Terry Ryan provided a quick update on some injured players, and had a few more random remarks as reporters huddled around him in the Twins media dining room prior to Sunday’s game at Target Field.
Third baseman Trevor Plouffe played all nine innings for Fort Myers on Saturday, and came out of the game feeling fine. Apparently the plan was for Plouffe to play nine all along. “That was the initial plan,” Ryan said. “He’ll play nine today. He’s fine. Got one hit. He’s doing alright. He’ll play again today and we’ll see how he does.”
The update on Ervin Santana basically confirmed what the original plan was from before the weekend: “He threw a bullpen today and did well. We’re taking Santana (on the road trip) and (Kyle) Gibson is staying back. Although Gibson is doing well, he’s a little beyond being ready to go on the trip. Santana’s set up to throw a bullpen in Houston. He’s getting fairly close.”
Ryan also said that there’s no new update on Glen Perkins. “That one’s slow,” Ryan said of the recovery process for Perkins from his shoulder injury.
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Other quotes
On reducing the schedule from 162 games to 154 (Ryan is on the MLB rules committee): “We’ve talked about that through the years. It’s always a subject; whether or not it’s going to come up, that’s a little above me to start telling you we’re going to erase games from a schedule. That’s more of an ownership situation, and obviously a revenue situation. We’ve talked about a lot of things in that area, whether it’s 154, 158 or 162. That subject certainly has come up through the years.
“But it affects a lot of things. Obviously it affects revenue, but it’s a legitimate subject and it’s way above a lot of us. It’s up in the ownership area. I’d have to hear the ramifications, and how many playoff games you’re going to have if you do that. Stuff like that. It’s brought up through the years a little bit here or there. But it’s not just “why don’t we do this, it makes sense” because it might make sense to one person, but for other people it does not. It’d affect the playoffs for sure. You’d probably change the playoffs and stuff like that.”
On if he could imagine this would be the lowest-scoring Twins team in April on his watch, other than strike shortened 1995: “No, I couldn’t. We’re striking out too much. We’ve had a couple guys get off to good starts, but every time we get something going we don’t string together very many rallies. I think that’s apparent.
“Every time it looks like we might get something going, it comes to a halt. We’ve got to put better at-bats together, and we’ve certainly got to take advantage of situations. We have not done that. Consequently, I don’t know how many runs we’ve scored but I’d bet it’s about three per game. That’s not enough to win many baseball games. We’re playing from behind way too much.
“That’s another issue where….the air comes right out of us yesterday with the three runs in the first, and it happened the day before. That’s not a good way to play. It’s no excuse, but we’re playing uphill in about every game we’ve played, seems like.”
On if he’s expecting to see a cooler, calmer Jose Berrios in starts two, three and beyond: “He’s 21 years old. It was raining and misting and all that stuff weather-wise. All that stuff aside, he was amped up. He didn’t throw enough quality strikes. His command was off. It’s safe to assume you’d think he’s probably going to settle in a little bit better than we saw the other day.
“We gave him a three-run lead, but he didn’t do enough with it to close that thing out to get a win — not only for himself but this ball club when we desperately need one. So I would hope yes that his second and third and right down the line is going to be better than his first. That’s a safe assumption. I’m not sure I’ve got it down to a statistic or anything, but it just makes sense.”
