6/12: Terry Ryan on D. Santana's Progress, Park's Struggles, Arcia's Flub and More

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While Danny Santana appears to be making progress and closing in on a rehab stint, Miguel Sano appears to still be a ways out, according to Minnesota Twins GM Terry Ryan.

“He’s light swinging. Light jogging. Light, light, light,” said Ryan. “It’s gonna be a while before he can do a whole lot. He’s making steady progress.

“We haven’t solidified that second opinion on Perkins yet, but we should here this week. So he’ll go for that.”

Santana, on the other hand, appears to be heading to Triple-A for rehab soon.

“I think we’ll end up sending him out to Rochester in the next couple days, and get him some at-bats. We’ll play him around in the outfield down there,” said Ryan.

“He shouldn’t take too long to get enough at-bats. We’ll see how he does and get him back here when it looks like he’s up to par.”

Ryan would not say how long he’s going to be in Rochester.

“Let’s see what he does, how many at-bats it takes,” said Ryan. “I don’t have a given amount of games that he’ll participate in yet. I want to see … he’s gotta have some success.

“Let’s see if he can drive the ball and take quality at-bats and get somewhat in the strike zone — although that’s a difficult thing for me to tell you, because you know he’s a bit of a free-swinger.

“But there’s not an area that I’m gonna tell you he needs 12 at-bats or 22 at-bats or five at-bats. Let’s see how he does.”

There is a question as to whether Santana will remain in Triple-A or be called up to the majors right away once his rehab stint is done. Byron Buxton’s bat appears to be coming around, and Max Kepler has played well in the majors.

“This doesn’t have anything to do with Kepler, it has has everything to do with Santana,” said Ryan. “Go down and get your work in, and we’ll bring you back. Don’t worry about Kepler, and don’t worry about Buxton and don’t worry about Grossman or anybody else out there.”

Less Park Bang

Byung Ho Park is hitting .212/.298/.451 with eight strikeouts in his last three games, and he is not in the lineup for today’s game.

“When we brought him over, that was of concern because he had a history of doing that in Korea,” said Ryan. “So I don’t think anybody should be particularly surprised, he’s had trouble with that before.

“Now, he had a nice go there for a while, and people have figured him out. Now he’s gonna have to make the adjustment coming back.”

Park is striking out about 30 percent of the time, but Ryan says he’ll take the good with the bad as long as the Korean slugger hit home runs frequently.

“You live with it when you hit it over the fence,” he said, “but that’s not been quite as consistent as it was the first part of the year, so he’s gonna have to make some adjustments.”

Park has options, but Ryan is not planning on sending him down to Triple-A yet.

“Have I considered it?” he asked, rhetorically. “No.”

Teammates need to pick up Arcia

Arcia dropped a catchable fly ball in yesterday’s game, a mishap that manager Paul Molitor deemed an important play he has to make.

“That wasn’t a good play he made there,” said Ryan. “Everybody’s aware of that.”

Still, both manager and GM agree that the team needs to respond better to the situation and not let thing get out of control.

“He got to the ball, and he didn’t end up finishing the play. Now, the next part of it is we’ve had a few issues defensively. More than a few,” said Ryan.

“We have got to, as a pitching staff as well, pick up our defense on occasion. Now, we had three or four plays yesterdays that weren’t made. The ball Boshers threw into right field. Arcia’s obviously. We didn’t turn a double-play. We had all kinds of things that were happening in that game that weren’t good for us.”

Instead of placing the blame solely on Arcia, he said the other players on the team didn’t help by playing poorly afterwards.

“We also have got to pick ourselves up here. People, as teammates, pick each other up, we have not done that, either. And that’s why we’re at where we’re at,” he said.

“That game should’ve been 5-4 going into the 9th or so, certainly the 8th, and it wasn’t. That’s kinda what’s been pretty much the M.O. here. When things start to go, we don’t have much damage control. Some of it’s pitching. Some of it’s defense. And many times we cannot get a big hit either on the offensive side, so that’s where we’re at.

“Arcia just made a bad mistake there, everybody saw it. That wasn’t our only issue yesterday.”

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