It's Berrios Time!

Ryan himself doesn’t get into things like who has a locker where or by who, but there’s no question he’s in favor of it.

“That’s up to the manager and the equipment manager. I don’t get too involved in that stuff. There are many times there’d be that approach where you’d sandwich a young player in between a couple of veterans. We did that back in the day with Hunter. There’s nothing wrong with that either. You can gain a lot of knowledge by just sitting there and listening to how those guys handle themselves.”

Berrios was not overwhelmed in his second official big league spring training. He was there a year earlier. It’s not like Berrios hasn’t been on the big stage before. In 2013, his first full season as a professional, he came to big league camp to work out and prepare for the World Baseball Classic. He and Eddie Rosario were part of the Puerto Rican team. He pitched against the strong Dominican Republic team. He pitched out of the bullpen, and though he struggled some (I mean, he was just 18!), he did strike out Robinson Cano in a game.

When the All-Star Game came to Target Field in 2014, Berrios was named the starting pitcher for the World Team in the Futures Game in the stadium he hoped to soon call home. Last year, he had the honor again, starting the Futures Game in Cincinnati.

He has been the Twins (and Twins Daily’s) Minor League Pitcher of the Year the last two seasons. In 2014, he combined to go 12.8 with a 2.77 ERA between Ft. Myers and New Britain (With a spot start in Rochester). In 2015, he went 14-5 with a 2.87 ERA between Chattanooga and Rochester. In his first three starts so far in 2016, Berrios has gone 2-0 with a 1.06 ERA.

Though he struggled with control and command in spring training and in his first couple of starts. In fact, in his 17 innings he has eight walks. His 4.2 walks per nine innings is double what it was in 2015, though again, it is such a meaningless sample size that it shouldn’t be taken too highly.

In his most recent start, Berrios needed 32 pitches to get through the first two innings and just 17 were strikes. Over the final five innings of his outing, he was very efficient and a strike-throwing machine. That is what he has been in the past two seasons.

What should we expect from Berrios? I would expect him to be quite nervous today, and tonight (if rains don’t push his debut back another day). So, it’s always important not to make too much of that first impression.

However, when he is on, he’s got good control and command. He has a good fastball in the low-to-mid 90s, sitting 92-94 and touching 96. There isn’t a ton of movement in it, but he’s able to work down in the zone and potentially get strikeouts up in the zone because he has enough velocity. He has a good changeup. He has a very good curveball. All three of them can be strikeout pitches.

There is no way to know with 100% accuracy what Berrios’s career will look like. However, from a pure-prospect situation, Berrios is easily the best Twins pitching prospect since Francisco Liriano. He has been maybe overlooked because his status as a Twins prospect has been behind the likes of Byron Buxton and Miguel Sano. But in this offseason, Berrios was a consensus Top 40 prospect in all of baseball. He was our choice for #2 Twins Prospect in 2016.

Like Liriano, Berrios has electric stuff. Berrios’s mechanics are certainly better than Liriano’s were when he came up. We all have seen his workouts and his work ethic on his social media sites. From my interactions, Berrios is very strong mentally and spiritually. He is a very confident young man, still just 21, but he also is humble.

These are all qualities that help build the picture of what could be with Jose Berrios. There is no way to know how his debut will go. There’s no way to know when the “right” time to call up any prospect might be. Would it have been last August? Maybe. Is it late April 2016? Maybe.

As Ryan said, “You’re trying to bring kids along, and you’re trying to get them some help and you’re trying to show them the way.”

On Tuesday morning, Berrios got on a bus in Rochester and made the trek west to Buffalo with his Rochester teammates. When he got there, he learned from his manager Mike Quade that he was heading to Minnesota and would make his debut against Cleveland on Wednesday. Assuming the weather cooperates, Berrios will stand on the Target Field mound tonight and in the first inning, he will face off against Cleveland’s Francisco Lindor. That will be a surreal moment for both, I’m sure. As Berrios said of Lindor, “We are friends. We are family.”

As disappointing as the 2016 Twins have been, Berrios’s promotion is a good reminder of what the future could include and could be for the Twins and the fans.

Happy Jose Berrios Day!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8p-A5jDpHYk