It’s sunny and delightful here at Target Field as the Twins open up a weekend set against the Texas Rangers. The Rangers come in with an MLB-best 51 wins, and have cruised to 22 wins in their last 30 games. They’ll send left hander Martin Perez to the mound to counter Ervin Santana for the Twins, but more on that in a bit.
Manager Paul Molitor had the entire roster out for early work as pitchers went through PFPs (pitcher fielding practice) while outfielders shagged flies and infielders worked on plays with the pitcher covering first.
It may come as beautiful music to the ears of Twins fans, but it sounds like the Miguel Sano experiment in the outfield is done. “I primarily see him at third base and DH’ing,” Molitor said in his pregame availability from the home dugout. Molitor wouldn’t rule out that Sano could play outfield again in a pinch, but it sounds like that plan has been aborted for at least the time being.
Sano did take some grounders at first base during PFPs, working on flips to pitchers, but he did so without the use of a first base mitt. Joe Mauer, Trevor Plouffe and Max Kepler were also in on the action, with each donning the requisite glove however.
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The Twins activated Sano from the 15-day disabled list on Friday morning, and sent struggling slugger Byung Ho Park down to Rochester in a corresponding move. Sano hit just .160/.300/.440 at Rochester on his eight-game rehab stint which spanned 30 plate appearances, but if one figures the swing will get going in the near term — read: it should — it might as well be with the big club. It’s perhaps telling that in the eight games Sano played down there, his playing time was divided as such:
- 3B – five starts
- DH – two starts
- RF – one start
The writing seems to be on the wall that Sano will DH in the near term while the team figures out what exactly it’s going to do with Trevor Plouffe. Sending Park down was a no-brainer move, as his season line is down to .191/.275/.409 and he went just 9-for-66 in June (.136/.224/.303) while ceding a considerable amount of playing time to other players late in the month. In an ideal world, Park would go to Rochester and get his swing back while Plouffe does the same with the big club, which allows the team to move Plouffe at the deadline and insert Sano as the starter at third base for the final two months of the season.
Park to Rochester puts the Red Wings above the 25-man roster limit, so there’ll have to be a corresponding move that’ll be announced at a later time. Park has 72 hours to report to Triple-A.
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Here’s how the Twins line up today:
Santana takes the mound for the 15th time this season for the Twins. June was a particularly difficult month for Santana, who had a 5.46 ERA while allowing an opponents’ slash line of .306/.333/.496. In short, he turned every opposing hitter into this year’s version of Eduardo Nunez. Worse yet is that his strikeouts dipped badly in June, as he fanned just 14 batters in 29.2 innings. Essentially, other than the slider which stayed stable, all of Santana’s pitches dropped off the table in terms of swinging strike rates from May.
The four-seam fastball — not much of a swinging strike pitch in the first place — fell to a paltry 3.6 percent whiff rate, and the changeup when from 15.3 percent in May to just 4.2 percent in June — which is something Molitor hinted at during the last homestand. In an ideal world, Santana would have a strong July and be shipped off to a contender who can better use him. However, the Twins are paper thin in pitching depth after the Phil Hughes injury, and Santana is still owed at least $28 million on top of what he’s still owed this year. It doesn’t look likely.
Perez is a former top prospect — around the same time current Twins reliever Neil Ramirez was a big prospect for the Rangers — who has kicked around the big leagues with so-so results amidst some injury issues. He’s only once gone over the 100-inning mark in his MLB career — something he’ll do this evening if he can record at least 10 outs. The results look OK on Perez (3.44 ERA), but the peripherals do not match (4.4 K/9, 3.8 BB/9), and as a result his FIP is an ugly 4.74.
Perez throws plenty hard for a lefty — 92-93 mph average on two- and four-seamers which he uses about equally — and his preferred secondary is a changeup to go with the slider and curve, of which he’ll use each about 10 percent of the time. To combat the paucity of strikeouts, Perez induces grounders well above a league average rate (53.7 percent), but even so he’s been bit a little by the home run ball and his numbers overall seem to forecast a rocky second half. His changeup (15.3 percent) is the only pitch that has any semblance of swing-and-miss potential to this point this year. There’s a fair chance Perez views the Twins the same way they view him — a chance to put something good on the tape.
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Notes & Quotes
- The Twins are expecting roughly 24-25,000 fans as the holiday weekend gets underway.
- It’s small potatoes, but the Twins head into July making progress in wins per month. The Twins won seven games in April, eight in May and 10 in June. That’s still just a 25-53 record, however.
- The Twins also did their best offensive work in June, slashing .257/.318/.438 after going .239/.309/.378 in April and .239/.301/.389 in May.
- The pitching staff has now followed suit however, with month-by-month ERA marks of 3.97, 5.96 and 5.50.
- Since being traded to Tampa Bay one week ago, Oswaldo Arcia has hit .450/.455/.700 with the Rays with two doubles, one home run, a sliding catch and another play that wasn’t so good. In short, it seems like the Rays are getting the full Oswaldo experience. We at Cold Omaha wish him well with the Rays.
- Molitor on moving Sano up and Park down: “Good day, bad day. Miggy’s been out for almost a month I think. Thankfully his recovery was a little faster than we hoped originally. His at-bats were coming along down there. To get him back in the lineup certainly is a positive for us.”
- Molitor on Park of late: “It’s been rough. I think it’s been really, really tough on him mentally to deal with some of the frustration that came over the last three or four weeks. While he was understanding and certainly accepting (of the demotion), he’s going to have to go down there and lessen the burden a little bit and get back to the pleasures of playing the game. I don’t think it’s been a lot of fun….for all of us it’s been tough in that regard. It’s one of those things where you could see it building. This will be a good feeling for him to down there and play under a little less scrutiny and try to get that swing back.”
- Molitor on the message to Park when he was sent out: “We tried to make sure before he left here that he knows we think his style of hitting will play here. He’s got to clear some of that clutter, and simplify it a little bit. That was my message to him this morning.”
- Molitor on where all Sano will play: “If I get into a situation where I’ll have to put him in the outfield, I’d consider that. It’s not really my preference right now. We’ll see how it goes.”
