Parker Hageman

When it was announced Minnesota Twins pitcher Scott Diamond went unclaimed through waivers and would not be named the fifth starter, the left-hander doffed his cap to his competition in Kyle Gibson. The decision was a tough one, with the left-hander being out of options, but Gibson’s strong spring showing ultimately won him the job. What solidified his spot in the rotation, in the manager’s mind, was a combination of his stuff and his demeanor. “The big power sinker. Right out of the get-go his ball was at a great angle and it was diving down. He just didn’t look like he was overwhelmed,” said Ron Gardenhire after the final spring training game of the year at Hammond Stadium. “Last year in spring training we saw him yanking pitches, when he came to the big league we saw him misfiring quite a bit. Catcher would be setting up inside and he would yank it all the way across the plate.” Gibson missed his spots often but pitchf/x data does not suggest he was missing out of the strike zone. In fact, Gibson was one of the most demerited pitchers when it came to pitches in the zone actually being called balls. Speaking in general to the blossoming benefits of framing, backstop Kurt Suzuki was questioned how much influence the catcher has over the calls versus the reputation and execution of the pitcher. “I don’t put too much stock in that,” Suzuki said. “Don’t get me wrong, I think that has a lot to do with it but at the same time, what a pitcher does has a lot to do with it. If he’s all over the place, he’s obviously not going to get those borderline calls, no matter how good you make it look. If you are around the plate consistently, you are going to get those calls.” In part, Gibson’s shrunken strike zone last year may have, had to do with his catchers. After all, he spent 40 of his 50 innings paired with Joe Mauer and Mauer, while a very solid receiver at gaining extra strikes at the top of the zone, had a history of not getting the calls at the bottom of the zone -- precisely where Gibson liked to work his sinker. At the same time, he was admittedly erratic with his pitches and failed to establish control. Gibson, who spent ten starts in Minnesota attempting to exploit the edges of the strike zone, said that in the moment he did not notice the scales perhaps being unfairly tipped to the hitter’s advantage. “On borderline pitches whether you’re a pitcher, hitter, catcher, whatever, it’s tough to really tell where that was,” remarked Gibson. “The way umpires can actually call those pitches as well as they do is pretty amazing, honestly.” To the naked eye, it is hard to call those pitches that fall within a fraction of an inch of the invisible strike zone. The cameras in the sky have a different perspective. According to the data, Gibson had just 73% of his in-zone pitches called strikes, well below the 81% average. Gibson believes that, if there was an effect, it likely stemmed from his inability to locate his pitches consistently. “What I was always taught in college was the more you get an umpire calling a strike, the more he’s going to call strikes on the borderline part,” he said. “And the fact of the matter was I was getting behind a lot and when it’s 1-0 and 2-0 and you’ve repeatedly shown that you can’t locate right there on the edge of the plate, you probably are not going to get that call.” That is the area that Gibson would like to focus on the most: working ahead in the count. This spring, his three walks in 16.1 innings suggest he has made strides in that department, but he recognizes that the improvement needs to come north with him. “Hopefully this year, if I am able to pound the zone and go back to those same pitches, then I might get more of those calls. But you've got to get ahead and earn the fact that you can hit that spot and I just wasn’t doing that.” If his spring performance has been any indication, he should be ready. “He’s been real consistent,” said Gardenhire. “Getting pretty close to the glove with a good angle and a hard slider and when he’s doing that, it’s hard for hitters to get on him. If he’s got that power sinker going -- at about 91, 92, 93 miles per hour. And that’s what he’s done this spring, really in control of himself.”

When the Minnesota Twins unloaded Denard Span and Ben Revere in one offseason, they envisioned Aaron Hicks being the bridge in center field to their super prospect, Byron Buxton. The torch, for the time being, was being passed along from Kirby to Torii to Denard to Aaron. “I would love to be the next in line,” he proclaimed in the Twins’ clubhouse on Opening Day last year before everything went awry. Perhaps in hindsight it was unfair of the Twins to lean on a kid fresh off a Double-A season and expect him to fill the integral role of leadoff hitter while [PRBREAK][/PRBREAK]manning a vital up-the-middle position. Certainly on paper the idea appeared tantalizing, particularly in the batting order. With his plus speed, switch-hitting capabilities and the tendencies to draw walks in the minors, he had the pedigree of a top of the lineup guy. On the field, this theory quickly devolved when he was obviously overmatched and overwhelmed. This season, however, the Twins expect things to be different for the center fielder. “I think he has a lot less pressure on him than he did last year,” Twins assistant GM Rob Antony said after news that Houston had claimed his competition Alex Presley off the waiver wire. “I think everything went so well for him in the spring that when the [2013] season started, that he just expected for it all to continue and went it didn’t he went ‘uh-oh, what am I doing wrong, what can I do differently?’ I think he’s a little calmer and I don’t think he’s getting too wrapped up with everything.” Improving the approach Hicks said he spent a significant portion of the offseason and spring working on his offensive weaknesses from the left-side -- driving the ball the other way and focusing on a game plan. Last year, the latter issue involved constantly finding himself at the mercy of the pitcher rather than attacking the ball in hitter’s counts. When he was up in the count, Hicks hit a very good .295/.396/.659 versus right-handed pitching. On the other hand, he was a .124/.140/.188 when he was behind in the count. The biggest difference was that he was ahead in the count in just 54 plate appearances and behind in another 114. As far as the former goes, Hicks believes if you watched closely this spring, you have seen a change in his style. “Typically, in the minor leagues, I pulled a lot,” he said. “If you looked at my spray charts, sure, but this spring training has been everything to left.” Though he managed a handful of hits while slashing the ball to left field in 2013, it rarely came with a punch. Of the 47 balls he hit the other way, only two were considered well-hit by Inside Edge’s video scouts. This spring he has seen a few more balls ripped that direction, including tagging one against the St. Louis Cardinals in Jupiter, only to be thwarted in his efforts by a diving Stephen Piscotty. Hicks said this progress has been made with hand-bleeding amounts of front-toss work and trying to react to pitches on the outer-half of the zone -- a factor that will be crucial for success if right-handed pitchers implement the same strategy as they did last year. According to ESPN/trumedia’s stats, 56% of the total offerings Hicks saw in the left-handed batter’s box were on the outer third of the zone. As a switch-hitter, he says he has a different approach from each side. “This offseason the focus was on the left and now I’m starting to do both, gotta get both ready for the season,” Hicks said. “Right-handed I tend to swing more, lefty I’m more patient. I try to look for a pitch. I tend to have more of a plan because I’ve had so much more at bats from the left-side, where as right-handed I get 100 at bats a year so I kind of just come out ready to swing.” It is amazing, too, the difference in how southpaws approach him versus the righties. Last year, right-handed pitchers threw the ball in the zone 47% of the time while the left-handed counterparts breached the zone 55% of the time. Physically, he’s added weight. The good kind, not the kind you acquire by sitting around and eating Cheez-Its. After finishing the year under 200 pounds, Hicks bulked up and added 15 pounds of muscle which will hopefully translate into bigger power numbers. Making the routine and remote But Hicks is slated to play a position in which the emphasis is on the defense and not the offense. The Twins are betting he can cover ground or “go get it”, in Ron Gardenhire nomenclature. He had a penchant for making highlight reel-type plays but missed on too many balls he should have had. Last year, Inside Edge’s data available at Fangraphs.com shows that Hicks was very adept at make the difficult or “Remote” plays -- those a center fielder has a 1%-10% chance of making, such as robbing home runs, like he did to Carlos Gomez in Milwaukee. He converted on 66% of these types of plays, the highest rate among center fielders with a minimum of 600 innings. At the same time, he converted on just 98% of plays that were considered “Routine” -- 90%-100% chance of conversion -- the lowest mark in that category. Hicks said there was a learning curve coming into the league from his days in the single-tiered stadiums of the Eastern League and having millionaires launch rockets into the night sky. “The biggest difference is guys hit the ball harder and, in a way, it gives you more chances to rob a ball because guys hit the ball higher,” Hicks observed, explaining why he found it easy to make those difficult plays at the wall. “Gives me more opportunities to run underneath it and more opportunities to make more plays.” ‘Million dollar arm, ten cent head’ If you hang around the grizzled old-timers at a baseball diamond, those dugout lifers in the game, you may hear the phrase “million dollar arm, ten cent head.” This label does not pertain to Hicks’ intelligence, rather it might apply when he chooses to air out his arm, attempting to nail a lead runner at home or third, rather than play it safe and hit the cut-off man and keep the trailing runner from advancing into scoring position. Hicks has a great arm and he hasn’t been afraid to show it off this spring -- to mixed reviews. In the game where he went 4-for-4, he overshot his cutoff man which led to another Phillies’ run -- a valuable one considering the Twins lost that game 5-4. "The guy who hit the ball went to second and scored on another base hit. So there you have it -- the fifth run, and we end up losing the game by a run," Gardenhire said to reporters after the game. "Throw the ball down. He had no chance to throw the guy out at home, I don't care how strong his arm is. We hit the cutoff man, keep the man on first, who knows what happens?" Most people who have seen Hicks’ snap off a bullet from the outer reaches of the playing field will agree the man has an elite arm. In fact, he was hitting 90 on the gun as a pitcher prior to his draft and several teams were interested in him on the mound rather than as a position player. Online onlookers at Fangraphs.com have cast their scouting grades in the website’s Fan Scouting Reports and found that Hicks’ arm strength comes out at a 78 out of 100, the third best among center fielders last year. There were times the game was going too fast, he acknowledged, and leaning on his strength (his arm) was likely one way try to slow it down. Instead, sometimes it spiraled out of control. *** There are thousands upon thousands of players who have struggled in their introduction to the big leagues -- the aforementioned Torii Hunter being a recent example. The Twins are betting Hicks' approach and abilities have matured and that the game has come down to his level, as opposed to rushing past him, and that his sophomore season will put his career on the right path.

The Twins clubhouse had a vibe to it that can only be appropriately summarized by a line from the movie, Major League: You don’t want to celebrate too hard in front of guys who just died. After news broke yesterday that Scott Diamond was on waivers, he learned he cleared today and faces a career decision of either accepting an assignment to Rochester or find another organization that will take him. In addition to Diamond, Chris Parmelee and Alex Presley were also placed on waivers. The Twins now have 36 of 40 roster spots accounted for however Jason Kubel and Jason Bartlett will be placed on the 40-man sometime this week, likely Saturday. [PRBREAK][/PRBREAK] Diamond clears waivers, has 48 hours to accept assignment Scott Diamond cleared waivers and has been informed that he has 48 hours to make the decision to report to Rochester or find another major league team. “[Kyle Gibson] had an unbelieveable spring and Duduno threw really well,” Diamond said outside of the clubhouse. “They definitely threw better than I did. Gibson definitely deserves that fifth spot. I felt what I had going for me is being out of options and being a lefty just trying breaking up that right-handed rotation but I think with the numbers he put up this spring in was too hard to ignore.” After his last outing on Tuesday, manager Ron Gardenhire shared his thoughts on the possibility of Diamond not making the roster. "We like the guy an awful lot, he's been around here and we've seen him have success. Good kid. I also don't want to see him in the minor leagues pitching somewhere. I don't think that is fair to him. I think he should be in the big leagues - totally up to him and his performance. If it doesn't work out here, I wish that he would end up in another big league uniform." Having led the team in walks this spring, the Twins staff realized that Diamond needed to work on his ability to live in the zone. “He needs to be sharper, he walked too many. He needs to improve his command, control. He probably has to get some confidence back,” said Twins assistant GM Rob Antony. The 27-year-old left was coming off a season in which he admits he was hindered from his elbow issues. With one of his biggest weapons in disrepair -- his curveball -- Diamond said that he sought out Glen Perkins who told him that the breaking pitches were the last to return to normal. “I didn’t think coming back into the season that it would have been as bad as it was,” said Diamond. “but coming from surgery I talked to Perkins when he was coming back from his surgery and he said the last thing to come from him was his slider. He told me to continue to work with it and I felt like it started to come back towards the end of the year last year and spring training this year it had been a pretty effective pitch for me.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKgwWHiPypI&feature=youtu.be If Diamond accepts his assignment, he will make $282,500. Parmelee clears waivers, Presley claimed by Astros The Twins also placed Chris Parmelee and Alex Presley on waivers. Whereas Parmelee cleared, Presley was plucked by the Astros. The Twins want to see Parmelee become a more aggressive hitter, one that had shown flashes of power in 2011 and again in Rochester. “He needs to regroup. He hasn’t gotten the job done,” Antony explained. “He’s had opportunities. We need him to be a run-producer. He needs to be a profile guy who can play first base, play the corner outfield positions and drive in runs. And to me, he’s become way too passive at the plate, taking pitches, taking strikes, taking first-pitch fastballs down the middle. He needs to go up there with the mentality that he’s going to do some damage trying to be aggressive.” Antony also expressed a slight concern earlier this week of being too left-handed so Chris Colabello may have had the inside track to make the roster to provide additional right-handed pop off of the bench. "Number one, we need a right-handed bat. Number two, he's doing all the things we want Parmelee to do," Antony said of the decision to keep Colabello over Parmelee. "He goes up there and tries to do some damage. We need someone to go and try do something. Swing the bat, be aggressive. We're going to face some left-handed pitching and he definitely has a role that can help us on this club." Presley’s departure signals that the Twins are prepared to enter the season with Aaron Hicks as the starting center fielder and the possibility of either Eduardo Escobar or Jason Bartlett as the backup. Bartlett a “super-utility” player on roster “He’s a good athlete,” Antony said about Bartlett regarding his ability to play multiple positions. “When you get down to the tail-end of your roster, I think the manager sort of has to determine how he’s using different guys and it doesn’t make much sense to fill out a roster any other way than how he’s going to use them.” Antony spoke highly of Bartlett’s veteran presence and clubhouse leadership and mentioned that the team may be trying to change the environment of the clubhouse which has been criticized by members of the media for becoming too passive. “I would say the second half of spring training he looks completely different from the first-half. He’s taking much better at bats, he’s drawing walks and he’s hit some balls hard now lately. From day one he’s fielded the ball well, he runs the bases well and he does a lot of things you look for and that helps.” Florimon working on offense With the weather and the delayed start to his spring season, shortstop Pedro Florimon and hitting coach Tom Brunansky took to the backfield to work on some situational hitting. Brunansky barked out counts and runners on base, stressing over and over the importance of Florimon putting the ball in play with two strikes. Florimon put the ball in play 37% of the time with two-strikes, below the league average of 41%. He also hit .140 in those situations, also lower than the league average of .199.

There have been few examples of teams having their Opening Day starter the previous season see his value deflate to the point where he clears waivers a year later and is traded for a stack of dollar bills. But that’s exactly what the Twins did with Vance Worley when they traded him to the Pirates for cash considerations. The interest was understandably minimal, said Twins assistant GM Rob Antony, after the 26-year-old right-hander passed through the waiver system unscathed but, based on his age and his past track record, there were several teams that inquired about him. “There was some (interest) right after he cleared waivers, some teams looked at him as their reclamation project,” said Antony. “So there were a few teams that expressed interest. I wouldn’t say anybody was jumping through the phone. I think everyone was looking at him the same way we were: What happened to this guy? We used to have really good reports on him but now they are not so good, otherwise they would have claimed him.” With the Rochester rotation as crowded as it is and Worley’s rapid descent on the organization’s depth chart, the Twins recognized it was in the best interest of the player to allow him to re-establish his value elsewhere. The Pirates are known for their interest in groundball pitchers and Worley, despite all of his struggles last year, demonstrated a high worm-burner rate of 47%. “I told him when we outrighted him that if somebody came and I saw an opportunity for him, a better path back to the majors, that I would try to do something for him,” Antony admitted. “I think maybe a change of scenery would be good for him or gone well for him. Sometimes it starts to snowball on you and you look for a fresh start.” Earlier in the spring, Worley acknowledged that he struggled to keep the ball down in the zone, a fact that was punctuated with the sound of loud impact. In 10 starts last year, opponents banged him around to the deafening tune of .381/.427/.557. When opponents put the ball in play (and they did so a lot considering he missed very few bats), they were able reach safely over 40% of the time -- the highest in the game with a minimum of 40 innings pitched. “For whatever reason, he didn’t throw the ball as hard as he could in the past, he couldn’t get the ball down in the zone and he couldn’t figure out why. I think there was some mechanical things we tried to do with him that he wasn’t able to do, to change some of things that he knew he had to change.” This spring was more of the same. While there were issues identified, Worley struggled to correct them. “You’d see him throw some good pitches with angle down in the zone and the next batter he’d elevate and they’d hit it in the gap. There just wasn’t consistency.” Remaining down in the zone regularly was Worley’s biggest issue both last season and this spring. Reviewing the data from ESPN/TruMedia, we find that Worley’s location was indeed higher in the strike zone than his previous seasons. In 2011, he was up in the zone on just 29.1% of his pitches. The next season that dropped to 26.8%. This past year, however, a whopping 36% of his offerings were elevated. 2013 2012 His two-seamer with run was now not moving with the same arm-side run that he displayed in 2012. He was not working pitches down in the zone with the same frequency. As a result: Whammy. How does a pitcher go from the Opening Day starter one season to being someone else’s reclamation project the next? “We were going off his past successes as much as what we saw in the spring last year,” Antony replied. “He didn’t pitch like a guy who should be handed the ball on Opening Day but that was the way it stacked up and he had been there and I think it tells you a little bit about the state of our pitching last year. I just don’t think you can run scared of that. The guy was two years removed from being third in the National League Rookie of the Year.” The Twins could be facing another deal similar to Worley's if Scott Diamond, who was reportedly put on waivers on Wednesday, slides through unclaimed. Like Worley, Diamond has dealt with minor ailments and poor results that have devalued his stock.

Greetings from surprisingly chilly Hammond Stadium. I know it is below freezing back in Minnesota but for the locals here, this means breaking out the heavy gear. The good news is it is sunny and the team has had an opportunity to have a full day of workouts. More notes: The Twins traded Vance Worley to the Pittsburgh Pirates for cash after last night’s game (and there will be more on that later). Interest in the right-hander who cleared waivers the previous week was lukewarm but there were several teams that called on him. The Twins ability to score runs has been a looming concern but the front office did not go into the winter with the idea that the offense was complete. “We did not go into the offseason saying we just need to get two or three starting pitchers and we will be right where we want to be,” said Antony. “That was not the case.” He acknowledged the team made efforts to obtain other position players but those targets ultimately signed elsewhere. Antony also reiterated there will be no cuts today; Ron Gardenhire said after yesterday’s game that the roster will be finalized on Friday -- likely after that day’s game. On the minor league side, Byron Buxton’s wrist sprain is going to likely keep him from starting the year on time at New Britain. There is no indication of when he will be ready but the likelihood is he will remain at camp for the extended spring training until his wrist is healed. That decision needs to be made by Twins’ minor league farm director, Brad Steil. The opening series rotation has been set for Chicago. Ricky Nolasco will take the opener opposite Chris Sale while Kevin Correia and Phil Hughes will follow in the next two games. Nolasco is starting this afternoon’s game and looking to finish spring strong after he was knocked around for seven runs in three innings in his last start. The wind is really whipping up down here. Yesterday, the wind was blowing strong from left to right field and today it is just the opposite. Prior to the game, the major league catchers were taking pop fly practice by means of a pitching machine set up at home plate. The ball’s trajectory would shoot towards the pitching mound but the wind would push it all the back towards the backstop and first base dugout. Approximately one out of every ten balls were fielded cleanly. More after the game. Be sure to follow the TwinsDaily twitter account for in-game and in-camp updates.

The Twins have 29 listed on the roster as of this morning, with four cuts coming. Among those remaining the team has 13 pitchers, 7 infielders, 6 outfielders and 3 catchers. At some point this week four of those guys will be gone. The obvious subtraction is the third catcher, Dan Rohlfing, which would leave Kurt Suzuki and Josmil Pinto as the pair of backstops heading to Chicago. The other position player moves may be interesting. Manager Ron Gardenhire has grown increasingly fond of Jason Bartlett and his versatility, giving the veteran every opportunity to secure a job. There are also some rumblings of concern of losing former first-round pick Chris Parmelee, so this may create the scenario of some outfield combination of Willingham, Hicks, Presley and Parmelee/Kubel with Oswaldo Arcia returning to Rochester. The Twins made a last second change prior to the game, having Mike Pelfrey -- who was scheduled to start yesterday's minor league game -- move to the major league game today. This will push the previously scheduled starter, Kyle Gibson, back to relief, with Scott Diamond making an appearance as well. Diamond, who is out of options, is on the bubble and may be pitching to impress other teams as well as the Twins (which may be why he is supposed to pitch the middle innings today rather than the end of the game). If there are takers, this would help in reducing the pitching total to 12. Speaking of Pelfrey, the Twins clubhouse vibe this morning was pretty loose, considering that final cuts are right around the corner. Part of the reason is that this MLB Fan Cave video was released which showed Gardenhire and Glen Perkins pranking pitcher Mike Pelfrey -- and a vast majority of players were enjoying the video on a phone or tablet prior to the game. Twins PR maven, Dustin Morse, snapped a photo of Pelfrey watching the results of this morning's prank. In his pre-game talk with the media, Twins assistant GM Rob Antony said that Jason Kubel will officially be added to the 25-man roster. "I believe he progressed throughout the spring and took better at bats," said Antony. "I still believe he's a professional hitter with something left. We're looking for offense." Matt Guerrier, who was released on Monday, has signed a minor league deal with the Rochester Red Wings. The previous deal included a June 1 opt-out clause but the new deal will have an earlier opt-out date that Antony would not specify. "I think the out-clause is fine and a reasonable amount of time for us take a look," Antony noted. "If there are several guys ahead of him, there's no sense holding him down there until August or September. If he pitches well, we'll make a decision to bring him up to the big leagues. If not then he can check out his opportunities with another big league club." Guerrier will start the year in extended spring training to avoid the cold weather on the rehabbing arm. Antony also reiterated that the roster will be finalized by Friday of this week to ensure players have enough time to make necessary travel and living arrangements. More to come this afternoon. Remember to follow TwinsDaily on twitter for all updates while I’m down here at camp.