Steven Buhr

It may surprise some Twins and Kernels fans to learn that, even with the promotion of fan-favorite Byron Buxton on Sunday, the Kernels still have an outfielder in their line up that was ranked among the Top 10 prospects of the parent Minnesota Twins coming in to the season. The reason for the surprise is that few fans have seen that prospect on the ball field yet this year. Max Kepler was promoted to Cedar Rapids last week and arrived just in time to join the team for their trip to Appleton, Wisconsin to face the Wisconsin Timber Rattlers. He had five hits in the four-game series and three of those hits were doubles. http://knuckleballsblog.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/Kepler1.jpg Max Kepler I ranked Kepler #9 on my list of top Twins prospects back on December 31, which was directly in between the #8 ranking he was given by mlb.com and the #10 ranking by Baseball America before the season started. He was expected to open the 2013 season as a member of the Kernels' outfield, but an elbow injury suffered during spring training resulted in Kepler being held back in extended spring training. Kepler is a native of Berlin, Germany, and was given an $800,000 signing bonus by the Twins in 2009, the same off-season that they signed Miguel Sano. That was the highest bonus ever given to a European player by a major league organization. Kepler was just 16 years old at the time of his signing and moved to the United States shortly after signin. He finished high school at the Fort Myers high school that adjoins the Twins' spring training facility. He has played for the Twins' short season rookie league teams the past three years and was expected to begin his first full season of minor league ball with the Kernels in April. I was covering the Kernels and Timber Rattlers series for Metro Sports Report over the weekend and I had an opportunity to interview Twins General Manager Terry Ryan before the Kernels game on Sunday. He shared some of his thoughts on Kepler. “Yeah, he’s had a bad elbow and it’s been frustrating for all of us because we can’t figure out what the problem is. Now he’s playing and he’s playing the outfield. He can play left, center and right. He can play first. He’s got a lot of life in his bat. We’ll wait for him to get up to par here, because he’s way behind everybody. But I think you’re going to like what you see in Kepler as the summer progresses.” You can read my entire interview with the Twins GM by clicking here. Kernels Manager Jake Mauer concurred with his boss. Mauer told me over the weekend, “Kepler's going to help us. He's going to be a pretty good hitter.” But just who is this young German outfielder? I had the opportunity to sit down with Kepler before Sunday's game in Wisconsin to ask some questions that may give fans some insight in to that question. SD Buhr: You were expected to open this season with the Kernels. Can you tell us what happened and what you've been doing the past couple of months? Max Kepler: I’ve been rehabbing. I’ve been set back three times and it was due to an elbow strain that happened during spring training. I made a throw to home and it just didn’t feel good in my elbow and I was taken out of the game right then and there. I got an MRI and got the results and it was said to be an elbow strain. We worked on it, but I’ve been set back a couple of times and that’s why I’ve been out for so long, which is unfortunate. But now I’m back! SDB: It had to be tough staying back in Florida while the guys you were training with and playing with in during spring training in March were going north to Cedar Rapids. Kepler: You know, it happens. Yeah, this is the same team we had back in E’town (Elizabethton, the Twins rookie league team that won the Appalachian League championship last season), so I missed leaving with them, but I’m glad to be back with them now. http://knuckleballsblog.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/KeplerBrewerAutographs.jpg Max Kepler and Caleb Brewer sign some autographs SDB: I have to ask, you were growing up as a kid in Germany - why baseball? It’s not exactly the German national sport, right? Kepler: That’s true. I went to an international school and my mom’s from Texas, so she kind of got me in to baseball. I was doing like four to five sports at the time and it came down to soccer and baseball and I had to make a decision between either one. I just chose to go with baseball. I wanted to go to the States, go abroad. Soccer’s real big in Germany so I would have spent the rest of my life in Germany if I’d stuck to soccer. So, yeah, I went with baseball. SDB: You said you played four or five sports, what were the others that you were playing when you were younger? Kepler: I played soccer, baseball, I had a scholarship in tennis, I swam, played basketball and some minor little sports on the side. SDB: For a lot of the international guys, the down side to playing minor league baseball is that the family doesn’t get to watch them play a whole lot. Does your family find a way to follow you or get to see you play at all? Kepler: Yeah, you know the time zone is a lot different there so they’re up until 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning just getting to see the first half of the game. But they love doing it and they’ll be down pretty soon, a couple weeks. SDB: I saw you in your first spring training with the Twins three years ago and I saw this skinny looking guy on one of the back fields. That’s not you anymore and the difference showed up a bit in your power numbers last year. Kepler: Yep. I gained some weight (laughing). It happens. I put on some weight and learned to pull the ball better in those couple of years and it paid off! SDB: Do you have a particular hitting philosophy? Do you see yourself as a power hitter or are you just concerned about driving the ball and if it goes over the fence, fine? Kepler: I used to strictly see myself as a contact hitter. I came to the Twins as a contact hitter, just going (opposite field) all the time. Now, basically, it’s just a start to a new season, first couple games, just see the ball right now and hit it. But when I’m in a groove, I like it to go far, the ball to go deep. SDB: Off the field, in your down time, what sort of things do you like to do when you’re not playing baseball? Kepler: I like staying active. Last year, in E’town, we used to go out on lakes, go fishing. E’town didn’t have much to offer, but we found stuff to do. SDB: What about during the offseason? Kepler: I love working out. Just getting back with friends and family. Spending a good time with family. SDB: Do you go back to Germany in the offseason? Kepler: Yes, that’s very valuable to me. I only get like a month because they (the Twins) usually send you somewhere to play winter ball. I spend most of that time with family. Kepler will make his home debut at 12:05 Tuesday afternoon when the Kernels open their first home series of the second half of the season against the Burlington Bees. SD Buhr covers the Kernels for MetroSportsReport.com in Cedar Rapids.

Cedar Rapids Kernels pitcher Mason Melotakis and first baseman Dalton (DJ) Hicks are roommates this summer, sharing the same host family during their stay in Cedar Rapids. Both players played major roles as the team qualified for the Midwest League Playoffs by finishing second in the league’s Western Division during the first half of the season. Both could be candidates for promotion at some point this summer. Melotakis leads the Kernels pitching staff in wins with six and innings pitched with 64 2/3. Those six wins are good for fourth spot among Midwest League pitchers. The lefty has been perhaps the most consistently reliable member of the Kernels’ rotation in recent weeks. [PRBREAK][/PRBREAK] Hicks has been one of the biggest power hitting threats in the Midwest League. He leads the Midwest League with 63 RBI in 66 games played for the Kernels and is third in the League with 12 home runs (just one home run behind co-leaders Renato Nunez of Beloit and Rock Shoulders of Kane County). Hicks is one of eight Kernels named to the Midwest League's Western Division All-Star Team. Melotakis was drafted in the second round of the 2012 First-year Player Draft by the Twins out of Northwestern State University. Hicks was the Twins’ 17th round draft choice the same year out of the University of Central Florida. On the final Saturday before the end of the first half of their Midwest League season, Hicks and Melotakis both sat down for interviews and reflected on their seasons, so far. (The interviews were conducted separately, but since similar questions were asked of each player, we’ve combined their responses here.) SD Buhr: DJ, How do you feel the first couple of months in Cedar Rapids have gone for you personally? http://knuckleballsblog.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/Hicks11-442x600.jpg Dalton (DJ) Hicks DJ Hicks: I feel good. You know, baseball is a tough game. You’re obviously going to have some ups and downs. The thing is, you’ve got to be the same person day in and day out and I think that’s the key to success is not to get too high or too low, just stay the same. SDB: Mason, you’re one of the pitchers the Twins organization is looking at converting to a starting pitching role after spending most of your time prior to this season working out of the bullpen. How do you think things have gone with that so far? Mason Melotakis: I think it’s going well. I mean every day is a new day and every outing is a new outing. Different stuff is working for me on that day. It’s a lot of learning how to pitch and how to adjust as the game goes on versus as a reliever, you’d better have your good stuff right then and there. As a starter, you can kind of turn it on later on. Early in the year, I struggled in the first inning or early in the game, then it seemed like I settled in. Now I’m adjusting to starting off strong and continuing strong. SDB: DJ, you profile as a first baseman/designated hitter. That’s a similar profile to a couple other guys in the organization ahead of you, such as Kennys Vargas, for example. Do you pay attention to what other guys at your position are doing? Hicks: No idea, because that’s something I can’t control. I can’t control what they do. I wish them the best, especially a guy like Vargas. He’s an awesome guy. I got to work with him in spring training, great guy. But that’s out of my hands. I can only control how I play. http://knuckleballsblog.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/Melotakis4.jpg Mason Melotakis SDB: Mason, the ‘book’ on you coming in to the year was ‘hard throwing lefty, nice slider, needs work on the change up. Needs to develop his secondary pitches.’ Is that what you’ve been working on the past couple months? Melotakis: Absolutely. SDB: How do you feel that’s gone? Melotakis: I don’t think I’m ever going to stop working on that, honestly, because you can always get better and better. But we are completely doing it all over again. I’m throwing a new change up grip and a new slider grip. We’re going back to square one. It’s all about throwing strikes and keeping them (hitters) off balance. SDB: Are you doing that because what you were doing before wasn’t working or is it just a new idea, trying a couple of different things? Melotakis: It’s more of a better feel. When I was throwing my change up in a game, it seemed like I was not having a good feel for it. Same with the curve ball, I couldn’t really throw it for a strike. So, if you can’t throw whatever for a strike, then they’re not going to swing at it. So you’ve got to keep them off balance and be able to throw it for a strike. I really wasn’t throwing (the change up) for strikes or even close sometimes. As for my slider, this one I have a good feel for, so I’m going to throw it for a strike. You know, who knows? It could be two lethal weapons now versus just throwing them out there. SDB: DJ, I understand a couple of years ago, you had some health issues you had to fight through. A collapsed lung, I believe. What happened there? Hicks: I was in the Valley League the summer after my freshman year of college. I dove at first base. I think I hit the grass. I felt a little weird. The next at-bat I hit a double and was really out of breath, really fighting it. The next morning, I couldn’t breathe on my right side, waking up. I just couldn’t breathe. So we thought I cracked a rib or something. So I took maybe a week or two weeks off in the league. Then the playoffs started so I finished maybe a couple of games in playoffs. A month later, when I got to UCF, I felt a sharper pain again, so we saw a rib doctor, a specialist, and he said everything was fine. Then we saw just a regular doctor, they took an x-ray and they rushed me to the hospital. http://knuckleballsblog.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/Hicks12.jpg Dalton (DJ) Hicks SDB: How much baseball time did you miss with that? Hicks: A lot. I was in the hospital for like 16 days. I had to have a couple of different operations because the first one didn’t work. They kind of told me I was done (with baseball) from the beginning. Then they kind of said maybe like eight months to a year and a half, pushing two years. I couldn’t do anything for the first three months, I couldn’t even hold a backpack. Nothing. But at five months, I thought I was good enough to play. I want to say I played a weekend series and by Sunday it was hard to breathe. It was just too much, so we kind of laid off. I took the rest of the year off. That was my red-shirt sophomore year. I played a little bit in that summer, but it was still bothering me. Then when I came back, it was just trying to run again and get in shape again. That was definitely the hardest part. Trying to condition with the team and just the warm-ups and I was done. SDB: Mason, the perception is that, in many cases, for someone that can throw a mid-90s fastball, the path to the Big Leagues might be a little quicker for a relief pitcher than a starter, while a starting pitcher’s career could be more lucrative. Did any of that go through your mind when the Twins told you they wanted to make a starting pitcher out of you? Melotakis: Absolutely. It’s a good career path to be a starter versus a reliever. Right now, we’re developing me in to a good pitcher, as in pitching and not just throwing. Having three pitches I can throw for strikes versus just having the two and just blowing by fastballs. My fastball’s there, it’s ready, but it’s the other stuff I need to work on. Making me a starter will give me more innings and I’ll also have a chance to work with adversity, adjustments, learning to throw strikes. It’s just all about development this year. Who knows what my path is? But right now I’m enjoying where I’m at. SDB: DJ, You’re on Twitter like a lot of the guys are. Are you active on Social Media sort of things? Do you go out and read what people write about you, about the team? Hicks: Not at all, to be honest with you. I’m on Twitter. I like Twitter. I like to keep tabs on all my friends, former teammates, guys that aren’t playing any more. I use it for that. Of course, you’re going to run in to stories and see your name and stuff like that, but I really do try to stay away from that stuff ‘cuz that stuff just gets in your head. SDB: Tell me a little about your interests and hobbies off the field. What do you like to do when you’re not playing baseball? Hicks: I like to hang out with the family. I’m a big family guy. I’m definitely missing my nephews, my niece. My niece actually just beat cancer at nine months old so that was definitely a struggle. Obviously, we’ve been cheering ever since we heard the news. She’s a tough little girl. But other than that, I like to play basketball. I’m a big basketball guy. SDB: Do they let you play basketball? Hicks: No, not any more. Now I stick to video game basketball (laughing). Any kind of little activities, any kind of games. I like doing stuff. I hate sleeping in. Mason gets mad at me all the time, ‘cuz I’m always waking him up. http://knuckleballsblog.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/Melotakis1-433x600.jpg Mason Melotakis SDB: Mason, what do you like to do when you’re not on the pitcher’s mound? Melotakis: Honestly, I don’t really know, man. Whenever we have off days, we don’t do anything. We don’t know what to do with our lives (laughing). I work out, try to get better. I don’t really do video games, I’ve never golfed. I’m going to golf for the first time on Monday over the All-Star break. We might see how that goes. I’m not a big video game guy. I watch movies, I guess. I’m a big movie guy. SDB: What’s your favorite movie? Melotakis: My favorite movie’s got to be the Batmans. All the Batmans, even old Batmans. Those are the best, I grew up on that. SDB: Down the road, what do you think you’ll remember about playing in Cedar Rapids? Have there been particular highlights during your time here so far that you think will stand out? Melotakis: Honestly, just the guys. We’re all a pretty tight-knit team. Being in first place the majority of the year. I’m going to really remember that, just us winning more than anything. Just enjoying our time here. But when you’re winning, everything seems to be a lot better. Hicks: One, we have a great team. Obviously, when you win, that makes everything way better. When you’ve got guys like (Byron) Buxton bringing in crowds, just for him, that’s something special. You don’t see the kind of player he is every day. Guys like JD (Williams) , it’s been fun playing with him. He’s a different character. It’s a great town, great host family. I can’t complain about anything in Cedar Rapids at all. SD Buhr covers the Kernels for MetroSportsReport.com in Cedar Rapids.