appearances) and major league teams having all offseason to make adjustments to him when he’s at-bat; and that Plouffe is essentially a placeholder for Sano.
On the other hand, Mauer tends to hit well when he’s healthy — the 6-time All-Star, 3-time batting champ hit .324/.404/.476 before sustaining a concussion in 2013; Dozier has turned himself into the voice of the Twins, in lieu of the reticent Mauer, and speaks incredibly highly of an organization that has fallen out of public favor — probably not a guy that the team wants to piss off by taking him to arbitration every year — plus, according to ESPN The Magazine (Insider required), he has the best value in fantasy this year; Santana might regress, but as long as he doesn’t fall off the face of the earth, he’ll still be a productive player next year; and if Sano replaces Plouffe mid-season, then a) it means Sano is panning out (a good thing), and b) Plouffe would be a nice bench player that can pinch hit and play a variety of positions.
As far as catcher goes, Kurt Suzuki’s performance last season (.288/.345/.383, 105 OPS+ and fearless defense) earned him his first All-Star appearance and the starting spot this year. The hope for the Twins is that Josmil Pinto, 26, eventually unseats him. Pinto, who is entering the prime of his career, hit .342/.398/.566 in 83 plate appearances two years ago, but regressed to a .219/.315/.391 line in 57 games last year while also needing to improve his defense.
It’s in the outfield that things get a little sketchy. Right now it looks like Minnesota will begin the year with Torii Hunter and Oswaldo Arcia in the corners, and a Jordan Schafer-Shane Robinson platoon in center. Statistically, Hunter was a poor defensive player last year. Arcia still has a ways to go defensively as well, while also having some kinks to work out at the plate (.231/.300/.452, 33 walks, 127 strikeouts). And while Schafer, 28, was once a top prospect in the Atlanta Braves organization that has worked to distance himself from a troubled past, Robinson, 30, was a replacement-level player in five seasons with the St. Louis Cardinals.
Outside of Arcia, who has the potential to be a power hitter at the plate, the Twins’ best outfield prospects are still in the minors. Hicks, of course, made the team out of camp two years ago, but struggled as the leadoff hitter and couldn’t stay above the Mendoza line as a rookie, and didn’t do enough last year to guarantee himself a spot in the outfield this year. And Buxton is supposed to be the center fielder of the future.
In an ideal world, if their prospects were to pan out, the Twins would have Hicks, a good defensive player, in left field where he could make catches at the wall — assuming he can hold his own with the bat late in the lineup; Buxton at center, becoming the Twins’ version of Trout; and Arcia knocking the cover off the ball in the middle of the lineup and playing in right field, the shallowest part of the Target Field outfield. But for now, they are stuck with Arcia, not exactly Hicks when it comes to speed or stealing home runs, in left, a platoon in center and an aging Hunter in right.
How soon can the prospects break through?
I think all of us agree that he’s probably more than a dependable center fielder. Now he made a throw the other night that didn’t have the accuracy that you’re hoping for. But his at-bats have been more competitive, he’s been way more aggressive. There’s been some things there that you see that at least there’s some progress, yeah.
— Ryan on Hicks, 9/21/14
While the Twins are going with a more veteran-laden lineup and rotation to begin the year, the hope is that the young players eventually punch through and start to make a home for themselves with the big-league club. Milone was the right fit for the Twins as the fifth starter because he’s the lone lefty, and has a track record of success with the Oakland A’s, but as everyone in Twins Territory knows, injuries can strike at any time, and there should be ample opportunity for May or Meyer to work their way up to the major leagues this season.
As for the position players, the hope is that Buxton and Sano get called up midway through the season and provide a boost to a team that can remain in striking distance of the AL Central, which is typically tightly packed. It would be a managerial blunder if Hicks can’t get out of Triple-A this year, given his natural ability as well as his major league experience. The lack of defensive prowess in the outfield is going to become prevalent sooner or later, even if Schafer and Robinson are used at the same time alongside Hunter.
The Twins are likely a 75-win team this season, barring any major injuries. Still, while they are likely to have trouble competing in an improved AL Central, it would be nice for fans to see the young players Minnesota believes are part of a winning equation play a significant part of the season. The buzz around Target Field is wearing off, and after four losing seasons, people are become apathetic about the Twins. Good performances from young, promising players is the first step to make Target Field the place to be once again — even though fans would have to go to Rochester to see them at the beginning of the season this year.