Twins Option Berrios, Recall Taylor Rogers

[Otto von Ballpark]

 

Tangent question about Tommy Milone... Now that he passed through waivers, let's say they call him up and want to send him back down to AAA. Does he have to go through waivers every time? 

Basically yes.  If he was added back to the 40-man roster, the only way to get him back to AAA is passing through outright assignment waivers again (since he's out of options).  And now that he has passed through once and been outrighted, he cannot be outrighted again without his consent (which was also the issue with Fien had he not been claimed, although he had an option left too).

 

I wouldn't be surprised if he came back, especially seeing the short leashes for Meyer and Berrios and reluctance to start May, and if Milone did come back, it would probably be the season and we'd non-tender him this winter.

[DaveW]

 

Well, judging by Mollie's harsh comments, I don't think we'll be seeing Berrios back with the mlb club anytime soon, and will probably be getting the Meyer treatment from Molitor.

I don't understand why they would choose a manager with so little patience for young players, given where they were at when they hired him.

This is the problem with hiring a hall of fame player as a manager, if you are a hall of fame player, then it's pretty easy to surmise that things probably came a lot more naturally and easy for you. (I'm not downplaying the effort or anything, just that hall of fame players have a lot more natural talent) so guys like Molitor etc can't empathize or understand what it is like for the other 99.8% of players who will struggle a bit more/won't have it come as naturally.

 

Gardy takes a lot of heat around these parts, but I think he did very well with the first crop of youngsters for the Twins (much better than TK was doing/would have done). Gardy wasn't perfect, but he seemed to have more patience with the young guys and coached them well. Perhaps this was due to his own major league career in which nothing came easy for him. Of course this also probably led to him "favoring" the scrappy types like Tolbert and Punto a bit too much, but again, overall I think he did well.

 

Molitor with some "harsh" comments for a 21 year old rookie pitcher is pretty ridiculous to be honest. I know that we have discussed Molitors job prospects with this team moving forward a lot these days, but this is just one more example of why the Twins maybe should have hired Dougie Baseball instead (or a manager with experience with youngsters)

 

Again, it's not ALL Molitor's fault, but it's hard to not notice that pretty much every youngster that has come up the past two years hasn't worked out very well thus far with the exception of Duffey and Sano.

 

[Otto von Ballpark]

Are these the Molitor comments on Berrios that everyone is referring to?

 

"He's fighting it," manager Paul Molitor said. "We look for encouraging signs in those four starts. They all started slowly. If you watch percentage of strikes, the command and where he's missing, there's got to be some adjustments. For him to do that here would be very challenging."

 

"I'm not going to let that kid keep going out there until he has a better idea of what he's doing with the baseball," Molitor said. "I just haven't seen it enough to think he's going to figure it out up here."

 

 

I don't think those comments are that bad.  Although like I've said before, the bad thing appears to have been calling him up when his control/command was already suspect for most of March and April.

 

Maybe that is another argument for calling him up last year -- maybe it wasn't ideal for the 40-man roster or his innings limit, but Berrios apparently had his control/command working at the time at AAA.  He'd still have adjustments to make in MLB, of course, but it seems like a better time to get his feet wet in MLB, when things are working at his current level, as compared to when they called him up this year when his control/command hadn't been working in spring training or AAA, and they seemed to want to get a look at him in MLB primarily for other reasons (open 40 man spot, desperate MLB club, etc.).

 

I know the Twins usually have a reputation as a careful promoter/developer of prospects, a reputation that was used to justify holding Berrios back late last year, but it sure doesn't seem like they are applying careful consideration to the promotion and development of Berrios so far this year (plus a few other guys, as I've noted before).

[Mr. Brooks]

Are these the Molitor comments on Berrios that everyone is referring to?

 

 

I don't think those comments are that bad. Although like I've said before, the bad thing appears to have been calling him up when his control/command was already suspect for most of March and April.

 

Maybe that is another argument for calling him up last year -- maybe it wasn't ideal for the 40-man roster or his innings limit, but Berrios apparently had his control/command working at the time at AAA. He'd still have adjustments to make in MLB, of course, but it seems like a better time to get his feet wet in MLB, when things are working at his current level, as compared to when they called him up this year when his control/command hadn't been working in spring training or AAA, and they seemed to want to get a look at him in MLB primarily for other reasons (open 40 man spot, desperate MLB club, etc.).

 

I know the Twins usually have a reputation as a careful promoter/developer of prospects, a reputation that was used to justify holding Berrios back late last year, but it sure doesn't seem like they are applying careful consideration to the promotion and development of Berrios so far this year (plus a few other guys, as I've noted before).

Ok well I guess I owe Mollie a bit of an apology.

 

Lavelle left out the first paragraph of those comments, which in context make the second paragraph not as harsh as it seemed on its own.

 

That said I still don't think Mollie is the best guy to lead a rebuild.

[jimmer]

Dave Cameron chat today:

 

Q: The Pirates are in contention, and rolling Jon Niese and Jeff Locke out there. Meanwhile, Glasnow and Taillon continue to mow down AAA batters. Why are the Pirates waiting to bring them up? Are they waiting on the Super-TWo deadline?
 

A:: Taillon hasn’t pitched much the last few years, and Glasnow still has significant command issues. Keep in mind the lesson of Jose Berrios; the jump to the big leagues isn’t always as easy as it appears, and it does more harm than good to put a kid on the yo-yo between the big leagues and the minors.

[Otto von Ballpark]

The Pirates are no strangers to the Super-2 deadline.  They even kinda held back Gerrit Cole for it in 2013, although Cole uncharacteristically showed poor control at AAA in April 2013 -- shades of Berrios this year?  The 2013 Pirates also had a incredibly solid rotation -- they still got fine results while waiting for Cole.

 

Not sure what they do this year, Taillon and Glasnow are both very interesting cases, but I wouldn't be surprised if it waits until June 5th or so...

[laloesch]

 

The only way this move would make even a little bit of sense is if the Twins were "in contention" and were bursting at the seams with quality starting pitchers.

 

Of course that isn't even close to the case, the Twins are the worst team in baseball and currently have guys like Dean, Nolasco and Hughes in the rotation. There literally is no good reason and no real defense for this move. It's dumb, it's terrible, it's something that 28-29 other GM's in the game would never do. The Twins are literally the anti moneyball at this point, I would say it's comical, but honestly it's more depressing than anything. At least in this dumpster fire of a lost season the Twins were worth watching 2 out of 5 days with Duffey and Berrios on the mound. Now we are down to one pitcher who is worth watching.

 

It won't happen, but the fans should boycott the May 21st game.

 

 

Agreed Dave.  I don't understand this move unless Berrios wasn't getting the catcher's signals or doing something fundamentally wrong.  The Twins are behaving like they are going to run off a 15-5 streak or something like that and get back in contention.

 

 IT AIN'T GONNA HAPPEN RYAN or MOLITOR!

 

Let the kids play damnit!  If he has 2 or 3 more horrendous starts like the last then yeah you send him back down because he's not ready.  But at some point you've gotta start working these kids into the lineup / rotation and its not always going to be pretty.  But you have to do it.  They are not all going to start out 10-0 or hit .300 with 20 homeruns right out of the starting gate.

 

This move SCREAMS DESPERATE front office.   

[laloesch]

 

Well, judging by Mollie's harsh comments, I don't think we'll be seeing Berrios back with the mlb club anytime soon, and will probably be getting the Meyer treatment from Molitor.

I don't understand why they would choose a manager with so little patience for young players, given where they were at when they hired him.

 

 

Judging by the yoyo promotions and demotions it appears to me that Molitor has zero patience for the youngsters.  You can't coddle these guys forever in AAA.  But a guy with Berrio's skills should get 6 or 7 starts before jumping the gun and sending him back down to AAA.  

 

Molitor seems to want instant perfection from these callups and that just isn't going to happen.  This is not a playoff bound team and probably not a .500 team.  Let these kids play gosh darnit.  If this is how you are going to manage the rest of the season you are definitely not the right guy for the job.

[FormerMinnasotan]

The only issue I have is how is Berrios going to learn how to pitch with better control when he will be facing mostly washed up or underperforming bums of AAA. For all we know Berrios really hasn't learned great controls because he might be getting away with getting AAA hitters easily swinging at pitches of his out of the strike zone.

[Mr. Brooks]

Jack Morris said it best on Barrerio yesterday.

 

"You can't learn how to get mlb hitters out in AAA."

 

Berrios has proven he can get minor league hitters out at will. I'm not sure there is anything for him to learn at Rochester, unless it's a specific mechanical issue they saw. But even so, isn't Neil Allen the best suited coach in the organization to work with him?

[DaveW]

Jack Morris said it best on Barrerio yesterday.

 

"You can't learn how to get mlb hitters out in AAA."

 

Berrios has proven he can get minor league hitters out at will. I'm not sure there is anything for him to learn at Rochester, unless it's a specific mechanical issue they saw. But even so, isn't Neil Allen the best suited coach in the organization to work with him?

#hirejackmorris

 

I agree with that too, guys in AAA are gonna swing at more of the borderline balls, in the MLB they won't do it.

 

In 2 of his 4 starts up here he didn't look over matched, just looked like a guy who needs to keep at it.

 

If we were replacing him in the rotation with May or Meyer this would be a much easier pill to swallow, but Pat Dean? While Hughes and Nolasco still have rotation spots on a 10-29 team? Yuck

[SheboyganBrats]

To me, it looked like his arm slot had dropped a bit, and his pitches had flattened out and were coming in high over the plate.

 

But, I don't know if I'm remembering his pitching motion correctly, or not.  Has anyone seen him pitch enough to know if this could be the case?  I thought when I saw him pitch last year, he was coming more over the top.

[Mike Sixel]

If Neil Allen is the best coach, he should be where Neil Allen is......

 

I agree with Jack Morris (can't believe I just typed those words).