Article: Twins Promote Alex Meyer

[Kirby_waved_at_me]

who will pitch more innings this season for the Twins, Meyer or J.R. Graham? I'm hoping for Meyer.

[Oxtung]

who will pitch more innings this season for the Twins, Meyer or J.R. Graham? I'm hoping for Meyer.

Since Graham has already thrown 31 innings with the Twins it would be hard for Meyer to catch up barring an injury.

[Dantes929]

 

Every starter outside of Tommy Milone has a worse career ERA than Ervin Santana. It is incredibly flawed to use career stats to make conclusions about a player. Santana has out performed his career numbers 4 out of the past 5 years in regards to ERA. 

Funny that Milone is the lone starter with the best ERA and is a likely candidate for being the one to be replaced.    If this were spring training  I am fine with putting Santana in ink but I never like the idea of replacing players that are doing well currently.   For example I would take Santana's career over Scot Diamond's career in a heart beat but I would not take him over Scot Diamond of 2012.   Rotation is doing well and Santana will fit in for someone eventually.   I just see no need for it to be now. 

[howieramone2]

 

I don't get the Tyler Jay nonsense. The Twins didn't draft Jay as the sixth overall pick so he could be a middle reliever.

He's going to the minors to work on becoming a starter. And that's the right decision.

Brock, I think it's so important to make the playoffs this season, that I would arm the women and children, so to speak.

[Steve Lein]

 

Why did you say "recall," John? This is his first time up...right?

 

He's on the 40-man roster, therefore already "on the team," and was "sent down" to the minors as part of Spring Training. Thus, he's "recalled" now!

[Brock Beauchamp]

 

Brock, I think it's so important to make the playoffs this season, that I would arm the women and children, so to speak.

The problem is that Jay is probably not the answer.

 

See Example A: Burdi, Nick

 

And why is making the playoffs so important that the Twins stunt the development of a first round pick? I'd rather see them trade off a marginal prospect to pick up a reliever (what they should do is dig into their deep farm system to fix the problem internally) than screw with a guy who they obviously believe has the potential to be a long-term solution in the rotation. That's bad management of prospects.

[howieramone2]

 

The problem is that Jay is probably not the answer.

 

See Example A: Burdi, Nick

 

And why is making the playoffs so important that the Twins stunt the development of a first round pick? I'd rather see them trade off a marginal prospect to pick up a reliever (what they should do is dig into their deep farm system to fix the problem internally) than screw with a guy who they obviously believe has the potential to be a long-term solution in the rotation. That's bad management of prospects.

We will have to agree to disagree. I disagree with the words stunt, screw, and bad.

[Brock Beauchamp]

 

We will have to agree to disagree. I disagree with the words stunt, screw, and bad.

They want him to be a starter. The longer they punt on making him a starter, the longer it will take for him to reach MLB. That's pretty much the definition of "stunt".

 

They've already signed Jay. He's going to head to the minors very soon and he'll get half a season to start stretching out and facing MiLB hitters. That's half a season wasted if they keep him as a reliever, put him in the minors, and hope hope hope he's good enough to face MLB hitters in the next two months.

 

Nick Burdi had very similar stats to Jay in college. He went to the minor leagues and performed well in A/A+ but then lit himself on fire the moment he was promoted to AA. What makes you think Jay is ready to go to Minnesota straight from college? Virtually nobody else does it anymore, what makes Jay so different?

 

There's a lot of hope in your opinion and not much else. There's no indication that Jay would fool MLB hitters when it took Nick Burdi over a month to start fooling AA hitters (and that was after he got a taste of the lower minors).

[nicksaviking]

 

Brock, I think it's so important to make the playoffs this season, that I would arm the women and children, so to speak.

 

I would have to disagree.  I think it's important to not only make the playoffs, but win in the playoffs in the years ahead.  This team is not built to win in the playoffs even if they should happen to sneak into it. 

 

I want to see them play in October, but let's try on the hypothetical situation where the Twins make the playoffs, but once again are knocked out ASAP.  Fair or not, the fans and media will say this is the same old Twins and nothing has changed. 

 

I think it's more important for the Twins to be relevant most of the year, even if they fall short of the playoffs.  If they can hang on and contend for another month, it will be a wildly successful campaign from what I can see.  It will whet the fans appitite, much as it did when they came up just short in 2001.

[howieramone2]

 

They want him to be a starter. The longer they punt on making him a starter, the longer it will take for him to reach MLB. That's pretty much the definition of "stunt".

 

They've already signed Jay. He's going to head to the minors very soon and he'll get half a season to start stretching out and facing MiLB hitters. That's half a season wasted if they keep him as a reliever, put him in the minors, and hope hope hope he's good enough to face MLB hitters in the next two months.

 

Nick Burdi had very similar stats to Jay in college. He went to the minor leagues and performed well in A/A+ but then lit himself on fire the moment he was promoted to AA. What makes you think Jay is ready to go to Minnesota straight from college? Virtually nobody else does it anymore, what makes Jay so different?

 

There's a lot of hope in your opinion and not much else. There's no indication that Jay would fool MLB hitters when it took Nick Burdi over a month to start fooling AA hitters (and that was after he got a taste of the lower minors).

I have no idea if he is good enough to help this season. Obviously percentages show it is remote. I do know the last thing a team learns how to do, is how to win. If push comes to shove, I would arm the women and children.

[Brock Beauchamp]

 

I have no idea if he is good enough to help this season. Obviously percentages show it is remote. I do know the last thing a team learns how to do, is how to win. If push comes to shove, I would arm the women and children.

But why? From a numbers and common sense perspective, if you're going to take a gamble on a lefty who can help the team in 2015, you start and end the conversation with Taylor Rogers. He's a starter but as we saw with Meyer, moving from starter to reliever shouldn't be much of an issue. He's not only dominating lefties, he's making them look foolish... and he's doing it at the highest level of MiLB, not a second-rate college conference.

 

There are multiple ways to fix this problem. Jay shouldn't even be in the conversation.

[drjim]

Isn't Jay going to spend the rest of season in bullpen in Ft. Myers? If he does well why not push him? Unlikely but certainly should be on the radar.

[USAFChief]

But why? From a numbers and common sense perspective, if you're going to take a gamble on a lefty who can help the team in 2015, you start and end the conversation with Taylor Rogers. He's a starter but as we saw with Meyer, moving from starter to reliever shouldn't be much of an issue. He's not only dominating lefties, he's making them look foolish... and he's doing it at the highest level of MiLB, not a second-rate college conference.

 

There are multiple ways to fix this problem. Jay shouldn't even be in the conversation.

today he shouldn't be in the conversation.

 

There's no reason he couldn't put himself in the conversation later this summer.

[Brock Beauchamp]

 

today he shouldn't be in the conversation.

There's no reason he couldn't put himself in the conversation later this summer.

Sure, but it's a mistake to bank on that being a possibility. Make the guy force his way into the conversation, don't alter his development cycle in hopes there's a remote chance he'll be a fit.

[drjim]

 

Sure, but it's a mistake to bank on that being a possibility. Make the guy force his way into the conversation, don't alter his development cycle in hopes there's a remote chance he'll be a fit.

 

But they aren't altering his development cycle - he is going to be a reliever the rest of the year and start next year as a starter. The issue, if he performs, is how aggressive does the front office want to be and do they want to deal with 40 man issues prematurely.

[Secondary User]

 

They want him to be a starter. The longer they punt on making him a starter, the longer it will take for him to reach MLB. That's pretty much the definition of "stunt".

 

 

The thing is, he's not going to be a starter in the minors this year anyway.  He'll finish off the season coming out of the bullpen and they'll stretch him out over the off season.  So the idea (which is basically what Kansas City was thinking last year with Finnegan) is, even if our long term plan is to stretch this guy out, but that won't start until the offseason, why not make use of him out of the bullpen if we think he's capable.

[spinowner]

 

They've already signed Jay. He's going to head to the minors very soon and he'll get half a season to start stretching out and facing MiLB hitters.

The thing is, there are already six other starters on the Ft. Myers roster. I thought I had read that the plan was to use him in relief for now and then work him in as a starter next spring. Guess we'll see.

[diehardtwinsfan]

 

But why? From a numbers and common sense perspective, if you're going to take a gamble on a lefty who can help the team in 2015, you start and end the conversation with Taylor Rogers. He's a starter but as we saw with Meyer, moving from starter to reliever shouldn't be much of an issue. He's not only dominating lefties, he's making them look foolish... and he's doing it at the highest level of MiLB, not a second-rate college conference.

 

There are multiple ways to fix this problem. Jay shouldn't even be in the conversation.

 

This.  Jay should be pretty far down on the depth chart, and I have a very hard time believing that he would be better out of then pen than both Rogers, Meyer, or O'Rourke. 

[Otto von Ballpark]

Jay would have to be pretty incredible for me to call him up this season.  Chris Sale in 2010 had 15 K's in 6.1 IP at AAA and got called up August 6th, I am thinking near that level of incredible, with us still in the race at that point too.

 

If he takes longer to get going or posts good but more sane minor league numbers (like Finnegan last year), or we fade in July, I'm not sure there's enough potential benefit opportunities in a month's relief work to offset losing the 40-man roster spot this winter.  Even Finnegan was basically a non-factor for the Royals until an elimination game went extra innings.  (Jay could obviously fill a bigger role in our pen, but I'm not going to push him into it -- he's going to have to definitively claim it.)