Nick Nelson

By far the most encouraging thing I've seen over the past couple days has been Dozier's defense at short. There seemed to be some doubt even within the organization as to whether he could play short in the majors, but he's shown plenty in these two games to inspire confidence.

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[ATTACH=CONFIG]900[/ATTACH]The true importance of the strikeout is a subject of much debate in baseball circles. It is generally agreed, though, that the K is a powerful weapon for pitchers, one with strengths (it's the most reliable method of recording an out) and weaknesses (pitching for strikeouts requires more pitches and taxes the arm). Dennis Brackin wrote a great piece for the Star Tribune last week on the subject of pitching to contact, which is a philosophy that the Twins have notoriously espoused. Brackin's article sought to clarify some misconceptions about the phrase. Most notably, that coaches are actively encouraging pitchers not to strike anyone out. A severe strikeout deficiency is currently the greatest downfall for Minnesota's pitching staff, but it's not the coaching approach that is at issue. It's the personnel. For whatever reason, the Twins have strayed away more and more from stocking the roster with strikeout pitchers in recent years. Maybe because it's cheaper, or maybe because the organization lacks the scouting chops to find quality power arms. In any case, the amount of contact that Twins pitchers are now allowing makes it nearly impossible to succeed. The chart below, which I put together as part of the Twins scorecard content for next week's series against the Indians (only $1 at the stadium!) paints a picture of how Twins pitching staffs have evolved over the years from a K-rate perspective, and how their results have been impacted: [TABLE] Year ERA (AL Rank) K/9 (AL Rank) 2002 4.12 (6th) 6.6 (5th) 2003 4.41 (7th) 6.1 (9th) 2004 4.03 (1st) 6.8 (3rd) 2005 3.71 (5th) 5.9 (10th) 2006 3.95 (2nd) 7.3 (1st) 2007 4.15 (5th) 6.9 (4th) 2008 4.17 (7th) 6.1 (12th) 2009 4.50 (11th) 6.5 (10th) 2010 3.95 (5th) 6.5 (10th) 2011 4.58 (13th) 6.0 (14th) 2012 5.69 (14th) 5.3 (14th) [/TABLE] As you can see, the Twins weren't always a contact-heavy staff. In fact, back in 2006 they led the league in whiffs per nine innings, and ranked second in ERA. Back then, Johan Santana was leading the rotation and Joe Nathan the bullpen. Now, Carl Pavano is the No. 1 starter and Matt Capps the closer. Those two set the tone for a staff that pitches to contact at an outrageously extreme rate. Since the start of last year, Pavano has struck out a lower percentage of hitters (10.9%) than any starting pitcher in baseball other than Jamie Moyer, who is 49, and Brad Penny, who was just released by a Japanese team. Meanwhile, Capps has struck out a lower percentage (12.4%) than any reliever other than Aaron Laffey and Erasmo Ramirez, both of whom are presently in Triple-A. The major leagues as a whole are averaging 7.3 K/9 this year. Excluding Scott Diamond, who's pitched once, the Twins currently have two pitchers on their entire staff with a K-rate above that mark: Glen Perkins and Jared Burton. As a team, Minnesota is averaging 5.3 strikeouts per nine innings; if that were to hold, it would be the lowest figure for an MLB club since the 2003 Tigers averaged 4.8. That team also lost 119 games. (Incidentally, the Twins are currently on pace to lose 117). As a general philosophy, telling hurlers to pitch to contact -- as in, trust your stuff and don't be afraid to throw in the zone early in the count -- isn't so bad. It's been Rick Anderson's calling card for many years. But at this point, the Twins have completely abandoned the punch-out. There are basically no starting pitchers in the entire organization who excel at missing bats. That needs to change. When you allow as much contact as this team currently is, you're going to struggle to limit hits and runs regardless of how good your defense is.

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[ATTACH=CONFIG]882[/ATTACH]Well, I never expected it would be this bad. Sure, I had plenty of doubts about these 2012 Twins. I realized I was being somewhat optimistic when I projected them to finish around .500, and I also realized that there was a chance injuries could pile up and send the club into the same sort of spiral that engulfed it last summer. The thing is, the roster has remained relatively healthy. Outside of Scott Baker, the Twins have largely been playing with the group that they hoped to have this season. And yet, they've still been almost every bit as bad as they were in the final two months of the 2011 season, when under-qualified minor-leaguers filled the lineup and apathy seemed to take hold of a team that dropped 41 of its final 54 games. It's getting worse, not better. What is going on? A sense of hopelessness currently permeates this organization from top to bottom. Players and coaches are despondent in their quotes. The front office appears totally clueless, cycling through Quad-A players like Clete Thomas and Erik Komatsu while making the same kind of blunders handling injured players as they did last year. The lineup, which figured to be Minnesota's greatest strength, just went through the worst offensive slump in modern major-league history. And then of course there's the starting pitching. It's been outrageously awful, and there's little hope on the horizon. Just take a look at the organization's top three pitching prospects: 1) Liam Hendriks opened the season with the big-league club after a good spring and has been utterly over-matched by MLB hitters, posting a 9.00 ERA, 1.89 WHIP and 9-to-4 strikeout-to-walk ratio while coughing up five homers in 18 innings. He's now been replaced in the rotation by Scott Diamond, who will probably fare better but not by a lot. 2) Kyle Gibson is recovering from Tommy John. He's expected back next year, but Twins fans know all too well that the process of returning to full strength after elbow surgery can drag on and ding a pitcher's upside. 3) Alex Wimmers, whom the Twins were also counting on to be knocking on the door next year, is currently on the shelf indefinitely with – what else? – an elbow tear. The medical staff has opted to avoid surgery for now, but we know how that goes. Aside from Diamond, Nick Blackburn is the only current member of the rotation under contract beyond this year. The Twins don't have quality pitching prospects coming up on the farm, they don't have many assets that they can trade for impact arms, and with attendance dropping precipitously it seems highly unlikely that they'll come up with the money it takes to bring in legitimate help through free agency. This organization is in dire shape. Here in Year 3 of a beautiful new stadium, the current situation is downright depressing. Strong leadership is required to bring the Twins out of this miserable funk, and frankly the front office's bumbling desperation hardly inspires confidence. It's time to make something happen. This is beyond unacceptable, and the fans deserve a whole lot better. I'm not calling for anyone to lose their job, I'm calling for some people to step the hell up.

Dating back to 2010 or so, this organization's scouting dept. has an incredibly poor success rate with bringing in players from the outside. Finding hidden gems in other organizations used to be a big strength for the Twins, but when you look at the list of guys who have come in and failed miserably – Dusty Hughes, Jim Hoey, Clete Thomas, Matt Maloney, Jeff Gray, Tsuyoshi Nishioka, Terry Doyle, etc etc – it's hard to have any faith in the guys making these evaluations. To me, that's the top area that needs to be addressed, because when you're trying to rebuild you've got to do a better job of finding quality players.

Dozier is old enough that starting his service clock should not be a consideration. He's also been pretty dang horrible since the first week or so of the season.

Also, it's interesting that some folks seem to be OK with the move based on the fact that Carroll can play third if needed. Great, you can take the team's best IF defender away from shortstop and put him at a position where he becomes an even bigger offensive liability than Valencia.

OK, well whether or not you understood either of those things, they both happened. If you're going to stick with the guy for that long, why not give him more than 18 plate appearances and three starts to show what he can do? Pretty neat that you've determined he's a "rally killer" based on 10 at-bats with men on base. I'm not really sure I believe Clete Thomas is more valuable than Burroughs, but the principal point is that there was no need to even choose between them. Keep them both and keep the team at full strength. If the Twins medical staff says Morneau is good to go in three days, do you trust them?

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[ATTACH=CONFIG]828[/ATTACH]The Twins announced today that they have designated infielder Sean Burroughs for assignment to make room for Drew Butera on the 25-man roster. This one is a head-scratcher. You can certainly make the argument that Joe Mauer's knee tenderness necessitated a call-up for Butera, as he may serve as more of a second catcher than third catcher for the time being. It's just tough to understand why the Twins felt the need to dump Burroughs when there was no good reason to do so. Justin Morneau came out of Monday night's game against the Angels due to wrist pain. This isn't a guy with a low pain threshold, so it's safe to say that Morneau must have been hurting pretty bad to pull himself from the game. The problem was deemed serious enough that he was immediately flown back to Minnesota for an MRI. Fortunately, Morneau received good news today when it was revealed that there's no structural damage to the wrist, but he won't be ready to play until Friday "at the earliest." Why not just throw Morneau on the DL and delay the roster decision? I'm not saying Burroughs is necessarily useful, but we can't make that judgment based on his 18 sporadic plate appearances. He was at the very least a veteran left-handed bat to bring off the bench, and with him and Luke Hughes both gone there is nobody on the roster to press Danny Valencia, who has been shaky in the field and jarringly horrible at the plate with a .646 OPS and 18-to-1 strikeout-to-walk ratio. Maybe Burroughs wasn't really an asset, but the Twins sure seemed convinced he was less than a month ago. Beyond weakening the bench and forcing the team to play short-handed for at least the next two games, the decision not to DL Morneau seems questionable on its own merits. He claims that the wrist has been bothering him since the Rays series – which was over a week ago – and it's a recurring injury from last year, so giving him an extra 10 days to rest probably wouldn't be the worst thing in the world. Rather than play it safe and stash a player on the disabled list to keep the roster at full strength, the Twins have decided to wait a few days and reevaluate. Sadly typical of this team.

Awesome work Jeremy! Love seeing this kind of stuff.

Far too hasty to remove Blackburn from the rotation. Mark my words: at season's end, he'll have the best numbers of any Twins starter. Also, Duensing has been doing his job. Left-handers hitting .188 against him. Gardy simply needs to do a better job of limiting his exposure to righties.

I'll be very interested to see how Hermsen fares in New Britain. He's been very successful despite a lack of swing-and-miss stuff up to this point; the upper levels will be a good test. Also good to see Boer on the fast track, though his lack of whiffs in Beloit this year was a bit perturbing. Hopefully just a SSS fluke.

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[ATTACH=CONFIG]814[/ATTACH]After missing a couple games due to the birth of his child, Josh Willingham returned to the Twins lineup on Sunday and immediately made his presence felt, delivering a two-run triple in his first at-bat to set the tone in a 7-4 Twins victory. Willingham finished the day 3-for-5 with a double and a single in addition to the three-bagger, raising his OPS to an eye-popping 1.163. The left fielder has hit safely in 17 of 19 games as a Twin while collecting more extra-base hits (13) than singles (11). He has already hit three balls out of Target Field. He has absolutely obliterated left-handed pitching – he's slugging .863 against southpaws after jumping all over Bruce Chen on Sunday – making him an ideal fit between Joe Mauer and Justin Morneau. In short, Willingham has thus far been every bit the hitter that the Twins were hoping for, and he's quickly making people forget about the man he was signed to replace. Sure, Michael Cuddyer's grin is missed around the ballpark, and he's off to a nice start in Colorado, hitting .289/.349/.500 with eight doubles and a pair of homers. But Willingham's first month as a Twin, which won't be complete until the finish of Monday night's game in Los Angeles, matches up favorably against any month Cuddyer had during his 11-year tenure in Minnesota. Consider that Cuddy never posted a monthly OPS above 1.047 (that mark was recorded in May of 2009), which is more than 100 points short of where Willingham currently sits. Of course, plenty of caveats apply to the new outfielder's phenomenal April. It's been a particularly small sample size, even for a single month, at just 19 games and 81 plate appearances. He's also a traditionally quick starter with a history of slowing down as the season progresses, so we'll surely see a few slumps come along to even things out. For now, though, Willingham is erasing any concerns that existed about his age, his health and his ability to hit for power in the new home park. His consistency has been a breath of fresh air for a team that hasn't seen much. In a season where plenty has gone wrong, I'm happy to embrace one of the few things that's gone completely right.

I like his defense, but no one with a .264 slugging percentage should consider his job safe.