Exching

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Good luck with all your buying and selling in the future :)

March 8th, 2016

The Minnesota Twins Bullpen is a Social Experiment

A quick glance at the Minnesota Twins bullpen will tell you that they have a social experiment going on in left-center field. It is a hodgepodge of characters that rely on one another to do a high-stress job that comes with little security -- no easy task..

With the exception of closer Glen Perkins and veteran setup man Jared Burton, just about everyone else is making around the league minimum, according to Cot’s Contracts. Two converted starters, Brian Duensing and Anthony Swarzak, make more -- $2 million and $935,000, respectively -- but everyone except Perkins can become a free agent after next season (Burton has an option in 2015).

Yet, the core group has been together for a while. Perkins, Duensing and Swarzak all came through the system -- Perkins and Swarzak were drafted in 2004, Duensing in 2005 -- while Burton and Fien joined as free agents in 2012. Caleb Thielbar was promoted last season. Those six players comprise the heart of the bullpen.

“It’s one of the best groups I’ve ever been a part of, and it’s been good, too, because we have the same four or five guys for this for the third straight year now," says Burton. “We all root for each other, we all kind of know how to keep each other going if you have a bad day or whatever, we know how to keep each other going."

Every geographical area is covered, except for the East Coast. Perkins and Thielbar are from Minnesota. Duensing is from Nebraska. Fien is a SoCal kid; Burton and Swarzak are southern boys (South Carolina and South Florida, respectively).

Some were drafted high, others passed over: Perkins (first round), Swarzak (second) and Duensing (third) were all drafted early, but Burton (eighth), Thielbar (18^th) and Fien (20^th) all came from the later rounds.

Fien is emotional on the field; everyone else is even-keeled. Swarzak came right out of high school; the rest went to college. Perkins has a complete understanding of sabermetrics; Burton can’t stand them. And yet, despite all their differences, this group is extremely close. To understand how this works, it’s best to look at each personality individually first before observing the group dynamic as a whole.

Casey Fien: The Emotional One

Fien is the only player that expresses a lot of emotion on the field. Other players may be expressive in the locker room, but for the most part, all of them, by nature, stay even-keeled as much as possible. “Casey’s really the outlier as far as on-the-field emotion," says Perkins. “I wish I could be like that, but it’s just not my personality or my style."

Early on in his career, Fien, who was drafted by the Detroit Tigers in the 20^th round out of Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo, Calif., was occasionally told by his minor league coaches to calm things down a bit. But he says that his personality has been embraced in Minnesota, and it is part of the reason why he resurrected his career with the Twins after being released by both the Tigers and Houston Astros. “I was a little nervous with it in the beginning," he admits, “but then Andy (pitching coach Rick Anderson) told me, he goes, ‘It worries me when you don’t show emotion’ because that’s when I know you’re thinking too much. Just let it go, let it loose."

As a result, Fien can be seen pumping his fist violently when he strikes a batter out, leaping in the air when he gets out of an inning or yelling at himself when he gives up a lead.

These emotions are genuine and were not always part of his game, even when they weren’t suppressed. When he was coming up with the Tigers, he often performed mop-up duty when the game was out of hand. That meant he came into games where his team was up 10-1 or down 1-10; rarely did his pitching affect the outcome of the game. “It’s kind of like ehh…well, c’mon," he says, laughing, “but now that I’m pitching in bigger situations, the crowd is more into it. I just fuel off the fans pretty much."

He says that he has always been an emotional guy, but rarely shows it like he does now. He made his major league debut in 2009, but only pitched 11 games in his first two seasons with the Tigers, did not play in the major leagues in 2011 and spent that summer playing in the Mexican league. It wasn’t until he was in a Twins uniform that he regularly started playing in front of significant crowds on a regular basis. “I’ve always been an emotional guy, but I’ve usually never shown it like I do now," he says. “But when you’re in front of 35,000 fans, and you hear them roar, I mean, if you can’t get up for that, then you shouldn’t be playing baseball."

Caleb Thielbar: The Everyman

Thielbar was playing for the St. Paul Saints in 2011. The Milwaukee Brewers had released him two years after drafting him in the 18^th round, and the former South Dakota State pitcher appeared to be out of the major leagues. He spent two years in rookie ball and never got past Class A.

Two years later, the Randolph, Minn., native went 19 2/3 innings without allowing a run to begin his career with the Twins.

I covered his ascent from the Saints to the Twins last year. In my reporting, I found him to be unchanged by his instant success. Still to this day, he has remained humble about his play, “This year I haven’t been real impressive with my performance," he says. “I have been giving up a lot of hard hit balls, and right now they’re going at people, but it’s baseball and that’s not going to be the case all the time." This coming from a player that through his first 24.0 inning pitched had only given up nine runs, had a 19:6 strikeout to walk ratio and owns a WHIP of less than 1.00.

He was encouraged to continue pursuing his major league career by Tyler Walker, an eight-year veteran that was playing with the Saints at the time. Thielbar learned his slider from an up-and-coming prospect in Milwaukee named Jake Odorizzi and on May 20, 2013 became the first South Dakota State player to reach the major leagues.

His coach in Brookings, current Sacramento State skipper Reggie Christiansen, said he is the best athlete he ever coached at SDSU. Thielbar came to South Dakota State, a newly-minted Division I program, with the ability to do a 360-degree dunk on the basketball court. That’s impressive for anybody, but especially exceptional for a guy that is a stocky 6’0", 195 pounds.

It’s hard to know exactly how a guy from a relatively unknown school who was drafted in the 18^th round and is two years removed from independent baseball has had so much success, but Glen Perkins, a fellow Minnesotan, has a theory. “I think he got healthy," says the closer, who grew up in Stillwater. “Obviously I never saw him throw a pitch until he came to camp with us two years ago, and I know we signed him…and obviously he had a pretty good run in career.

“Obviously the stuff he has now wouldn’t lead you to get released so I’m guessing that his stuff has gotten a lot better, he’s gotten healthier, whatever it might be, but he’s obviously a different pitcher than he was."

A different pitcher, maybe, but that’s about all that has changed. That much is obvious.

Brian Duensing: The Self-Critic

After famously starting against CC Sabathia and the New York Yankees in the 2009 ALDS and going 10-3 with a 2.62 ERA in 2010, there was perhaps some thought that Duensing, a third-round pick out of the University of Nebraska in 2005, would be a starter in Minnesota. His ERA spiked above 5.00 in subsequent seasons, however, and he was sent to the bullpen after 11 starts in 2012 where he was a better fit.

During his tenure as a starter, Duensing was notoriously tough on himself. He never made up excuses in post-game interviews and could be seen crestfallen while sitting in front of his stall in an empty locker room long after the game had ended.

He appears to be better suited, and more content, now that he is a reliever. He throws better from the stretch and has posted a career ERA more than a full run better out of the pen than in the rotation. “There’s times where I’ll have that drive to be a starter and feel like I can still do it," he says, “but there’s days when the bullpen thing is going really well and you think, ‘Things are going well, maybe I should stay in this role.’"

For the time being, it appears that he’ll remain there. He appears better able to handle the ups and downs of baseball as a reliever than he did as a starter, and in a game that relies heavily on a player’s mentality, that can be as important as anything. As far as personality goes, Duensing is closest to Thielbar. “Brian’s just a normal dude," says Perkins. “That’s the weird thing about him is that he just goes out and does his thing and doesn’t really expect much at any point."

Duensing might not have changed much as a person, but he seems to be more at ease now that he’s a reliever -- and that’s a good thing.

Anthony Swarzak: The Goofball

Within a few minutes of speaking with Swarzak, it’s easy to identify him as a little goofier than the rest of his fellow relievers. Although he offers a sincere, firm handshake, he can’t hold back a playful grin. When he’s with his teammates, he tends to keep things loose with a wisecrack or a clever phrase, and his mannerisms alone are enough to turn a downtrodden player’s mood around. But as soon as he gets the call from the bullpen, he becomes as serious as any other player in the game.

“That’s probably why he succeeded in that role," says Perkins, who has known Swarzak since the two players were drafted in 2004, “he can flip a switch, and he pays attention, and then he really zones in when the phone rings and they tell him to get up. He probably knows scouting reports on guys as well as anyone that I played with."

Swarzak’s role is difficult because he can get that call at just about any time during the game. Unlike other players in the bullpen that have a set role and tend to pitch the same amount of time during each outing, Swarzak will pitch in long relief as well as high-leverage situations. “He doesn’t know when he’s going to throw," explains starter Kyle Gibson. “He could throw four innings one day a month in long relief and one inning in short relief. I mean, that’s a tough role to be in. You’ve got to have the right mindset."

“The year he had last year was unbelievable considering he had to be focused from Pitch 1 to Pitch 100, and that’s not easy to do," echoes Perkins. “When you know you’re going to go in a game or have an idea when you’re going into a game, it’s a lot easier to prepare yourself and get yourself in the right mindset to get ready to go."

“The most impressive thing is him being able to bounce back," echoes Guerrier. “He throws two or three one day, he’s available the next day to pitch if need be. That’s the hardest part is going over the hump of saying, ‘Shoot, I threw three innings two days ago. Am I available today?’ and he puts himself in a good spot."

“Be prepared for anything," Swarzak says of his mindset. “Make sure you are warm and your body is in good shape in case the team needs you to pick up three or four innings, and also be ready to come in with your best stuff right out of the gate to get that big double play ball with runners on first and second, first and third, whatever it is."

This is easier said than done, of course, and while Swarzak appears to be settled into his role in the bullpen, he holds out hope to be a starter again one day -- something that differentiates himself from both Duensing and Perkins. “I would love to start," he says emphatically. “I would love the opportunity to start. I’m never going to get rid of the windup with nobody on. It’s just something that I won’t let go.

“I know I can do it, but I also know my value here is to help the team any way I can, and I’m willing to do whatever I can to put on a major league uniform every day."

Wanting to change his role with the team even though he’s mastered an extremely difficult one in the bullpen seems a little bit goofy. But for Swarzak, that might just be fitting.

Michael Tonkin: The New Guy

Tonkin could have easily felt excluded when he joined the Twins bullpen this season. Yes, he was called up last season and yes, he has good stuff, but he is also a quiet, 30^th-round pick that few pundits felt would ever make it to the major leagues. Most players selected that late choose to go to college, and those that don’t often spend most of their careers in the minor leagues.

Tonkin had his brother-in-law Jason Kubel on the team during his stint in Minnesota this year, but it was Duensing and Burton who made him feel most at home in the major league clubhouse. “Both of them have been around for a while," says Tonkin. “It’s basically the guys with the most time that I feel comfortable asking questions. Pretty much it’s as simple as that, really."

This is a good sign, of course, because if the veterans in the bullpen were not approachable, younger players would feel less included. Younger players like Tonkin get sent up and down frequently and don’t always feel like they are part of the team because of that, but the ability to approach veteran relievers about anything that is on his mind has made Tonkin feel welcome. “The questions aren’t always about baseball or aren’t always about strategies or facing a batter," he says, “it’s more just what do I want to do right now and where do I want to be?"

“He came up a little bit last year and he was just one of those kids that didn’t say much and just always had a feel of the right and wrong thing," said Burton. “He would ask questions, this and that, and he’d surprise you with something funny, too."

Burton won’t reveal any specifics -- he says they will stay within the clubhouse -- but says Tonkin is one of the goofiest, most random people he has ever met. “He’d be sitting, not saying a word, and then all of sudden he’d say something, and the whole bullpen would be laughing at him."

“He’s a good kid," says Duensing. “He comes in and he keeps his mouth shut, really. If he has questions, he asks, and he works hard and wants to win as much as the rest of us."

Burton and Duensing, as well as Swarzak and Fien, have specifically said that they feel Tonkin has major league ready stuff and plenty of confidence to throw it in the strike zone. He’s also noticeably raw and relies heavily on his fastball, which he likes to use to blow by batters. That strategy works in the minor leagues, where many players are not able to get ahead of his pitches, but has hurt him at the game’s highest level.

“You can’t just live on a fastball up here," said manager Ron Gardenhire before the team sent Tonkin down in mid-May. “He doesn’t throw 98 mph. He throws 94-95 mph, and you’ve got to have a secondary pitch, you have to have something to get them out."

There’s reason to believe Tonkin will be back, however, if he improves his secondary pitches. And if he does get another call up, it is certain that he will be accepted as one of the guys once again. “Tonkin’s been fun to watch," says Swarzak. “He’s got a little ways to go early on here, but he’s got the mindset and the personality to be very, very effective in a major league bullpen."

Matt Guerrier: The Prodigal Son

On the opposite end of the spectrum, Guerrier is the wily old veteran who is extremely familiar with the organization. Only four pitchers have made more appearances in a Twins uniform than Guerrier: Eddie Guardado, Rick Aguilera, Jim Kaat and Joe Nathan. He, along with Kubel and Jason Bartlett, was part of a wave of old faces from the team’s glory years that are ostensibly finishing up their careers in Minnesota.

Guerrier took a little longer to join the team than others because he was coming off of surgery that had taken place in August to repair a flexor mass in his throwing arm, but he also appears to have the most staying power. Instead of being the setup man, as he was before he left in 2010, he has embraced being more of a utility guy. “I definitely feel like I’m kind of an interchangeable piece down there," he says. “I can go a couple innings if I have to and can fill in for guys if somebody needs a day off."

It can’t be ignored that he is also sort of a prodigal son. The Clevelander was drafted by the White Sox and debuted with Minnesota in 2004 at age 25, but left for Southern California to join the Los Angeles Dodgers and had a brief stint with the Cubs before returning to Minnesota this season. He somehow managed to play for the Twins during most of their peak years while watching the team self-destruct from the West Coast.

Yet, despite missing out on Mauer and Justin Morneau’s injury-plagued 2011, the Tsuyoshi Nishioka experiment and the implosion of the pitching rotation that resulted in three straight 90-loss seasons immediately after he left, he got a warm welcome in the Twins’ clubhouse as the team makes an attempt to get above .500 this season.

“It has to do with the guys," he says. “Guys like Duensing and Burton are really easy to get along with and Perk’s witty and fun to be around.

“That makes it easier when the veterans aren’t hard-nosed tough guys and not worried about someone taking their job or something. They embrace it with another guy coming in and you gotta make them feel comfortable so they can go out there and win some games for us."

Jared Burton: The Old School Guy

Ask any reliever in the Twins’ clubhouse and they will tell you that, without a doubt, Perkins and Burton are the leaders of the bullpen. “Perkins obviously has that closer, leader role aspect going and Burton is more like the voice of the bullpen," says Duensing. “We feed off of each other, and we’ll talk about things -- how we want things to go, get things done or whatever, and Burton is the kind of guy that will speak his mind about it for us as a whole."

“They’re the key to our success last year and [show] how to be a professional, how to go about your job and what the bullpen asks of you," adds Fien, who took over Burton’s role as the eighth inning setup man this season. “They just tell you and teach you how to prepare and how to get people out in the big leagues."

The funny thing is that Perkins and Burton couldn’t be more different. Perkins is a first-rounder that came up a starter; Burton is an eighth-rounder that has pitched in relief since A-ball. Perkins is witty and gregarious; Burton is relaxed and soft-spoken. Perkins loves advanced stats; Burton loathes them.

“I don’t care anything about that," he says, emphatically, when asked about sabermetrics. “I’m a traditional guy, and what happens on the field is sacred to me. All of that stuff, yes, it’s a way for people to assess players, assess the game, but I don’t even want to talk about it."

Burton says this with a thick southern drawl. He’s a Carolina guy who went from an eighth-rounder out of Western Carolina University in Cullowhee, N.C., to Lights-Out Levi -- a nod to his given name -- at the major league level with the Cincinnati Reds before joining Minnesota. He’s a man who will offer a firm handshake, look you directly in the eye and ask your name twice to ensure he has it right. He also is not one to get uptight about things.

“There’s not a lot of high-strung guys that play this game," he says, smiling. “There are a few, but most guys have a laid back side to them. It’s just kind of the vibe of this game."

The one thing that will make him raise his voice in disdain is somebody who tries to take humanity out of the game. Suddenly his drawl is a little less pronounced and his vowels start rolling off the tongue a little quicker than usual.

“It don’t mean anything," he says of sabermetrics. “It don’t have anything to do with what’s inside of a guy when he’s in a tough situation, back against the wall. It has no idea how to rate that player. The human element is pretty irrelevant and most of those guys take a number and plug it in with what they think’s going to happen and it has nothing to do with whether somebody’s locked in for a couple days or if they’re slumping."

While some players may fall back on advanced statistics, Burton says that his success comes as a result of how much effort he puts into preparing for a game. “Confidence is huge in this game for any offense, defense, pitching, whatever, but I always feel like if I feel prepared, then I’m going to be confident," he says, adding that he watches video and has become familiar with most of the established major league hitters by now. “I just glance at the hitters and see what their natural swing is, and then it’s just down to executing pitches.

“In the pitcher’s meetings, you could say, ‘This guy hits fastballs in really well,’ but if your strength is throwing sinkers in, then I’m going to bet that I’m going to execute more than him so you’ve just got to stay with your stuff more times than not and be confident in it.

“And if his strength is your strength, then you’re gonna go, ‘Well, I’m better than you are, so here it is.’"

Simple as that.

Glen Perkins: The Sabermetrician

Just because Perkins knows FIP, BABIP and WHIP, doesn’t mean that he fails to acknowledge the human side of the game. “There’s multiple ways to look at it," he says. “Being someone that understands most or all of the numbers and also someone that’s in this clubhouse and on that mound and in that bullpen, I know there’s a human element."

The thing about Perkins is he doesn’t seem like a guy that would delve into advanced statistics: He once forgot to zip his fly during an outing, bought a round of beers for some hard-core fans during a rain delay and picked a fight with Josh Donaldson of the Oakland Athletics to get his team fired up. If you didn’t know any better, you’d think he was some regular old guy from Stillwater that spends his nights sipping on a Lift Bridge seasonal at Rafters or The Freight House.

“Perk is Perk," says Fien.

The bottom line is that a person who is as human as Perkins is -- seriously, he left his zipper down in front of 40,000 people -- can’t ignore that element of the game when it comes to his preparation. “The hard-core sabermetricians want to throw that out because there’s no way to quantify it and they feel that everything should be quantified," he says. “And it can’t be; it’s not possible."

The stat that Perkins uses most is Fielding Independent Pitching, or FIP, which measures what a player’s ERA should have looked like over a given time period, assuming that performance on balls in play and timing were league average. “I have a 3.00 ERA, I have a FIP that’s 1.30," he says. “I know that the longer I keep doing what I’ve been doing so far for my first 22 innings this season, that the more innings I get, the closer my ERA is going to be to my FIP."

“The four hits against Boston," he adds, referencing a blown save against the Red Sox on May 15, “I know that those hits are going to happen and that they’re going to find holes and then things like the other night happen, and when I give up a leadoff triple and three balls in play get hit to fielders -- it evens out and your batting average on balls in play (BABIP) is going to be what it is."

It ultimately comes down to a search for confidence. For Burton, it is derived from his preparation; for Perkins it is in advanced metrics, although he does rely heavily on a unique routine to get ready for his outings.

Instead of staying in the bullpen, he will sit in the clubhouse for the first five or six innings and then join the rest of the relievers in the seventh. He knows that he won’t have to pitch until the ninth inning and likes to watch the hitters up close on the clubhouse monitors. At that point he could care less what an opposing hitter has done in the last few days, he’s concerned about how that guy is playing on that particular day. “There’s days where guys are on and days when guys are off and you can see that on TV that day," he says. “I want to know if a guy’s bat is slow one day because maybe he went out the night before and he’s dragging a little bit."

That’s the balance Perkins has struck: He knows when the stats matter and when they don’t. Stats will tell you if your ERA is too high or too low and what a player has done over a course of time, but when it comes down to getting three outs with your team ahead by less than four runs, you’ve just gotta know how well each batter is doing that day. “I want to see what a guy did that day, which is kind of opposite of what sabermetric thinking would be," he says. “It’s a small sample size, but that’s all that really matters to me (that day)."

Perhaps it takes a man who leaves his fly open to bring the sabermetricians and old school baseball thinkers together. At the very least, the Society for American Baseball Research should add another acronym to their collection, one specifically designed for Mr. Perkins: XYZ.

Chemistry is built upon shared burdens

The Twins bullpen has somehow made this work. Despite their different personalities, backgrounds and approaches to the game, there is a core group in Minnesota that has found a way to get the job done -- even when the rest of the team has been performing poorly. Some of it is finding their roles -- Perkins as the closer, Fien stepping in for Burton as the setup man, Swarzak as the long reliever, et cetera -- and some of it is just the nature of sitting around with the same group of guys for hours on end, especially when many of those guys played in the minors together. But some of it is just the way it is.

“I mean, I think it’s just how it works," says Perkins. “You want to do well, and when I was throwing earlier in games, when I was setting up and coming in with guys on base, you almost want to try harder in those situations to pick up the guy behind you and make sure that his runs don’t score.

“Part of it is you go in in a certain situation, and the next day you’re back down in the pen and you want to look the guy in the eye and know that you got him and that all reciprocates."

The fact that most of the guys in the bullpen have specific roles is big, according to many of the relievers. In situations where the closer and setup man, or even the long reliever, is not doing his job and everyone is competing to replace him, there can be conflict among the members of the bullpen that can lead to an overall drop in performance. “No one feels like they are stepping on each other’s toes or that they are competing with the next guy or anything like that," says Duensing. “We’re all out there for the same reason and that’s to pick up the starters and give our team a chance to win."

That means that when Fien was able to take over Burton’s job, it was huge that he still respected him as a leader. It also is important that Fien and Burton are both capable of doing Perkins’ job if he’s had multiple outings in a row or gotten injured. And because Duensing has experience as a starter, he can fill in for Swarzak if he’s pitched a lot of innings in a row over the course of a week.

What it comes down to, though, is that they all face the same burdens. They all get too much work during one month and then not enough the next. They all have to come in at odd times with men on base or in high-pressure situations. They all get no attention when they do their job, but become scapegoated when they give up even as many as one or two runs during a game.

“You approach the game the same way if you’re in the bullpen," says Burton. “You’re down there, you sit down there, you watch the game, you shoot the s*** for six, seven, eight innings every night together. Every guy we’ve had here we haven’t had any problems with whatsoever. Any young guy that comes here, they just immediately fit right in."

In some ways, it may be the differences in personalities that ultimately allow all the relievers to develop working relationships. “That’s kind of why it works," offers Guerrier. “If everybody was cut from the same mold, then we’d probably clash a little bit."

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.

December 18th, 2014

The Minnesota Timberwolves Need to Trade Kevin Love to Cleveland

It's time for Kevin Love to go. He is a star player that has been put in a poor situation, was knocked around by management and deserves better. For the Wolves organization, it's time to turn the page, suck up the loss of another franchise player and move on..

Hanging on to Love is a losing cause at this point. Yes, there's new management; yes, the team is spending money; and yes, they did improve last year, but the damage has been done, and both Love and the Wolves could benefit from a breakup.

The best move for Minnesota right now is to trade Love to the Cleveland Cavaliers. They own the No. 1 pick (somehow), and Minnesota could use another star to latch onto. In the past, it was not the cold weather or the size of the Twin Cities that put off Love, it was the mismanagement of the team and his mistreatment that upset him.

Dec. 11, 2012 was the day that the handwriting was placed on the wall. Love told esteemed NBA writer Adrian Wojnarowski in a Yahoo! Sports Article that he was fed up with owner Glen Taylor, then-GM David Kahn and his less-than-max contract. While Taylor and Love seem to have made up, and Flip Saunders has replaced Kahn, the organization still put guys like Darko Milicic and Michael Beasley around Love and drafted Jonny Flynn and Wesley Johnson instead of Steph Curry and Paul George early in his career. That combined with the fact that he did not get a max contract seem to have caused irreversible harm to the organization's relationship with Love.

Like the Target Center itself, the Wolves need to be refurbished. It's time to send Love on his way, acquire the No. 1 overall pick Minnesota has somehow missed out on in 10 consecutive lottery appearances and build around a new superstar: Andrew Wiggins.

It is in Minnesota that Wiggins, a Canadian, can become Maple Jordan. Instead of putting him on a team with bare cupboards or where he is not a fit, he will be put into a situation where there is a need at small forward and veteran players around him that will take pressure off the 19-year-old Kansas University star.

Here is how this will work: Using a trade suggested by Rob Mahoney of SI.com, Minnesota will deal Kevin Love, J.J. Barea and Alexey Shved for Anderson Varejao, Dion Waiters, Anthony Bennett, Tristan Thompson and the No. 1 overall pick. This unloads Love, who could leave as a free agent for nothing, Barea, who became notorious for pouting at the end of the bench and drawing technical fouls at the end of games last year, and Shved, who is a talented player that probably could use a change of scenery after spending most of last year on the bench.

In turn, the Wolves get a franchise player in Wiggins when they draft him No. 1 overall, a veteran defender in Varejao who could be waived if it doesn't work out, former No. 1 overall pick Bennett for value, a rotation piece in Thompson and Waiters, who was a No. 4 overall selection in 2012.

For the Cavaliers, they get a great package to offer LeBron James should he choose to leave Miami. Instead of playing with the suddenly aging Dwyane Wade and sometimes disappearing Chris Bosh, he'll get to play with Wes and Uncle Drew. This will keep Kyrie Irving in Cleveland, woo LeBron back home and give another hapless franchise a chance to compete in the easier Eastern Conference.

It's a win-win for both teams and, more importantly for the Wolves; a chance to start over once their new arena is ready. It's a much better solution than hoping Love stays around and seeing him leave for nothing or less value, which would make the team to wonder why they didn't trade him for the No. 1 overall pick when they had the chance.

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.

December 18th, 2014

Joe Mauer: Hometown Hero to Local Scapegoat

Six-time All-Star Joe Mauer is going to miss the Midsummer Classic with an oblique injury this year. This would normally not be cause for alarm -- Mauer missed it in 2007 and 2011 as well -- except that the game is being played in Minneapolis, and Major League Baseball designated him the All-Star Ambassador in April, meaning that he will be hosting the event. The three-time AL batting champion, three-time Gold Glove winner and four-time Silver Slugger will have to glad-hand at the FanFest while knowing he is not on the All-Star team this season. “It’s been a trying year," Mauer admitted the morning after he was placed on the 15-day disabled list. “It’s frustrating any time you go on the DL, but’s it’s even more frustrating when you feel like you’ve been playing pretty well lately, and it felt like things were going my way."

The key phrase with Mauer this season has been “stick to the plan." Through all his early season struggles that have accompanied his move to first base and recovery from concussion, Mauer has been trying to do what has worked for him his whole career -- with mixed results.

“I’m feeling pretty good, actually, which is even more frustrating because I’m hitting a lot of balls hard and not having much to show for it," he said at the end of May. “Hopefully that turns here soon. I just have to try to have some good at-bats and keep having some good at-bats and hopefully they keep falling."

“It is un-Mauer-like, but he’ll get going," general manager Terry Ryan assured the media following the press conference announcing the signing of Kendrys Morales. “His track record is too good, his health is too good, there is no reason he can’t string together four or five games quickly and, all of a sudden, it’s happening.

“It’ll return. He’ll have a way of figuring things out."

“My experience with Joe is when it’s all said and done his numbers are going to be there," offered Terry Steinbach, himself a Minnesotan and former catcher. “Sometimes he starts off quicker, sometimes he starts a little bit slower, but he’s a professional hitter, a great hitter, and just through the course of time, it’s gonna happen."

“It doesn’t happen overnight," echoed Gardenhire back in May. “We’re only a month into the season. He’ll be fine."

Mauer Apologists. That’s what anybody who has brushed off the former catcher’s sub-par numbers at the plate have been called. In reality what people are saying is: He’ll get better. And recently, he has. But still, .250, .260 or .270 doesn’t make you a major league All-Star, especially at first base.

Maybe it’s that thought -- the insistence that he’ll get better as long as he trusts the process -- that results in Mauer taking the brunt of the blame for the Twins’ downfall since 2010. He is a microcosm of the Twins Way: Keep doing it the way it’s been done and results will follow. That’s not to say Minnesota has eschewed advanced statistics -- they hired Jack Goin primarily as a stats guru -- or that they are completely averse to change. But they believe in a system that works and tend to stick to it.

Having said that, we’ve seen a little more frustration from Mauer than in years past. Typically laconic and reserved, Gentleman Joe has piped up recently, at least by his standards. When he says, “It’s funny, I feel I’ve had some bad pitches called on me," as he did in mid-April, he’s saying a lot. When he says, “I’m probably a lot more frustrated than those people who were booing," as he did at the end of May, he’s saying a lot. When he says, “It’s hard to deal with, All-Star Game or not," that’s big.

People confuse his stoic nature with indifference. He cares, and the losing wears on him.

He’s never going to have a Kevin Love moment where he tells a reporter that his team do not have a plan, even though the team has had three 90-loss seasons and only one winning season since he signed his eight-year, $184 million contract in 2010. He’s never going to get upset with the fans, even when they booed him for getting injured in 2011 and for slumping this year, even though he knows many of those same fans would have treated him like he was LeBron James if he had announced he was going to join the New York Yankees, Boston Red Sox or another big-market team before signing his blockbuster deal.

He’s never going to say it, but he’s probably not thrilled that he shoulders a lot of the blame for the team’s recent losing records. Twins fans got used to division titles. Twins fans got used to playoff appearances. Twins fans were expecting that with the opening of a new ballpark, the team would become the St. Louis Cardinals North. Instead, they became the Pittsburgh Pirates or the Milwaukee Brewers -- teams that got new parks and emptied them out with losing seasons.

Mauer has become the scapegoat for the Twins’ organizational issues

There’s a lot more people tweeting about Mauer’s inadequacies that those of the Twins front office. Sure, people talk about Ramos-for-Capps, Garza-for-Young and Hardy-for-Hoey, but Bill Smith is not scapegoated for the Twins’ failures like David Kahn is for the Minnesota Timberwolves woes.

Blame often falls squarely on Mauer’s shoulders even though it’s not his fault that the rotation combusted in 2011 and hasn’t fully recovered. There isn’t much thought given to the fact that Michael Cuddyer, Matt Garza, Francisco Liriano, J.J. Hardy, Carlos Gomez and Justin Morneau are all playing on different teams now. And few people mention that recent first round picks, Chris Parmelee (2006) and Aaron Hicks (2008), haven’t panned out so far and that a third, Trevor Plouffe (2004), has offered inconsistent production.

But Mauer is making $23 million and he doesn’t hit home runs, he’s been slumping this year and he plays every day -- so blame him. It’s simpler to blame one man than many. He’s Bill Buckner. He’s Steve Bartman.

Nobody talks about how the Red Sox were up two runs at the top of the 10th in 1986. Or how the New York Mets tied the game by hitting three straight two-out singles off of Calvin Schiraldi and coaxing a wild pitch from Bob Stanley. Or that the Boston Red Sox were leading 3-0 in Game 7 and blew that lead.

All they talk about is the ball that rolled between Buckner’s legs.

Similarly, in the Bartman case, nobody talks about how Mark Prior walked Luis Castillo on a wild pitch following the incident, allowing Juan Pierre to advance to third. Or that Alex Gonzalez mishandled a routine double-play ball that would have gotten them out of the inning. Or that it was the eighth inning and the team was leading 3-0 before Bartman reached over the outfield wall. All they talk about is Bartman’s ill-advised attempt to catch a foul ball.

Yes, Twins fans are fed up with the organization. Once a model for how a small-market team should be run -- akin to the Oakland Athletics or Tampa Bay Rays -- Minnesota is creeping towards Seattle Mariners territory. Plouffe, Parmelee and Hicks are looking more and more like Dennis Ackley, Justin Smoak and Mike Zunino every day. They have been accused of fostering a “country club" culture, one that has refused to adapt to today’s game with platooning and advanced metrics.

Some of that is true, some of it isn’t. But the bottom line is Mauer is the one that gets pilloried. He’s Mr. Minnesota Twin. He advocated keeping manager Ron Gardenhire when his contract was up last season. He is quiet and patient, and he has never complained about the way things are done in Minnesota despite the recent losses that have piled up.

As a result, he’s been accused of being soft, greedy and complacent. People got mad when he took off time due to leg injuries and his concussion and other minor ailments. They can’t stand that he makes $23 million and hasn’t hit more than 20 home runs since his MVP season in 2009. And they don’t like that he doesn’t seem upset when he’s slumping.

The bottom line is Joe Mauer went from hometown hero to scapegoat since signing long-term with the Twins in 2010. The real question is: How did this happen?

He could have been Minnesota’s LeBron James

Think back to 2010. The Twins were in a much happier place: The team had just won its fifth Central Division title, had a strong core of players on the major league roster and were opening a new ballpark. Minnesota appeared to be on the cusp of breaking through against the New York Yankees -- eventually David had to slay Goliath -- and their homegrown catcher was going to lead the way.

Mauer was coming off of an MVP season, hitting .365/.444/.587 with 28 home runs and 96 RBIs. No. 7 jerseys were flying off the shelf, and the Twins had to assure that they would sell out their new stadium, Target Field -- the House that Mauer Built. Had they not re-signed him, $184 million price tag or not, not only would the “new era of outdoor baseball" have been a tougher sell, but Mauer would have become public enemy No. 1 in Minnesota.

In the same year that LeBron James made “The Decision" to “Take his talents to South Beach," leaving his hometown Cleveland Cavaliers for the Miami Heat, it would have been yet another blow to die-hard, small-market fans. It may be harder to fathom now following the three straight 90-loss seasons, but Mauer would have been LeBron. Someone would have burnt a jersey. He would have been booed -- not for being injured or slumping, but for betraying the place where he was born and raised.

The basketball analogy is apt here too because had Mauer chosen basketball, and had the ability to be an NBA star, perhaps his scapegoating would have been a little more justified. LeBron was able to carry an undermanned Cavs team to the NBA Finals in 2007, but he was able to get them to the playoffs five years in a row before departing to join Miami. One player can drag a team to the playoffs in basketball, but the same cannot be said in baseball. Mauer can’t bat in the 3-, 4- and 5-hole. He can’t pitch in the rotation. He’s one of nine guys on the field; not one of five.

There are a few people that have disliked Mauer since the beginning -- not enough power, too quiet -- and, to be fair, they’ve remained consistent, even through his better seasons. At the same time, no matter how much you think of one player, he can only do so much. Joey Votto can’t turn the Cincinnati Reds into the Big Red Machine. Andrew McCutcheon can’t turn the Pirates into the We Are Family team of 1979. Mauer can’t turn the Twins into Cardinals North.

It can’t go without saying, though, that there are many people that held Mauer up to be a hometown hero, a baseball god, but as soon as he suffered knee and head injuries -- as soon as he became human -- he was treated like LeBron sans the jersey burning. LeBron left his hometown to chase a ring; Mauer decided to try to win one in Minnesota. He wants to win a championship for his hometown, and there’s something to be said about that.

Mauer might turn out to be Minnesota’s Tony Gwynn

Let’s start with the numbers. Mauer is hitting .320/.401/.461 lifetime with 107 home runs and 662 runs batted in. He is in his 11th season with the Twins and his wins above replacement (WAR) is 45.0. Gwynn played 20 seasons with the San Diego Padres (1982-2001), hit .338/.388/.459 with 135 HR and 1138 RBI. He owns a WAR of 68.8.

Mauer is 31; Gwynn retired at 41. The only year Gwynn hit below .300 was in his rookie season, 1982, and had four of his best seasons between 34 and 37, leading the league in average with video game numbers -- .394 (in the strike-shortened 1994 season), .368, .353, .372 -- and retired with a .324/.384/.461 line, which is about what Mauer hit last season (.324/.404/.476) when he won his fifth Silver Slugger Award.

In order to be Gwynn, however, Mauer has to keep hitting like he did in his 20s, which is no easy task. Even in his injury-riddled 2011 season he hit .287/.360/.368, but time will tell how much those injuries, combined with a concussion last season, will affect him in his 30s.

Some people have called into question how history will view Mauer. If Gwynn is any indication, a congenial player that stays with one team throughout his career will be received well. It wasn’t a large topic of discussion that some of those Padres teams Gwynn was on were undermanned or that he never took his talents north to try and win a World Series with the Dodgers or Angels -- or went to the East Coast for that matter.

It seems that people still value a player that wants to win in a certain location, especially if a player calls that place home.

He might not be worth $23 million anymore, but does it matter?

Mauer’s contract ends during his age 35 season, and he will likely take less money. This is more as a result of his change from a catcher to first baseman than to his production at the plate. Once a prolific offensive threat at the catcher’s position, his lack of power is more scrutinized now that he is at a position where home runs are expected. He still could command a hefty sum if he continues to hit as Gwynn did in his late 30s, but it is unlikely that Mauer will be worth $23 million. The sad truth is that as soon as Mauer sustained that concussion last season, his value dropped, even if he is worth more in Minnesota because of his roots and community outreach in the Twin Cities.

Keep in mind, however, that he was making less than $500,000 during his first three seasons and didn’t make seven figures until his MVP season in 2009. In some ways, by keeping him around, the Twins got good value out of him during the entirety of his career.

The Twins have been criticized for putting Mauer at first base -- as opposed to moving him to third or the outfield -- but Gardenhire counters by saying that it is a position where he is involved in just about every play. “I read somewhere somebody said we’re wasting his athletic ability at first base," said the skipper back in May. “Well, I have a hard time with that statement. The ball goes there as much as it did [when he was] the catcher."

Gardenhire says the Twins have tried Mauer at third, but that move doesn’t make a lot of sense. Trevor Plouffe has improved defensively since being moved from shortstop to the hot corner two years ago. He’s shown he’s capable of hitting for power (24 home runs in 2012) and is hitting more doubles this season, although he has yet to raise his average and still has to prove that he can stay healthy and replicate his power numbers from two years ago. They probably want to play Plouffe out, knowing he is in the prime of his career, could have some value, and was a former first round pick.

Another reason third base doesn’t make much sense is that blue-chip prospect Miguel Sano is projected to play there in the major leagues. This could become a predicament, however, if his arm does not recover fully from Tommy John surgery and he has to be moved to first base, or suffers further injury, creating an additional setback.

“We tried third base way back," Gardenhire says in regard to Mauer. “I got hit in the knees standing behind him, and we cancelled that one when he missed the ball and got me."

Gardenhire says that the team has considered the outfield with Mauer, but it was foreign to him. While Mauer played some other infield positions in Little League and high school -- shortstop, second, third -- he didn’t play much in the outfield. “Some guys profile out there as outfielders, and Joe could probably do that," he said. “He can run, he can probably run the ball down if he had done it his whole life, played the outfield, but I’m venturing to say that’s not something he was accustomed to."

“When I put him in right field, he told me that’s the most afraid he’s ever been on a baseball field," Gardenhire continued, chuckling. “That’s not a good statement. He could do it if you give him more time, but the ball doesn’t come there an awful lot. It comes to first base."

Even the outfield is getting kind of jammed. Byron Buxton is supposed to be the franchise center fielder, Oswaldo Arcia will be expected to play right and Aaron Hicks will play left -- assuming he can get his swing figured out. Chris Parmelee also can be used as a bench player in right.

Mauer is likely to be a first baseman for the rest of his career. The key will be making the adjustment at the plate as well as in the field. After moving out from behind the plate, Mauer has had some trouble tracking pitches because he is no longer catching. “There’s a reason why he’s a great hitter, “says Gardenhire. “He uses the catching part of it as tracking pitches too and seeing the ball, and I thought that was pretty good stuff. That’s not something that you think about too often, so that’s an adjustment for him."

While his numbers are more common among first basemen then they are among catchers, if he continues to hit .300 and drive in runs, even with a dearth of power, he’ll be worth spending money on. In the end, there are no salary caps in baseball, meaning that to an average fan, it really doesn’t matter how much the Twins spend on him. What does matter, however, is that Minnesota spends the money to put a good team around him -- something they haven’t been able to do since the mass exodus of talent in 2011.

Ultimately, the Twins have to put a team around Mauer

Since Mauer joined the Twins in 2004, Mauer has seen plenty of his talented teammates leave the organization. Gone are Justin Morneau, Michael Cuddyer, Francisco Liriano, Matt Garza, Kyle Lohse, Torii Hunter, J.J. Hardy, Carlos Gomez and many other All-Stars. Not all great players can stay within the organization, but that’s an awful lot of talent that has departed. Morneau’s departure hit Mauer the hardest and, back in 2010 when the M&M Boys were the showcase stars for the new ballpark, nobody thought he was going to end up somewhere else.

Minnesota is unlikely to go out and spend millions of dollars to create a makeshift team around Mauer, especially because that kind of spending doesn’t often work -- even for big-market teams. At their core, the Twins are still the draft-and-develop team they always have been, only now they should be able to keep their stars. For the Twins to win a championship with Mauer, they are going to have to work with what they’ve got.

Alex Meyer and Trevor May are going to have to come up and supplement a rotation that will include Ricky Nolasco, Phil Hughes and Kyle Gibson. The core bullpen -- Glen Perkins, Casey Fien, Brian Duensing, Anthony Swarzak and Caleb Thielbar -- has to stay intact and be supplemented. Byron Buxton and Miguel Sano have to pan out. Aaron Hicks has to turn his career around. Brian Dozier needs to continue to play like a franchise player, and Josmil Pinto has to develop defensively behind the plate while maintaining his swing.

On top of that, the Twins still need a shortstop: Eduardo Escobar, Eduardo Nunez or someone from the outside. Chris Parmelee and Chris Colabello are wild cards that could find a spot in the lineup if they can produce consistently. And, of course, there will be free agent signings and call-ups.

In the end, the Twins need more superstars like Mauer, so it doesn’t make sense to chase him away.

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.

December 18th, 2014

For Minnesota Twins Pitcher Kyle Gibson, Tommy John Surgery Was a Learning Experience

Kyle Gibson is aware of the long list of pitchers this season that have undergone Tommy John surgery. The Minnesota Twins pitcher is happy that he is pitching well now that he is two years removed from the procedure, but he still laments that it is becoming routine for hurlers to have go under the knife.

"As a pitcher, I wouldn't call it scary," he said. "Everybody knows it's part of the game. Unfortunately I see it become more and more part of the game. I have no idea why.".

SB Nation has compiled a Tommy John "Kill Sheet," and with names like Matt Harvey, Josh Johnson and Jose Fernandez recently joining that list, teams are left wondering what is at the root of this epidemic. "I don't know the reasons why all of a sudden now this elbow thing's coming up where I don't think anybody’s treating pitchers any differently," said Twins manager Ron Gardenhire. "I don't think they are doing anything different in college or high school, I think it's just the violent motion of throwing a baseball."

Gibson, who had the procedure done in November of 2011, has no solution to Tommy John surgery. Instead, he sees it as a learning experience. The rehabilitation he went through taught him new techniques he could use to strengthen and preserve his arm, and the year away reminded him of how much he loved baseball.

He understands the importance of good mechanics and preserving the arm at a young age, but says that sometimes pitchers who were instructed by wise coaches still get injured. Gibson does not want to fundamentally change the game of baseball by having pitchers throw four innings or toss the ball from a lower mound, nor does he want to see young pitchers to see the surgery as a magical procedure that will help them reach the big leagues. Instead, he sees it as an opportunity to learn techniques to stay healthy and throw harder following the surgery.

It can happen to anyone

When Joba Chamberlain and Stephen Strasburg underwent Tommy John, experts blamed the "Inverted W," a pitching technique both players implemented where they picked up both elbows above the shoulder during the cocking phase of the pitch. But Harvey, the Mets ace, had sound mechanics and also was sidelined due to a UCL tear.

"You've got guys that are talking about mechanics and the inverted W, you've got guys that had Tommy John that don't do that so it could just be something where you throw for a long time, and you throw hard for long enough, and your arm just wears down," said Gibson. "You just try and stay on top of it as much as possible and keep your conditioning up, but some of it is luck," he continued. "I mean, who knows? Like Matt Harvey, who thought Matt Harvey, who has really good mechanics, is going to get hurt?"

Tommy John himself came out and said that he feels that the reason so many players are having the surgery named after him is because they specialize so young and play year round. Others blame high school and college coaches that emphasize winning over player health, often letting pitchers throw over 100 pitches if they continue to get players out in latter innings.

Twins assistant general manager Rob Antony says that he looks into a player's history before drafting him, but will not be dissuaded from drafting a player that is considered Tommy John prone. "You look for arm action probably as much as anything. Some guys just have a little more risky arm action, but you gotta be careful," he said. "A lot of it major leagues clubs can't control because of what a player has done coming up in high school or if you went to college, how he was used, pitches that he threw, when he started throwing the ball, if he pitched year round.

"There's so many factors you can't control. You get the pitcher at that stage of his career, and go from there."

The Twins knew that Gibson may be injury prone coming out of the University of Missouri, but took him at No. 22 overall in 2009 and gave him a $1.8 million signing bonus. "When we drafted Gibson out of college, he had a stress fracture in his forearm, and a lot of people said that was a precursor to Tommy John, and we all knew that was a possibility," he said. "He ended up having Tommy John, but if that's behind him now, and he goes on and pitches the next seven years, we'll know the issues were well worth it."

Gibson understands Tommy John's argument and does not discourage kids from playing other sports, but he also says that the only way to improve arm strength and pitching motion is to actually do it. He says it's like a runner: The only way to get better at sprinting is to go out and sprint. Yes, it may be a more natural motion, but it's the same basic concept in his mind.

"The only way to throw harder is to break those muscles down and build them back up," he said. "It's kind of a double-edged sword: If you want to throw hard and you want to make your arm stronger, you've got to go out and throw. There is no magic exercise that's going to do that for you."

Don't change the game

As the number of pitchers undergoing Tommy John increases, baseball writers have begun mulling ways to reduce the amount of UCL injuries among starting pitchers. Esteemed Sports Illustrated scribe Tom Verducci wants to see the league lower the mound while Anthony Murray of The Atlantic suggested that teams limit MLB starters to four innings. Both options have gained some traction, but neither is appealing to Gibson.

"In general, it doesn't matter what athletic profession you're in. Your career is a short career," he said. "To take somebody that is just getting into the league and limiting them to four innings, maybe not ever seeing what they can do late in the game probably doesn't make a whole lot of sense."

Besides being energized by their competitive nature, pitchers become accustomed to the mound being a certain height and pitching a certain amount of pitches. They develop habits early on that allow them to pitch accurately at a high velocity, and dramatic changes to the game could be detrimental both to their performance and to their health.

He praises pitchers like Anthony Swarzak, a Twins reliever that is able to throw any amount of pitches in just about any setting. The former starter is used both in long relief and spot duty and has traditionally handled an inconsistent workload well since being moved to the bullpen (Swarzak only had 5 starts in 2012 against 39 relief appearances. In 2011, he had 11 starts and 16 relief appearances. You could probably say he's been close to full-time relief for at least two years prior to this; arguably three. That's why I nixed "last year.")

"You've got to have the right mindset, and if you ask these guys, they're comfortable knowing their role and to do as good as they can in that inning or with one batter," he said. "To expect all of these guys to go out there and have their mindset open and say, 'I'm going to throw three innings today,' that’s going to be difficult for a lot of guys."

It's not a magical procedure

In May, Gregg Doyle, a national columnist for CBSSports.com, wrote that Tommy John is becoming a growing addiction among young pitchers. Dr. James Andrews, a preeminent sports surgeon who has operated on Stephen Strasburg, Adam Wainwright and Joe Nathan, said that he has to turn away many adolescent players that want to get on the operating table before they enter college thinking it will help them improve their game.

"The ones we have the most trouble with are high school players, sophomores and juniors," he told Doyle. "They're worried about their career and going to college, or worried about getting drafted out of high school, and their parents are pushing."

Andrews said that he could have a player like that ready for surgery in 15 to 20 minutes, but refuses to do so because the surgery is not foolproof. The procedure entails holes being drilled into the bones of a pitcher's upper and lower arm and a tendon from the pitcher's arm or leg getting snaked through those holes in a figure-eight pattern to stabilize the elbow. It isn't a simple operation.

"I wouldn't ever tell somebody to go get Tommy John just to throw harder," said Gibson, who has had two elbow surgeries. "I don't think you can really appreciate what the sport does for you until you're actually aware of it. You take a year off and you don't get to enjoy the fun and excitement of being on a team."

Gibson says it is all about the rehabilitation. Growing up, he threw long toss as long as he could during the offseason to build up arm strength and made that part of his rehab, but he also learned new techniques to build up his arm and shoulder while staying on a strict regimen. It was the rehab, he says, more than the surgery that allowed him to have success after the operation.

"Once you get to pro ball, it's a lot on yourself, and it's a lot of self-discipline," he said. "Even me this year, there's times when I don't really have my shoulder working, and when you're rehabbing you've guy a guy standing right next to you [giving instructions]. They keep on top of you because they understand how important that rehab process is.3

"If I probably took that same diligence that I had for that 12 months and applied it to every day after Tommy John, I'd probably have a lot better chance of staying healthy. That's kind of the goal, is to take what you learned in the process and use it as part of your routine."

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.

December 18th, 2014

Chris Colabello: From the Worcester Tornadoes to the Minnesota Twins

Paul Cantiani, the man that brought independent baseball to the city of Worcester, Mass., believes that Minnesota Twins first baseman Chris Colabello should wind up and hit a tree. Evergreen, birch, hickory or willow - it doesn't matter: He should just let loose and wail on some arbor. "I just want to punch him once in a while and say, why don't you get pissed off? Punch a tree or something," says Cantiani in an East Coast accent so thick he could be mistaken for a Family Guy character. "He just smiles back.".

Cantiani is kidding of course. Colabello broke his hand while playing in his penultimate season for the Worcester Tornadoes, the Canadian-American independent league team that Cantiani brought to central Massachusetts. Even if he hadn't done that, it isn't smart for a person that wants to hit a ball 400 feet or throw a runner out at home to run around punching trees.

Colabello would be justified if he let loose, however. He played his first MLB game at age 29 last year. He is also primarily a first baseman, a fungible defensive position where Joe Mauer will play next season, and a right fielder, where first round pick Chris Parmelee and blue-chipper Oswaldo Arcia play, and he hit below the Mendoza Line in 181 plate appearances as a rookie. That means that if he cannot get the bat going, he probably will not find a spot on a major league roster. He cannot play for the Tornadoes if he gets cut because they folded shortly after he entered the Twins system and he does not have much more to accomplish in the minor leagues after being named International League MVP and Rookie of the Year last season.

None of that bothers Colabello, though, because he is just taking it one step at a time. "Every day my focus is on the task at hand and when I say that I mean it," he says. "If you get too caught up in where I'm going to be in a week or where I'm going to be in two weeks or what's going to happen in my next at-bat or all that stuff, it has a tendency to really detract from what you're trying to do as a player."

"He doesn't feel pressure," says Cantiani. "He's acting no different in the major leagues than he did when he was [with] the Tornadoes. I'm not kidding you; the kid's wacky. You can tell him I said that too. If you talk to him about me, he'll tell you how much he loves me."

Beloved in Worcester

Everybody in this city took to him because he's just so personable. He'd stay after games and sign autographs for an hour or two hours and it was all for nothing. He's just a nice kid.

- Paul Cantiani, Cantiani Insurance Agency

"The one thing I can say about Paul for sure is that he has a huge heart and he's a very straight shooter," says Colabello. "Until you get to know him, it's hard to see how big his heart is and what kind of guy he is." He calls Cantiani the Godfather of Worcester. "He's a guy that cared very deeply for a lot of players who played for the Worcester Tornadoes those years when I was playing and became like a surrogate dad to me."

It was not as though Colabello needed a surrogate father, though: Both of his parents, Lou and Silvana, were supportive of his choice to pursue professional baseball despite his long odds and allowed him to live at home while he was playing for the Tornadoes. Lou, a high school physical education teacher and former pitcher, met Lou while he was playing professionally in Italy. "My mom and dad have the same passion for the game that I do," Colabello told Sports On Earth's Pat Borzi. "A day on a baseball field is better than a day somewhere else. That's the way I looked at it."

So while his parents were comfortable with him living at home until age 27, it was Cantiani that got in his ear about his pursuit of a career as a professional baseball player. "I was like, 'you're outta your goddamn mind!'" yelled Cantiani, adding that Colabello made enough money to live independently during that time. "Would you goddamn move out? He loves his mother and father."

"They were more than happy to have me there," says Colabello, smiling. "I was an only child in an Italian family."

"The problem I was having, personally at the end, I was saying, 'Chris, you're 27, you're 27 years old, stop bullshitting yourself. You've got to get out and get into the real world and find some kind of career,'" says Cantiani. "I used to think he was playing baseball because he was too lazy to get a job."

The two used to get together every for lunch when Colabello was playing for the Tornadoes, but Cantiani would not allow Colabello to talk about baseball. "He knows I don't want to hear it," Cantiani says. "I want to talk about your life, I want to talk about your girlfriend: I want to make sure you don't knock her up."

In the offseason Colabello taught baseball lessons and worked camps and clinics while also substitute teaching at local schools. Not only was it additional income for Colabello, who made between $800 and $2000 a month playing Indy ball, but it also allowed him to integrate with a community that he cared for greatly.

He even went so far as to participate in an event called Dancing with the City, Worcester's play on the popular television show Dancing with the Stars. Colabello, who admittedly is a poor dancer, took Beth O'Brien, the wife of former City Manager Mike O'Brien, to the event. He had to do countless lessons, in addition to playing baseball, in order to be competent enough to dance in front of other people. In three weeks he learned how to do the Cha Cha and the Limbo. "Why would a guy do that? He just respects the City Manager," says Cantiani. "And then he calls me up one time and says, 'We're going out with the City Manager's daughters for lunch.' So he takes me because he knows I'll pay - so he's not stupid."

Leaving Worcester

In terms of Worcester, it couldn't have come at a better time, but you could have said that four or five years ago when he got traded or anything like that.

- Keith Beauregard, assistant coach at Santa Clara University

While the daughters of the City Manager were not typical guests of Colabello and Cantiani when they sat down for lunch, Keith Beauregard was. Currently an assistant baseball coach at Santa Clara University in Northern California, Beauregard competed against Colabello in college and then was his teammate for three years with the Tornadoes. "He's one of my closest friends," Beauregard says of Colabello. "That's my boy right there."

They both grew up near Massachusetts - Beauregard is from Leominster and Colabello is from Milford - and chose to play Division II baseball locally in the Northeast-10 Conference: Beauregard played for St. Anselm in Manchester, N.H. and Colabello played for Assumption College in Worcester. Because the baseball community in Massachusetts is smaller than it is in hardball hotbeds like California, Texas, and Florida, the two knew each other from playing summer ball and in high school. "We played against each other in the same conference, so it was one of those things: I wanted to beat him every time and he wanted to beat me," says Beauregard, "but when we got to Worcester we had mutual respect for one another."

The two had lockers next to one another while playing for the Tornadoes and established a daily routine. They went to the cages with manager Rich Gedman, a major leaguer who played from 1980 to 1992 and spent 11 years with the Boston Red Sox, and hitting coach Barry Glinski, who coached at Assumption from 1981 to 1988. Both players say that it was the close bond they had with their team - a ragtag collection of players that had played all levels of the game ("You had guys from South America, guys from Australia, and then you had your Canadians," says Beauregard. "It was an extremely diverse culture.") - that allowed Worcester to win a Can-Am championship in 2005.

But two years later Worcester was slumping and Colabello, hitting .300 in the heart of the order, was traded to the Nashua Pride in the middle of the season. Suddenly, Worcester's native son was hitting cleanup for a team in New Hampshire. The decision to deal Colabello took a toll on Gedman, who like Cantiani and Beauregard had become incredibly fond of him. "I was very, very close to him and we spent an awful lot of time together and maybe it was a fault of my own that I was so close," says Gedman, "but my thing was I felt he was better served by being traded than he would have by playing and going through what we were going through at the time."

Colabello went on to win a championship with the Pride that year and returned to the Tornadoes in 2008. By that time, however, Beauregard had moved on. At age 25, he wanted to try his hand at real estate. He moved to New York, worked for Prudential Douglas from 2008-10, came back to the game in 2011 and played 11 games for Pittsfield and then went to work on Dan O'Brien's staff at Santa Clara two years later.

Colabello was playing for Worcester in 2011, but the ground was falling beneath him. The team had trouble competing against all the baseball in the area - the Red Sox, Paw Sox, Lowell Spinners, legion, and high school - and found itself in financial trouble. The end was near when, after the 2011 season, the Minnesota Twins reached out to Colabello. In the Can-Am league, each team is only allowed five veteran players and was looking at signing Jose Conseco in order to draw a larger crowd and try to stay solvent. Colabello signed with the Twins that February and saw the team that he and Cantiani build go bankrupt and fold.

"In terms of Worcester, it couldn't have come at a better time, but you could have said that four or five years ago when he got traded or anything like that," says Beauregard. "It came at the right time. It came at the right time for him. His maturity as a hitter has increased greatly and his ability to generate power not only to his pull side, but to the opposite field side, his understanding of pitch selection, pitch sequences is unbelievable right now."

So Colabello dodged a bullet in some sense by signing with the Twins, but there was still the matter of going from Mickey Mouse baseball, as Cantiani called the Can-Am league, to Associated ball.

Hitting Like Pujols and Cabrera

The thing that made him ultimately give it a chance was I was showing him clips of Miguel Cabrera, Albert Pujols, and Hanley Ramirez and when I showed him a clip of himself and it was the farthest hit ball that he's ever hit up to that point and he looked at it and the things that happened in that swing were completely different than his intent.

- Bobby Tewksbary, A.B. Athletic Development

"Chris always had this thing in his head, if he doesn't hit .300, he's a failure," says Cantiani. "That's why when is average goes down, he panics a little."

Colabello hit .300 every year when he was with Worcester, including his rookie year in 2005 as a 21 year old, but this was different. With the Twins Double-A affiliate in New Britain, Conn. he was going to be playing 134 games; in the Can-Am league he played around 90. In New Britain he was affiliated with a major league team; in Worcester he did not. He was playing with major league prospects, Bonus Babies, in New Britain; in Worcester he was not.

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

"Richey Gedman loves him," says Cantiani, adding that the two do regular hitting lessons together and also put on clinics for underprivileged children in Worcester. Colabello fell short of .300 for the first time in his professional career, however, when he hit .284/.358/.478 for in 134 games with the Rock Cats in 2012. He still was promoted to Triple-A last year and it was there that Colabello, at age 29, had perhaps one of the best single season turnarounds for a minor league veteran in baseball history.

In 89 games with the Rochester Red Wings, Colabello hit .352/.427/.639 with 24 home runs. Never before in his professional baseball career had he hit above .350. Never before in his baseball career had he hit more than 20 home runs. Only in his final year with the Tornadoes did he have an OPS above 1.000 and yet, in his first year at Triple-A, Colabello's on-base plus slugging percentage totaled 1.066.

How did that happen? It was a combination of instruction from the Twins, Gedman, and a friend named Bobby Tewksbary.

Colabello met Tewksbary during the 2004 New England Collegiate Baseball All-Star Game during the summer between their junior and senior years of college and then played a year and a half together on the Tornadoes. Unlike Colabello and Beauregard, however, Tewksbary was never a .300 hitter in the Can-Am league. In fact, the Hudson, N.H. native never cracked .250 in the 72 games he split between Worcester and the North Shore Spirit in Lynn, Mass. But it was getting away from the game that allowed him to instruct hitters to do what he himself never could on a baseball diamond.

"I went to New York City for a couple years, got away form baseball, and I started looking a the swing again, looking at video again," he says. He went out and bought a high-speed camera and went to the 2008 Home Run Derby at Yankee Stadium and took footage of Josh Hamilton as the former Texas Rangers slugger hit 35 home runs at New York's old park. "The time away from the game allowed me to look at things in a different light," he says. "When you transition from playing to coaching, you teach what everyone taught you. I got away from it for a couple years and started seeing some things differently that what I always thought was happening."

Colabello broke his left hand late in the 2010 season in a game against Les Capitales de Quebec. It was raining out at the time, but because the Can-Am league did not have a budget for makeup games, so the teams played on. Colabello caught a fastball in the left hand when the pitcher fell off the mound and missed the rest of the season with a non-displaced fracture. "At that point I was really starting to feel good about myself," says Colabello. "When I got hurt, I was still hungry. Going into the offseason, I decided that I was going to start hitting right away. I was going to do everything I could to be the best hitter that I could be that offseason. That was when I first really made that commitment to being the guy I am today."

It was during the 2010 offseason that he began to work with Tewksbary. The mechanics Tewksbary teaches do not fall in line with conventional wisdom, which preaches short swings and few moving parts -- something the Twins preach to their hitters from the minors on up. Tewksbary, who studies film of great hitters so often he says its like he's conducting a C.S.I. investigation ("People talk about the 10-year, 10,000-hour rule," he says, "I've blown past 10,000 hours a long time ago."), has found that the best hitters in the game today, guys like Hamilton, Albert Pujols, and Miguel Cabrera, have large swings with multiple movable parts that all serve a purpose in the swing.

Twins general manager Terry Ryan has openly expressed his concern regarding the moving parts in Colabello's swing, but Tewksbary insists that his method is the reason why Colabello went from being a .284 hitter in New Britain, to a .352 hitter with 24 home runs in Rochester. Asked about the moving parts in Colabello's swing, Tewksbary replied that "I want to be careful answering this question because I don't want to piss off Terry Ryan or get Chris in trouble, but I'll say that the movement of Chris' swing is not random.

"We've spent a lot of time studying video, we've spent a lot of time adding and removing different components of his swing and the movement that exists in his swing has purpose," he continues. "It's in sync with what the pitcher is doing, it's in sync with his plan with how he is trying to be successful, there's nothing random about what he's doing in the batter's box."

Twins hitting coordinator Bill Springman acknowledged via email that Tewksbary and Colabello have a relationship and said it is not an "instructional type of relationship," but offered no further comment. "I would definitely consider Chris a friend before I consider him to be a client just because of our history," says Tewksbary, "but he's a smart kid, he's very smart, he's very critical and objective and has very good questions." Colabello actively works with Twins hitting coach Tom Brunansky during the season and hits in Tewksbary's Nashua, N.H. facility in the offseason.

Two of the Twins best hitting prospects, Oswaldo Arcia and Josmil Pinto, have large swings and both players had success at the plate as rookies last season: Arcia hit .251/.304/.430 with 14 home runs in 97 games and Pinto hit .342/.398/.566 with 4 home runs in 21 games. During the past two seasons, Tewksbary has traveled to Ft. Myers, Fla. for Spring Training with Colabello and was impressed by both players.

The first year he traveled down to Florida, he did not know many of the Twins prospects, so he walked around the complex and a left-handed hitter caught his eye. "I went over to the cage underneath the stadium and there was this lefty hitter just raking, mashing balls off of the iron mike and I took video and this guy has the best swing that I've seen here today," says Tewksbary, who had no idea who that player was, but had been informed by Colabello that there were two players that could hit: Arcia and Pinto. "So I'm going back to my video at the end of the year, looking up the big league camp roster and the lefty I saw was Arcia."

Tewksbary got a chance to see Pinto when he was called up to Double-A. He was at home and he and Chris decided to see New Britain play when they visited the Blue Jays' Double-A affiliate in New Hampshire. "I was there watching batting practice and I see Pinto swing, I have no idea who he is, and as soon as I see him take one swing, I look at Chris and I'm like, 'Who's that?' and he slapped himself on the leg like 'I knew it, that's the guy I was telling you about.'

"When you see the guys with these mechanics, it jumps out at you because it's different," Tewksbary continues. "The more you understand it, the more obvious it becomes. As far as I'm concerned, it's not really debatable that it exists because you can look at the video and it's pretty obvious once you know what to look for."

Colabello initially rejected Tewksbary's advice, challenging repeatedly in verbal disagreements that often grew very loud, very quickly. "It was pretty funny, he would question me about specific hitters, he would question me about certain wording, and he was very adamant about emergency swings and how am I supposed to protect the plate? How am I supposed to hit the inside pitch or the outside pitch?" says Tewksbary. "He needed to understand the concept to understand there might be more to what he is capable of."

"More than a player, he's a student of the game," says Beauregard, who acts as the hitting coach at Santa Clara. "He understands the game extremely well at one of the highest levels I've ever seen."

Early on in the training process, Tewksbary would have Colabello try "something crazy" with three swings and then the two would yell for three hours. Then they would try something different, only to have another shouting match ensue. "It was hilarious because we're good friends and he's got some Italian in him." Eventually, though, Colabello gave in and began to see results, culminating in his Triple-A performance last season.

"He showed up and he didn't have to show up," acknowledges Tewksbary, who says that Colabello is a friend first and a client second. "He could have been like, 'You know what? You're crazy, I don't need this. I'm as successful as I need right now, I'm comfortable with what I'm doing and I don't need it.'

"Despite the confrontation that we used to have back and forth, he kept showing up, kept giving it a chance."

Don't Label Him Quad-A

More than anything else, what makes Chris special is the type of person that he is. He's a good teammate, a good person, and that's what makes him special. It's his perseverance, his desire to want to be one of the best, to overcome obstacles where most people would have given up - that's what makes him special.

- Rich Gedman, former major leaguer and manager of the Tornadoes

"Baseball likes to label people and create definitions of people and a lot of times its accurate,but people are really quick to throw that Quad-A label on players," says Tewksbary, "To know where he came from and to know where he's at, he's gonna battle, he's the type of kid that's going to do everything he can and challenge himself harder than anybody could challenge him to be a better player and to succeed."

"His dream would be to die on the ball field," says Cantiani. "I ain't shittin' ya: Kid's wacky."

"He played seven years of Independent ball and I bet you 99.9 percent of the population in America that knew him was like 'When is he going to hang it up?'" says Beauregard. "[He's] going to do all he can to make the Minnesota Twins the best possible team that they can be or whatever team he is a part of for the remainder of his career."

Colabello himself says that he never once considered quitting because baseball meant so much to him. He said that he promised himself he would play as long as three things held up: 1) Physically he could do it, meaning he was capable physically, financially, and emotionally, 2) That he was still having fun playing the game, and 3) That he felt like he was getting better. "I felt that was the most important one and over the course of time, that just kept happening," he says. "More than anything, my hunger to get better grew."

Colabello says the fraternity of players that have gone from Independent ball to the majors has welcomed him.

"It's funny, when you're in Independent ball, you have a tendency to really keep an eye on the guys out there," he says. "You keep close tabs on those guys because you know what it took to endure over there and kind of get through it." Colabello speaks highly of players like John Lindsey and Steve Delabar, who made it to the Show after playing Indy ball and says he looks up to Daniel Nava, who has had success with the Red Sox.

Gedman feels that Colabello has made a major impact on the Canadian-American league and the players playing in it. "New anybody who plays in Independent ball can go, 'If Chris Colabello can do it, why can't I?'" he says. "For whatever the reason or for however it happens, it gives that league a valid reason to be there. Yeah, you can get there from here. It might be a hard road, but if somebody gives you an opportunity, you never know. "That's what makes his story so special."

For Colabello's part, he's just focused on the moment. His long-term goal, of course, is to play into his 40s, but right now it's about making the team and producing at age 30. "Hitting .300 has always meant the world to me, for whatever reason. From when I was a little kid, I understood what it meant to hit .300 and we have the epitome of that guy in this clubhouse every day," he says. "To watch Joe Mauer go about his business and be as steady as he is every day, he's so poised." Colabello says that he is at his best when he breaks down an at-bat into its most basic form form: a battle between a hitter and the pitch that is thrown. He knows he'll stay as long as he can produce at the plate, and he has proven he can hit at every level except the game's highest. In order to take his game to the next level, he will focus on each individual moment rather than the big picture.

"A lot of times we catch ourselves focusing too much on the future instead of staying in the present," he says. "Aspirations of what you want to be down the road have to come from the individual moments."

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.

December 18th, 2014

MLB Draft: Are the Minnesota Twins Moving Away from Pitch to Contact?

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.

December 18th, 2014

Kevin Correia: There's No Trends

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.

December 18th, 2014

What Trevor Plouffe Tells Us About the Minnesota Twins Player Development

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.

December 18th, 2014

Rob Antony Dishes on the Minnesota Twins Outfield Situation

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.

December 18th, 2014

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