Twins recent roster moves a bit surprising

While checking out the website MLBTradeRumors.com earlier today I came across a pair of Twins stories that disappointed me a bit. The first story announced that the club had signed former Minnesota outfielder Jacque Jones to a minor league contract with an invite to spring training. The second story had to do with the Twins losing minor league outfielder Jason Pridie to the New York Mets on waivers. Pridie had been released to make room on the 40-man roster for recent free agent acquisition second baseman Orlando Hudson.

I hadn’t even considered Pridie as one of the likely candidates and I’m just a bit baffled by the move. He hit a line of .265/.295/.382 with 25 stolen bases during a full season of play last season for the Twins’ farm facility Rochester Red Wings – a Triple A club. Now that’s not very promising at all, in fact it just doesn’t grade out to suggest any success at the plate in the majors. Jones was not active in the majors at all last season, playing instead for an independent team, the Newark Bears. In 2008 he hit a line of .147/.239/.207 in a split season with Detroit and Florida, later that year turning down a minor league assignment in the Marlins system.

Looking a bit further back…during the 2006 season with the Chicago Cubs, Jones was in the starting lineup nearly every day as the right fielder, clubbing 27 HRs and hitting for a .285 average; in ‘07 he appeared regularly as either the starting center or right fielder hitting only 5 HRs but once again logged a respectable .285 batting average. The 27 homers match his career best, reached in the Twins 2002 season.

The Twins do not have any depth in the outfield at the minor league level – there aren’t any outfielders playing at any level that I would consider major league ready. Pridie was easily the head of his class as far as the Minnesota farm system went and I figured the Twins to hold on to him. If we were to lose either Denard Span or Michael Cuddyer for any length of time I’d always counted on Pridie being there to plug the hole defensively at least. Now that he’s gone Jones actually moves to the top of the list of callups should the Twins need one in 2010…and of course you know they will. Someone will miss time for some reason – it happens! An injury, a leave of absence for a funereal, etc.

Joe Christensen, a Minneapolis Star Tribune sports writer, reported in his blog, Around The Majors, that Jones has agreed to play at Rochester if he doesn’t make the Opening Day roster. And I have to believe he would be an extreme longshot to make it unless he has the absolute best spring training season of his professional career. Minnesota has Delmon Young, Span and Cuddyer penciled in as the 2010 starting outfield with Kubel as the fourth outfielder. Nick Punto and potentially Matt Tolbert could also play the outfield if necessary. For the record, Punto has logged 46 innings of centerfield play with no errors for the Twins over the past four seasons. Not a large sampling I admit, but it does testify to his ability to play there when needed.

A bit off-topic: One of the quotes Christensen includes in his blog is from Twins GM Bill Smith who said that Jones was looking to continue his career and that he’s been a good player. Smith further stated that Jones was one of the reasons the Twins became competitive earlier in the decade and that they’re glad to have him back in Minnesota. Well, that could be said about many of the former Twins from the 2001, ‘02, ‘03,’04 and ‘o5 seasons that are still active professionally – most of them looking for an opportunity still. Smith has a bad habit of sounding chummy & folksy, and trying to put a kind of, touchy-feely ‘one-from-the-heart’ spin on too many of his moves. I wish he’d stop that. Christensen has the same tendency too…read the blog for yourself and see.

Well, provided Jacque can give the Twins the defensive stop gap measure they’re likely to need at some point in the outfield during 2010, it really doesn’t seem like a bad move in retrospect. Jones does have considerable MLB experience and the fact that he can play all three outfield positions is a big plus. We’re not likely to miss Pridie in the future, and besides the club can still work out a trade for an extra outfielder sometime before the start of the season. And worst case scenario: one of the outfielders gets injured and has start off 2010 on the DL…which would free up a roster space and create a situation where a trade or watching the waiver wire as teams break camp and see who’s available.

“A million to one shot…”

 

…but priceless just the same.

‘Lost’

I have mixed feelings about this final season of Lost. In a way I almost wish it would continue because it is the only show on television that truly does entertain me. But then again, like many others, I’m really fed up with it. Besides, I’m so very curious about how this crazy multiple timeline situation gets resolved – not to mention (hopefully) getting an explanation to the island’s many supernatural characteristics, ominous indigenous life-form (Smokey) and most of all an accounting of it’s history and origins.

Lost burst on the TV screen in 2004 and immediately became the touchstone of television pop culture. Within two years, specifically near the end of season 2, many viewers of the show began to grow tired of the continual series of flashbacks. They were perceived by some to be repetitive, recycling information viewers were already aware of; the flashbacks had also lost the importance they had in the first season, taking away from the on-island storylines that were considered far more compelling. Additionally, viewers were complaining that Lost was moving much too slowly and that there was a grievous lack of answers provided in the episodes – I definitely agreed with that assesment.  But most public outcry concerned the unease that they were making an investment in a show that, while being very entertaining, is extremely complicated, and continually invented new ways to confuse the viewer without providing any real or true sense of where it is going to lead them. The show’s die-hard fans began questioning the honesty and veracity of Lost’s creators & producers, claiming they were making it up as they went along. And it was hard not to see their argument as there have been many ‘oops’ moments in Lost. They’ve (creators/producers Damon Lindelof & Carlton Cuse) simply bitten off more than they can chew, throwing in too many plot elements and characters over the five seasons and have inadvertently created some unfortunate continuity issues.

For instance, in a season 4 episode we discover one of the characters (Charlotte) has a birth date of 1979; in a season 5 episode, aired just slightly more than a year later, Charlotte appears as a young girl in an episode that takes place in 1974! There’s no alternate timeline that’s in play here either – it’s a seriously big gaff on the series’ writers part. The last two seasons commit multiple errors of this type, where the details between a character’s first-hand account of either past or current events are then seen in a later episode that clearly shows these events not matching up. We expect that there will be some tenuous link to the alternative timeline theory but it just never surfaces.

Even so, it’s still possible that we’ll see a montage of scenes from each of the previous seasons that will have it all make sense. Something like an unnoticed, yet preexisting televised scenes, sequence or chain of events spanning back through the show that we’ll be able to see was all a result of the island’s opposing forces, Jacob and Smokey (the smoke monster). Can such an ending alleviate our potential disappointment with a vague and conceptually unsatisfying payoff lacking in both shock and punctuation?

No matter – I still want to see the conclusion of the show. I just watched the first two episodes of the sixth season online Sunday and I saw much that I liked which gave me plenty of hope for a satisfying conclusion. But it did bring up something that might just become one of those pesky continuity issues: Hurley is now lucky. Possibly because he won the lottery without using the infamous Lost numbers 4, 8, 15, 16, 24, 42. And if the island is completely submerged, then Danielle Rousseau, the lone survivor of the French exploration team, wouldn’t be on the island – because there would be no island to land on. Therefore, she can’t broadcast the numbers in the distress signal, and because there’s no distress signal, then Sam Toomey never hears them on the radio one day. And because Sam doesn’t hear them, then, of course, he never tells Hurley’s crazy friend Leonard about them, all of which means Hurley never learns ‘The Numbers’. Of course, because Hurley is now lucky then it would to seem to naturally follow that he wouldn’t even be in the treatment facility with Leonard in the first place, and…oh, let’s not even get started! I’m just hoping – really hoping – that the creative forces behind the show somehow finally knit all the pieces together in a nice neat little package.

“Heckuva’ job Brownie!”

Or “I love it when a plan comes together!” I’d been hoping for a New Orleans win and it’s a pleasure to be able to say congratulations to the Saints and their fans on the Super Bowl victory. Like many others blogging late last night and into this morning I’m glad to see them ‘get off the schniede’ with a championship year. For now they can forget the unresolved issues of the Hurricane Katrina drama, it’s accumulating baggage and still unanswered questions – it’s time to get caught up in ‘Lombardi Gras’!

I confess that I didn’t watch a second of the game but I checked in on the score periodically on the internet., and I awoke this a.m. to audio replays of the game on NPR. I love the onside kick call to open the second half – it’s gotta’ be a Super Bowl first.

In a game that featured one of the greatest quarterback matchups in Super Bowl history, the Saints’ Drew Brees was largely overshadowed by the fan favorite Indianapolis Colts’ quarterback Peyton Manning. It was being widely predicted by many NFL sportswriters that this would be the second championship in his sure to be Hall of Fame career…but the Saints played the role of spoilers to the delight of many.

And Drew Brees being awarded the game MVP hardware makes up a bit for the slight he received when Peyton Manning won the NFL MVP. That one’s still a mystery to me because Brees finished with superior passing stats. Must have been based on popularity…

So many books, so little time…

When J.D. Salinger passed away recently it naturally triggered an inordinate amount of talk and appreciation in the media about the infamous recluse and his well-known books, none more so than, “The Catcher In The Rye”. When the conversation about that particular book, as well as his others, began growing repetitive it led to discussions on a few radio stations and websites I pay a call on daily to attempt to define at least a short list of ‘must-read’ books. They each had varying opinions concerning the choices of course, but it seems to me, in regards to my fifty years of life, that this is a naturally occurring phenomenon within each person – that need to form such a list and then hope to influence others or at the very least receive their approval. In fact “The Catcher In The Rye” is a book I practically insist upon people reading so I will often buy a copy, new or used, for a person I know who hasn’t had the pleasure of reading it yet.

When creating a list of my own recommendations I don’t usually have any problems other than trying to keep it short. So, if you’ll bear with me and read on I’ll tally a few of them for your perusal, with one slight digression into my childhood. The first book, which remains my favorite to this day, is “The Count Of Monte Christo” by Alexandre Dumas. If you’re familiar with it you know it’s a book of great length with some editions, containing commentary & criticism, running 2,000+ pages. I was a fifth-grader when I read it and the edition I checked out from the school library was 1458 pages and, as you can imagine, it required a monumental effort from me to finish from cover to cover. I read it during an extended winter break during the school year covering the weeks of Christmas & the New Year; when we returned to school after the break was over I feigned an illness the second or third day of the week in order to stay at home and finish the final chapters. Never had a book captured my imagination the way it did and it began my life-long love of reading.

I’ve read many books in the years that followed and though I’m likely to neglect a few titles because of faulty memory here is my somewhat short list of ‘must-reads’:

“Gulliver’s Travels”, by Jonathan Swift

“Lord of The Flies”, by William Golding

“The Stranger”, by Albert Camus

“The Sun Also Rises”, by Ernest Hemingway

“The Long Goodbye”, by Raymond Chandler

“To Kill A Mockingbird”, by Harper Lee

“The Monkey Wrench Gang”, by Edward Abbey

“American Tabloid”, by James Ellroy

“The Fountainhead”, by Ayn Rand

“The Great Gatsby”, by F. Scott Fitzgerald

“Shoeless Joe”, by W. P. Kinsella; Salinger appears as a character and is featured prominently in the book.

No one’s list can be complete without naming one of Kurt Vonnegut’s works and here it becomes difficult for me – which one do I choose? Well, it’s my list so I refuse to make a singular choice and instead I’m going to list my three favorites; “Cat’s Cradle”, “The Sirens Of Titan” and, of course, “Slaughterhouse-Five”. And finally, the two best books I’ve read in the past twenty years are “Blood Meridian: Or The Evening Redness In The West” by Cormac McCarthy and “Lonesome Dove” by one of my very favorite authors, Larry McMurtry.

I didn’t include any short story collections, poetry collections or non-fiction books on my list because I like to consider them separate categories – and that will give me another post to add to my blog sometime in the future. In the meantime please leave me your comments and be certain to mention any books I’ve left out – it’s possible that I just haven’t gotten around to reading them yet. And I never turn down a good reading suggestion either!

Twins Trivia Question – 2/7/10

Q: Which Minnesota Twins player was the first American League player to hit a home run as a designated hitter?

Leave your answer in the comments section below; I’ll publish the answer next Sunday as well as a new question.

Former Twins outfielder Bobby Kielty wants to pitch his way back to the majors

I’ve just been following the few pieces of info that were tweeted or posted on other baseball blogs about one-time Twins outfielder Bobby Kielty converting to pitching. Tim Dierkes, of MLBTradeRumors.com, also reported he heard Kielty’s slider is “pretty good”. I have to believe the odds that Kielty will surface in the majors as a pitcher must be astronomical but it’s a story that will certainly generate a lot of interest and frequent followups as he progresses.

Kielty, now 33-y.o., was signed by the Twins in 1999 and received his first callup from them in 2001. But most Twins fans will recall it was the following season that he would be a key component in revitalizing a Minnesota squad that had grown complacent over the previous few years. The Twins made the ALCS that season in large part due to his spectacular outfield play and his timely hitting.

In a surprise turn of events Kielty was traded during the following summer to the Toronto Blue Jays for Shannon Stewart who proved to be the spark plug that Minnesota needed to jump-start their 2003 season. Since Kielty departed he has had stops first in Toronto, then on to Oakland and still later Boston where he last played in the majors in 2007. Minnesota resigned him after he was released by Boston in July 2008 but he never made it back to big league ballclub. Kielty was released by the team in early September that same year, signing with the New York Mets next January where he has idled in their minor leagues. And, I presume, that’s where he is trying to resurrect his career by taking the pitcher’s mound.

Can his arm take the sudden stress and workload that he’s attempting? I imagine they’re (coaches & Kielty himself) taking every precaution necessary but it’s still an extreme longshot that he’d face major league hitting. Any thoughts from anyone else?

UPDATE – 2/8/10: MLBTradeRumors.com reports that they heard from Kielty himself via email. Kielty says his ultimate goal is to be a right-handed bat off the bench and eat up some relief innings if necessary. He threw some bullpens for the Mets last season and has thrown for Oakland as well. I could see a small market or mid-market team wanting to get a bargain in a player that could do double-duty and the Mets certainly don’t strike me as fitting the description of either of those. Then again former Twins player David McCarty did do double-duty for the big market Boston Red Sox in 2004 – though he only 3.2 innings of work on the year. Still, it is a precedent.

Addition of O-Dog means decision time for Twins roster cut

Now that the Twins have made the announcement concerning the addition of Orlando Hudson to the club they’ll also have to choose someone to release or possibly designate for assignment. I was just perusing the 40-man roster and the two most likely candidates I came up with were catcher Drew Butera & infielder Trevor Plouffe.

Neither of them has seen any major league playing time with the club yet and regarding each of them there are already players at the Triple A or Double A clubs blocking them from reaching here anytime soon. I don’t remember the source just now but I read recently (within the past week) that the Twins had concerns about the decline of Butera’s defensive skills. And with Jose Morales already a proven offensive stud and Wilson Ramos more than ready to play at the major league level, Butera is just extraneous.

Concerning Plouffe’s case, both Matt Tolbert & Alexi Casilla have seen considerable time playing for the Twins and with Danny Valencia & Luke Hughes ready to get playing time ‘in the bigs’ at some point this season Plouffe just seems superfluous. Casilla’s value is as a pinch runner and he can make reasonably decent bunt attempts – perhaps he can be even better this year.

Some of you reading this may be considering the possibility of a trade of either Nick Punto or Brendan Harris but that isn’t likely in my opinion. They’ll each be manning the hot corner for the most part with Punto additionally returning to the super utility role he does so well at – and we need him to do! And forget about Delmon Young being potential trade bait. As long as Bill Smith remains the GM he will continue to try to salvage something out of Young.

Any ideas about any others on the roster? Leave a comment if so…

O-Dog comes to town!

I just read a post on MLBTradeRumors.com that Orlando Hudson has agreed to a deal. The post was originated by Curtis Kitchen of WHB radio in Kansas City via his Twitter account. As of this moment I’m still searching the internet for an ‘official’ confirmation – as I suppose many others are doing right now as well.

It’s a terrific decision and a real ‘no-brainer’ for Minnesota as they have a serious run production problem at both second base and third base with Nick Punto & Brendan Harris penciled in as the 2010 starters. O-Dog is, of course, a vast improvement over Punto at second in the hitting department. And this move gives the team the opportunity to use Punto in the super utility role that he excels at as a player. Just the same, consider that the Twins were scheduled to pay Punto $4MM this year alone to be the starting second baseman and most would consider that cheap. However, for a few million a year more they add Hudson who is solid defensively at second and gives the team a bona fide bat in the two slot in the batting order. This is how I see the Twins batting for 2010 with the O-Dog signing:

1. Span (CF)

2. O-Dog (2B)

3. ‘Baby Jesus’ Joe (C)

4. Morneau (1B)

5. Kubel (DH)

6. Cuddyer (RF)

7. Hardy (SS)

8. Young (LF)

9. Harris (3B)

Some of you might prefer to bat Delmon Young in the 7 spot because of the obvious higher batting average and 20+ HR potential but I put Hardy in that spot because I’m certain he’ll be crushing more long balls than Young will be. This signing makes the team a serious contender for the World Series as well. Yes, I’m aware that there’s a lot of concern about the pitching rotation and the health of starters Francisco Liriano, Glen Perkins, Kevin Slowey; naturally there’s an equal amount of interest (coupled with a small measure of anxiety) surrounding the return of reliever Pat Neshek. The Twins do have some depth to the rotation and a few decent minor league options on the cusp to turn to should they need it. Stop gap measures have become a Twins pitching trademark over the past 3+ seasons and I don’t envision any serious troubles that can’t be solved.

Speaking of pitching there was another mention or two this week about the Twins interest in Jarrod Washburn. Please say it ain’t so! Washburn was asking for $5MM for a single season too! PLEASE! O-Dog is worth $5MM a season…let’s get it done Twins!

So I was wrong…

And I can – and will -  admit it. I. Was. Wrong. Really wrong.

It was brought to my attention yesterday that I had written a blog entry ( “Seriously…the Super Bowl?!?!?!”, 8/21/09 ) predicting a doom & gloom season for Brett Favre and the Vikings late last summer a few days after he was signed by Minnesota. Well, Favre went on to have a near career best year and the Vikings’ receivers matured and blossomed under Favre’s tenure into Pro-Bowl caliber players. And they came within a game of reaching the football ‘promised land’, a game I’m sure that most Viking fans are unwilling to relive or bear a mention of…so I digress.

Favre’s turn at quarterback for the Vikings helped transform a team that disappointed many last year into bona-fide contenders for the NFL title. He sparked a revival among his teammates who rose up to the challenge, and was singlehandedly responsible for unprecedented season tickets & single game ticket sales for home games in Minnesota. The Vikings became the early favorite for the NFC title with their dominance on both sides of the ball but drew even with New Orleans about halfway through the season and then they hit a few rough spots. The Sunday night nationally televised Chicago away game was probably the ‘lowlight’ of the season as the Bears completely ruled the first half of play, making the Vikings look like…well, the 2008 Vikings. Minnesota made an unbelievable comeback under Favre’s play calling in the second half, which unconfirmed reports had some saying he ‘blew off’ the offensive plays that head coach Brad Childress had called…who really knows? I never heard anything definitive on the subject though the controversy never did go away completely.

And now that the season is over for the team the ‘will he or won’t he retire’ Brett Favre stories are already clogging up the internet, newspapers, television media, etc. Despite the brilliant season Favre had I still believe the Packers made the right decision in releasing him and going with Aaron Rodgers as the starting quarterback. Rodgers had an excellent season himself – in spite of the fact he was literally running for his life during games because of the porous Green Bay offensive line. [Work on that in the off-season guys!] And I know many of you will disagree with what I say next but I stand firmly by what I say. It would be foolish of Minnesota to sign Favre once again. Honestly.

The Vikings have had a very bad tendency of bringing in veterans to be their starting quarterback over the years. There was a somewhat short era where Daunte Culpepper was the go-to-guy, and they actually drafted him themselves. As everyone knows he didn’t continue to have success in the years following the Randy Moss trade and he was jettisoned as well.

Just for fun consider that from 1972 – 1991 the Vikings starting quarterbacks were Fran Tarkenton, Tommy Kramer and Wade Wilson – with Steve Dils being the exception, starting nearly every game in 1983. Beginning in 1991 their starters were, in somewhat of a succession: Rich Gannon, Sean Salisbury (a CFL castoff), Jim McMahon, Warren Moon, Brad Johnson, Randall Cunningham, Jeff George, Culpepper, Todd Bouman, Spergon Wynn, Gus Frerotte, Tarvaris Jackson, Kelly Holcomb, Brooks Bollinger and last season Favre. The Vikings brought in retired old-timer Bubby Brister, a once upon a time starter in Pittsburgh & Miami, during one of those season to be a backup to Culpepper. They never started Brister so they avoided at least that embarrassment.

Some of those quarterbacks I named were the starters in seasons that weren’t consecutive, for instance Johnson’s reign was split by nearly a ten year gap, being the Vikings starter during ‘96 & ‘97 and returning to be the starter in 2006. The simple fact is that Minnesota keeps resorting to stop-gap measures at quarterback instead of drafting and grooming. To bring Favre back for one more year and assume you have another chance at a championship may seem like a no-brainer but it only puts off the inevitable.  Right now is the time for the team to take stock of the future and invest in a more likely candidate who will give them more than a one-year at a time potential shot at the title.

The strategy they have employed at choosing starting quarterbacks all these past years has produced three trips to the NFC conference championship games and zero trips to the Super Bowl. Do you know the last time the Vikings played in the Super Bowl? 1976. Tarkenton was the starter for the team that year. He celebrated his 70th birthday yesterday…it’s been a while Minnesota…it’s time to start to build a champion and stop trying to piece one together with discarded parts.