Hosken Bombo Disco

On Monday, Rhett Bollinger of MLB wrote that the Minnesota Twins are still more likely to upgrade their pitching rotation for 2018 through free agency than by trade.
 
And on Tuesday, MLB Trade Rumors reported off of a 1500 ESPN tweet that pitchers’ agents were getting the sense that the Twins (i.e., Derek Falvey and Thad Levine) were putting off talks until Yu Darvish announces his decision to sign.
 
Reading between the lines, one can interpret these reports to mean that the Twins have not been in much communication with free agent pitchers waiting to sign contracts this offseason.
 
But does an absence of communication mean that the Twins are failing to communicate?
 
A story Thursday in the New York Times (h/t dougd) suggests that Levine is one of the more skilled baseball executives in using alternative means to communicate (such as text messaging) with players, agents, or other major league personnel.

"...today, we negotiate hundreds of millions of dollars of contracts and make massive trades without ever picking up the phone and speaking directly with one another, let alone meeting face to face,” Levine said. “You kind of learn the personalities of guys—who needs a phone call, who can do it on text, who prefers emails, who likes to be lighthearted.
 
"The art of the negotiation has almost been trumped by the art of communication."  
This makes the news that the Twins have not met in person with Darvish much easier to take.
 
Meanwhile, back in December, the Twins were reportedly offered Gerrit Cole in exchange for prospects Nick Gordon, Zack Granite, and Tyler Jay, according to the news site Pirates Breakdown.
 
https://twitter.com/pbcbreakdown/status/940390540998250497
 
Many Twins fans, including myself, liked this trade idea. (See here, here, here, or here —and the proposals offered by Twins fans in these threads were actually not far off the mark in terms of value.)
 
The stat we know as WAR is not how we evaluate pitchers during the season, but it can be a good, broad gauge of general value.
 
In terms of fWAR, the two sides of a Cole/Gordon/Granite trade match up well. Fangraphs projects Cole to provide 3.8 fWAR in 2018; let's add 3.8 fWAR more for 2019. That makes 7.6 fWAR for the final two team-controlled seasons of Cole coming from Pittsburgh. How much fWAR will the Twins prospects provide? The 2017 midseason KATOH+ projections estimate that Granite will contribute 6.8 fWAR through his six team-controlled MLB seasons, while Gordon will accumulate 6.3 worth of fWAR across his six seasons. Throw in a generous 2.0 fWAR for Jay as a relief pitcher, and the total contribution of the prospects coming from the Twins is 15.1 fWAR.
 
In such a Gerrit Cole trade as proposed above, the Twins would trade away a future 15.1 fWAR in exchange for Cole’s 7.6 fWAR as a starter for the next two seasons.
 
That looks unequal, but posters on the Dozier trade discussion threads last winter found that MLB-for-prospect trades often lean heavily to one side in this way. A risk premium on the speculative nature of unpredictable prospects, perhaps.
 
In any case, the barstool argument in favor of the trade may be more effective than the mathematical or financial analysis. Gordon and Granite are good players, but their production can be replaced. The Twins have Jermaine Palacios and Royce Lewis playing shortstop in the minors behind Nick Gordon, and have Jorge Polanco and other capable shortstops on the Major League team already. As for Granite, I would not count on him getting enough playing time to contribute much fWAR anyway, the maturing young Twins outfield being what it is. And the bottom line is the Twins badly need starting pitching in 2018.
 
Now compare Cole to Darvish. Fangraphs projects Cole for 3.8 fWAR in 2018, while Darvish is projected only for 3.6 fWAR in 2018. Consider that Darvish’s contract will fetch more than $20 million per season for each of the next five or six seasons; Cole will not earn $20 million over the next two seasons together. Moreover, Cole might be motivated to pitch his best in order to increase his value in free agency following 2019.
 
Through the quiet offseason to this point, and assuming Pittsburgh is still interested in a trade, Cole has looked like a solid alternative to Yu Darvish, maybe even better. Cole is younger and will not tie up salary beyond 2019, and might even present a July trade opportunity for the Twins if the 2019 season goes sideways.
 
Beyond 2018 and 2019, the success of the Twins will depend on their ability to develop their own starting pitching. Darvish might help win some games in future seasons, but those wins will cost a lot of money, and possibly at the expense of extending one or two of the Twins young outfielders.
 
Levine’s "negotiation" with Darvish this winter has put me at ease somewhat. Levine's knowledge of Darvish from their days in Texas suggests to me that the Twins are not concerned about Darvish’s health, nor his motivation to pitch after he signs this nine-figure deal. And a dollar today is worth more than a dollar tomorrow; figure on that annual salary at the end of Darvish’s contract to not look so bad as it does now, once those latter years finally arrive.
 
I still prefer a trade for Cole, combined perhaps with a signing of Alex Cobb. But if the Twins really do sign Darvish — and my gut gives them a better than 50/50 chance at it — I imagine I will be amazed, thrilled, and fired up for the 2018 season. Such a signing will instantly put Minnesota almost on par with most other teams in the American League, and will give them a dependable arm for the next several seasons.
 
But it's Darvish’s decision to make. If Levine has misjudged Darvish and Darvish chooses to sign with another team, and other subsequent options fail to break for the Twins, the Twins would find themselves going into 2018 without the addition of a single starting pitcher. For a young, talented team that made a strong run in 2017, this would be quite a blow. To borrow a great metaphor from another TwinsDaily poster in another thread, the Twins are playing a game of musical chairs, and if Darvish signs with another team, the Twins might find themselves without a chair when the music stops.
 
Let's hope the personal relationship and commitment Thad Levine and Yu Darvish have together is real. My gut tells me it is.

All the Hall of Fame ballots are postmarked. More than 100 have been revealed. Of those, only three voters have checked the name of the greatest pitcher I’ve ever regularly watched. Johan Santana’s time on the writers’ ballot looks to be short and unsuccessful.
Others have written compelling and thorough articles about Santana’s case. I’m mostly sad that he’s only 38 and we’re already having this discussion. I want to think about Santana at the height of his powers. I want to remember a game that still resonates with me more than a dozen years later.
It’s 2004. The Twins have won the Central the past two years and they’re in first place now. It’s Aug.1 and their lead is five games over the White Sox.
I’d graduated from college that spring and I’m lamenting the fact that I’m jobless, hours away from the Metrodome and with no money for a ticket anyway. Johan Santana is facing Pedro Martinez today.
But I do have cable television and it’s connected to my fiancée’s 13-inch TV/VCR combo. It’s the only TV we have in the apartment we rented when I was still optimistic about finding a decent job near Morris, Minnesota. I’d be back at home living with my dad in a matter of weeks.
But Santana was pitching this afternoon, so this afternoon things look bright.
After getting Johnny Damon to ground out and striking Mark Bellhorn, Orlando Cabrera hit a home run in the first.
Cabrera hadn’t been all that good that year. But Cabrera had just become a member of the Red Sox. Maybe the change of scenery would do him good. (It did. Cabrera hit .294/.320/.465 for the Red Sox that year after hitting .246/.298/.336 for the Expos.)
Cabrera started for the Red Sox for the first time that day after he and Doug Mientkiewicz joined the Sox earlier in a four-team trade that saw the Twins pick up 19-year-old minor-league pitcher Justin Jones from the Cubs.
Mientkiewicz’s departure was sad, as he joined A.J Pierzynski and Matt Lawton as players traded away after starting for the 2001 Twins team that sucked me back into baseball fandom.
The Twins had stopped grabbing my attention as the ‘90s often found them mired in last place and found me in a new town with new friends who weren’t all that interested in baseball. But the Twins found new life in 2001, and found me, now away at college, with some friends who gave a damn about a pennant race and with access to cable television.
Cristian Guzman reached on a single in the first but was stranded.
Santana retired three straight in the second, striking out Jason Veritek and Bill Mueller.
Corey Koskie doubled for the Twins in the bottom of the second and then scored on a Matthew LeCroy single. LeCroy was catching that day, with Joe Mauer’s rookie season mostly ruined by injury.
Mauer was the first Twins player I can say I followed from the day he was drafted onward, but Santana was the first player I really saw emerge and become a star.
Torii Hunter, Jacque Jones, Guzman, Koskie and Mientkiewicz burst onto the national scene in 2001, but as someone who was just paying attention for the first time in years, they felt a little more established. I knew they were young. I knew they were surprising, but they never existed for me as anything other than Twins starters.
But Santana was a reliever in 2001, and by this point in 2004 I’d watched him become the best pitcher in baseball.
Manny Ramirez homered in the second; the Twins were down 2-1.
That was the last hit Santana gave up that day, but while Martinez’s 2004 was not a great year by his standards, the man still hadn’t posted an ERA above 2.89 from 1997 to 2003. Maybe this was it for the Twins.
In the bottom of the sixth, Lew Ford doubled and then scored on a single from Hunter. The game was tied and it felt a little easier to breathe.
Santana struck out Ramirez to lead off the seventh, but then hit Veritek.
Veritek stole second and went to third on a throwing error from LeCroy.
Veritek only stole 25 bases in his career, though 10 of those came in 2004. This game was one of only 16 that LeCroy started at catcher that year. Sixteen runners attempted stolen bases against him in 144 innings in 2004. LeCroy threw out only one. Maybe Veritek knew something.
With Veritek on third, he scored on a sacrifice fly from Kevin Millar. Santana hadn’t given up a hit, but he’d given up a run and the Twins were losing once again.
Martinez finished the seventh with the Red Sox still up 3-2. He was done for the day.
Santana came out for eighth and struck out two, giving him 12 strikeouts for the day, one better than Martinez.
With Martinez gone, the Twins came out swinging. Guzman and Ford hit back-to-back singles to start the inning and then pulled off a double steal.
Justine Morneau hit a sacrifice fly that scored both runners when shortstop Cabrera committed an error. The Twins were up 4-3 and Santana was in line for the win.
First-year but all-star closer Joe Nathan faced only three batters to secure that win. Santana, the best pitcher in baseball, had bested the previous best pitcher in a game that was very much a pitchers’ duel despite the 4-3 score.
He may never get a plaque in Cooperstown, but Santana will be remembered by me, and I’m sure many other baseball fans, as one of the best to ever stand on a pitcher’s mound.

On Monday, Rhett Bollinger of MLB wrote that the Minnesota Twins are still more likely to upgrade their pitching rotation for 2018 through free agency than by trade.
 
And on Tuesday, MLB Trade Rumors reported off of a 1500 ESPN tweet that pitchers’ agents were getting the sense that the Twins (i.e., Derek Falvey and Thad Levine) were putting off talks until Yu Darvish announces his decision to sign.
 
Reading between the lines, one can interpret these reports to mean that the Twins have not been in much communication with free agent pitchers waiting to sign contracts this offseason.
 
But does an absence of communication mean that the Twins are failing to communicate?
 
A story Thursday in the New York Times (h/t dougd) suggests that Levine is one of the more skilled baseball executives in using alternative means to communicate (such as text messaging) with players, agents, or other major league personnel.

"...today, we negotiate hundreds of millions of dollars of contracts and make massive trades without ever picking up the phone and speaking directly with one another, let alone meeting face to face,” Levine said. “You kind of learn the personalities of guys—who needs a phone call, who can do it on text, who prefers emails, who likes to be lighthearted.
 
"The art of the negotiation has almost been trumped by the art of communication."  
This makes the news that the Twins have not met in person with Darvish much easier to take.
 
Meanwhile, back in December, the Twins were reportedly offered Gerrit Cole in exchange for prospects Nick Gordon, Zack Granite, and Tyler Jay, according to the news site Pirates Breakdown.
 
https://twitter.com/pbcbreakdown/status/940390540998250497
 
Many Twins fans, including myself, liked this trade idea. (See here, here, here, or here —and the proposals offered by Twins fans in these threads were actually not far off the mark in terms of value.)
 
The stat we know as WAR is not how we evaluate pitchers during the season, but it can be a good, broad gauge of general value.
 
In terms of fWAR, the two sides of a Cole/Gordon/Granite trade match up well. Fangraphs projects Cole to provide 3.8 fWAR in 2018; let's add 3.8 fWAR more for 2019. That makes 7.6 fWAR for the final two team-controlled seasons of Cole coming from Pittsburgh. How much fWAR will the Twins prospects provide? The 2017 midseason KATOH+ projections estimate that Granite will contribute 6.8 fWAR through his six team-controlled MLB seasons, while Gordon will accumulate 6.3 worth of fWAR across his six seasons. Throw in a generous 2.0 fWAR for Jay as a relief pitcher, and the total contribution of the prospects coming from the Twins is 15.1 fWAR.
 
In such a Gerrit Cole trade as proposed above, the Twins would trade away a future 15.1 fWAR in exchange for Cole’s 7.6 fWAR as a starter for the next two seasons.
 
That looks unequal, but posters on the Dozier trade discussion threads last winter found that MLB-for-prospect trades often lean heavily to one side in this way. A risk premium on the speculative nature of unpredictable prospects, perhaps.
 
In any case, the barstool argument in favor of the trade may be more effective than the mathematical or financial analysis. Gordon and Granite are good players, but their production can be replaced. The Twins have Jermaine Palacios and Royce Lewis playing shortstop in the minors behind Nick Gordon, and have Jorge Polanco and other capable shortstops on the Major League team already. As for Granite, I would not count on him getting enough playing time to contribute much fWAR anyway, the maturing young Twins outfield being what it is. And the bottom line is the Twins badly need starting pitching in 2018.
 
Now compare Cole to Darvish. Fangraphs projects Cole for 3.8 fWAR in 2018, while Darvish is projected only for 3.6 fWAR in 2018. Consider that Darvish’s contract will fetch more than $20 million per season for each of the next five or six seasons; Cole will not earn $20 million over the next two seasons together. Moreover, Cole might be motivated to pitch his best in order to increase his value in free agency following 2019.
 
Through the quiet offseason to this point, and assuming Pittsburgh is still interested in a trade, Cole has looked like a solid alternative to Yu Darvish, maybe even better. Cole is younger and will not tie up salary beyond 2019, and might even present a July trade opportunity for the Twins if the 2019 season goes sideways.
 
Beyond 2018 and 2019, the success of the Twins will depend on their ability to develop their own starting pitching. Darvish might help win some games in future seasons, but those wins will cost a lot of money, and possibly at the expense of extending one or two of the Twins young outfielders.
 
Levine’s "negotiation" with Darvish this winter has put me at ease somewhat. Levine's knowledge of Darvish from their days in Texas suggests to me that the Twins are not concerned about Darvish’s health, nor his motivation to pitch after he signs this nine-figure deal. And a dollar today is worth more than a dollar tomorrow; figure on that annual salary at the end of Darvish’s contract to not look so bad as it does now, once those latter years finally arrive.
 
I still prefer a trade for Cole, combined perhaps with a signing of Alex Cobb. But if the Twins really do sign Darvish — and my gut gives them a better than 50/50 chance at it — I imagine I will be amazed, thrilled, and fired up for the 2018 season. Such a signing will instantly put Minnesota almost on par with most other teams in the American League, and will give them a dependable arm for the next several seasons.
 
But it's Darvish’s decision to make. If Levine has misjudged Darvish and Darvish chooses to sign with another team, and other subsequent options fail to break for the Twins, the Twins would find themselves going into 2018 without the addition of a single starting pitcher. For a young, talented team that made a strong run in 2017, this would be quite a blow. To borrow a great metaphor from another TwinsDaily poster in another thread, the Twins are playing a game of musical chairs, and if Darvish signs with another team, the Twins might find themselves without a chair when the music stops.
 
Let's hope the personal relationship and commitment Thad Levine and Yu Darvish have together is real. My gut tells me it is.

On Monday, Rhett Bollinger of MLB wrote that the Minnesota Twins are still more likely to upgrade their pitching rotation for 2018 through free agency than by trade.
 
And on Tuesday, MLB Trade Rumors reported off of a 1500 ESPN tweet that pitchers’ agents were getting the sense that the Twins (i.e., Derek Falvey and Thad Levine) were putting off talks until Yu Darvish announces his decision to sign.
 
Reading between the lines, one can interpret these reports to mean that the Twins have not been in much communication with free agent pitchers waiting to sign contracts this offseason.
 
But does an absence of communication mean that the Twins are failing to communicate?
 
A story Thursday in the New York Times (h/t dougd) suggests that Levine is one of the more skilled baseball executives in using alternative means to communicate (such as text messaging) with players, agents, or other major league personnel.

"...today, we negotiate hundreds of millions of dollars of contracts and make massive trades without ever picking up the phone and speaking directly with one another, let alone meeting face to face,” Levine said. “You kind of learn the personalities of guys—who needs a phone call, who can do it on text, who prefers emails, who likes to be lighthearted.
 
"The art of the negotiation has almost been trumped by the art of communication."  
This makes the news that the Twins have not met in person with Darvish much easier to take.
 
Meanwhile, back in December, the Twins were reportedly offered Gerrit Cole in exchange for prospects Nick Gordon, Zack Granite, and Tyler Jay, according to the news site Pirates Breakdown.
 
https://twitter.com/pbcbreakdown/status/940390540998250497
 
Many Twins fans, including myself, liked this trade idea. (See here, here, here, or here —and the proposals offered by Twins fans in these threads were actually not far off the mark in terms of value.)
 
The stat we know as WAR is not how we evaluate pitchers during the season, but it can be a good, broad gauge of general value.
 
In terms of fWAR, the two sides of a Cole/Gordon/Granite trade match up well. Fangraphs projects Cole to provide 3.8 fWAR in 2018; let's add 3.8 fWAR more for 2019. That makes 7.6 fWAR for the final two team-controlled seasons of Cole coming from Pittsburgh. How much fWAR will the Twins prospects provide? The 2017 midseason KATOH+ projections estimate that Granite will contribute 6.8 fWAR through his six team-controlled MLB seasons, while Gordon will accumulate 6.3 worth of fWAR across his six seasons. Throw in a generous 2.0 fWAR for Jay as a relief pitcher, and the total contribution of the prospects coming from the Twins is 15.1 fWAR.
 
In such a Gerrit Cole trade as proposed above, the Twins would trade away a future 15.1 fWAR in exchange for Cole’s 7.6 fWAR as a starter for the next two seasons.
 
That looks unequal, but posters on the Dozier trade discussion threads last winter found that MLB-for-prospect trades often lean heavily to one side in this way. A risk premium on the speculative nature of unpredictable prospects, perhaps.
 
In any case, the barstool argument in favor of the trade may be more effective than the mathematical or financial analysis. Gordon and Granite are good players, but their production can be replaced. The Twins have Jermaine Palacios and Royce Lewis playing shortstop in the minors behind Nick Gordon, and have Jorge Polanco and other capable shortstops on the Major League team already. As for Granite, I would not count on him getting enough playing time to contribute much fWAR anyway, the maturing young Twins outfield being what it is. And the bottom line is the Twins badly need starting pitching in 2018.
 
Now compare Cole to Darvish. Fangraphs projects Cole for 3.8 fWAR in 2018, while Darvish is projected only for 3.6 fWAR in 2018. Consider that Darvish’s contract will fetch more than $20 million per season for each of the next five or six seasons; Cole will not earn $20 million over the next two seasons together. Moreover, Cole might be motivated to pitch his best in order to increase his value in free agency following 2019.
 
Through the quiet offseason to this point, and assuming Pittsburgh is still interested in a trade, Cole has looked like a solid alternative to Yu Darvish, maybe even better. Cole is younger and will not tie up salary beyond 2019, and might even present a July trade opportunity for the Twins if the 2019 season goes sideways.
 
Beyond 2018 and 2019, the success of the Twins will depend on their ability to develop their own starting pitching. Darvish might help win some games in future seasons, but those wins will cost a lot of money, and possibly at the expense of extending one or two of the Twins young outfielders.
 
Levine’s "negotiation" with Darvish this winter has put me at ease somewhat. Levine's knowledge of Darvish from their days in Texas suggests to me that the Twins are not concerned about Darvish’s health, nor his motivation to pitch after he signs this nine-figure deal. And a dollar today is worth more than a dollar tomorrow; figure on that annual salary at the end of Darvish’s contract to not look so bad as it does now, once those latter years finally arrive.
 
I still prefer a trade for Cole, combined perhaps with a signing of Alex Cobb. But if the Twins really do sign Darvish — and my gut gives them a better than 50/50 chance at it — I imagine I will be amazed, thrilled, and fired up for the 2018 season. Such a signing will instantly put Minnesota almost on par with most other teams in the American League, and will give them a dependable arm for the next several seasons.
 
But it's Darvish’s decision to make. If Levine has misjudged Darvish and Darvish chooses to sign with another team, and other subsequent options fail to break for the Twins, the Twins would find themselves going into 2018 without the addition of a single starting pitcher. For a young, talented team that made a strong run in 2017, this would be quite a blow. To borrow a great metaphor from another TwinsDaily poster in another thread, the Twins are playing a game of musical chairs, and if Darvish signs with another team, the Twins might find themselves without a chair when the music stops.
 
Let's hope the personal relationship and commitment Thad Levine and Yu Darvish have together is real. My gut tells me it is.

Eddie Rosario has always been a polarizing player for me. In his first extended stint with the Twins in 2015, he showed flashes of a really exciting all round game. He was a good base runner (4.7 runs above average), a solid defender (2.2 runs above average), and clobbered 13 home runs in his age 23 season. Rosario had excelled throughout 5 minor league destinations, and was noted for having an exceptionally quick bat and hands. There were a few major problems. Rosario struck out a lot (25% in 2015, compared to a league average 21%) and he rarely walked. Like, ever. In 2015 Rosario walked just 15 times in 474 plate appearances, good for a BB% of just 3.2%, well below the league average of 8.1%. Taken together, Rosario’s strikeouts and inability to take a walk amounted to cripplingly poor plate discipline.
 
In 2016 some of the aspects of Rosario’s game which made him exciting disappeared. His base running regressed marginally in 2016, and majorly in 2017. His defense went from good in 2015, to acceptable in 2016, to pretty bad in 2017 (-6.2 runs above average), a dip not often discussed in the Twins heralded ‘nothing falls but raindrops’ outfield, which should be renamed to reflect the fact that anyone not named Byron Buxton is actually a poor to average defensive outfielder.
 
Rosario’s regression and streaky hitting were so infuriating that it led to discussion about whether he would be the odd man out in the Twins up and coming outfield moving forwards, with Buxton spectacular, Kepler solid, and Zack Granite pushing for playing time with an impressive season at Rochester. Throughout his first two seasons, Rosario had shown little progress in his plate discipline, leading folks to voice the possibility that he had hit his ceiling. Enter James Rowson.
 
If Pat Shurmur is the MVP of the Vikings this season, Rowson deserves the same plaudits for his work with Buxton, Polanco, and Rosario in 2017. In researching Rowson, two things seem to stand out about his approach with the young core of Twins hitters; firstly, he wants players to have a high comfort level in taking ownership of their own swings, secondly, he’s keenly aware of the strengths and weaknesses of hit hitters and publicly pushes those buttons. After a game against the White Sox, Rowson named Rosario the player of the game, despite going 0-4, crediting him for helping teammates see more pitches from Jose Quintana which eventually allowed them to force him from the game.
 
Rosario’s numbers from 2017 are a testament to Rowson’s work. He increased his BB% to just under 6%, taking 23 more walks than he did in 2016. Rosario’s OBP jumped almost 30 points, despite a 26 point decrease in his BaBIP from 2016 to 2017. The main cause for this increased ability to get on base? Rosario was significantly more selective with his swings in 2017. He dropped his O-Swing % (the percentage of time he swings at pitches outside the strike zone) from 42% to 37%. This decreased his overall SwStr% around 5% and led to a significantly increased Contact% (percentage of the time a hitter makes contact when swinging at all pitches). Overall, Rosario wasn’t swinging at significantly less pitches, he’s swinging at significantly more hittable ones, leading to a spike in home runs, walks, and isolated power.
 
Entering his final pre-arbitration year in 2018 Rosario will need to keep his improved offensive output going to offset other diminishing skill sets. If Rosario can continue to build upon his improved plate discipline in 2018, he could finish the season as one of the more offensively productive outfielders in the American league.

https://www.si.com/more-sports/2011/07/01/kaplan-spahnmarichalToday I was motivated by reading an article on ESPN by Bradford Doolittle - hitting the reset on pitcher wins http://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/21439977/hitting-reset-button-starting-pitcher-wins-baseball
 
As a baseball fan who started out rooting for Warren Spahn, Lew Burdette, Hank Aaron, and Eddie Mathews of the Milwaukee Braves and then moving over to the new Twins as an usher for their first season my views are tainted by history and, while I like many new stats, I am bothered by the tendency to throw out the old stats with the recycling.
 
Over and over I hear that wins don't count, then we drool over our greater win totals. True it is a team game and the wins by an individual pitcher have to be looked at under a new lens since the idea of a complete game where the pitcher really does control the outcome has changed and now we have shifted to the bullpen as masters of the mound, but the true aces rise above this.
 
Sale and Kluber, Kershaw and Scherzer are not just great starters, they actually win games, even though they do not pitch very many complete games. To understand my love of the complete game and the true aces you should read about the Spahn/Marichal game in 1963 - https://www.si.com/more-sports/2011/07/01/kaplan-spahnmarichal
How nostalgic this game is for me.
 
Now admittedly in this era it is a thrill to see two starters go 7 innings against each other, but that does not diminish the win and loss records. It is true that the scorer never invokes his right to award the win to the most deserving so a relief pitcher can come in throw one ball and then get the win, but that is not all that common. The starter gets his record because he pitches long enough, often enough to get to the position to win.
​And I understand fielding and hitting are essential I remember when Ryan won the ERA title in 1987 came with an 8 - 16 record, hardly a great pct. Yet he overcame the poor teams he pitched for to surpass 300 wins just as Blyleven won 287 games pitching with some mediocre teams. I give him credit for this win total in addition to the new stats that pushed him in the Hall of Fame.
 
I do not want to negate the new approach. In fact the bullpen era will create some interesting statistical aberrations that challenge our ability to compare pitchers from one era to another, but take nothing away from those winners of yesteryear.
 
It is common place to always state today's athletes are the best ever. Kershaw is being anointed by ESPN weekly and he deserves his recognition, but necessarily his ranking. Give the same diet, training and opportunities, the greats of the past would be the greats of today and the greats of today put in another era would still rise to stardom.
 
So how do we judge players? Old stats, new stats, the eye test? Maybe all of them. If real baseball was just a statistical exercise we could dispense with the field and just play strato-matic, but the human element is what gives it greatness and is the reason we still talk about players like Cy Young and Honus Wagner even though they are simply grainy photographs and statistical lines in our life times.

Not that anyone asked, but in the past day or so I posted in these Twins Daily threads...
Who, besides Robbie Grossman himself, deserves credit for Grossman's improved defensive stats in the outfield, as well as improvement in the eye-test according to yours truly? My general recollection has been less wandering about in search of fly balls. If Jeff Pickler is in charge of coaching the outfielders, kudos to him. Now, about Buxton banging repeatedly into center field walls...
On a post-season broadcast, Matt Vasgersian reportedly opined that managers should not be allowed to add check-swings as another call that can be appealed. I agree. When the automated strike zone becomes a reality, the cameras presumably will be able to track the bat head's progress (or lack) across the plate area. Until that day, stopping the game for such appeals is not a good investment of time.
Sheesh, Jacque Jones. That's how you treat someone you were close to? To paraphrase another's wisdom, can't we all just get along?
If surgery is needed for Sano's aching leg, I'd vote for proceeding ASAP. While caution is medically advisable, it's also likely that his conditioning regimen is suffering at present.

Ervin Santana is on top of his game.
 
Earlier this evening, Santana blanked the Baltimore Orioles in a complete game win. It's his second complete game shutout on the season. Santana allowed just two hits, two walks, no runs, and no baserunners after the fifth inning.
 
Santana owns a 7-2 record with a 1.80 ERA in ten starts. In 70.0 innings, he has allowed a mere 31 hits.
 
After tonight, Santana has now won all four of his road starts, allowing just one run in 29.0 innings in those starts.
 
The bottom of the ninth inning in tonight's game was a thing of beauty. Leading off and trailing by two runs, Adam Jones took a fastball and then a slider out of the zone, working Santana to a favorable 2-0 hitter's count. Then, like a true poker player, Santana stared down Jones and threw a thigh-high fastball, which Jones took for a strike. That ran the count to 2-1 and back in Santana's favor. Jones grounded out the next pitch. Then Manny Machado came up, fell behind 0-1, and couldn't lay off pitches out of the zone after that, striking out on a slider in the dirt. Mark Trumbo then came to bat and grounded out on the first pitch to end the game.
 
Great pitch-calling, great execution of those pitches, great approach to batters the third and fourth times through the order, no doubt also some great scouting reports and comparing of notes when necessary as the game went on. Santana was in complete control. Great pitching is truly an art. Now excuse me while I go fetch a handkerchief.

Ervin Santana is on top of his game.
 
Earlier this evening, Santana blanked the Baltimore Orioles in a complete game win. It's his second complete game shutout on the season. Santana allowed just two hits, two walks, no runs, and no baserunners after the fifth inning.
 
Santana owns a 7-2 record with a 1.80 ERA in ten starts. In 70.0 innings, he has allowed a mere 31 hits.
 
After tonight, Santana has now won all four of his road starts, allowing just one run in 29.0 innings in those starts.
 
The bottom of the ninth inning in tonight's game was a thing of beauty. Leading off and trailing by two runs, Adam Jones took a fastball and then a slider out of the zone, working Santana to a favorable 2-0 hitter's count. Then, like a true poker player, Santana stared down Jones and threw a thigh-high fastball, which Jones took for a strike. That ran the count to 2-1 and back in Santana's favor. Jones grounded out the next pitch. Then Manny Machado came up, fell behind 0-1, and couldn't lay off pitches out of the zone after that, striking out on a slider in the dirt. Mark Trumbo then came to bat and grounded out on the first pitch to end the game.
 
Great pitch-calling, great execution of those pitches, great approach to batters the third and fourth times through the order, no doubt also some great scouting reports and comparing of notes when necessary as the game went on. Santana was in complete control. Great pitching is truly an art. Now excuse me while I go fetch a handkerchief.

May 7, 1965



Twins Commit Seven Errors


 
The Twins committed seven errors in a 13-5 loss to the White Sox on their home turf in Bloomington. Shortstop Zoilo Versalles and third baseman Rich Rollins each committed two errors, while Harmon Killebrew, Earl Battey and St. Paul native Jerry Kindall added one each. Every infielder plus the catcher committed an error. Despite the seven errors, Twins pitching still gave up 10 earned runs. Nimrod, MN native Dick Stigman started the game for the Twins and lasted just 3 ⅔ innings, allowing four runs (all earned) on five hits.
 
The Twins would salvage the season and capture the American League Pennant.
 

May 7, 1978



Smalley Draw Team-Record 5 Walks


 
Roy Smalley set a team single-game record when he walked 5 times in a 15-9 Twins win in Baltimore. Smalley also hit a double in his sixth at-bat, driving in left fielder Willie Norwood. Smalley walked in each of the first three innings, the first two vs. 1990 Hall of Fame inductee Jim Palmer who only lasted 1 ⅔ innings, allowing six runs on three hits and five walks. Willie Norwood stole second during each of Smalley’s first three at-bats, which eventually ended in walks anyway. The Twins scored nine of their 15 runs in the first three innings. Starting for the Twins was Alexandria, MN High School graduate Gary Serum, who only lasted 4 ⅓ innings, allowing five runs on eight hits, but did not walk a batter.
 

May 7, 1989



Dan Gladden Makes Second Pitching Appearance


 
Dan Gladden made his second big league pitching appearance in a 12-1 loss in Cleveland. Gladden allowed only one run on two hits and a walk. Not bad considering that Cleveland had scored 11 runs over seven innings against Minnesota’s full-time professional pitchers.
 
By the way, how about Gimenez getting out of the inning on four pitches yesterday, eh?
 




 

May 7, 2000



Tom Kelly Wins 1,000th Game


 
Tom Kelly became the 46th manager in major league history to win 1,000 games as Minnesota beat Detroit 4-0 at the Metrodome. Joe Mays, who entered the game with an 0-4 record, pitched a complete game five-hit shutout for the Twins.
 

May 7, 2002



Mary Tyler Moore Throws Out First Pitch


 




 

May 7, 2008



Carlos Gomez Hits for the Cycle


 
Leadoff hitter Carlos Gomez hit for the “natural cycle” in reverse in a 13-1 Twins win versus the White Sox in Chicago. Gomez led off the game with a home run, and then hit a triple, double and single. Gomez had three RBI, two runs scored and also struck out twice. Nick Punto hit the first of his two home runs of the season. Livan Hernandez pitched the complete game for the Twins, improving to 5-1.
 




 
 
Keep in touch with the @TwinsAlmanac on Twitter.

This blog entry will be sweet and short. The Twins are 14-12 on Cinco De Mayo. Last year on May 5 the team was already eliminated from playoff contention, at least it felt like at 8-20.
 
But this year baseball is fun because the team is winning. Many of the guys helping the team win are guys who will be part of the future of this team. Miguel Sano, Byron Buxton, Jorge Polanco, Max Kepler and Eddie Rosario.
 
However, anytime one mistake is made or a move is or isn't made by the front office the complaints come out in full force. A handful of fans don't like the new front office and think these new guys have same philosophies as the old regime and complain, complain, complain.
 
They want Berrios up even though he might not be ready yet, they wanted Gibson sent to AAA and when he was they complained it took too long. They complain about Nick Tepesch, even though he might be an ok back end starter. Danny Santana . . . . Ok, I understand that complaint.
 
But my point is, let's enjoy the winning and fun baseball team we are watching right now. I trust the front office even though I too scratch my head on some moves. I think we are watching the beginning of what will become a very good baseball team in the coming years.

The Twins sit at 8-10 through their first 18 games.
 
The Twins are in a much better spot than last season, but considering that opening series sweep against Kansas City, the Twins have been heading in the wrong direction recently.
 
The Twins begin a six game road trip in Texas tonight. I want to get my hasty thoughts down for the upcoming week.
 
There's not a lot the Twins can do about the starting pitching right now (yes there is, but anyway), so I will set that aside. There is also specific information we do not have access to, as fans. However, in my opinion, there are four general things I would like to see the manager do this week to improve the team's present and future outlook.
 
Here they are, as addressed to Molitor, in no particular order (except for the number one thing, which is unquestionably the number one thing, in my mind):
 
 
# 4 : Hold the outfield together.
 
Rosario-Buxton-Kepler should start all six games. They will not need rest, as there is a day off after each series. If you feel compelled to make a starting lineup substitution, then it needs to be Grossman, and probably as a right fielder. Kepler can move to left field or DH.
 
 
# 3 : Move Mauer down the order.
 
These are the players that should be batting ahead of him: Dozier, Polanco, Grossman, Sano, Kepler. Against a lefty, Mauer can sit (Hamels pitches Wednesday) and Vargas can slip into that sixth slot as a RHB first baseman.
 
I liked the early lineup experimentation, but things are coming into a little more focus. Polanco and Grossman are OBP machines. Take advantage.
 
 
# 2 : Manage pitching changes as if it's August.
 
Manage them as if the Twins are in a pennant race, too. I understand it's pretty slim pickins out there, but there's no need to bring in a guy like Breslow to face a guy like Castellanos, as you did on Saturday. Granted neither of those two has a strong platoon split, but mind the splits anyway. Also, I like how you used the mop up guy for three inning stretches when necessary. Tepesch is that guy this week.
 
 
# 1 : Let Buxton bat.
 
This might be the week Buxton gets on track.
 
Do not pinch hit for him, do not pinch run for him, do not ask him to bunt. In fact, tell him not to bunt. Just let him hit.
 
The Twins have played mostly afternoon games to this point. Oddly, the Twins have played one night game on the road so far. It is April, and it has been the cold weather schedule. Beginning tonight, they will start their normal schedule. They will play three consecutive night games, followed by a day off, followed by two more night games this week, and then the Sunday day game before heading home for an evening series beginning Tuesday.
 
These are good conditions for establishing a routine.
 
Often, teams do not take batting practice ahead of day games. I'm sure Buxton is being coached well and doing tee work and getting swings off the machine. It's the real stuff out on the field where he needs to be this week, standing tall (DeRosa), and keeping his eyes on the ball (Reynolds). Lots of repetitions. Minimum distractions. Sound mechanics, same approach, swing after swing. Then into the clubhouse to think about it, grab a bite, get dressed, and get ready. Let him carry his batting practice work into the games.
 
Buxton was slotted third in the batting order to start the season, a show of confidence. Removing him from a game for a pinch hitter is probably a contradictory message. Imagine if Buxton is allowed to bat in those late innings and comes up with a big hit, instead of being pinch hit for. That might be the biggest affirmation of his work and confidence boost of all.
 
Tell Buxton he has 12 plate appearances in Texas, and 12 more in Kansas City, and as long as he's doing things correctly, there's no pressure to change or make it all up in that first at bat. He's got 4 at bats tonight, 4 tomorrow, and just go out there and do it. Unless of course the Twins clobber the starting pitcher tonight, in which case he might get 5 at bats. Or 6, if it really goes off the rails.
 
Go Twins!

The Twins sit at 8-10 through their first 18 games.
 
The Twins are in a much better spot than last season, but considering that opening series sweep against Kansas City, the Twins have been heading in the wrong direction recently.
 
The Twins begin a six game road trip in Texas tonight. I want to get my hasty thoughts down for the upcoming week.
 
There's not a lot the Twins can do about the starting pitching right now (yes there is, but anyway), so I will set that aside. There is also specific information we do not have access to, as fans. However, in my opinion, there are four general things I would like to see the manager do this week to improve the team's present and future outlook.
 
Here they are, as addressed to Molitor, in no particular order (except for the number one thing, which is unquestionably the number one thing, in my mind):
 
 
# 4 : Hold the outfield together.
 
Rosario-Buxton-Kepler should start all six games. They will not need rest, as there is a day off after each series. If you feel compelled to make a starting lineup substitution, then it needs to be Grossman, and probably as a right fielder. Kepler can move to left field or DH.
 
 
# 3 : Move Mauer down the order.
 
These are the players that should be batting ahead of him: Dozier, Polanco, Grossman, Sano, Kepler. Against a lefty, Mauer can sit (Hamels pitches Wednesday) and Vargas can slip into that sixth slot as a RHB first baseman.
 
I liked the early lineup experimentation, but things are coming into a little more focus. Polanco and Grossman are OBP machines. Take advantage.
 
 
# 2 : Manage pitching changes as if it's August.
 
Manage them as if the Twins are in a pennant race, too. I understand it's pretty slim pickins out there, but there's no need to bring in a guy like Breslow to face a guy like Castellanos, as you did on Saturday. Granted neither of those two has a strong platoon split, but mind the splits anyway. Also, I like how you used the mop up guy for three inning stretches when necessary. Tepesch is that guy this week.
 
 
# 1 : Let Buxton bat.
 
This might be the week Buxton gets on track.
 
Do not pinch hit for him, do not pinch run for him, do not ask him to bunt. In fact, tell him not to bunt. Just let him hit.
 
The Twins have played mostly afternoon games to this point. Oddly, the Twins have played one night game on the road so far. It is April, and it has been the cold weather schedule. Beginning tonight, they will start their normal schedule. They will play three consecutive night games, followed by a day off, followed by two more night games this week, and then the Sunday day game before heading home for an evening series beginning Tuesday.
 
These are good conditions for establishing a routine.
 
Often, teams do not take batting practice ahead of day games. I'm sure Buxton is being coached well and doing tee work and getting swings off the machine. It's the real stuff out on the field where he needs to be this week, standing tall (DeRosa), and keeping his eyes on the ball (Reynolds). Lots of repetitions. Minimum distractions. Sound mechanics, same approach, swing after swing. Then into the clubhouse to think about it, grab a bite, get dressed, and get ready. Let him carry his batting practice work into the games.
 
Buxton was slotted third in the batting order to start the season, a show of confidence. Removing him from a game for a pinch hitter is probably a contradictory message. Imagine if Buxton is allowed to bat in those late innings and comes up with a big hit, instead of being pinch hit for. That might be the biggest affirmation of his work and confidence boost of all.
 
Tell Buxton he has 12 plate appearances in Texas, and 12 more in Kansas City, and as long as he's doing things correctly, there's no pressure to change or make it all up in that first at bat. He's got 4 at bats tonight, 4 tomorrow, and just go out there and do it. Unless of course the Twins clobber the starting pitcher tonight, in which case he might get 5 at bats. Or 6, if it really goes off the rails.
 
Go Twins!

The Twins sit at 8-10 through their first 18 games.
 
The Twins are in a much better spot than last season, but considering that opening series sweep against Kansas City, the Twins have been heading in the wrong direction recently.
 
The Twins begin a six game road trip in Texas tonight. I want to get my hasty thoughts down for the upcoming week.
 
There's not a lot the Twins can do about the starting pitching right now (yes there is, but anyway), so I will set that aside. There is also specific information we do not have access to, as fans. However, in my opinion, there are four general things I would like to see the manager do this week to improve the team's present and future outlook.
 
Here they are, as addressed to Molitor, in no particular order (except for the number one thing, which is unquestionably the number one thing, in my mind):
 
 
# 4 : Hold the outfield together.
 
Rosario-Buxton-Kepler should start all six games. They will not need rest, as there is a day off after each series. If you feel compelled to make a starting lineup substitution, then it needs to be Grossman, and probably as a right fielder. Kepler can move to left field or DH.
 
 
# 3 : Move Mauer down the order.
 
These are the players that should be batting ahead of him: Dozier, Polanco, Grossman, Sano, Kepler. Against a lefty, Mauer can sit (Hamels pitches Wednesday) and Vargas can slip into that sixth slot as a RHB first baseman.
 
I liked the early lineup experimentation, but things are coming into a little more focus. Polanco and Grossman are OBP machines. Take advantage.
 
 
# 2 : Manage pitching changes as if it's August.
 
Manage them as if the Twins are in a pennant race, too. I understand it's pretty slim pickins out there, but there's no need to bring in a guy like Breslow to face a guy like Castellanos, as you did on Saturday. Granted neither of those two has a strong platoon split, but mind the splits anyway. Also, I like how you used the mop up guy for three inning stretches when necessary. Tepesch is that guy this week.
 
 
# 1 : Let Buxton bat.
 
This might be the week Buxton gets on track.
 
Do not pinch hit for him, do not pinch run for him, do not ask him to bunt. In fact, tell him not to bunt. Just let him hit.
 
The Twins have played mostly afternoon games to this point. Oddly, the Twins have played one night game on the road so far. It is April, and it has been the cold weather schedule. Beginning tonight, they will start their normal schedule. They will play three consecutive night games, followed by a day off, followed by two more night games this week, and then the Sunday day game before heading home for an evening series beginning Tuesday.
 
These are good conditions for establishing a routine.
 
Often, teams do not take batting practice ahead of day games. I'm sure Buxton is being coached well and doing tee work and getting swings off the machine. It's the real stuff out on the field where he needs to be this week, standing tall (DeRosa), and keeping his eyes on the ball (Reynolds). Lots of repetitions. Minimum distractions. Sound mechanics, same approach, swing after swing. Then into the clubhouse to think about it, grab a bite, get dressed, and get ready. Let him carry his batting practice work into the games.
 
Buxton was slotted third in the batting order to start the season, a show of confidence. Removing him from a game for a pinch hitter is probably a contradictory message. Imagine if Buxton is allowed to bat in those late innings and comes up with a big hit, instead of being pinch hit for. That might be the biggest affirmation of his work and confidence boost of all.
 
Tell Buxton he has 12 plate appearances in Texas, and 12 more in Kansas City, and as long as he's doing things correctly, there's no pressure to change or make it all up in that first at bat. He's got 4 at bats tonight, 4 tomorrow, and just go out there and do it. Unless of course the Twins clobber the starting pitcher tonight, in which case he might get 5 at bats. Or 6, if it really goes off the rails.
 
Go Twins!

The Twins are coming home 6-3, and with the seasons we've suffered through they might as well all strut onto Target Field wearing uniforms designed to mimic John Travolta's white suit from Saturday Night Fever. They should have a "Pinch 'n Slap" booth at each entrance to help fans confirm they are not dreaming. Ice cream in mini batting helmets should come with six cherries on top.
 
But we're all gonna talk about losing that series to Detroit, and we're especially going to talk about Byron Buxton striking out like he was trying to take Sally Field's Oscar from Norma Rae.
 
-- Is there any actual strike in that movie? If not, I'm just counting on the fact that Twins Daily readers like me - they REALLY like me! That should get me past the facts.
 
The dread moments of baseball aren't reserved for when your team loses a number of games that would be good to score on the wheel in The Price is Right. Dread's the bitter coffee you have while watching a beautiful sunset. It's the bowel movement caused by that coffee when you sit on your throne and watch videos of another Sano home run. Dread may be a little gross and personal, but we always put it on the menu.
 
By the end of August, every goldurn one of you will have a player you can't stand. And you will follow this player more closely than the players you like. You'll pray for them to get demoted, traded, or even forced into real estate. When one of those outcomes happens, you'll cheer and splatter ink praising the end of the great awfulness all over your social media. Then, before your head hits the pillow, your brain will seize the next player you'll hate by one ankle and begin brewing barrels of spite.
 
I think this happens because we all really believe we're just a bend in the road away from true happiness, and we could fix it if someone just gave us the chance. Proving we can fix the destiny of our favorite baseball team reinforces the idea we'd be living like princes and princesses if the damned bastards of the world would just listen to us.
 
For me, life would be fine and dandy if the White Sox went away and Trevor May got healed by Roma Downey in Touched by an Angel (or some retro Michael Landon miracle-making). Will this amount to anything? Well, Brendan Harris isn't going into the Twins' Hall of Fame any time soon. But the human animal I am can't just watch the game without grounding my teeth and dreading the unholy idea that no one cares what I think.

With the 2017 Minnesota Twins season set to open up on Monday, it's finally time to try to predict what this team will do over the next 162 games.
 
(This article was originally posted at Knuckleballsblog.com)
 
Looking at the Opening Day roster and comparing it to what we saw a year ago, making a prediction that doesn't have the Twins once again at least flirting with 100 losses takes a combination of considerable imagination and pure hope.
http://knuckleballsblog.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/DSC_0834-2-600x400.jpg
Twins GM That Levine (Photo by SD Buhr)

A 103-loss team a year ago, it's pretty hard to see obvious reasons to project a significant improvement in that record. The primary change (in fact, perhaps the only significant change) in the organization came in the front office and, no matter what you think of Derek Falvey and Thad Levine, the new Twins brass won't pitch or hit the team to more wins.
 
This is a roster that cried out for pitching upgrades and I defy anyone to look at the Opening Day pitching staff and point out where significant improvement is going to come from. The decision-makers have determined that manager Paul Molitor will have 13 pitchers to choose from. I don't think volume is going to automatically make the staff better, though.
 
What this roster does have, thanks to the extra pitching being carried, is a total lack of offense available off the bench. When Molitor looks down his bench for a pinch hitter, he's going to be looking at Chris Gimenez, Eduardo Escobar and Danny Santana.
 
The only way he'll see a viable pinch hitter in that dugout is if he has started Escobar at shortstop, leaving Jorge Polanco available.
 
Gimenez, the backup catcher, is also supposedly the backup first baseman behind Joe Mauer. That's not ideal. I have to wonder if we won't see Max Kepler at first base with some frequency. I don't doubt he can handle the position (he did well enough there in Cedar Rapids back in 2013), but it's a waste to put a guy with his range in the outfield at first base. It just makes you worse as a team, defensively, at both positions.
 
I don't envy Molitor the task he has before him this season.
 
Owner Jim Pohlad made it clear at the end of 2016 that, regardless of who he hired to run his baseball operations, they were going to keep Molitor as their manager in 2017.
 
So Falvey and Levine knew they wouldn't be able to hire the manager of their choice until the 2018 season.
 
But it's almost as if they collectively decided that they weren't going to go out of their way during the 2016-2017 offseason to improve the Twins' roster and risk giving Molitor any chance to win enough games to make replacing him an unpopular thing to do, either with fans or with an owner who clearly likes the Hall-of-Famer, after his lame-duck season wraps up.
 
Molitor has certainly not set the world on fir in his first two seasons as a manager. In this interview with the Pioneer Press' Brian Murphy, Molitor even admits that, "Learning to run the bullpen has been a work in progress."
 
He'll get no argument from most Twins fans on that point.
 
Molitor also conceded that his ability to produce more wins may be taken out of his hands as this season unfolds. After trying, and failing, to get what they considered fair market trade value out of veterans like Brian Dozier and Ervin Santana during the offseason, you have to assume that the Twins new front office would be quick to pull the trigger on mid-season trades of such players if they get off to good starts, driving up their trade values
 
With a front office so obviously focused on the future, such moves would have significant negative effects on the chances of Molitor leading his team to enough wins to save his job.
 
To his credit, it's clear from the comments he made to Murphy that Molitor, while being aware of these circumstances, isn't particularly concerned about them. Or at least he's classy enough not to express any such concerns publicly.
 
Make no mistake, however, any ultimate failure of the 2017 Twins to substantially improve the results that fans see on the field would be a shared responsibility.
 
I won't argue that Molitor would be blameless for a lack of success, but his front office did him no favors with its inactivity all offseason long. They had an obvious task - improve the pitching, both the rotation and the bullpen. They did almost nothing to address that need and that, in my view, would make them primarily responsible if a lack of pitching talent leads to another bad season.
 
I'm hoping that another year of development will mean significant improvements on the field from guys such as Kepler, Polanco, Byron Buxton and Miguel Sano.
 
I'm hoping Phil Hughes and Kyle Gibson have good years and that whatever mix is in that bullpen turns out able to do its job well.
 
I'm hoping that some of the organization's young pitchers develop quickly enough to provide upgrades during the course of the season.
 
As a fan, hoping is all I have the ability to do.
 
Unfortunately, everything I've seen, heard and read about the new Twins front office indicates that they're just hoping all those things happen, too.
 
Falvey and Levine, however, walked into their offices at Target Field with the absolute authority to reshape their roster and they did virtually nothing to give Molitor - and Twins fans - anything of substance to hang our hopes on for this season.

On Saturday, the Twins announced that young pitcher Jose Berrios would be demoted to Rochester to start the season. The reason, according to manager Paul Molitor, was "that the lack of work and consistency of work ... to try and rush the buildup here in the last ten days to try and get him ready to try and be in that spot didn’t make a lot of sense to me.”
 
Does this explanation pass muster?
 
Consider Phil Hughes is a given for the rotation, and that Berrios and Hughes have been on roughly the same pitching schedule this spring:
 
Feb 25, Hughes: 2.0 innings
Feb 26, Berrios: 2.0 innings
 
March 2, Hughes: 2.0 innings
March 3, Berrios: 2.0 innings
 
It was at this point that Berrios went to play for Puerto Rico in the World Baseball Classic. Meanwhile, Hughes pitched in an intra-squad game on March 7. I will assume Berrios stayed loose or played some catch during that same time.
 
Berrios and Hughes then made starts on the same day:
 
March 12, Hughes: 5.0 innings
March 12, Berrios: 5.0 innings
 
After this, Berrios did not pitch again until the final, while Hughes made a start on March 17 for 5.0 more innings. However, Hector Santiago, teammate of Berrios on Puerto Rico, did say that Berrios threw a 55-pitch session of live batting practice during this time.
 
Interestingly, both pitchers pitched again on the 22nd:
 
March 22, Hughes: 2.0 innings
March 22, Berrios: 1.2 innings
 
This was the game Berrios struck out Giancarlo Stanton and Jonathan Lucroy with the nasty slurve-curve he throws:
 

 
And here we sit, heading into Monday March 27. Both Berrios and Hughes would figure to pitch again in a day or two. In my opinion, if anyone needs to be stretched out, it's Hughes, who reported tingling in his fingers between innings last season, then had shoulder surgery.
 
Obviously we are not privy to some of the things that goes on within the clubhouse and in private. I am also no pitching coach and do not know how pitchers prepare except for what I read on the Internets. However, the explanation that Berrios can't get "stretched out" does not hold up, in my opinion. Will Molitor and the Twins name a date for Berrios's return or the number of starts they plan to give him, or when the expect him to finally be stretched out?
 
Berrios threw 40 pitches in his last outing the 22nd. How much more stretching out would Berrios need?
 
How about something like this:
March 22, 40 pitches (already complete)
Tues. March 28, starting pitcher vs. Tampa Bay (50 or so pitches)
Sun. April 2, no game, but a vigorous bullpen session (50-75 pitches - continue scaling upwards)
Regular season: Sat. April 8, makes start against the White Sox, with a limit of 5 innings or 75 pitches

That April 8 start is the turn of the fifth starter in the rotation. After that point, wouldn't Berrios be stretched out and ready to take his regular turn in the rotation? Yes? No? Thoughts?

On Saturday, the Twins announced that young pitcher Jose Berrios would be demoted to Rochester to start the season. The reason, according to manager Paul Molitor, was "that the lack of work and consistency of work ... to try and rush the buildup here in the last ten days to try and get him ready to try and be in that spot didn’t make a lot of sense to me.”
 
Does this explanation pass muster?
 
Consider Phil Hughes is a given for the rotation, and that Berrios and Hughes have been on roughly the same pitching schedule this spring:
 
Feb 25, Hughes: 2.0 innings
Feb 26, Berrios: 2.0 innings
 
March 2, Hughes: 2.0 innings
March 3, Berrios: 2.0 innings
 
It was at this point that Berrios went to play for Puerto Rico in the World Baseball Classic. Meanwhile, Hughes pitched in an intra-squad game on March 7. I will assume Berrios stayed loose or played some catch during that same time.
 
Berrios and Hughes then made starts on the same day:
 
March 12, Hughes: 5.0 innings
March 12, Berrios: 5.0 innings
 
After this, Berrios did not pitch again until the final, while Hughes made a start on March 17 for 5.0 more innings. However, Hector Santiago, teammate of Berrios on Puerto Rico, did say that Berrios threw a 55-pitch session of live batting practice during this time.
 
Interestingly, both pitchers pitched again on the 22nd:
 
March 22, Hughes: 2.0 innings
March 22, Berrios: 1.2 innings
 
This was the game Berrios struck out Giancarlo Stanton and Jonathan Lucroy with the nasty slurve-curve he throws:
 

 
And here we sit, heading into Monday March 27. Both Berrios and Hughes would figure to pitch again in a day or two. In my opinion, if anyone needs to be stretched out, it's Hughes, who reported tingling in his fingers between innings last season, then had shoulder surgery.
 
Obviously we are not privy to some of the things that goes on within the clubhouse and in private. I am also no pitching coach and do not know how pitchers prepare except for what I read on the Internets. However, the explanation that Berrios can't get "stretched out" does not hold up, in my opinion. Will Molitor and the Twins name a date for Berrios's return or the number of starts they plan to give him, or when the expect him to finally be stretched out?
 
Berrios threw 40 pitches in his last outing the 22nd. How much more stretching out would Berrios need?
 
How about something like this:
March 22, 40 pitches (already complete)
Tues. March 28, starting pitcher vs. Tampa Bay (50 or so pitches)
Sun. April 2, no game, but a vigorous bullpen session (50-75 pitches - continue scaling upwards)
Regular season: Sat. April 8, makes start against the White Sox, with a limit of 5 innings or 75 pitches

That April 8 start is the turn of the fifth starter in the rotation. After that point, wouldn't Berrios be stretched out and ready to take his regular turn in the rotation? Yes? No? Thoughts?

Thursday morning in Fort Myers, I resolved to take some pictures for once. Arrival was a little after 9, in time again for calisthenics (shown, left). Either that, or the prospects were being put to work erecting a new fence.
 
Fellow TD moderator USAFChief arrived shortly after this, and we shared a great day soaking up all that Twins spring training offers at the back fields.
 
After the players were warmed up, instruction began. Sometimes they do a lot of standing and listening at spring training, in this case to coach Ivan Arteaga (only his white-clad shoulder is visible in this shot):
 

 
We moved to the fields in the far back. Fielding practice ...
 

 
... was followed by every position player's favorite activity, batting practice. This day, it was decided to divide the hitters into two teams for a bit of artificial competition. The players opted for Americanos ...
 

 
versus Latinos:
 

 
The hitters judged for each other, regarding "outs" and "hits", and there was more good-natured joshing than I recall at most Twins on-field activities. Good idea, it turns out. (I failed to notice which team won, sorry.)
 
Drills ended early because the two minor league games were scheduled for 11:00. Chief and I visited the team shop, both downstairs and up, and while inside Hammond we took a look at the upstairs environment. An interestingly different view of activities on the major league batting practice field was available from this vantage point:
 

 
We noticed that the minor league games had started, so we sauntered hustled over to the back fields again. When we got to the AA game, guess Hu had dropped in to pay a visit?
 

 
Yep, Chih-Wei Hu, traded in 2015 for ..., well, it will be less contentious and painful if I don't go into that again, here. Hu turned out not to get a very friendly welcome from Twins bats, as you will infer from how he is backing up home in the above photo. However, later in the game he did saw off the bat of Twins prospect Cristian Castro (who reached base anyway on the play):
 

 
I like this shot of Tom Belza taking a swing. Sometimes it must seem to the prospects that the major league field is only one long home run away.
 

 
Over on the AAA field, you Gotta love this Rays prospect, whose first name is Cade by the way:
 

 
And here, Daniel Palka demonstrates that he's not some punch-and-judy hitter, with that high kick. Reminds me of the old saying: "When you're going well, it's a timing mechanism. When you're in a slump, it's a hitch in your swing."
 

 
Here, Karim Kevin Garcia [thank you Seth] goes out to talk with Mason Melotakis, and Melo apparently gives HIM the encouragement.
 

 
And here, Reynaldo Rodriguez is checked at home plate by a trainer after taking a very painful shot to the lower leg on a foul ball. He did not look very steady as he was helped off the field, either. Owie.
 

1. Pitch Clock
I used to be anti-pitch clock, like a lot of people. "Baseball doesn't have a clock!" I exclaimed, stupidly forgetting the day that I saw Freddy Garcia average (estimating here) fourteen hours between pitches. By the end of the third inning of the first pitch-clocked game I saw, I was a convert, and you will be too.
 
It moves the game along. I now support the shortest pitch clock possible, as well as a between-innings clock, and also support giving the umpire a BB gun to shoot people who don't comply.
 
2. Eliminating Mound Visits
Baseball is the only sport that allows coaches, managers, and other players to call unlimited timeouts. This is because every other sport realized that, given this unchecked power, everyone would routinely abuse it. Somehow, baseball sat through Joe Torre's managerial career without once thinking, "You know, we're kind of tired of watching him trudge out to the mound at 0.03 mph, twelve times a game."
 
Give each team three timeouts, or one, or whatever, but otherwise let the pitch clock rules stand.
 
3. Limiting Pitching Changes
There are about eighteen different ways of doing this. Among them:
Require pitchers to face a certain number of batters
Allow teams to make only a certain number of mid-inning pitching changes per game
Require that pitching changes take place during a timeout (see item #2)
Limit or eliminate the warmup throws that the reliever gets when he reaches the mound.
Require bullpen cars that travel at least 45 mph
Put Tony La Russa in prison

Whatever it takes. Again, no other sport takes five minutes to make a substitution. Let's get it together, baseball.
 
4. Ten seconds to call for replays, no managers involved
I mean, nothing beats watching a manager stand on the second step of the dugout, staring at the guy who's on the phone with the upstairs replay coordinator, who is watching TV to decide whether or not a challenge is a good thing, right?
 
This was never the point of replay; the point was to eliminate the truly awful decision, the one where you know immediately that the umpire (usually Phil Cuzzi) is a moron. We don't need managers and video coordinators involved in that.
 
Plus: watching players make challenges is hilarious because they're always wrong. Every team will have at least two players that cannot believe that they are ever out, and will challenge every call and waste their team's replay challenges, and we will all get to laugh at them.
 
5. Expand the Strike Zone
I'm a little tired of the fooling with a strike zone; I legitimately cannot tell you what the rule actually is, these days. The high strike / low strike / whatever probably won't change the game that much; it'll just change the pitcher's aiming point. That said, I do think that anything that promotes swinging the bat is probably a decent thing.
 
6. Bunt Foul, You're Out
Here's a solution: don't bunt.
 
7. Limit Pickoff Throws
I don't think this is a terrible idea, but it seems like it's pretty far down the list of the things that are slowing down games.
 
4,893. Automatic Intentional Walks
I mean, it's fine? We've saved ourselves six seconds a week? That's great?
 
63,852: Seven-inning Games
Yes, after 120 years, let's change the length of the game. That's a great idea.
 
1,890,293,298: Ties
I mean, I guess we could shorten the games by introducing ties. You finish the ninth inning tied, the hell with it, we'll try again tomorrow. This is a terrible idea, but at least we're not deliberately altering how the game is played, we're just introducing an outcome to the game that hasn't previously been used unless it's spring training or Bud Selig is involved in the decision-making.
 
1,890,293,299: Everyone Starts With A 1-1 Count
1,890,293,300: Starting the 10th Inning With A Runner On Second
Now you're just being stupid.

Thursday, the Twins officially announced what many had suspected all along: "Engelb Vielma," supposedly a light-hitting middle-infielder from Venezuela, is actually a fictional creation, a la Sidd Finch.
 
"Frankly, we were surprised that our joke went on so long," said Twins spokesman Dustin Morse. "It seemed obvious that it was a prank, especially when we put it out that his middle name was 'Stalin,' but in the internet age, people just assumed that he was a prospect and didn't question it."
 
Vielma, whose name was created by scrambling the letters in "Level Beaming," the title of a feature on Rob Antony's new car, supposedly batted a combined .265 across High-A and AA last season. With the Twins' dearth of shortstop options, some wondered if Vielma could potentially provide some much-needed depth.
 
"I think people just wanted to believe," said Antony. "After things with Levi Michael went south, people just needed something to grab onto."
 
When asked about the status of Ehire Adrianza, whose name is an anagram for "Zanier Airhead," or Wander Javier ("A Redrawn Jive"), Antony only grinned cryptically and said, "Hope is definitely around the corner for Twins fans."

In the spirit of putting stream-of-conscious rants in the blogs section, where nobody will ever see them or have to look at them, I submit this frustrated piece of work in response to the insanity thread poster Shane Wahl started. You have been warned!
 
Another angle I come at this insanity from is the public messaging; in other words, the people who cover this team for the public.
 
Let's start with the television guys, the guys with the most reach.
 
I didn't see any of the broadcasts Jack Morris worked this spring when Dozier was slumping, but reading through the game threads you get the impression Morris's criticism of Dozier was bordering on abuse. Not sure what the purpose of it was. Then you have Dick in the other chair praising whatever the front office does. Yes, Dick, Robbie Grossman was a nice waiver wire find. But Fangraphs also has him ranked 87 out of 88 in UZR150 for outfielders with 550 innings, so maybe Cleveland isn't pulling hair and gnashing teeth about losing him, after all.
 
Another example. On the radio, after each game, the producers and broadcasters (usually Kris Atteberry and Dan Gladden) rehash the biggest moments of the game, conversation style. It's entertaining and smart.
 
Last night, however, the big play was Polanco's sac fly in the fifth, when Buxton scored but Dozier was thrown out trying to advance to third base. Hey wait a minute: Dozier didn't even make the first or third out of the inning! But according to Atteberry, that was the turning point of the game somehow.
 
I like Atteberry and it's obvious he's an extremely hard worker and good at his job but he is way off base much of the time. There were two other plays last night--occuring later in the game-- that had a higher impact on the win expectancy than Dozier being thrown out at third. The liner Schafer misjudged in the sixth (didn't see it) that would have been the third out was the difference maker by far, and the low throw behind the runner by Wimmers after the sac bunt that Plouffe should have caught but didn't. That was in the eight and it was a one run game. It was a tough play but very makeable and I feel like Mauer with his experience, stretches forward to make that catch. (I could be wrong and welcome input from experienced first baseman who have read this far.) However, the camera did show Molitor glaring out to first base at the conclusion of the play. Atteberry didn't even mention that play in the post game.
 
I also detect a very strong pro-Plouffe bias in Atteberry, which I don't really care for, and practically all the broadcasters and journalists on all broadcast outlets pin as much blame to Rosario whenever possible, which I also don't care for. I'd go to war with Rosario. There's a lot of energy there that will contribute to a championship if harnessed correctly. Of course, I also said that about Arcia once.
 
Then there's LaVelle. Enough said. One of the first things I would do as a GM/POBO is suspend his press privileges. I am also worried about Phil Miller slipping to the dark side. Please don't!
 
The last thing this front office needs is for their broadcasters and journalists to keep telling them how smart and right they are about everything. I assume that's what's happening. That's how it looks from the outside. I assume it began as a benign effort to keep everyone cheered up, but has evolved, or devolved, into a performance art. "How well can we spin this poor turn of events" has become the name of the game. Fun for a while, and anyone who has worked politically will recognize it, but it's no way to go through life, year after year.
 
And you never hear anything in the media, from anyone, ever, about how or why Danny Santana plays full time, or about all the base running blunders he regularly makes.
 
Think about how the fans turn against this team's best players. At least that's what I'm seeing. Think about "bilateral leg weakness" and how many people in this market genuinely dislike Mauer. Think about the dislike for Gardy (I plead guilty). It would have been better for everyone and a really obvious, non-controversial move to part ways with Gardenhire after 2013, but they let him linger on. Then you had Morris attacking Dozier earlier in the season, causing many fans to become enraged by Dozier's long slumps. And now, the weight jokes about Sano are of course great sport for the LaVelle and Reusse types--black pots and kettles if there ever were any. The work ethic and weight gain whispering campaign against Sano in the media has taken the desired effect, and many fans have now taken the sport up themselves. Or maybe this is how the media and the fans are. I just don't know.
 
I don't get it. I don't get any of it.
 
Rant over.
 
I agree completely--it's insanity!

In the spirit of putting stream-of-conscious rants in the blogs section, where nobody will ever see them or have to look at them, I submit this frustrated piece of work in response to the insanity thread poster Shane Wahl started. You have been warned!
 
Another angle I come at this insanity from is the public messaging; in other words, the people who cover this team for the public.
 
Let's start with the television guys, the guys with the most reach.
 
I didn't see any of the broadcasts Jack Morris worked this spring when Dozier was slumping, but reading through the game threads you get the impression Morris's criticism of Dozier was bordering on abuse. Not sure what the purpose of it was. Then you have Dick in the other chair praising whatever the front office does. Yes, Dick, Robbie Grossman was a nice waiver wire find. But Fangraphs also has him ranked 87 out of 88 in UZR150 for outfielders with 550 innings, so maybe Cleveland isn't pulling hair and gnashing teeth about losing him, after all.
 
Another example. On the radio, after each game, the producers and broadcasters (usually Kris Atteberry and Dan Gladden) rehash the biggest moments of the game, conversation style. It's entertaining and smart.
 
Last night, however, the big play was Polanco's sac fly in the fifth, when Buxton scored but Dozier was thrown out trying to advance to third base. Hey wait a minute: Dozier didn't even make the first or third out of the inning! But according to Atteberry, that was the turning point of the game somehow.
 
I like Atteberry and it's obvious he's an extremely hard worker and good at his job but he is way off base much of the time. There were two other plays last night--occuring later in the game-- that had a higher impact on the win expectancy than Dozier being thrown out at third. The liner Schafer misjudged in the sixth (didn't see it) that would have been the third out was the difference maker by far, and the low throw behind the runner by Wimmers after the sac bunt that Plouffe should have caught but didn't. That was in the eight and it was a one run game. It was a tough play but very makeable and I feel like Mauer with his experience, stretches forward to make that catch. (I could be wrong and welcome input from experienced first baseman who have read this far.) However, the camera did show Molitor glaring out to first base at the conclusion of the play. Atteberry didn't even mention that play in the post game.
 
I also detect a very strong pro-Plouffe bias in Atteberry, which I don't really care for, and practically all the broadcasters and journalists on all broadcast outlets pin as much blame to Rosario whenever possible, which I also don't care for. I'd go to war with Rosario. There's a lot of energy there that will contribute to a championship if harnessed correctly. Of course, I also said that about Arcia once.
 
Then there's LaVelle. Enough said. One of the first things I would do as a GM/POBO is suspend his press privileges. I am also worried about Phil Miller slipping to the dark side. Please don't!
 
The last thing this front office needs is for their broadcasters and journalists to keep telling them how smart and right they are about everything. I assume that's what's happening. That's how it looks from the outside. I assume it began as a benign effort to keep everyone cheered up, but has evolved, or devolved, into a performance art. "How well can we spin this poor turn of events" has become the name of the game. Fun for a while, and anyone who has worked politically will recognize it, but it's no way to go through life, year after year.
 
And you never hear anything in the media, from anyone, ever, about how or why Danny Santana plays full time, or about all the base running blunders he regularly makes.
 
Think about how the fans turn against this team's best players. At least that's what I'm seeing. Think about "bilateral leg weakness" and how many people in this market genuinely dislike Mauer. Think about the dislike for Gardy (I plead guilty). It would have been better for everyone and a really obvious, non-controversial move to part ways with Gardenhire after 2013, but they let him linger on. Then you had Morris attacking Dozier earlier in the season, causing many fans to become enraged by Dozier's long slumps. And now, the weight jokes about Sano are of course great sport for the LaVelle and Reusse types--black pots and kettles if there ever were any. The work ethic and weight gain whispering campaign against Sano in the media has taken the desired effect, and many fans have now taken the sport up themselves. Or maybe this is how the media and the fans are. I just don't know.
 
I don't get it. I don't get any of it.
 
Rant over.
 
I agree completely--it's insanity!

In the spirit of putting stream-of-conscious rants in the blogs section, where nobody will ever see them or have to look at them, I submit this frustrated piece of work in response to the insanity thread poster Shane Wahl started. You have been warned!
 
Another angle I come at this insanity from is the public messaging; in other words, the people who cover this team for the public.
 
Let's start with the television guys, the guys with the most reach.
 
I didn't see any of the broadcasts Jack Morris worked this spring when Dozier was slumping, but reading through the game threads you get the impression Morris's criticism of Dozier was bordering on abuse. Not sure what the purpose of it was. Then you have Dick in the other chair praising whatever the front office does. Yes, Dick, Robbie Grossman was a nice waiver wire find. But Fangraphs also has him ranked 87 out of 88 in UZR150 for outfielders with 550 innings, so maybe Cleveland isn't pulling hair and gnashing teeth about losing him, after all.
 
Another example. On the radio, after each game, the producers and broadcasters (usually Kris Atteberry and Dan Gladden) rehash the biggest moments of the game, conversation style. It's entertaining and smart.
 
Last night, however, the big play was Polanco's sac fly in the fifth, when Buxton scored but Dozier was thrown out trying to advance to third base. Hey wait a minute: Dozier didn't even make the first or third out of the inning! But according to Atteberry, that was the turning point of the game somehow.
 
I like Atteberry and it's obvious he's an extremely hard worker and good at his job but he is way off base much of the time. There were two other plays last night--occuring later in the game-- that had a higher impact on the win expectancy than Dozier being thrown out at third. The liner Schafer misjudged in the sixth (didn't see it) that would have been the third out was the difference maker by far, and the low throw behind the runner by Wimmers after the sac bunt that Plouffe should have caught but didn't. That was in the eight and it was a one run game. It was a tough play but very makeable and I feel like Mauer with his experience, stretches forward to make that catch. (I could be wrong and welcome input from experienced first baseman who have read this far.) However, the camera did show Molitor glaring out to first base at the conclusion of the play. Atteberry didn't even mention that play in the post game.
 
I also detect a very strong pro-Plouffe bias in Atteberry, which I don't really care for, and practically all the broadcasters and journalists on all broadcast outlets pin as much blame to Rosario whenever possible, which I also don't care for. I'd go to war with Rosario. There's a lot of energy there that will contribute to a championship if harnessed correctly. Of course, I also said that about Arcia once.
 
Then there's LaVelle. Enough said. One of the first things I would do as a GM/POBO is suspend his press privileges. I am also worried about Phil Miller slipping to the dark side. Please don't!
 
The last thing this front office needs is for their broadcasters and journalists to keep telling them how smart and right they are about everything. I assume that's what's happening. That's how it looks from the outside. I assume it began as a benign effort to keep everyone cheered up, but has evolved, or devolved, into a performance art. "How well can we spin this poor turn of events" has become the name of the game. Fun for a while, and anyone who has worked politically will recognize it, but it's no way to go through life, year after year.
 
And you never hear anything in the media, from anyone, ever, about how or why Danny Santana plays full time, or about all the base running blunders he regularly makes.
 
Think about how the fans turn against this team's best players. At least that's what I'm seeing. Think about "bilateral leg weakness" and how many people in this market genuinely dislike Mauer. Think about the dislike for Gardy (I plead guilty). It would have been better for everyone and a really obvious, non-controversial move to part ways with Gardenhire after 2013, but they let him linger on. Then you had Morris attacking Dozier earlier in the season, causing many fans to become enraged by Dozier's long slumps. And now, the weight jokes about Sano are of course great sport for the LaVelle and Reusse types--black pots and kettles if there ever were any. The work ethic and weight gain whispering campaign against Sano in the media has taken the desired effect, and many fans have now taken the sport up themselves. Or maybe this is how the media and the fans are. I just don't know.
 
I don't get it. I don't get any of it.
 
Rant over.
 
I agree completely--it's insanity!

Back on June 11, the Minnesota Twins were defeated by the Boston Red Sox 15-4, giving up 10 runs over the final two innings to let an otherwise close game get out of reach.
 
It wasn’t just another loss in another losing season. It was noteworthy because it gave fans their first look at J. T. Chargois, a highly-touted, hard-throwing pitching prospect from the 2012 draft. Chargois is one of many collegiate relief pitchers the Twins have been stockpiling with high picks in the amateur draft over the past several years, and became the first of these picks to make his major league debut.
 
Twins manager Paul Molitor said before the game that he would look for a low-pressure situation in which to ease Chargois into his role. It made sense. Chargois was coming off of two lost seasons to elbow surgery and had pitched on back to back days only once in 2016 to that point. The late innings of a lopsided game seemed like a good spot to give him his first appearance. Any runs Chargois might surrender would have little impact on the final result. And surrender them he did—he faced eight batters, six reached base, and he was charged with 5 runs in 2/3 of an inning.
 
And just as quickly as he had been called up to the majors, Chargois was immediately optioned back to AAA after the game.
 
Introduction
 
Chargois was drafted in 2012 out of Rice University with the 72nd overall pick, one of five college relievers selected among the Twins’ first eight picks that year. The Twins then drafted heavily again in this way in 2014. Obtaining more college relievers with high velocity and expectations of much quicker promotions was welcome news for many Twins fans, who were enduring a string of losing seasons in which their team would finish near the bottom in many pitching categories. The 2014 season was one in which division rival Kansas City was building a pennant winner around its overpowering, upper-90s-throwing bullpen arms. Twins used the 42nd overall pick in June 2014 on Nick Burdi, a relief pitcher from Louisville who could reach 100 mph on the radar gun.
 
But the 2014 draft was two years ago, and the 2012 draft was four years ago already. The Twins bullpen in 2016 is still relying on softer-throwing minor league signings made during the offseason. Where have all the college relievers gone?
 
From reading the discussion boards at Twins Daily this season, I noticed others asking this same question. TwinsDaily writer Seth Stohs had an article back in December on the long list of college relief pitchers the Twins have drafted over the past decade. Other than that, references were scarce; I couldn’t find much (or didn't conduct the right searches) about how college relief pitchers became major league relief pitchers. Are the Twins promoting their relief prospects too slowly? That was my main question, but I had some other questions too. I decided to frame the questions as an academic type of study. I wanted answers with Chargois and Burdi in mind, two guys who were selected with second round picks and have been indisputably developed for the purpose of becoming major league relief pitchers.
 
The natural response to the question of whether the Twins are promoting these pitchers too slowly is: They are promoted when they are promoted. Hard to argue with that explanation, but for many people, it’s not good enough.
 
I wanted to compare how other organizations promote pitchers with profiles similar to Chargois and Burdi through their minor league systems. My intent was not to perform any sophisticated statistical analyses or conclusively answer any big philosophical questions, nor do I consider roster issues, or a pitcher’s velocity or pitch repertoire, or any qualitative information that might affect a player’s progress or a team’s evaluation of it. I just wanted to dig up some data, present it, and see if it was saying anything.
 
I settled on three hypotheses or questions I wanted to test. First, that the Twins have drafted more of these types of pitchers than most other organizations; second, that the Twins promote these pitchers more slowly than other organizations; and third, that it makes no difference to their careers when these pitchers make their first major league appearance, whether it be a critical situation or low leverage.
 
Also, I believed that there are more efficient ways to obtain strong bullpen arms than targeting them in the amateur draft, but I chose not to address this last question. A good rundown of the best relievers the Twins have developed over the years is here, and they are not primarily relief pitchers drafted from college.
 
On the initial three hypotheses, I found the answers mixed. But I did discover a couple of things that surprised me.
 
Methods
 
In order to arrive objectively at a set of pitchers to examine, I established some rules. First, I would define what a college relief pitcher is. Then I would set some conditions for which pitchers from the draft were eligible for inclusion into the sample, and finally, I would need to decide on how to measure the promotions of these pitchers once they were in a team's minor league system.
 
Above all, I was interested in success stories. Again, I was targeting players who were drafted as college relievers, who pitched in relief in the minors, and who eventually reached the major leagues as relievers for the team that drafted them. I wanted to know what characteristics these ballplayers had in common, and if Chargois, Burdi and other Twins relief pitchers shared those characteristics.
 
Defining a college relief pitcher. I didn’t want starting pitchers in the group. During his college career, J.T. Chargois appeared in 47 games as a pitcher and started only 2 of them. (Note: I would use the Baseball Cube for retrieving college stats, and then verify these stats against other sources when possible.) I was comfortable calling Chargois a college relief pitcher. Other times it was less clear. Logan Darnell appeared in 43 games—strictly in relief—in his first two seasons at Kentucky. In his third and final season, he made 11 starts. Was Darnell a college reliever? Did the Twins consider him one? I wasn’t sure.
 
After browsing through the records of many former college pitchers who were selected in the draft, I settled on the following rules. A college relief pitcher would be someone who:
pitched in relief in a majority of games his final college season; or, pitched in relief in a majority of all college pitching appearances; and
pitched fewer than 200 innings total as a college pitcher.
There is nothing special about these rules; I thought they simply made sense for what I wanted to look at. Unfortunately those rules created a couple of odd exclusions, including Chance Ruffin, who was the closer for the Texas Longhorns during the 2010 NCAA season but who made 28 starts in his two prior seasons at Texas, exceeding the innings limit. Also disqualified as a relief pitcher here was Madison Boer, who the Twins drafted at the end of the 2nd round in 2011 but who also barely exceeded the innings limit (according to Baseball Cube). It's also not impossible that a pitcher or two in this study might have been unintentionally mis-categorized, but if so, it was without bias.
 
Eligibility for sample. Having defined a college reliever, I then decided I would only look at picks in the first and second rounds, including compensation picks. This would include Chargois and Burdi in my set (but not Darnell, who in 2010 was a sixth round pick).
 
I settled on the drafts from the years 2004-2012, however. This meant I would have Chargois, but not Burdi, who was drafted in 2014. I decided that for any players drafted 2013 or later, their teams wouldn’t have the benefit of development time. Though this endpoint excludes Burdi, I will bring him into the discussion later. I had also supposed that Chargois, a mid-second round pick in 2012, might be the final pitcher in the set chronologically, but my first surprise was that there was a college relief pitcher drafted later than Chargois in the second round who has been in the major leagues for several seasons now.
 
The 2004 draft was my other endpoint, or beginning point, because in my initial browsing, I discovered that Huston Street was part of that draft, and he is an example of the successful type of college pitcher I imagine the Twins are hoping to develop with these picks. I also liked the 2004 draft for the irrational reasons that it was the first draft held following the publication of Michael Lewis's Moneyball, it was the draft of Glen Perkins, and also the draft of Matt Bush, the first overall pick that year, selected as a shortstop but now pitching effectively in relief with the Texas Rangers. (Perkins and Bush are not otherwise part of this study.)
 
As I was finishing this project, I became aware that in 2002 the Twins drafted Jesse Crain in the 2nd round with the 61st overall pick. Crain then debuted for the Twins two seasons later. Crain would have qualified for this list had I broadened the year range back to 2002. But by that time, I did not want to expand the set of pitchers based on this selected piece of information. However, like Burdi, I will bring Crain into the discussion at various points of interest.
 
How to measure the speed of promotions? I thought it would be reasonable and convenient to use innings pitched to measure a pitcher’s time spent at each minor league level. Innings pitched has the advantage of familiarity over other measures like batters faced, game appearances, or even calendar days spent at a level. I would track the number of innings pitched up until the pitcher's major league debut.
 
I also began with the intention of tracking minor league performance, such as strikeout and walk rates, but as I went on, I felt less of a need for this. Sample sizes are too small for this exercise, and my own judgment about performance would be too uninformed and subjective. Here is an example. An argument could be made that Nick Burdi, compared with his stats in college, struggled with control (a higher BB/9) at his first minor league assignment in A ball at Cedar Rapids. Indeed, I believe the Twins even stated this. However, Huston Street, with the Oakland organization, also struggled with control in this same way (with a higher BB/9) at his first minor league assignment. I began the study wanting to measure performance, but when I considered things like park bias, and sample size, I decided it was not significant. Huston Street pitched only 2 innings in AAA, after all. Whatever his walk or strikeout rate in AAA, it wouldn't be as significant to me as the number of innings he pitched. I reasoned that Oakland would not have promoted Street after a mere 2 innings in AAA if they did not feel he was ready.
 
In the end, I was comfortable bypassing statistics altogether and using the promotion itself as the main indicator for satisfactory performance.
 
I did not account for innings pitched in exhibitions, minor league postseasons, or independent leagues. Only innings pitched in the affiliated minor leagues were part of this study; in other words, the innings pitched total you would see if you checked MiLB.com.
 
Likewise, other than Chargois, I had very little information on injuries for these pitchers, and I simply used their presence in games as an indicator of health.
 
The College Reliever Search
 
Using the criteria above, I found a total of 50 college relief pitchers drafted in the first or second round from the years 2004 to 2012.
 
Have the Twins drafted more college relief pitchers than other organizations? This was my first hypothesis, and from this pool of relievers, I would conclude yes. From this set of 50, the Twins drafted five college relief pitchers within the first two rounds between 2004 and 2012. The Dodgers also drafted five. The Diamondbacks and the Cardinals each drafted four, and no other team accounts for more than three such pitchers.
 
However, I determined that 27 of these 50 relief pitchers were converted to starters early in their minor league careers, or were given enough starts to cast doubt on whether they were drafted with the strict intent of becoming major league relief pitchers. For example, Mason Melotakis, drafted in the 2nd round of 2012, met the conditions of a college relief pitcher, but he made 18 starts in A ball to begin the 2013 season. Carlos Gutierrez, drafted in 2008, had a similar profile as a potential starter. Starting games in the minor leagues made Melotakis, Gutierrez and the others distinct enough from Chargois and Burdi that I excluded them from my set.
 
Removing those 27 converted starters from the original set of 50, and removing four others who did not sign a contract (including Josh Fields, who is actually counted twice in the set of 50 as he was drafted in consecutive years), I arrived at a set of 19 college relievers who were drafted in the first two rounds and then used almost exclusively as relief pitchers in the minors.
 
The Twins drafted 3 of these 19 players to become relievers exclusively, while no other team drafted more than two. Setting aside Melotakis and Gutierrez, here are the three Twins pitchers who would make up part of this group of 19 (Table 1):
 
Table 1: College relief pitchers drafted by the Twins between 2004-2012 in the first or second round, who were developed exclusively as relief pitchers in the minor leagues


 
Because I was only interested in college relievers who have reached the majors with their original teams, I sorted these 19 relief pitchers into even smaller sets: three who were traded to another organization while still in the minors, including Bullock (and also Josh Fields again, who I will mention later); three who retired or were released by their original clubs before making it to the majors; and two who are still in the minors with their original clubs, including Luke Bard. That left 11 left over. The remaining 11 pitchers were the ones I was looking for—college relief pitchers who made it to the major leagues as relievers with the club that originally drafted them.
 
These were the guys who again, like Chargois and Burdi, were selected with high draft picks, developed through the minors almost exclusively as relief pitchers, and made their debuts with the teams that drafted them.
 
Table 2 introduces these 11 pitchers, listed chronologically by year drafted and draft position: Bill Bray (drafted as a Montreal Expo), Huston Street, Craig Hansen, Joey Devine, Chris Perez, Eddie Kunz, Ryan Perry, Daniel Schlereth, Drew Storen, J. T. Chargois, and Paco Rodriguez.
 
Table 2: College relief pitchers drafted between 2004-2012 in the first or second round, who were developed exclusively as relief pitchers in the minor leagues, and who debuted in the major leagues as relief pitchers for the teams that drafted them


 
By collecting data from this set of 11 relief pitchers, I could now look at innings pitched to test my second and main hypothesis, about whether the Twins are promoting college relief prospects more slowly than other organizations. I got my answer, but found that the question was a little more complicated than that.
 
Before collecting this data, however, I wanted to get a sense of how well these pitchers have performed in MLB. A couple of these pitchers are well known, while a few of them I had not heard of or had forgotten about. Table 3 lists these same pitchers, tracking the pitcher by age and the fWAR accumulated in the majors at that age, through the end of the 2015 season:
 
Table 3: Age of relief pitchers per season, and accumulated fWAR for that season


 
There are some problems with using fWAR and dividing by seasons played to put a value on a player, but I was only looking for approximations. Additionally, when evaluated this way, I found these pitchers could be put into three natural groupings: a very good group, an above average group, and a below average group.
 
The following data re-sorted and displayed in a bar graph (Figure 1) will illustrate these three groupings better. The top and bottom of each grey bar represent the highest and lowest season fWAR for each pitcher. The black line near the middle of each bar represents the pitcher’s career average fWAR. The league average fWAR for a relief pitcher is 0.16, indicated by a dashed line.
 
Figure 1: Relief pitcher high and low season fWAR, represented as a bar graph, relievers sorted by general effectiveness


 
The first three bars in order are Huston Street, Drew Storen, and Chris Perez. These three make up what I considered the very good group. The next three bars are the above average group of Paco Rodriguez, Joey Devine, and Bill Bray. The last group of bars includes Ryan Perry, Daniel Schlereth, Eddie Kunz, Craig Hansen, and J. T. Chargois.
 
The pitchers will be sorted in this order in all of the bar graphs to follow.
 
I put Chris Perez with the first group based on his career saves total, and because Perez’s fWAR was hurt by his final two seasons. bWAR treats Perez much better than fWAR. Perhaps Perez would fit better in the middle group, but I chose to include him in the top group. Perez also was named to two All Star games.
 
You can also see Jesse Crain’s performance in this graph. The first bar represents his seasons with the Twins, which would fit neatly with the above average group of relievers. Crain’s second, taller bar represents his full career, including his final three seasons with the White Sox.
 
Results and Discussion
 
My second hypothesis was that college relief pitchers in the Twins system were promoted more slowly, as measured by innings pitched, than the pitchers in the other organizations. Note that this innings pitched data is not intended to differentiate across seasons, only minor league levels.
 
For each of the 11 relief pitchers in the final set, Table 4 lists the number of innings each pitched at each minor league level prior to their major league debuts:
 
Table 4: Relief pitchers, innings pitched per minor league level


 
Below is the same information presented in bar graph format (Figure 2). Already, one or two things start to stand out.
 
Figure 2: Relief pitchers, innings pitched per minor league level, represented as bar graphs


 
The first thing that stood out to me is the tallness of the bar representing Chargois. Chargois pitched more minor league innings prior to his debut than all but Perez.
 
Another clear bit of data that stood out is the number of innings Chargois pitched in rookie league, which I generally thought to be for players coming out of high school. All six of the very good and above average relief pitchers skipped the rookie level. At first, I thought that the Twins not having a short season A- team might have narrowed a choice of assignment to either rookie level or A level, but each of the top three relievers pitched in organizations with a short season A- level team, yet were assigned directly to A level.
 
However, looking at Chargois and the top three relievers, what also stands out is a pattern of promotions those pitchers were given through the minors. Each of the top three of Street, Storen and Perez began their careers at A ball, pitched at AA, and then at AAA. Storen also made a stop at the high A+ level. Each of the top three spent their longest minor league assignment, measured by innings pitched, at AA. On its face, it looks significant to me that this progression of promotions is shared among the top three relievers, and I find it encouraging that Chargois also followed this progression. What’s more, none of the other seven relievers in the set shows this progression in just this way. On the contrary, the promotion patterns of the others seem haphazard in comparison.
 
The most common characteristic shared among all the pitchers is pitching at the AA level. Ten of the eleven pitchers in this set pitched in AA prior to their major league debuts. The top three were then promoted to AAA and promoted to the majors from there. However, six of the other seven were promoted to the majors from AA.
 
Nine of the 11 pitchers prior to their debuts, including Chargois, pitched their highest number of innings in AA. Perhaps these organizations see AA as the most important level for these pitching prospects.
 
But for how long did these other pitchers stay in MLB after their debuts? Here is a chart with an additional bar to represent major league innings pitched following each pitcher’s debut:
 
Figure 3: Relief pitchers, length of first stay in major leagues, represented as a bar graph


 
Again, Chargois stands apart from this group in a few respects. His initial stay in the majors was very brief and fits more with the bottom of the group or relievers than the top group.
 
The table below shows the number of major league game appearances and innings pitched for each pitcher following their initial call up (Table 5):
 
Table 5: Relief pitchers, number of game appearances and innings pitched following MLB debut


 
The best three pitchers had three of the four longest stints in the major leagues. Street was with the team from Opening Day, and Storen and Perez were each called up in the middle of May. Bill Bray was called up in June and then traded in July. Paco Rodriguez was a September call up, then broke camp with the Dodgers the following spring. Only Joey Devine was demoted shortly after his first call up.
 
Leverage of First Appearances
 
Does the leverage index of a debut appearance make a difference?
 
I decided to look at the leverage index of the first three major league appearances of each reliever (Table 6). Approximately, low leverage is a number under 0.85, medium leverage is between 0.85 and 2.00, and high leverage is anything higher than 2.00:
 
Table 6: Relief pitchers, leverage index (LI) of first three major league appearances following first call up


 
Most of the relievers did indeed debut in low leverage situations, if not quite blowout losses as Chargois did. In fact, Huston Street’s first three appearances were also fairly late in blowout games (one win, two losses).
 
The big difference between Street and Chargois is that Street eventually took over the closer role later in his rookie season, something Chargois seems unlikely to do.
 
The highest leverage debut appearance came from Joey Devine, who entered a game in the top of the 12th inning for the Braves. Devine’s appearance was rated a leverage of 2.31. Devine was one of Bobby Cox’s last options from a bullpen that appears to have been depleted from the previous couple of games. Devine pitched a scoreless top of the 12th, struck out trying to lay down a bunt with two strikes in the bottom of the 12th, then got into trouble in the top of the 13th before surrendering a grand slam and taking the loss.
 
Meanwhile, Bill Bray was credited with a win in his debut appearance—without facing a batter. Pitching for the Nationals and manager Frank Robinson, Bray entered a game in Milwaukee in the bottom of the 8th inning with a runner on first and two outs, his team trailing by a run. He was brought in to face the rookie Prince Fielder, but the baserunner was caught stealing after the first pitch, ending the inning. The Nationals scored two runs in the top of the 9th and another pitcher replaced Bray to record a save. Bray got the win. The baserunner who was thrown out? Corey Koskie, in his final major league season.
 
Jesse Crain's MLB debut in August 2004 was in a 0.51 leverage situation, trailing by five runs in the 4th inning versus the Angels. Gardy pulled no punches with Crain’s next two appearances, however, with leverage indexes of 2.85 and 3.41 each, one of those being an extra-inning appearance.
 
As far as leverage is concerned, I am not sure there is enough information—here or anywhere, perhaps—to determine whether a debut appearance in a high leverage situation will impact a career negatively. Introducing a relief pitcher into a low leverage situation wouldn’t seem to hurt, however.
 
Other Pitchers
 
In the following bar graph are the innings pitched of some additional pitchers, including Twins, who were not part of the original set of 11. Each of these pitchers were also relief pitchers in college and developed as relief pitchers in the minors:
 
Figure 4: Relief pitchers, innings pitched in minor leagues, represented as a bar graph


 
The first three remain Street, Storen, and Perez. The next two pitchers, separated by extra space in the middle, are Chargois and Nick Burdi. Chargois’s stats are through his debut in June, while Burdi’s stats are through the end of 2015, before his 2016 season began.
 
The next group of six pitchers is made up of Twins. In order, from left: Billy Bullock, Luke Bard, Zack Jones, Jake Reed, Trevor Hildenberger, and Jesse Crain. The stats for Crain are up through his major league debut in 2004. The stats for the other five Twins pitchers run through the end of the 2015 season and do not include 2016.
 
The final bar at the far right is Josh Fields, who was just traded from Houston to the Los Angeles Dodgers, which is now his fourth professional organization. Briefly on Josh Fields: Fields was among the 19 relievers in the sample above who were college relievers and pitched almost exclusively in relief in the minors. Seattle drafted Fields with the 20th overall pick in 2008, and notice how they assigned him directly to AA, skipping the lower levels completely. After seeing the progression of promotions from the top three relievers, it’s not hard to imagine how Fields might have struggled in that first long minor league assignment, facing a quality of competition he was not yet suited for, and then having trouble catching up and meeting expectations from that point forward.
 
The second tallest bar, next to Fields, is Jesse Crain. You can see how the Twins promoted Crain comparatively slowly, but also according to the progression of minor league levels, without skipping a level. Crain spent the longest time in AAA, rather than AA.
 
Notes on other Twins college relief pitchers here include:
Billy Bullock, drafted in 2009, in the 2nd round with the 70th pick. Bullock was traded to Atlanta during spring training of 2011 after 107.2 minor league innings with the Twins. Bullock pitched in AAA for a couple of seasons and then was suspended in December 2012, effectively ending his career;
Luke Bard (2012), 1st round with the 42nd pick. Bard has been hit with significant injuries which perhaps prolonged his stay in A ball, but is currently healthy and pitching in high A;
Zack Jones (2012), 4th round, 130th overall. Looking at his stat line, Jones seemed to pitch well and even improve on his college numbers in 3 ½ seasons in the Twins system. Jones was then taken in the Rule 5 draft by Milwaukee in December 2015, but returned to the Twins in June. He is pitching in AA;
Jake Reed (2014), 5th round, 140th overall. Reed would not have made my original set, for pitching too many innings in college. Reed sputtered when promoted to AA in 2015, but is performing very close to his college numbers in AA now in 2016;
Trevor Hildenberger, 2014 draft, 22nd round, 650th overall. Successful late round picks are fun stories, and Hildenberger is finally getting some attention this season. Like the others in this study, he was a college reliever who was developed as a reliever in the minors. Like the other Twins, he has progressed through every level, and was promoted comparatively slowly to Street, Storen and Perez, which I attribute partly to his low draft selection and lower expectations. Hildenberger has dominated at AA this season;
Mason Melotakis. I did not include Melotakis in the bar graph above, because the games he pitched as a starter in 2013 would distort his innings compared with the others. He was drafted in 2012, 2nd round, 63rd overall. He has been promoted on the same schedule as the others, with stops at every minor league level, including rookie. Melotakis is also currently pitching in AA;
Pat Light. Light was drafted 37th overall in the 2012 draft. He was a starter in college and in the low minors, but has pitched exclusively as a reliever since being assigned to AA to begin 2015. At AA he has pitched 29.2 innings in 21 appearances, and at AAA he has pitched 64 innings in 51 appearances. He debuted with Boston on April 26 of this season and had two appearances before being demoted back to AAA;
Alan Busenitz. Busenitz was college relief pitcher drafted in the 25th round of the 2013 draft. He has pitched 254 innings in the minor leagues, mostly in relief.
All of which leads us to Nick Burdi.
 
On the surface, it looks as though Burdi and Chargois are being promoted on the same schedule as the other Twins college relief prospects. Here is the comparison of Burdi’s minor league innings through 2015 with the innings pitched by Street, Storen, Perez, Chargois, and Crain prior to their major league debuts:
 
Figure 5: Relief pitchers, comparison


 
Again, Street and Storen were promoted fairly quickly, while Perez and the three Twins were promoted less quickly, or even slowly, in comparison. Chargois and Crain pitched 75.2 and 85.2 innings apiece through the AA level prior to their debuts. Similarly, Burdi reached 84 innings through AA through the end of 2015 (not counting Burdi’s innings during Chattanooga’s 2015 postseason run).
 
Notice how Burdi skipped rookie ball and was assigned directly to A ball in 2014. As we’ve seen, for the Twins this is unusual. Remember too that Burdi struggled in the first half of 2015. After 30.1 innings in AA he was demoted back to A+ for a short time. Burdi then pitched 20 more innings in A+ before his promotion back to AA.
 
Now suppose that Burdi, instead of struggling in those first AA appearances, had pitched very well. Suppose he pitched well enough that instead of being demoted at the end of June, the Twins instead promoted him to AAA, and he pitched in AAA until the end of the Rochester season. Here’s how the graph might look under these new innings totals (FIG 6):
 
Figure 6: Relief pitchers, comparison alternative


 
This alternative promotion schedule is similar to Storen’s, especially through the end of AA. If the 33.1 innings pitched by Burdi after his demotion had all been credited to AAA instead of the lower levels, the AA to AAA innings ratio would have resembled Crain’s prior to Crain’s debut. It is not a stretch of the imagination to think that Burdi would have been considered for a September call-up last season had his season gone differently.
 
Wrapping up
 
Looking only at this small set of 11 pitchers, one can conclude that what is most important to the major league success of these pitchers is not the speed of their promotions, but instead is the logical progression of promotions the pitcher takes through the minor leagues. The pitching prospect is drafted and assigned to a minor league team, after which point the pitcher advances level by level, without skipping more than one level at a time, until AA is reached. A college relief pitcher on a successful development plan can skip the rookie level, but will not skip the AA level. At AA, the pitcher may be asked to pitch more innings than at any previous level. AA is then followed by a stop in AAA, which is followed by the pitcher’s MLB debut. The soundness of this progression is even more evident when looking at the major league careers of the college relief pitchers in this study who did not follow the progression (Figure 2). It’s true that better data and a larger sample of pitchers might alter how this conclusion currently looks, but for now I am standing behind it.
 
Unfortunately for this study, the relative slowness with which the Twins promote their relief prospects means that their success will not be apparent for a while. The quick promotion of Paco Rodriguez, selected 10 picks later than Chargois in 2012, does suggest that a late second round pick would not need to be promoted slowly out of fear of hurting the pitcher’s career. The Dodgers had already gotten more than three seasons and 1.2 fWAR from Rodriguez before trading him away during his age 24 season. With the slower timelines the Twins prefer, the Twins figure to miss out on the early value a college relief pitcher might present.
 
Only after I finished with the above data did I hunt for pitchers with similar profiles who fell outside of my set. This is when I discovered Jesse Crain, drafted in 2002. There are pitchers such as Jake Barrett in Arizona (2012, 3rd round) and Tony Zych in Seattle (2011, 4th round) who were taken a bit later in the draft and spent a great deal more time in the minors than Chargois, but there are also pitchers like Joe Smith (2006, 3rd round), who was promoted rapidly by the Mets and debuted in MLB with only 32.2 minor league innings behind him.
 
A similar, better study of minor league promotions would widen the sample of pitchers, and would also improve on the definition of college reliever as used here.
 
For now, it's reasonable to think that the Twins still expect a few of these relievers in their system to become valuable major league contributors. I would also conclude that most of these relievers have been promoted responsibly, if a little slowly. But again, too slowly? It's hard to know for sure. Chargois could probably have been called up by now. Once Burdi becomes healthy, the Twins will probably ask him to pitch more minor league innings than he really needs. And aside from Chargois and Burdi, there is still an abundance of young pitching prospects in the Twins system waiting for their chance. Perhaps half of the AA Chattanooga bullpen is made up of former college relief pitchers who could stand to use a promotion, but not to the majors yet—to AAA.