Exching

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I don't want to get stuck there; I have a lot left to do. It's awesome to have a nice month or a nice week or whatever -- don't get me wrong -- but the season’s 162 games. You don't just play the month of April.

-- Chris Colabello, April 26, 2014

Chris Colabello often begins his sentences with the phrase, "At the end of the day" when he is trying to make a particularly important point. The sentence is often viewed as a verbal crutch, a meaningless idiom someone uses when they have trouble emphasizing a point, but for Colabello -- a well-spoken Economics major from Assumption College in Worcester, Mass. -- it symbolizes his philosophy on baseball. He believes that to succeed in a game that the 30-year-old has played professionally since age 21, he must conquer the moments that make up the larger timeline..

On April 23, Colabello was hitting .346 with a .962 combined on-base and slugging percentage (OPS). Between then and the day he was sent down. May 25, he hit .110 with a .331 OPS. As Kurt Suzuki continued his hot streak and Chris Parmelee caught fire and was called up after being dumped from the 40-man roster, Colabello was not only removed from the cleanup spot, but from the lineup in general. So when Oswaldo Arcia and Josh Willingham came back from the disabled list, it was Colabello that was sent down to Rochester. And it was on that day that he delivered perhaps the most somber of his at the end of the day lines. "Playing", he said while standing outside his locker room, looking glum, "is what it's all about at the end of the day."

There are a series of Colabello truisms, many of which he has punctuated with his patented phrase:

At the end of the day, it comes back down to what I talk about all the time: It's the ability to go up and have a competitive at-bat regardless of the situation, regardless of if you're down 10-1 or up 10-1 or whatever the scoreboard says. It can't dictate the way you play the game.

At the end of the day, you have to put yourself in a position as a hitter to execute when you get mistakes, and it's a combination of things. You hit balls hard, they get caught, all of a sudden you look up and, 'Well, I haven't gotten as many hits as I had before.’

At the end of the day, you're trying to figure out what other guys did when they went through the same situation you did.

These can all sound like platitudes heard in any locker room from any professional athlete: You have to have competitive at-bats; you have to put yourself in a position to execute; you have to figure out what other guys did and learn from it. But what separates Colabello from the average player is his knowledge of the game and his ability to relate complicated baseball concepts to those around him.

Every at-bat is a battle with the ball, for example. It is not a battle with the pitcher or the pitch count or the conditions that day. It is with the ball. Because as soon as the leather leaves a pitcher's hands, he no longer has control over it, and it is in that moment where the ball is traveling from his hand to the plate that the hitter is in control. The ball has left the pitcher's hands. He can spin it, sink it or hurl it 95 mph -- it doesn't matter. If a hitter can conquer that moment, he can put that ball in play.

Colabello had many memorable moments in the first month of the season, but none was more memorable than a home run he hit in Tampa Bay on April 23. As Marney Gellner interviewed Colabello’s parents, Silvana and Lou, in the outfield seats at Tropicana Field, he hit a ball past the 404-yard marker in center field, only a few feet away from where his parents were seated. The best part of all of this was that, well, it was his mother's birthday that day.

You can't make that stuff up.

But Colabello doesn't dwell on those moments. Asked only three days later if he has reflected on his season so far, especially that day, he said he had not. "Maybe I could have done more," he said. "If I start thinking about what I have done or what I have accomplished -- that's for the end of the season. That's for the last day, [then] you start thinking about what the numbers say."

Immediately following his quote about trying to figure out what other players did when they were in his position -- in this case he specifically mentioned Twins coaches Tom Brunansky and Paul Molitor, two former players -- he dropped this mind-bender: "Rich said something to me early in my career, 'We're all just messengers in this game.' I'm not inventing anything new. I'm not creating a new formula. I'm just passing along information that somebody gave me." Rich, in this case, is former major leaguer Rich Gedman, his manager when he played for the Worcester Tornadoes in the independent Canadian-American League.

Sure, Colabello acknowledges that sabermetrics have changed the way that people approach the game, and the economics major certainly has the mental horsepower to crunch the numbers, but he says that the Society for American Baseball Research has not fundamentally changed the game that Gedman played in the 80s and early 90s. "I've always been a numbers guy, but the more I'm around the game, the more I understand that it's not about the numbers as it is about individual moments that create numbers," he says. "Numbers are created over the course of individual moments."

When you put yourself in search of a number, you start to create or force or expect or whatever. As a player, when you get caught doing that -- every time I got caught doing that in my life, I've failed. Miserably. You look up at the numbers, and they are what they are. You can't judge a guy on his numbers until the season's over.

So at the end of the day, numbers don't matter to Colabello. He could be hitting .350, .250 or .150, but his goal the next morning is to beat the ball. He is going to capture the moment where the ball has left the pitcher's hand and capitalize on it. It is failure to execute that caused Colabello to go from the player he was in April to the one he was in May. He may have seen his batting average dip from around .300 to below .250, but at the time he was sent down, he was still leading the team in RBIs. At the end of the day, Colabello said, he stopped executing in that moment, that split second where he is in control and the pitcher is not. And make no mistake; the Twins had a tough time sending him down. "It sucked," manager Ron Gardenhire said a day after Colabello was reassigned.

That's not fun because I like having him here in the first place. He had a heck of a first month, we all know he struggled, we know he’s had a hard time.

"He's great for the ballclub, roots for everybody, cheers for everybody, but it's all about results, and he's been struggling lately."

It's tough to send him down because his knowledge of Spanish allows him to be the clubhouse translator. It's tough to send him down because he never once complained about losing his spot in the lineup. It's tough to send him down because he was more than willing to share his knowledge of the game with anybody and everybody who would speak with him. "You've got to have people that [you can talk to], those outlets. You have to have outlets to eliminate frustration. People that help you get in the right frame of mind. For me, personally, that's what Rich Gedman was for me for a lot of years," Colabello says. "When you grow a personal attachment to someone over the course of time, you figure out who you are a little better, how to push the right buttons. Obviously you hope to do that with people here, and I think I have started to for sure."

Colabello has formed a meaningful relationship with Aaron Hicks and has served as his mentor during his time in the major leagues. The great irony is that the center fielder is everything Colabello is not. Hicks is a great defensive player; Colabello is a below-average outfielder. Hicks is a first-rounder; Colabello went undrafted. Hicks skipped Triple-A; Colabello played seven years of independent ball. Hicks hails from the West Coast; Colabello is from the East Coast. And if a player is in his athletic prime from 26-32, Hicks is two years away from entering his physical peak, and Colabello has only two years left.

"Hicks is a tremendous athlete and obviously his skillset speaks for itself," says Colabello. "Everybody in the room knows about his skillset, and I got to come up with Hicksy. The sky's the limit with him, and he's certainly making adjustments every day and working hard to get to the place he has to be."

It was Colabello who Hicks turned to when he was contemplating going from a switch-hitter, something he had done his whole life, to exclusively hitting from the right side of the plate. "When I approached him with the decision that I made that I was going to become a right-handed hitter, he was like, 'Hey, you know what? If that's what you believe in your heart, then go ahead and do it.' He just said, 'Do you. Do you.'" Hicks said. "It definitely made my decision easier for me."

Hicks was so confident in his decision that he pulled Gardenhire aside as he walked through the clubhouse on the morning of May 26, unsolicited, and told him he was going to hit right-handed from now on. His whole life, Hicks had been a switch-hitter, something his father had encouraged him to do growing up. That day he went 2-for-4 from the right side of the plate against Nick Tepesch of the Texas Rangers, a righty.

Even early in the year, before Colabello broke Kirby Puckett's record for RBIs in April or gave his mother a souvenir on her birthday, Hicks raved about Colabello's leadership ability. "He's really outspoken," Hicks said. "A leader? I would say yeah because he's a guy that wants to win. He loves to compete, and those are the guys that you need in the clubhouse."

Colabello loves to compete, but what separates him as a leader is his patience with others and willingness to get to know them. Hicks is one of the most misunderstood people in the Twins organization. At every level he says that his coaches thought he was "cadillacing," in his parlance, because his natural ability allowed him to run and swing the bat so effortlessly. "Yeah, I'm a relaxed player," he said. "Every time I have a new manager they always say it to me, but then the more games they see, it's just what it looks like. I'm making all the plays and doing everything right. What can you do?"

It was Colabello who took the time to get to know Hicks during their tenure in Double-A and in the majors. The two eventually became roommates and say they had constant communication while they were together on the road. "He's a pretty quiet guy for the most part, not really emotional," Colabello says of Hicks. "He cares. He cares a lot. A lot of times, people don't necessarily" -- he pauses for a second -- "he's a tough guy to read."

The two will be separated now that Colabello has been sent down to Rochester, and it is during this trying month that he has reminded himself of what Gedman told him years ago. "There's probably a range where guys belong, where guys fit into their whole lives," he says. "Rich used to say, 'Your range is anywhere between .270 and .330.' He said, 'You're going to find a way to be in there at the end of the year when it's all said and done. That's who you are.'"

"I don't care what you play: Little League, Babe Ruth, high school, college, not many people hit .300 six years in a row. There's an art to it, an understanding of it," Gedman said when asked about Colabello's stats in the Can-Am league. "Knowing how to do it, regardless of the level you're playing at, you're doing something that some people can do and other people can't, and he’s one of those kids."

So yes, there will be times when Colabello leaves the ballpark, and the scoreboard shows a batting average lower than .300. But at the end of the day, he believes he's a .300 hitter. And if that is true, this isn't the last we’ve seen of Chris Colabello.

Tom Schreier can be heard on The Michael Knight Show from 2-3:00 on weekdays. He has written for Bleacher Report and the Yahoo Contributor Network. Follow him on Twitter @tschreier3.
The announcement that Aaron Hicks was no longer going to be a switch-hitter, a dramatic mid-season effort to increase his production at the plate, came as a surprise to manager Ron Gardenhire. According to Gardenhire, assistant general manager Rob Antony and Hicks himself, the manager was walking through the locker room on the morning of May 26 when Hicks pulled him aside and said that he was no longer going to hit from the left side of the plate against right-handed pitchers..

"He's going to shelf his left-handed swing," Gardenhire announced, unsolicited, to the local media that morning, "[he] says he has no confidence in it, and he's worked at it with Bruno (hitting coach Tom Brunansky) trying to figure these things out this morning, and he said he wanted to hit right-handed."

The thought process with this move is that if you make the game of baseball simpler, it will bring out Hicks' athleticism. More specifically, if he cuts down on the things that he has to do at the plate, and he won't think when he’s at-bat; he'll act without overthinking things. And when Hicks stops thinking, he should become that five-tool player the Minnesota Twins believe he can be.

"That's something that I'm really going to need to do," says Hicks. "I need to simplify everything, I need to be able to do what I can to make hard, solid contact and pretty much go from there."

"To simplify in his mind is to clear it and free it," says hitting coach Tom Brunansky. "As a switch-hitter, the hard thing about switch-hitting is that you’re never going to feel good on both sides. Every switch-hitter I've ever talked to always told me that."

The decision came swiftly, but it does not mean that it was an easy one for Hicks. His father, Joseph Hicks Sr., encouraged him to hit from both sides of the plate growing up and only once allowed him to hit right-handed, his dominant side, against a right-handed pitcher -- during an All-Star game when he was 12 years old. It's not the first time that Hicks has deviated from his father's advice, he also wanted his son to pursue professional golf instead of baseball (Hicks has hit five holes-in-one, his first at age 10), and Hicks maintains that his father is supportive of the decision.

Simplifying the game goes farther than just dropping his left-handed swing, however. Hicks is also learning how to consume information and figure out what major league pitchers are doing to him in order to stay one step ahead of his opponents. And converting from a switch-hitter to a right-handed hitter in the middle of the season is not optimal, especially for a player that is currently hitting below the Mendoza Line.

What it really comes down to, however, is whether or not Hicks is capable of becoming the player the Twins thought he could be when they promoted him directly from Double-A a year ago.



Simplifying things doesn't mean just dropping the left-handed swing

It is too easy to conclude that dropping the left-handed swing is a panacea that will allow Hicks to increase his on-base percentage and allow him to hit for power. Hicks also needs to better process information and show that he is willing to do what he has to do in order to come to the ballpark prepared to face the opponent that day.

This came to a head on May 14 when Gardenhire told the media that he and Hicks had a long talk about picking his game up. The Twins front office is aware that he was underperforming, and it was not the first time Hicks was told that he could not rely on his talent alone. Gardenhire also re-emphasized that it's all about the numbers at the major league level -- he didn't want to have to send shortstop Pedro Florimon down, but if you can't hit .200, you can't stay on a major league roster.

"He needs to get some hits; that's the message," said Gardenhire. "You need to start -- if it's studying the game a little more, studying the pitchers a little bit more, a little extra work in the outfield doing drills and everything, improving your whole game and the way you come to the ballpark and your approach to the game."

Antony went on to add that there were times when Hicks did not know who that day's starting pitcher was, and later that day, a card with that week's upcoming matchups could be seen in Hicks' locker after the game. "That's the preparation: When you show up at the ballpark knowing who you're facing, what you want to try and accomplish, what your approach is going to be, rather than walking in and looking at the board and asking who's pitching today," said the assistant general manager.

Antony went on to say that Hicks gets preoccupied, and ultimately distracted, by some things in his game, and it causes him to lose focus at the plate. "I don't think he always has a plan: How that guy is going to pitch him, how he is going to be prepared for it," he said. "It's going to be more of a mentality of, 'I feel good, and I'm going to rake today.' Well that's great in high school or whatever, but it's a little more sophisticated, and there's a lot more preparation that goes into it."

The Twins provide the necessary information -- how a pitcher approaches right-handed hitters, what he throws in 0-2 counts, if he has any tells in his delivery -- and all the accompanying film, but they can only go over what to study so much. Eventually, players must learn on their own what film they want to watch and how much detailed information they need. Some players prefer to watch hours of film and want to know which pitch is going to be thrown in a 1-2 count; others don't watch film of themselves at the plate unless they are dramatically changing their swing and only want to know which pitches the opposing pitcher will throw and how often he uses them.

At this point, Hicks is still figuring out what information he needs on a daily basis and says he is looking at a lot more film than other players that have figured out their swing. Dropping one swing, ironically, has meant he's had to watch more film to figure out how to face right-handed pitchers from the right side of the plate.

"There's actually a lot of information to learn," he says. "Some stuff you need, and some stuff you don't. Some stuff works for some guys and for me, it's more I like to focus on the small things -- percentages on fastballs and curveballs and all that stuff and then go from there to my game plan."

Sometimes keeping it simple can be, well, kind of complicated.


Dropping switch-hitting mid-season is uncommon and suboptimal

Gardenhire cannot think of any players that have stopped switch-hitting in the middle of a season, nor can Antony. Many players do it in the minors, and there are a couple examples of players that have done it during their major league careers, but it's hard to find somebody that did it mid-season. Still, J.T. Snow, Rico Petrocelli and Reggie Jefferson all dropped switch-hitting during their major league careers.

Hicks is unfamiliar with those names, but teammate Eduardo Nunez dropped switch-hitting in the New York Yankees minor league system before he was traded to the Twins this season. Unlike in Hicks' case, it was team management who told Nunez to drop switch-hitting, but Nunez only sits a few lockers over from Hicks and can offer him advice on how to make the transition.

Hicks says that the two have already spoken about the change, but it was not incredibly encouraging. "When I was thinking about it, we actually talked a little about it," he says. "He was talking to me about how he went, like, 1-for-50. I was like, uh, all right..."

"If we were in a perfect world right now we would be able to send him down and do this at the Triple-A level, but we're not," acknowledged Gardenhire, knowing that Sam Fuld is out indefinitely with a lingering concussion and Danny Santana's natural position is shortstop. "That's just the way it has to happen."

"He could go down to Triple-A -- we've talked about that -- it would be great to be able to send him down to Triple-A," echoes Antony. "I'm not sure he would face everything. Even if he goes down and hits fairly well down there, it's completely different. You go watch Triple-A ball for a week, and then come back and watch this, it's night and day."

When asked if he'd rather go down to the minors or learn at the major league level, Hicks laughed and said that of course he'd like to stay in the majors. While that's understandable, it also means that Brunansky is delivering him a crash course on right-handed hitting. He sets up the pitching machine and has it throw him breaking balls over and over again. In one drill, Hicks never offers at them, all he'll do is sit and track them and decide if he should offer at them and at what point he wants to make contact. "A lot of the problems we see with breaking balls coming from a lefty, we want to go out here," he explains while extending his arms, pantomiming a swing at a breaking ball, "because we know it's going to come to us. With a right-hander, we can't do that because if we see a pitch out there, and we think we’re going to go get it, by the time it's supposed to be bat-to-ball contact, it's got to be a little deeper."

Hicks is used to seeing fastballs from righties because there are no left-handed batting practice coaches. Therefore, pitches that may be dramatically different and difficult to hit from the right side – say, a fastball high and inside -- Hicks has already seen. "He gets that every day. He sees that in BP," explains Brunansky. "The biggest challenge is the ball that's going to be breaking away from him."

There's also some thought that Hicks should play better from the right side even though he is used to hitting left-handed against righties. His left-handed swing is learned and did not come naturally to him. He is also noticeably more aggressive from the right side of the plate. What it comes down to is Hicks will have success with the transition if he is able to process information fast enough to stay one step ahead of pitchers.


Can he still reach his potential?

Antony has no doubt that Hicks will become a great player one day. To him, it's a matter of when, not if. "I'd be extremely surprised and disappointed if he's not a solid everyday major league outfielder," he says. "It's a process; it’s going to take time. I'm not saying that's going to be the case overnight, but there's a lot of guys that have gone through the process, and he's got a lot of athletic ability, and he's shown all the tools now, so it's just a matter of when he's going to put it together."

Gardenhire has already noticed a difference with Hicks. He believes that a weight has been lifted of his player's shoulders and that he's starting to display more confidence in the clubhouse and on the field. "I see him walking around here, he's actually kidding around, joking around a little bit more than ever," says the manager, "and you can tell he's a little more relaxed, there's no doubt about that."

Not only that, but according to Gardenhire, there have been no more issues with his work ethic. He's been showing up to the field early, taking extra batting practice and knows who is pitching every day. "He's doing a lot of work, and I think he feels good about that so it all gets down to the performance on the field and putting it to use during the game," he added, "but he's definitely bumping around on people, throwing elbows at people. You can definitely see he's a little bit more relaxed."

Hicks, for his part, has played everything pretty cool. He says that he has set a goal of hitting .250 and is not worried about doing anything too fancy. If he hits a home run, it's simply a ball he was trying to knock into a gap that carried a little further than it was supposed to. "I need to focus on just getting hits, not trying to hit home runs or trying to get doubles quite yet," he avers. "But just being able to step in the box and be comfortable in there is a step I needed to make."

Brunansky just came out and said it: by simplifying the game, he's trying to bring out the athlete in Hicks. "That's the whole game plan," says Brunansky, standing in the clubhouse batting cages with a wide smile on his face. "You can't think, you can't think. You come in here, and everything we do is react -- trust what you see, and react to what you see."

See the ball and hit it. It's simple, as long as you don't think about it.

Tom Schreier can be heard on The Michael Knight Show from 2-3:00 on weekdays. He has written for Bleacher Report and the Yahoo Contributor Network. Follow him on Twitter @tschreier3.
Before Shabazz Muhammad's 20-point outburst against the upstart Phoenix Suns, it would not have been crazy to think that the Minnesota Timberwolves forward would have spent most of his rookie season on the bench. The No. 14 pick out of UCLA had only played more than 20 minutes in one other game and only scored in double-digits once before Tuesday..

Before the draft, Doug Gottleib had warned GMs against taking him, saying that he was a "very average athlete" who was kind of small for a forwardand did not defend, rebound or pass the ball. There were off the court issues as well: The Los Angeles Times report that Muhammad's father, Ron Holmes, had fudged his age, he was caught sulking when a teammate of his hit a game-winning shot. On top of that, Rick Adelman tends not to give rookies playing time right away.

But there Muhammad was, scoring at will against Phoenix, a Western Conference team that the Wolves need to pass in order to make the playoffs this year: 24:20 minutes played, 8-13 from the field and 20 points. All were career highs.

Adelman's hand was forced, of course, just as it had been with Derrick Williams a year ago. Last season, when a rash of injuries transformed the Wolves became basketball's version of The Walking Dead, Williams suddenly got a lot of playing time. Similarly, while Kevin Love and Ricky Rubio have dodged the injury bug this season, Kevin Martin, Nikola Pekovic and now Ronny Turiaf are sitting courtside in a suit and tie and Muhammad is getting more minutes.

Williams never found a role with Minnesota. He was too small to be a 4 in Adelman's system and didn't look natural at the 3 so hewas eventually shipped to the Sacramento Kings for Luc Richard Mbah a Moute. It's easy to dismiss Williams as another failed draft pick, but he appears to be a fit in Sacramento where he's getting regular playing time and scoring with some regularity. Yes, it's easy to laugh at him when he misses a wide-open NBA Street-style off-the-backboard dunk, but it's harder to acknowledge that he scored 16 points when the Kings came to town and beat the Wolves in mid-January.

The difference between Williams and Muhammad is that Williams was drafted at No. 14 and Williams was selected No. 2 overall. It's easy to look back now and ask why the Wolves didn’t nab Klay Thompson, a Morris brother or Kawhi Leonard that year, but all four of those players were selected outside of the top 10. Williams was the consensus No. 2 pick and the only player to make it to an All-Star Game is Kyrie Irving, who went first overall.

Looking at the pick in context, there was no other viable option other than Williams unless the Wolves wanted to trade down. That's not the case with Muhammad: The Wolves chose to trade down in this case, dealing Trey Burke, the No. 9 pick, for picks No. 14 and No. 21. When a team selects a player later in the draft, they are looking for a fit and, according to Chris Mannix of Sports Illustrated, they were looking at Muhammad and Gonzaga’s Kelly Olynyk. When the Boston Celtics moved up to take Olynyk, Flip Saunders chose Muhammad.

That's the other key here: Saunders chose Muhammad. This wasn't David Kahn; this was Saunders, the beloved former coach, and should be judged accordingly. Saunders may not have known that Martin, Pekovic and Turiaf were going to go down, but Muhammad was the guy he selected, Burke was the guy he traded, and this isn't going to look good if the Wolves trade away Muhammad for cents on the dollar as they did with Williams.

Tom Schreier can be heard on The Michael Knight Show from 2-3:00 on weekdays. He has written for Bleacher Report and the Yahoo Contributor Network. Follow him on Twitter @tschreier3.
It's easy to hate the Mike Pelfrey signing right now. He started the season 0-3 with a 7.99 ERA, has lost velocity on his fastball, has been placed in the 15-day disabled list, doesn't know what is wrong with his arm and the Minnesota Twins offered him a two-year, $11 million contract last summer.

Many Twins fans did not like the contract to begin with, expressing shock and disappointment when he signed because of his low strikeout rate, control issues and slow pace of play. Team management likes him because Pelfrey is a former first round pick that had two good seasons with the New York Mets in 2008 and 2010, has a positive presence in the clubhouse and is always accountable after his poor outings. That has done little to appease Twins fans that are fed up with poor pitching, however, especially when they were against the signing from the beginning..

"That was weird," tweeted Parker Hageman, a blogger at Twins Daily, in response to the signing, which was initially reported by Jon Heyman of CBS Sports. "The tweet by Heyman made it sound like the Twins made a 2-year deal to Mike Pelfrey. That can't be right." While Hageman appeared to be dumbfounded, Aaron Gleeman, who hosts the popular podcast Gleeman and the Geek with John Bonnes of TwinsDaily.com, expressed frustration upon hearing the news. "If the Twins sign Mike Pelfrey to a two-year contract," he tweeted, "I quit."

Although he had a 5-13 record with a 5.19 ERA last season, pitchers have traditionally thrown better a year removed from Tommy John surgery. By re-signing Pelfrey, they were hoping the 30-year-old veteran would have a Kyle Gibson like leap in production once the pitch count was removed and his mechanics returned to form.

It should be noted that super agent Scott Boras, who also represents big-name players like Stephen Strasburg and Barry Zito, negotiated Pelfrey's contract. Strasburg famously received a record-breaking four-year, $15.1 million deal with the Washington Nationals as a rookie and Zito is much-maligned in San Francisco for signing a seven-year, $126 million contract, the highest for any pitcher at the time, and falling to the back end of the rotation and failing to live up to the money.

Pelfrey got two years and now the Twins have a puzzle to figure out. Pelfrey went on the DL with a groin injury, but he says that that is not what is causing his velocity to drop. "My arm physically is fine," he said the morning it was announced he would be going on the disabled list, "if there was something wrong, at least it would give me an understanding of, 'Maybe this doesn't feel right. Maybe this is it.'"

Pelfrey has insisted that he has been healthy since returning from Tommy John surgery earlier than expected last season, but the results have said otherwise. He is being hit hard on a regular basis and is hardly reminiscent of the player that was drafted No. 9 overall in 2005.

It's also hard to tell when he is actually hurting. He's a 6'7", 250-pound man from the heartland that is willing to play through injury. When asked if he was going to go on the disabled list following his last outing, which came on May 1, he said that he hadn't even thought about going on the DL. This has led to speculation that his groin injury is simply a cover-up that will allow him to take time off and play in the minors while he tries to figure out what is wrong with him.

The story has been consistent, however. While pitching to Dee Gordon, the first batter he faced against the Los Angeles Dodgers on May 1, he went back to fix the mound by rubbing his cleats against the sand, slipped and pulled his groin. Both manager Ron Gardenhire and assistant general manager Rob Antony offered the same story to the media before Pelfrey spoke and Pelfrey said that he has pulled his groin before and experienced pain there during Spring Training.

"It's been there," he said. "I've strained my groin a lot, but I'm fine. It's more sore today, a lot more tender today then it is usually is."

Antony said that he was told the injury did not affect Pelfrey's performance, but just became more irritating over time and then stiffened up after he came out of the game. He also said that Pelfrey mentioned the injury to team trainer Dave Pruemer before throwing a bullpen session, indicating that the team was not initially going to put him on the DL.

Even if you choose not to believe his story, it makes little sense for him to pitch through a groin injury while trying to figure out while his fastball has dropped to the high 80s and lower 90s when it is supposed to be around 93-95 MPH. He also said that it does not affect his stride or otherwise influence his pitching.

It also makes little sense to put him in the bullpen. While Pelfrey's absence gives Samuel Deduno an opportunity to prove himself as a starter once again, it makes little sense to add another former starter to a bullpen that already carries Anthony Swarzak and Brian Duensing -- converted starters who now serve as relievers.

The Twins do have the option of cutting Pelfrey and eating the $11 million he is owed, but that too creates a predicament. While there are myriad reasons why he struggled last year, which Gleeman sums up in this post, and Twins fans would like to believe that Alex Meyer and Trevor May are going to come in and dominate immediately after being called up, most rookie pitchers have a steep learning curve before they can become part of the regular rotation. Even recent stars like Johan Santana, Matt Garza and Kyle Gibson struggled in their rookie seasons and took a year or two to find consistency at the major league level.

By cutting Pelfrey right now, the Twins have essentially limited themselves to five starters: Ricky Nolasco, Phil Hughes, Kevin Correia, Sam Deduno and Gibson. Nolasco and Hughes signed long term contracts in the offseason, so they are not going anywhere, but Correia is on the final year of his deal and Deduno has control issues. Keeping Pelfrey around is wise, so long as he does not have serious issues that will prevent him from pitching in the future.

There are a lot of consistencies here. Pelfrey has always been accountable and honest about his situation and people are not piling on -- those who were against the deal were against it from the very beginning. The Twins want players that take ownership of their play and are good influences in the clubhouse, and Pelfrey offers both, but they also know that he needs to produce in order to keep him on the big league roster.

"Everyone roots for him," said Gardenhire, referring to the players in the locker room. "He's a great guy, a great guy in the clubhouse, but the big leagues is all about results. You have to get people out and you’ve got to give your team a chance."

For Pelfrey to do that he’s got to figure out what is wrong with his arm and his pace of play needs to improve, especially with men on base. If he can do that, the Twins will look smart because they got a first-round pick with a first-class attitude at a value price. If not, there will be a lot of people tweeting "I told you so."

Tom Schreier can be heard on The Michael Knight Show from 2-3:00 on weekdays. He has written for Bleacher Report and the Yahoo Contributor Network. Follow him on Twitter @tschreier3.
The Minnesota Twins would have liked to have replay back in 2009. It's a while ago now, but most baseball fans in the Twin Cities remember Game 2 of the AL Division Series that year against the New York Yankees when Joe Mauer hit a ball that was clearly fair and would have scored two runners with the bases loaded, only to have it called foul. ESPN's Dave Schoenfield called it one of the five worst umpiring calls in baseball history. Yes, they were wearing different uniforms, playing in a different stadium and, well, winning more games than they lost back then, but this memory is still fresh in the minds of many Twins fans..

The fact that left field ump Phil Cuzzi, who was only standing a couple feet away from where the ball landed, blew the call was instantly visible to anyone watching the game that night. The ball was obviously fair and although it was at the top of the inning, it was unlikely that the Yankees would have won the game in the bottom frame.

Although the ball was fair, it's difficult to whole-heartedly blame Cuzzi in this situation -- he's human. He may have been standing close to the action, but the ball dropped in an instant and Melky Cabrera may have blocked some of his vision. The bottom line is that it shouldn't have mattered: An instant replay would have shown the umpiring crew that the ball was foul almost immediately and he would have been overruled.

Replay, at its core, is a necessity. If a fan sitting at home can tell that a ruling is incorrect, it should be overturned, preventing a blown call from ruining a perfect game or a team's chance of winning a playoff series. The problem is that replay can become cumbersome and start to affect the game in ways that should be prevented.

While the Twins would have liked to have Mauer's opposite field hit replayed in 2009, the same review system has gotten in their way five years later. Starting pitcher Kevin Correia was pulled from a quality start against the Chicago White Sox because of instant replay in his first start this season. Manager Ron Gardenhire used his first challenge of the year to overturn a ruling on a catch by White Sox outfielder Adam Eaton and won it, but by the time the umpires were looking at the play, Correia was already cold and Gardenhire decided to remove him from the game.

In his second start of the season, Correia was once again victim of instant replay when a ball originally called foul was replayed to see if it was a home run. It turned out it wasn't, and Correia and other Twins players, including Chris Colabello who was in right field that day, thought it was clearly foul. Biased? Maybe, but it looked foul all the way on television. It wasn't like the Mauer call where the announcers instantly knew the call was wrong. Correia was having a rough day anyway, but the replay didn't help his cause at all. "It would have been nice if it was a little quicker," says Correia, "but that wasn't even a new replay rule, that was one we had last year so it's just something we'll have to get used to." Gardenhire echoed his pitcher's sentiment, saying that while it's important to get things right, the whole process needs to speed up.

"I don't like it stopping the game: That's two times we've been involved with it so I don't like that part of it," he says, "but the ultimate goal is to get it right. It's not working yet, as far as the quick part of it goes, but we're supposed to get it right."

The most difficult part of it, at least for the manager, is figuring out which calls can be challenged and when he can just ask the umpires to take another look. After the sixth inning, managers are no longer able to challenge calls and the umpiring crew will initiate all replays. But managers are allowed to ask umpires to give a play a second look, just to be sure. This, of course, creates a difficult situation: managers want to reduce the amount of times they have to officially challenge a play because if they are wrong, they lose it, but at the same time they want to ensure that they are not victim of a bad call.

It also creates confusion on plays that cannot be challenged, but are reviewable. For example, a foul-tip cannot be challenged, even if a catch in the field can. "It's not a reviewable play, [but] they can look at it," says Gardenhire of the foul-tip. "They can look at it. It's not challengeable, I don't think, but you can ask them to look at it and get help." So how is a catcher dropping a ball and a fielder dropping a ball any different? Well, managers find themselves confused there too.

"Well, that's our argument," he says referring to a specific foul-tip on Wednesday. "He caught the ball, there was no play being made anywhere. He caught it in his glove, turned it back and then dropped it. He caught the ball. There was no play being made anywhere." He went on to explain that there are multiple plays that can and can't be challenged and there is a laminated sheet that he keeps at his desk in his office explaining the official rules, but there are many grey areas.

Why, for example, can he not challenge a warning given by the umpires? When closer Glen Perkins got into it with Josh Donaldson of the Oakland Athletics and each bench was given a warning after each dugout cleared and entered the field, nobody actually got in a fight, everyone just danced around. Why was an official warning issued then? "Can I challenge that?" Gardenhire said of the incident, which took place Wednesday. "That's what I asked [the umpires], and I'm serious. Why would you throw a warning on that? Nothing happened." He couldn't use a challenge because the incident took place after the sixth inning and it wasn't a challengeable play anyways.

That may seem trivial, but what about a situation with the new rules about collisions at the plate. When can he use a challenge? Can he avoid using a challenge by just asking the umpires to look at the replay? Does it matter if it takes place in the first inning or the ninth? "Plays at the plate, can you ask them, 'I think he blocked the plate?' Or do you ask them, 'I think he was safe, you called him out?'" pondered Gardenhire. If you ask one way, the umpires may think you are inquiring about subjectivity (Was the catcher blocking the plate?); asked another way, it may be interpreted as a question of where the tag was applied (Was the runner safe?). It's all semantics, but when a run is on the line, this becomes very important.

"I thought the best part about [instant replay] was they were showing the replays on the big board," he says, referring to a rule that allows controversial calls to be replayed on the jumbotron while the umpires are communicating with New York. "The fans were all involved and they were oohing and aahing."

In time this will work itself out. With a fan's ability to watch just about every game in high-definition and see replays over and over again, it makes no sense to allow an umpire's error to influence the outcome of a big situation. Everyone will have to be patient and allow this to work itself out, but in the mean time, confusion around replay can be frustrating. "Why do you think I've been thrown out of 67 games?" Gardenhire asked rhetorically. "There's a reason."

Tom Schreier can be heard on The Michael Knight Show from 2-3:00 on weekdays. He has written for Bleacher Report and the Yahoo Contributor Network. Follow him on Twitter @tschreier3.
Much has been made of the Minnesota Twins' outfield situation this year. A pair of infielders, Eduardo Escobar and Eduardo Nunez, has seen time in the corners, centerfielders Aaron Hicks and Sam Fuld have suffered concussions and two power hitters Josh Willingham and Oswaldo Arcia have been out for most of the season. With Hicks struggling at the plate, some are asking why the team let Alex Presley and Darin Mastroianni pass through waivers and get claimed.

"Whenever you make decisions, everyone can look back in hindsight and say, 'We should have held on to Presley,'" said assistant general manager Rob Antony. "We ran Presley through [waivers], we ran Parmelee through, we ran Diamond through -- Presley got claimed.".

Antony also does not want to give the impression that because the team likes Hicks, they are averse to providing competition for the second-year player. They still feel he has upside, but they understand the importance of depth at that position, especially if Hicks continues to hit below the Mendoza Line and has to be sent down. "I don't want to say, 'We've got Hicks, we don't need anyone else.' We looked at Mastroianni as an option, we brought him up when we needed a spot and we claimed Fuld."

On the injury front, Antony says that Minnesota is looking into changing the padding on the centerfield wall. It could potentially be a difficult thing to do in-season, especially with the All-Star game coming up because he does not know how much time it would take, but when both Hicks and Fuld went down with injury, Antony says he got a call from ownership asking if there was anything that could be done about the outfield wall.

"We're looking to see if there's any options of outfield walls we could possibly install," he said, adding that he has spoken to Matt Hoy, the team's senior vice president of operations, seriously about the matter. "They said that they are aware of one other type of wall that is a little more cushiony and we’re going to take a look at that and see if that's something that we want to do."

The bottom line is that if the Twins are going to continue to play .500 baseball, or even try and have a winning record this year, they are going to have to shore up their outfield. Escobar, a utility infielder, made a critical error that led to a loss against the Cleveland Indians when he thought the outfield wall was closer to him than it was. Santana has speed, but the natural shortstop lacks experience at centerfield. And Jason Kubel, Chris Parmelee and Chris Colabello offer power at the plate, but are not known for their defense.

"I'm not sure you're ever properly prepared for Willingham, Arcia, Hicks, Fuld -- all those guys being on the DL at the same time," said Antony. "As long as they have 40-man rosters, it's going to be hard to have four or five guys go down at the same time."

Tom Schreier can be heard on The Michael Knight Show from 2-3:00 on weekdays. He has written for Bleacher Report and the Yahoo Contributor Network. Follow him on Twitter @tschreier3.
The crazy thing about the whole Miguel Sano Tommy John surgery situation - other than that, well, an infield prospect is having Tommy John - is the fact that if there were an infielder on the roster that would be likely to have the procedure, it would be Trevor Plouffe..

It's easy to forget that Plouffe was once considered to be a pitching prospect before he signed with the Twins in 2004. He went 13-1 with a 0.71 ERA during his senior year at Crespi Carmelite high school in Encino, Calif. and had he gone to the University of Southern California, Plouffe would have pitched and played an everyday position in college. "(USC coach) Mike Gillespie and I talked about me playing shortstop and then coming in to close games," Plouffe told Seth Stohs, now a blogger at Twins Daily, in 2006.

There was a legitimate question as to whether or not Plouffe would pitch in the majors. In an article about whether or not Plouffe would decide to play at USC, a school he had grown up rooting for, or go pro, Eric Sondheimertold readers to take a step back and ponder what position Plouffe would play: "First, everyone must solve a pressing question: Is Plouffe a pitcher or a shortstop?" he wrote in 2004. "That provokes sharp debate and genuine disagreement among well-respected scouts."

Sondheimer was not writing for The Onion; he was writing for the Los Angeles Times. "The pro guys are really split because he is a prospect as a shortstop and pitcher," Gillespie told the Times. "I’m a shortstop who pitches," Plouffe said at the time. "Ultimately, it’s up to whomever lets you play."

Well, the Twins drafted him at No. 20 overall that year, offered him $1.5 million to sign and Plouffe went pro. "The decision to sign was very easy," he told Stohs. "You can’t pass up a chance to play pro ball with an organization like the Twins."

But Plouffe became neither a shortstop nor a pitcher. When he got called up as a 24-year-oldin 2010, he split time between short and second and as a designated hitter. By 2011 the team had tried him as a corner outfielder and at first base. The next year he beat out Danny Valencia at third base while hitting .235/.301/.455 with 24 home runs.

On Opening Day, Plouffe will have played every position except center field, catcher and... pitcher.

The point of writing this is not to suggest that Plouffe should have been developed as a pitcher. The point is that it wasn't Tommy John that forced Plouffe from the mound to the field a la Rick Ankiel. Rather, it's a blue-chip third base product that is having the procedure and Plouffe is the one that is going to benefit from another year at the hot corner.

There has been plenty of moaning and groaning among Twins fans hoping to see Sano who, along with Byron Buxton, is supposed to turn Minnesota around after three straight 90-loss seasons: Out with the old, in with the new. Except that Plouffe really isn't that old and should be capable of having a big season this year. He is in the middle of his prime and showed signs of progression last year before a calf injury and concussion slowed him down.

He was beginning to hit home runs to opposite field and with runners on base - something he did not do during his breakout 2012 campaign - and raised his batting average to .254.

If Plouffe can hit .260 to .280 with 25-plus homers, it's hard not to see him as an asset, even if his fielding is decidedly middle-of-the-pack compared to the rest of the league. He hit for power against righties (12 home runs) and average against lefties (.300), but hit only two home runs against lefties and .240 against righties while also continuing to show power to opposite field and produce with runners on base.

This really shouldn't be too far-fetched. Plouffe hit .244/.300/.430 in Triple-A in 2010, right before he got called up for his major league debut, then hit .313/.384/.635 in 2011, essentially forcing the Twins to bring him up again and find a spot for him on the field. The improvement was astronomical: Plouffe had never hit above .262, save for his first season in rookie ball, and suddenly was crushing the ball.

Babe Plouffe, as baseball nuts around the Twin Cities jokingly called him, had adjusted his batting stance and his swing and changed him from a ground-ball hitter to a fly-ball hitter. Still, the increase in production befuddled some of baseball's brightest minds. "Could anyone have predicted this?" asked SB Nation’s Rob Neyer. "Well, the Twins must have predicted something. Otherwise they wouldn't have drafted Plouffe in the first place, or stuck with him through all those seasons of minor-league mediocrity."

Aaron Gleeman of NBC Sports was even more critical about the Twins' development of Plouffe. "By promoting him so aggressively in the face of mediocre performances the Twins put Plouffe in an odd situation developmentally. He was a former first-round pick one step from the big leagues at age 22, yet he'd never actually shown anything to suggest that he was a top prospect," he wrote. "In short, he looked like a bust."

It's the Twins who chose to select him in the first round and give him $1.5 million to sign with them. It's the Twins who decided to promote him to Triple-A at age 22 despite the fact that he had never hit above .280 or 20 home runs at any level except in his rookie season. It's the Twins who turned him into a fly ball hitter and moved him all over the field.

Some of these moves have worked out and some haven't.

Look at Plouffe now: He's got the undistinguished honor of not being Miguel Sano. Some have written him off as a placeholder that they have no desire seeing once the Dominican blue-chipper arrives along and other big-name prospects hit their stride, but the Twins are making difficult decisions with all of their prospects right now. Players like Alex Meyer (No. 23, 2011), Kyle Gibson (No. 22, 2009)and Aaron Hicks (No. 14, 2008) are all supposed to develop into stars and supplement Buxton and Sano and bring a contending team back to the Twin Cities.

But if Trevor Plouffe does not pan out, what's to say that the others will?

Tom Schreier can be heard on The Michael Knight Show from 2-3:00 on weekdays. He has written for Bleacher Report and the Yahoo Contributor Network. Follow him on Twitter @tschreier3.
Following an Opening Day loss to the Oakland Athletics where Minnesota Twins starter Kevin Correia gave up six runs in 5.2 innings, the Twins' revamped rotation only had one quality start in their last seven tries..

Sportswriter John Lowe coined the term quality start while writing for the Philadelphia Inquirer in 1985. He described it as a situation where a pitcher completes at least six innings and gives up only three runs. While it is not an all-encompassing statistic by any means, and it is not rooted in advanced metrics, when a rotation only produces one quality start in seven tries, it is enough to indicate that a team is having issues with its starting pitching.

Minnesota spent $49 million on Ricky Nolasco, $24 million on Phil Hughes and $11 million on Mike Pelfrey in the off-season. Through two starts, Nolasco is 0-1 with a 9.00 ERA. Hughes and Pelfrey have only made one start, but the former owns a 7.20 ERA and the latter is sitting at 5.06 with a loss.

So the $84 million question becomes: How much stock do you place on what has happened this season?

Correia, the lone man with a quality start, which came in a 7-6 loss to the Chicago White Sox on April 2, feels that people should not be quick to judge. "The starters were supposed to be a big improvement and hopefully get off to a good start," he says. "We haven't been bad, we haven't pitched great, but it's so early. At this point in the year there's no trends, there's no way you can look ahead and see what's going to happen. It's just early."

Kyle Gibson, a second-year player who is a year removed from Tommy John surgery, owns a 1.80 ERA and got the win in Cleveland on April 5, but did not get a quality start because he only pitched 5.0 innings against the Indians.

Pelfrey, who is also a year removed from Tommy John, coasted through five innings against the Indians the day before, retiring 15 of the 16 batters he faced, but got hammered in the sixth inning and was removed after only getting one out.

"[We're] thinking [he can go] seven, eight, nine innings here, maybe save our bullpen,' manager Ron Gardenhire told Phil Miller of the Minneapolis Star Tribune. "But once the next inning started, he wasn't the same pitcher."

"I was efficient. But the way it unraveled, who cares?" Pelfrey told Miller. "It kind of ruined the whole day."

"Gibby had a great start when he pitched and Pelfrey was really close and I think my last start was a good one and this one wasn't," said Correia. "We're not going out there and getting beat up, I don't think, but we're just a few pitches away here and there from getting deep into games. It's so early. It's hard to judge. We're not even through the rotation twice so it's impossible to predict what's going to happen."

Correia got hit around early in his start, giving up two runs in the second and three in the third, but then appeared to settle in. He retired eight straight batters before giving up a solo shot in the sixth that kept him from completing the inning.

"I started pitching in a little more," he said. "They got almost all their hits on off-speed pitches that were down and away so I made the adjustment and I just threw a hanging breaking ball on the first pitch."

Admittedly, the adjustment came too late, but the Twins scored a run in the second and two in the third, so they were only down 5-3 when Correia got the first two outs in the second inning. Derek Norris' homer in the sixth didn't help Minnesota's cause, but it was the two runs in the seventh, given up by reliever Samuel Deduno, that put the game out of reach.

"I would have liked to get that guy out. There were two outs, nobody on, and the first pitch he just jumped on it," says Correia of Norris. "You learn every time you face a guy like that you've never faced before and you see what his tendencies are. They had a different sort of game plan against me the last time I faced them."

While he says that it is too early to judge the pitching staff, Correia's underlying message is that things will get better. "You've got to get a couple starts under your belt and what I've noticed about a pitching staff is that they kind of get on a roll together," says Correia. "Once you start going, everyone feeds off each other and hopefully that's going to happen here real soon."
Tom Schreier can be heard on The Michael Knight Show from 2-3:00 on weekdays. He has written for Bleacher Report and the Yahoo Contributor Network. Follow him on Twitter @tschreier3.
With the way that the Minnesota Twins drafted this year, it looks like they are moving away from pitch to contact -- at least when it comes to relievers..

Take away Nick Gordon, a shortstop with major league bloodlines that fills a need in the infield, and local guy Max Murphy, and eight of the Twins top ten draft picks this year were hard-throwing relief pitchers. Second-round pick Nick Burdi reportedly hit 103 mph on the radar gun while pitching at Louisville and Michael Cederoth came close to 100 mph at San Diego State. Both players are well built -- Burdi is 6 foot 4, 220 pounds; Cederoth is 6 foot 6, 220 pounds -- and many of the other players are of similar stature. All eight of them pitched in college, all eight are expected to sign and there may be one or two that get fast-tracked to the majors.

Manager Ron Gardenhire said before the draft that he could care less who the team takes; he just wants players that are close to the majors, and his wish may be granted this year.

"You always hope for something like that," says assistant general manager Rob Antony when asked if any of these pitchers could join the bullpen this season. "You don't want to count on it or expect it. It would be great, but at the same time you want to be realistic, and it doesn’t happen all that often."

Burdi, for his part, says he's ready to join the Twins any time they are ready. "I've always been a confident player, and I believe in myself and that I'm just as good as anyone in this draft," he said immediately after being drafted. "If they make the decision to put me in the major leagues at some point in the next year or this summer, it would just be an honor."

Of course Burdi wants to play in the majors, and yes, he will have to prove himself before he joins an already stocked bullpen, but a major change in philosophy is taking place at 1 Twins Way. For years, scouts simply saw pitchers as starters. Now Minnesota's scouts have started targeting relievers in an effort to get a hard-throwing player that should be more major league ready and have a fit as soon as he joins the team. "We were always taught as scouts that in the past that most big league relievers were former starters," says Twins scouting director Deron Johnson. "Things have changed a little bit now. Most bullpens, guys are throwing gas. That’s kind of the way it's trending."

The Twins say that their approach with the draft is to take the best player on the board, and arguably they did that with Gordon, but the fact that they took so many hard-throwing relievers is no coincidence. "Are you guys excited about the velocity? No more pitch to contact?" Johnson asked the media with a wide smile on his face. "They got out pitches. They all pretty much have...pretty good out pitches."

Fast-tracking players through the minors? Not forcing relievers to start? No more pitch to contact? What the hell is going on here?

Change is taking place at Target Field. Although the back-of-the-rotation starters will likely continue to practice pitch to contact -- which makes sense for a player without ace stuff that’s expected to throw 100 pitches once a week -- relievers will no longer be asked to rely solely on location.

What this means is that for the incoming draft class, it becomes a war of attrition. Pitchers are going to get hurt -- a couple of these guys already have had Tommy John surgery -- and it's hard to know how many will actually make it to the majors. But that’s the thing about the draft: It's all about finding a couple stars. There are 40 selections, and not all will sign. For the pitchers, it comes down to who can stay healthy. "You can never, ever have too many [pitchers]," says Antony. "You know there’s going to be injuries. We're going through it right now with some of our guys in the minor leagues, and hopefully they'll be back here, if not this year, then some guys next year."

Those that survive will make it to the Show, and they'll be expected to miss bats when they get there. Progress is being made at Target Field; embrace it.

Tom Schreier can be heard on The Michael Knight Show from 2-3:00 on weekdays. He has written for Bleacher Report and the Yahoo Contributor Network. Follow him on Twitter @tschreier3.