Reusse: Wander Javier Growing Up Before Their Eyes

[Seth Stohs]

In my opinion, there isn't much better than reading Patrick Reusse's articles from Ft. Myers before spring training even begins. He spends a lot of his winter down in southwest Florida and often treks over to the Twins complex to see who is working on the back fields and will write articles from down there.

 

This is a fun one on Wander Javier, about how he was skinny when they gave him $4 million to sign. He hasn't played a lot of games, but they have worekd with him on gaining strength. We listed him at 190 in the Prospect Handbook. He insists he is now at 200 pounds. Having watched a little video of a couple of his workouts, he may not be exaggerating.

 

The key... just needs to play at this point. 

 

http://www.startribune.com/infield-prospect-wander-javier-now-20-grows-up-right-before-the-twins-very-eyes/504677192/

 

[SF Twins Fan]

Seth - What team do you think he’ll start on this season?

[rghrbek]

When Pat covers baseball, and I mean not as a columnist, but invested, not many better.  When he has an axe to grind on Fleck or someone else he is not so good.  Glad to see this article and agree. Javier's year is going to tell us a lot!

[darin617]

As long as he doesn't follow how Sano in how he grew UP.

[Seth Stohs]

 

Seth - What team do you think he’ll start on this season?

 

He'll start in Cedar Rapids... unless they keep him in Extended Spring for a couple of weeks to keep him out of weather.. but he'll spend most of the season with the Kernels. 

[beckmt]

Am hoping Twins start Javier one level below where they start Lewis.  That will probably be Cedar Rapids, but would like to see Javier in Ft. Myers this year.

[gunnarthor]

 

When Pat covers baseball, and I mean not as a columnist, but invested, not many better.  When he has an axe to grind on Fleck or someone else he is not so good.  Glad to see this article and agree. Javier's year is going to tell us a lot!

Agree on this. Reusse honestly loves baseball and it shows.

[jokin]

 

When Pat covers baseball, and I mean not as a columnist, but invested, not many better.  When he has an axe to grind on Fleck or someone else he is not so good.  Glad to see this article and agree.

 

Spot on. Not many more talented sports writers than Reusse. He's a wonderful baseball writer, his love of the game comes through his prose. If Javier blossoms as it appears is happening, Reuse just got the jump on the rest of the local and national media. What a franchise-changing development if both Lewis and Javier realize their full potential as MLB rookies by 2020-1.

 

But... on the other hand, in regards to Reusse's columns, not many more grating when he exhibits a clear negative agenda and preconceived bias against the subject of one of his articles.

 

Case in point, a true story. I was involved in a 5th GRADE AAU weekend tournament basketball game, when, lo and behold, Patrick Reusse shows up. This of course is extremely unusual, as the attendance at such games usually exclusively consists of maybe only a couple dozen family members, if that. As it turned out, KARE 11's Randy Shaver was the coach of the other team and was generally well-known by his own admission at becoming rather animated during the course of a typical youth basketball game. Shaver, no fool, noticed Reusse in attendance on his "gotcha" mission and was on his best behavior and the game unfolded incident-free. Reusse's intentions- at showing up just for this particular AAU game- and not the dozens of others played by all age groups that weekend were obvious- needle Shaver.

 

Reusse still actually ended up writing up the game for his Strib column (A 5th grade basketball game? Reallly?). He talked about how "crazy" Minnesota was becoming about spring and summer basketball (possibly to the detriment of youth baseball), but, though he got a couple shots in, he couldn't hide his disappointment through his words at being unable to more thoroughly needle Coach Shaver in the process.

 

[Squirrel]

Moderator note: Let's keep this to Javier, if we could, please. Thanks. I agree Reusse wrote a nice article. Let's leave it at that.