News y Notes

Rodney Williams and Royce White: Yes, I'm lumping them together. It's their fault for being so similar and for playing on the same AAU team. Anyway, the Howard Pulley team travelled to Kansas this weekend for a tournament, and here's a couple of reviews from two different Scout writers on both of them from Friday night's game:

Rodney Williams, SG, Howard Pulley – Indiana Elite quickly found out what Williams does best -- dunk the ball. The 6-foot-4 wing attacked the basket and threw down dunk after dunk. To go with his incredible hops, Williams showed improvement on his jumper by knocking down a handful of three pointers. He went for 27 points in a close win over Indy Elite.

Rodney Williams - Those who have seen him play before have thrown out the theory that the springy 6-6 wing from the Minneapolis area is the top run and jump athlete in the class of 2009, those who saw him in action Friday night won’t disagree. After signing a few pre-game autographs, the slender wing came out and hit a deep three before beginning his assault on the rims. He dunked off the drive, he dunked in peoples faces and he dunked in transition. When he wasn’t dunking, he sported a much improved handle and more aggressive attitude which is a great sign.

Royce White, PF, Howard Pulley – His AAU coach said it wasn’t his best game, however we were still impressed with what White was able to get done against Indy Elite’s big men. The 6-foot-7 forward faced up defenders, knocked down threes and attacked the basket. He was aggressive the entire contest and put up 19 points.

Royce White - Fresh off of his commitment to Minnesota, White was scoring in bunches Friday night. Armed with a good jumper that he’s very capable of hitting off the bounce, he’s a 6-7 combo forward who frustrates bigger guys with his ability to score off the dribble while taking smaller guys inside to dunk on them. Brimming with confidence, he’s playing terrific ball right now and teamed with Rodney Williams to carry Howard Pulley past a tough Indiana Elite One squad.

Damn, these two are sounding better and better. Hopefully Royce can use his influence to get Rodney to sign on with the U as well. Oh, wait. I forgot Rodney had some academic issues last year. We don't want kids like that at our school. Guess we should forget it. I hear there's some white kid with a 4.0 who averages 8 points per game available though. Hopefully we can beat out Northwestern for him.

Verdell Jones: More on the recruiting front, Verdell Jones cancelled a scheduled visit to the U of Arizona this weekend, despite receiving a scholarship offer from them following the departure of Jerryd Bayless. Standing in the way is incoming freshman Brandon Jennings, the number one PG recruit in the country, and if his play in the McDonald's game was any indication, a hell of a player. Jones is expected to announce his decision Monday, and according to Scout, Minnesota is "the prohibitive favorite." Sounds good. Bring him aboard.

Delmon Young: As if in response to my post yesterday about how much he sucks, Delmon went ahead and 2-5 to show me how good he is. Not so fast. His hits were a seeing eye groundball between third and short and another ground ball back up the middle that the Detroit pitcher couldn't handle. Yes, two more groundballs. His outs? Two more groundouts and a strikeout. Four balls put into play, four balls on the ground. Pay attention to this next time you watch a Twins game. It's crazy. Speaking of the Twins, we were linked by AaronGleeman.com, the best Twins blog on the interweb. If you haven't checked it out, do so now.

Francisco Liriano: Liriano made his first start down in Rochester on Wednesday, and it's not good. Not good at all. He only went 4 and 1/3, giving up four earned runs to go along with five hits and a red-light flashing five walks. According to the radio, he threw 94 total pitches, just 51 for strikes. He's basically lost not only a lot of his velocity and pitch movement, but now his command of the strike zone. I'm afraid his confidence is shot and at this point he's afraid to throw strikes, thanks in large part to him being rushed back to the majors way to early. In this article at mlb.com they have some quotes from Liriano which make it clear that he is happy to be back in AAA, and I'm not sure how I feel about that. Even worse was this quote from Francisco, "I don't know what I'm doing." Yikes. I'm still holding out hope he can make it back to at least be a serviceable starter. To say I'm concerned right now would be putting it mildly.

Johan Santana: Wondering how Johan is faring over in the NL. I'll admit, I haven't been paying as much attention as I thought I would, even though he is on the Sidler and I's fantasy team. He's just 3-2, which, to the crowd that evaluates pitchers based on wins and losses isn't that great, but some of his other stats are looking very strong, including a 3.12 ERA and a 0.92 WHIP. He's still struggling with the long ball, sitting at 1.56 HR/9 this season, the worst of his career. He's been able to have such a low WHIP due to a really low BB/9 of 1.79 - which would be the second lowest of his career - and a low OAVG of .203. I'm guessing he'll fade a bit based on the lowest K-rate of his career (8.7 per 9) and an absurdly low .227 BABIP (batting average balls in play) which will likely go up. Although he's getting 47% of the balls hit against him on the ground, versus a career total of 38%, so maybe he's just turned over a new leaf. In any case, he's awesome and I miss him so much it hurts sometimes.

Kyle Lohse: Speaking of former Twins who are dominating the NL, how about this guy with the Cardinals? In six starts he's 3-0 with a 2.36 ERA and a 1.16 WHIP. Other than his low strikeout rate, everything else looks good. Can he keep it up? I doubt it, but just looking at the stats, it's scarily possible.

Dylan Hale: Lastly, I wanted to mention this guy. A commentor mentioned him in a couple of different posts, and I hadn't heard of him, so I figured I'd look him up. He plays for St Paul Central, and Rivals doesn't even have him in their database while Scout has him as a 1-star SG, with no other info. They don't even have his height and weight listed. Looking at Maxpreps, he is 6-2, and averged 17 points, 4.5 rebounds, 3 assists, and 2 steals per game last season as a junior, which included a 39 point outburst against Arlington, whatever that is. On the season he shot 60% from the floor, including 57% from three. Since he's not really on the recruiting radar right now, there isn't a whole lot of info on him, but what I can find makes it clear he's a big-time shooter with great range. I have no idea if he's D-I material or not, but I'll be watching for his name.

More bad Delmon

As has been discussed previously, Delmon Young has been a major disappointment this year so far, showing absolutely no power and pretty much becoming an outfield version of Nick Punto - with less walks. Now, with over 100 at bats in the books this year, we can take a harder look. One hundred ABs is still a pretty small sample size, but it's enough to be valid, especially when it is continuing a trend.

The trend is his complete lack of power, gap or over the wall. With 102 abs, he's had all of four extra base hits, and is slugging .314, just north of Nick Punto. Simply put, a .314 slugging pct. is amazingly low. Only two regular players last season managed to put up a lower slugging pct in over 500 plate appearances, Nick Punto and Jason Kendall. In the past ten years, only 32 players have managed to do it, with names like Mike Bordick, Otis Nixon, Cesar Izturis, and Mickey Morandini. Historically low, and the territory of middle infield defensive wizards and slap hitters.

Again, it's only 100 at bats this season, but as has been pointed out before, it's continuing a trend which begain in his minor league days. Since his first season in class A ball, he's slugged .538, .527, .474, .476, .408, and now .314. Sure, he's young, and there is plenty of opportunity for him to turn it around, but this is looking like more than just a fluke due to some interesting findings.

First off, his groundball vs. fly ball percentage is way, way up. It should be obvious that hitting groundballs makes it harder to get on base, and Delmon is a case in point.



In his first two seasons, 46% of his balls put into play were on the ground. I can't find an league average statistic, but from some reading it looks like the average is somewhere around 50% of balls are hit on the ground. This season so far, he's up to a 59%, too much for a power hitter (Morneau is at 46%). This wouldn't be nearly as bad if he was increasing his line drive % as well, but he's dropped there from 26% to 21% to 17% in his three seasons.

Adding to his degree of difficulty is his horrendous pitch selection. Check out his swinging strikes:



Compared to, say, Joe Mauer:



Ignore the total amount of swinging strikes for a moment, and just concentrate on the ones out of the strike zone. Mauer has 24. Young has 73. Seventy three swinging strikes outside of the strike zone. Forty three of which are low. And if you do happen to swing at a ball below your knees and hit it fair, guess where it's probably going?

As a matter of fact, Young swings at 36% of all pitches that are out of the strike zone. 36%. 36. Sadly, that's a major improvement from his rookie year, when he swung at over 50% of pitches out of the zone. Carlos Gomez is even worse at 40%. For comparison sake, Mauer swings at 17% of pitches out of the zone. Jack Cust at just 14%. Notorious hackers Torii Hunter and Vlad Guerrero swing at 33% and 45%.

None of these problems is particularly worrisome on it's own. As mentioned, Vlad Guerrero is a well-known free swinger, with a similar strike zone profile to Delmon. Joe Mauer actually has almost identical groundball/flyball/line drive splits. And the drop in slugging happens to a lot of players adjusting to the major leagues. You can succeed with any of these issues, the problem here is the combination of all three.

Look, I was in favor of the trade, and I'm still hoping Delmon succeeds. The fact of the matter is, he's not doing what he needs to do. Obviously, he's only 22 and has plenty of time to straighten out, but there are some real warning signs flashing. In 2005 at the age of 22, Jose Reyes walked 27 times in 724 plate appearances and was considered an ok shortstop with a bright future. The next season, he walked 53 times in 700 PAs and made the leap to superstar. Let's hope Young takes a page out of that book, and not out of the Jacque Jones book, which is right where he's heading - but with less power.

Stats courtesy of Hardballtimes, Fangraphs, and the awesomely nerdy blog "from smallball to the long ball."

Verdell in Action

In honor of the alleged forthcoming Verdell Jones III signing with the Gophers, I present a video I found on this awesome new website called "Youtube." It is a matchup of former Arizona PG Jerryd Bayless vs. futuer Minnesota PG Verdell Jones. It's a year and a half old, but it still shows some things.

The main thing you can see from the video is just how awesome Jerryd Bayless was. The whole video is pretty much Bayless up until the 1 minute mark, then Verdell starts to get involved.

At the 1:29 mark you see Bayless go right by Verdell, in one of the only times in the video they go head to head. I have no idea if Verdell just didn't make the effort to try to stop Bayless, but if he did, there have to be some serious concerns about his defensive ability.

Right after that the video goes into a nice little back-and-forth between the two of them. Verdell shows a very nice mid-range game, which is a nice surprise considering one of the main knocks on his game is his perimeter shooting. Jones finished the game with 28 points and 8 assists in leading his team to victory. If you watch from 1:28 until 2:56, you'll see everything you need. The video really showcases his ability to score, and considering his strengths are said to be his ballhandling and passing ability, this really makes him look like a complete player.

I'm even more excited than I was already.

Verdell Jones a Gopher?

According to gopherhole.com (which sited KFAN and gopher illustrated) Verdell Jones will be committing to the U of M on Monday. If this is true then Tubby, then Tubby solidified the back court. The gophers will now have 2 true point guards which has probably never happened in the history of the program.

I'm not sure what exactly Tubby brings to the table that past gopher coaches lacked but this guy can recruit his tail off. Other top teams that were in the Verdell hunt include: Indiana, Kentucky, Oklahoma, Arizona, Virginia, Souther Ill, Illinois and Tennessee. Plus he is doing all of this recruiting with his butt ugly kid Saul. Could you imagine if that ugly SOB walked into your living room and tried to persuade you to come to his school. Congrats again Tubby. You are the man.

He was regarded as the top ranked undecided point guard in the class of 2008.

What's the deal with Nick Blackburn?

Warning - if you don't like stats, please skip everything after the first two sentences and laugh at the mullet-ed kid some more.  Personally, I can't wait to see what color he chooses for his Camaro IROC-Z with t-tops.

WWWWWW asked me to take a look at Nick Blackburn and figure out if he's any good, probably since he literally bet his house on the line based on his performance.  Before getting into the details, the numbers suggest that yes, Nick Blackburn will be a good pitcher as long as you have realistic expectations for a middle-to-back of the rotation starter.  In fact, his minor league and 2008 stats show a very similar composition to the OTHER Venezuelan starter who left the organization this offseason--Carlos Silva.

Early season stats (particularly ERA) are often worthless since the sample size is so small--Zach Greinke and Kyle Lohse are the early runners for the AL and NL Cy Young awards, respectively.

With that in mind, Blackburn's ERA stands at a very solid 3.52 after six starts, not too shabby.  There are a few keys to his early success--he's keeping the ball on the ground and not walking many batters.  The GB/FB ratio is in line with his minor league performance (and better than Silva, who is actually not much of a GB pitcher despite Bert's hype), so no red flag there.  His walk rate could be a concern, although it is a continuing trend from his 2007 season where he took a step forward.

Strangely enough, Blackburn has been both lucky and unlucky during his start.

The Twins have been a mediocre defensive team (more on that in a future post), but there's no way hitters continue to hit .388 against him when they put a ball in play.  Expect that to regress closer to the .300 range as the season progresses.

How has he been unlucky?  Double plays and HRs.  As a groundball pitcher, Blackburn is going to stand out from Bonser, Baker, and Slowey with his ability to keep the ball in the park.  On average, 11% of all fly balls are HRs for all pitchers, but Blackburn's sitting at about 4% right now.  That's going to regress to the mean.  And I don't have any stats to back it up, but it seems like Blackburn's induced more double plays that I'd expect to continue.  Again, he'll induce more than average since he keeps the ball on the ground, but the inherent randomness of baseball will leave him out to dry every once in a while.

A couple additional stats to throw onto the pile are FIP (fielding independent pitching) and xFIP (which takes FIP and normalizes the HR rate).   These are designed to have similar values to ERA (sub-4.50 is a average or better score) are particularly useful, especially this time of year, to remove as much luck as possible from the pitching equation.  For instance, Scott Baker put up solid FIP numbers even when he was "struggling" with a high ERA, and the Twins pitching staff as a whole had better FIP #s than ERAs when Tony Batista and Juan Castro manned the left side of the infield (they sucked).

Using these metrics, Blackburn still looks good.  In fact, he has a GREAT FIP (2.70) and a solid xFIP (4.03, he's hit for some extra runs due to his lucky HR rate).

To go all high school paper here...

In conclusion, Nick Blackburn appears to be a solid pitcher that will contribute as a mid-rotation starter for the next few years with the Twins if he can stay healthy.  But as a guy who allows a lot of balls in play, his ERA is probably going to fluctuate between 4.00 and 5.50, much like Silva.

Fortunately for WWWWWW, I don't think the Twins offense is good enough to allow a guy like Blackburn to get 15 wins this season.

Sioux Fans Should Not Be Allowed To Breed!

And Sioux fans wonder why fans from other teams make tractor pull and hill billy jokes. Honestly, you people make it to easy.

Here is a quick write up on the big winner from yesterdays Star Tribune.
"Three-year-old Brady Arneson is keeping a tradition alive with his first-place finish in the 2008 Minnesota Mullet Contest. His older brother won the award in 2005."

These parents need their kids taken away from them and their asses kicked. These kids already have no chance. Who would have ever guessed these parents cheer for UND... F'ing losers! If the kid wasn't three I would recommend kicking his ass also. Once Brady turns five he is a dead man. I bet that kid even wears that jersey to Friday night games.

Go Sioux!

Pat Reusse is a Big Fat Idiot

As much as I hate to step on my Twins' draft posting since I really enjoyed writing it, I can't let Patrick Reusse's recent article slide, especially considering the conversations that have already taken place in the comments section similar to Reusse's piece.

It is entitled "Recruiting outweighs academics once again" and, as you could probably guess, bashes Tubby Smith and the U of M for recruiting and signing Royce White. PJS already hit this, but I could not just sit idly by without tossing in my two cents in a couple places.

"Academic mistake. Breaking rules. Gosh, what in the name of (the late) Jan Gangelhoff could that mean?"

Really? These two things aren't even related. The Gangelhoff thing was obviously a black mark on the school, but it was a different time, different coach, and different culture. It's like being afraid to go to Europe because of the plague, or being scared to travel west because of those damn uppity injuns. Old news. Let it go. Tubby is the coach now, with a squeeky clean reputation. Remember, Kentucky wasn't all that far removed from it's own recruiting-based collapse when he coached there. Sure, yes, Pitino was the one who started the return to glory, but the point is valid.

"We are nine years removed from Minnesota becoming the basketball program by which all others compare themselves when it comes to academic fraud."

Yep, nine years ago. Clearly, in Reusse's mind, this means we should only be recruiting A students. Why not become another Northwestern? Hell, why not just pack the athletic department in completely? Don't want to risk it by taking a chance on someone who made a mistake or two, so why not just eliminate revenue sports altogether? Plus, this way the Big Ten has just ten teams again, and everybody's happy. Nine years ago Michael Jordan was retiring for the second time. Nine years ago the Broncos won the Super Bowl the Vikings should have been in. Nine years ago Hugo Chavez was elected president of Venezuela. Nine years ago Napster debuted. Nine years ago was Eric Milton's no-hitter. It is a long time.

"There's no evidence that White's verbal commitment was greeted with hesitation by coach Tubby Smith, or his boss, athletic director Joel Maturi, or Maturi's bosses.

They can't comment on the qualities of recruits before they sign, but certainly it was in Smith's power to tell White, "Let's cool it here until next fall -- make sure you have your act together academically and elsewhere before you make an announcement."

And if Smith wasn't willing to take that stand on White, then Maturi should have ordered his coach to deliver this message: Tell the young man the offer is off the table until he proves himself somewhere other than the basketball court."

Ignoring the idiocy of the whole "He should have to be a top shelf student to come to the U" mentality, how do you know they didn't do something like this? PJS touched on this exact point, but it's really, really horrible journalism. He states there is no evidence they didn't hesitate to take his commitment, and then mentions they can't discuss recruits. All true. But the tone assumes there was no second thoughts, no discussions, no worries put into this. Just as Reusse asserts there is no evidence this happened, there is also no evidence it didn't. We can't know, because they can't comment on incoming recruits. Reusse, however, takes the stance that supports his shoddy article and treats it as fact. I'm actually a Reusse fan, but this is absolutely horrible journalism, and clearly looks agenda driven. I won't presume to know what that agenda would be, but it sure looks like it's there. Expect another, similar article if Rodney Williams signs on.

On White's decision to enroll at Hopkins:

"White could have gone on the rebound to ... how about Minneapolis South? Magnet school. Strong academics and mediocre basketball. If White enrolled there, we could say: "Hey, it's true. Royce wants the classroom and the court to be of equal importance in his senior year."

But Hopkins? He's there to play basketball -- win a state championship"

Well no shit he considers basketball more important than academics. I'd be willing to wager that a very high percentage of high school athletes put their sports ahead of the classroom, and they don't even have the goal of playing for a living someday. If White is guilty of this one, and I'm assuming that he is, he's guilty of no more than being a kid. Ridiculous.

"If White's one season there preps him as well for the Gophers as did the Hopkins experience for Kris Humphries and Dan Coleman, Tubby has a chance -- come the fall of 2009 -- to find himself with a combination of a ball hog featuring inconsistent effort."

Just another example of how poor this article is. I seriously wonder if he wrote this in about five minutes and no editor even glanced at it. Yes, Humphries and Coleman went to Hopkins. And? Humphries clearly had an agenda from the beginning, and Monson lacked the strong coaching to reign him in. Coleman had some serious talent as an incoming freshman, but lacked the heart and desire and didn't get the coaching needed to get the most out of his game. I'd say the two results are more the result of Dan Monson than Hopkins high, but then again, I'm not a professional journalist.

"There is a recent precedent for the White situation when it comes to Gophers basketball. Minneapolis Henry's Brandon Smith already had signed with the Gophers when he was thrown off the team by coach Larry McKenzie in December 2004.

Dan Monson stuck with Smith and he enrolled as a freshman in the fall of 2005. He was academically ineligible for the second semester. He was suspended by Jim Molinari, Monson's interim replacement, as a sophomore. And then Tubby threw Brandon off the team, once and for all, last fall."

One final example of Reusse making spurious links between events, and another one I just can't let go. I fail to see what this has to do with Royce White, in any capacity. Dan Monson recruited him, Tubby Smith tossed him. Thus, Tubby will kick players off for the team due to their academic failures. This is good. Furthermore, Monson took a chance on a kid with poor academics, it didn't work out and he got booted, and yet the program still stands. It was not a huge scandal. There were no sanctions. This is something that happens at many schools, and, while unfortunate, is not a black eye. There is no need to make it one based on an isolated event under a different regime nine years ago.

I generally like Reusse's articles, but this was one of the most poorly written pieces of crap I've read in a long time. His point was academics need to be more important when recruiting, and he them rambled on without making a single supporting argument to back up his opinion. Sadly, I have no doubt a healthy contingent of fans will read this and find themselves agreeing, without seeing how empty it really is. Hopefully, those idiots will stay away from the Barn, and let real fans enjoy a vastly improved product.

I have no problem with fans believing academics should be very important in recruiting. I don't agree with it, but I respect it. I can't respect this kind of article.

Twins Draft History

Although the Major League Baseball Amateur Draft is still a couple months away, since my season on Out of the Park Baseball has gotten to that point (and I can't recommend this game strongly enough, plus it's only $19.99 to download) I've been in the draft mindset. Why not take a look at the Twins' draft history? We kind of know it a bit, but nobody pays all that much attention to the MLB draft. I'll take a look at the Twins' first pick and how it is working out, players they missed, and the rest of their picks overall. I won't focus on players missed by looking through the whole thing, there's like 50 rounds. We've heard about Piazza going in round 62, Mark Buehrle in round 38, and Roy Oswalt in round 23, but that would take all day to look it. Instead I'll focus on the picks right around the Twins, and see who was missed.

2007: Twins take Ben Revere, High School CF, 28th overall (pictured). Although he was considered a cost-saving pick by many, Revere looked good in Rookie ball last season, as mentioned below and is the Twins' third best prospect according to Baseball Prospectus. The big miss here wasn't passing on any name in particular that stands out, but that Rick Porcello, considered by many to be the best high school right hander to enter the draft in years, was nabbed by Detroit one pick before the Twins'. He was good enough to make his debut in High A ball this season, his first as a pro after a year at prep school, and has posted a 0.93 WHIP and 2.18 ERA in five starts. I haven't heard of any of the Twins' other picks from 2007, but a couple who show promise are CF Andrew Schmiesing (.321 BA/.421 OBP in Rookie ball last year) and SP Daniel Berlind (1.93 ERA and 1.02 WHIP in 56 innings).

2006: Twins take Chris Parmelee, High School RF, 20th overall. After playing well in rookie ball is first year, Parmelee has struggled a bit in A ball over parts of the past three seasons. Last year was his first full year in A, and he hit just .239 and has followed that up with a .227 so far this season. There are encouraging signs, however. He gets on base (OBPs of .313 and .366) and can slug (.414 and .561). Despite the low average, the OPS is there, .927 this year, so he should come around. Glaring mistakes in this draft include passing on both Ian Kennedy and Joba Chamberlain. I'm assuming since those two were both college pitchers, this was once again a cost saving draft pick. If that's the case, then the better pick would have been SS Adrian Cardenas, another high school player who is ranked the 3rd best prospect in the Phillies system, whereas Parmelee isn't in the top 11 for the Twins. The Twins were able to grab excellent pitching prospects Tyler Robertson in the third, and Jeff Manship in the 14th.

2005: Twins take Matt Garza, pitcher from Fresno State, 25th overall. We all know about Garza, since he made the bigs, basically rocketing through the minors. That success hasn't quite translated to the majors as of yet, and he's now laid up with an injury for the Rays. Garza's evaluation will be forever tied to Delmon Young because of the trade, so let's just say for now it looks like Garza can't hit. It's hard to say if they made any mistakes here with the pick, because Garza still has the ability to end up being the best pitcher out of this draft. One name that glaringly stands out as a guy the Twins passed on is pitcher Clay Buchholz in the Red Sox system, taken by them at #42. You know, the guy who already has a no-hitter in the majors. The rest of the Twins' draft looks promising, with P Kevin Slowey in the second and P Brian Duensing in the third looking like top prospect types, and SS Andrew Thompson in the second, 1B Erik Lis in the ninth, and P Brian Kirwan in the 11th looking like decent picks.

2004: The Twins had five first round picks this year, taking SS Trevor Plouffe at 20, P Glen Perkins at 22, P Steve Waldrop at 25, P Matthew Fox at 35, and P Jay Rainville at 39. Plouffe I covered below, so I'll skip him. Perkins has been up and down in the bigs, so you probably know who he is. None of Waldrop, Fox, or Rainville makes the Twins top 10 list, Rainville was solid in A ball the past two years, but has been getting ripped around after being promoted to AA for this season. Fox has been an ok middle reliever in rookie and A ball so far in his career, and Waldrop has been ok as a starter, moving up the system at a decent pace to land in AA ball and the end of last year. Overall, for five first round picks, this is a pretty disappointing group, especially when some of the guys they passed on include the Yankees' Phil Hughes, Oakland's Huston Street, the Brewers' Yovani Gallardo, and Boston's Dustin Pedroia. The Twins did pick up some good later picks, with P Anthony Swarzak in the 2nd, P Eduardo Morlan (since traded) in the third, and C Javier Sanchez in the 14th, but overall this draft was a failure, at least at this point.

2003: Twins take high school third baseman Matt Moses at #21 overall. Moses is beginning his sixth season in the minor leagues this year, and even worse is starting in double-A after getting a shot at Triple-A late last season. He doesn't walk much and doesn't hit for much power, and has posted a .258/.311/.388 in his minor league career. I'm pretty much calling him a bust at this point. Unfortunately, Moses was taken over guys like Chad Billingsley, Eric Duncan, Jarrod Saltamacchia, and Adam Jones. Oof. This was overall a nightmare of a draft, as none of the guys taken have spent so much as a minute on the Twins' major league roster, and it looks like none of them ever will.

2002: Twins take high school outfielder Denard Span at number 20 in the first round. We finally got to see Span this year, and he looks like he might end up being a good pinch runner. He's an ok hitter, with a decent OBP, but doesn't have and will never had much power. Unlike, say, Jeff Francouer who was taken by the Braves four picks later and has already put up major league seasons with 29 and 19 homeruns or Cincy's Joey Votto, who hit all through the minors and is putting up a very nice rookie year so far, taken 24 picks later. If you're curious about pitching passed up, Joe Blanton and Matt Cain were taken within five picks of Span. The rest of this drafted netted Jesse Crain and Pat Neshek, as well as a possible contributor down the line in the 49th round of Brock Peterson at third base. Peterson is still just in AA, but has posted an OPS of .800+ at pretty much every stop.

That leads us to 2001, which was the Joe Mauer draft and ends this post on a positive note, which I need because the rest of this draft review is making me a little sick.

Didn't see this coming...

Livan Hernandez - 5.05 ERA, 1.46 WHIP,  after Sunday's start against Texas

On the bright side, Mike Lamb's now hitting over .200

Some Other Prospects

There are a lot of Twins' prospects you hear about, and quite a few who you really don't. Since we pretty much know Carlos Gomez is a poor man's Vince Coleman, Delmon Young is really Jacque Jones, Boof Bonser's only chance is as an innings eater type, Kevin Slowey gives up too many homeruns, Scott Baker is boring, and Nick Blackburn is the new Jesus, I'm going to attempt to take a look at some guys who haven't hit the bigs yet.


1. P Deolis Guerra. You probably recognize Guerra's name, as he was the other key piece to the Santana deal. Guerra is currenly ranked the #1 prospect in the Twins system, and is putting up the numbers to back it up at Fort Myers. In 19 innings over 4 starts, Guerra has given up 14 hits and 9 walks for a WHIP of 1.21 and only three runs, leaving his ERA at 1.42. He's struck out 15 (good) and given up two homeruns (ok). He's also impressed scouts, despite a fastball that is currently hitting only about 88 on the gun. He has a plus curveball and a plus-plus changeup, which is already considered an average changeup for a big league pitcher. Considering Guerra is just 19 years old, if he picks up some speed on the fastball he could be a star. Even as is, he has the tools to be a big league pitcher, if just a 4/5 type - which the Twins are loaded with.

2. OF Ben Revere. The Twins' 2007 first round pick ran through the Gulf Coast League last year, to the tune of 21 steals in 30 tries in just fifty games. He was already known for his speed, but showed a excellent ability to drive the ball (.461 slugging including 10 triples in just 191 ABs), plate patience (13 BB/20 K, OBP of .388), and hit for average (.325). All these stats point to an excellent player, and hopefully in about 2-3 years he'll be playing CF and leading off for the Twins.

3. P Anthony Swarzak. With all the hype surrounding Garza, Baker, Slowey, and Bonser you never heard much about Swarzak, but he's turned into a top prospect while putting up excellent numbers each year. Swarzak followed up last year's 1.18 WHIP between A and AA with a hot start at AA New Britain, posting a WHIP of 1.00 and an ERA of 1.35 in four starts covering 20 innings. He doesn't give up many HRs (0 this year), he strikes out a good amount (24 in 20ip) and doesn't walk many guys (4 this year). Keep your eye on Swarzak, either this year or next he should be making his big debut.

4. P Tyler Robertson. A big (6-5) lefty down at Class A Fort Myers, Robertson is a guy jumped up Twins' prospect lists last season. After an uninspiring initial season in Rookie Ball, Robertson pitched very well at Class A Beloit last year. At just 19 years old, he pitched 102 innings, giving up just 87 hits, 3 homeruns, and 33 walks compared to 123 strikeouts on his way to a 1.17 WHIP and a 2.29 ERA. He's been a bit shakier so far this season at High A Fort Myers, posting a 1.60 WHIP through four starts and 19 innnings, but he still hasn't given up a homerun this year and posts an excellent K/9 of 9.94. Big lefties are always good to have around, so rest assured Robertson will get his chance.

5. SS Trevor Plouffe. Plouffe is a guy I'm very interested in, seeing as he's a shortstop and the position has pretty much been a black hole for the Twins for years and years, other than a handful of average seasons from Jason Bartlett, Greg Gagne, and Pat Meares and one hellaciously awesome season from Cristian Guzman. Of course, other than being a SS, Plouffe is fairl unremarkable. However he is an excellent fielder, with good range either way and a great arm. His hitting is suspect at best, as he's never hit better than .283 in a full minor league season, although he's up to .284 this season so far in AA. He shows decent plate patience and has fairly good speed. If he can develop a better bat, he could be a nice player. Ranked as the #11 prospect in the system, he has potential.

Other names you may not know: P Jeff Manship, P Jeff Duensing, OF Joe Benson

Oh, and if you're wondering about the other two 'tards from the Santana trade, they're both at AAA Rochester, where Kevin Mulvey has been lights out (1.16 ERA/1.16 WHIP) and Phil Humber has gotten absolutel lit up (5.09/1.70).