There was Miguel Sano, leaning against his locker three hours before Monday afternoon’s game against the Cleveland Indians, not knowing who would be on his team when he took the field that night.
The Minnesota Twins had returned to Target Field without Eduardo Escobar and Ryan Pressly, who had been dealt to the Arizona Diamondbacks and Houston Astros, respectively. Zach Duke would find out that he had been traded to the Seattle Mariners around 4:30 p.m. while he was playing catch, and Lance Lynn was dealt an hour before the game to the New York Yankees.
“I don’t want to talk about that, all the trading stuff,” said Sano, “because I’m not a GM, I’m a player.”
He may not be in the front office, but whether or not he reaches his potential as one of the Twins best prospects in a generation will determine the direction Derek Falvey and Thad Levine take the team going forward.
If he and Byron Buxton, who is trying to find his swing in Triple-A, falter, this won’t be the last time the Twins are sellers. They are the center fielder and cleanup hitter of the future, and if they do not pan out, Minnesota’s unfortunate routine of being deadline sellers in all but one season at Target Field will continue.
While Sano is ultimately responsible for his career trajectory, his performance in a Twins uniform going forward will be used to evaluate Falvey and Levine’s ability to develop players — a crucial tool for any team, especially one in a mid-sized market like Minnesota. Instead of just sending Sano to Triple-A to build his confidence back up, they chose to demote him to High-A Fort Myers, where they have facilities to assist him with conditioning and his approach at the plate.
It was a bold move. One intended to turn him into the player he was last year, when he hit 28 home runs and was named to his first All-Star Game.
“I talked with the guys about how it went, they said he obviously looks better,” said manager Paul Molitor. “He hasn’t had the results yet. I try to imagine everything being in his head with everything that’s gone on his career to this point. To be asked to go through what he went through over the past six or seven weeks, and now you get back up here, you’re going to have to catch your breath a little bit and try…not to do too much.”
Publicly, Sano has been supportive of the demotion the whole time. It did not cost him a year of free agency, and it appears that the front office has been transparent with him throughout the process, which may be why he has openly accepted the move.
Sano’s discipline on and off the field has been called into question. While he possesses prolific power, he is not a great situational hitter, did not have a strong two-strike approach this season and struggled with the slider. But he also had surgery in November to place a rod in his tibia in order to assist in his recovery from a stress fracture in his left shin. He said it affected his conditioning, and that the demotion essentially served as a second Spring Training for him.
“They sent me down, and it was a good moment in my life,” said Sano. “I took that moment to go down there and work.”
One of the things he focused on in Florida was taking pitches and being more disciplined at the plate. It should lead to more fastball counts, allowing him to be the power threat he was during his first three seasons in the majors.
“I’ve been working on that, in the cage, the machine and in the game,” says Sano. “I got a routine, trying to work the plate and the pitcher. But I don’t think I’ll have any problem with hitting.”
Molitor, who just got back from Cooperstown where he was celebrating the induction of fellow St. Paul native Jack Morris, is a good resource to lean on. The Hall of Fame hitter says he will provide advice as needed, but is curious to see how he takes advantage of his return to the majors — one necessitated, to some degree, by the departure of Escobar.
“If I have something to encourage him about, I’ll certainly do that,” he said, “whether it’s just what he’s thinking or what I see physically in his swing.”
Trading players away at the deadline wears on a team.
Not only does their fate appear to be sealed with two months left to play, but the transactions come at random times and are disruptive. Escobar was in the lineup in Boston, and Molitor found out when it appeared on a screen behind him. Pressly was dealt in the fourth inning of a 10-inning game in which he could have been used. Duke and Lynn were Twins when the clubhouse opened on Monday, and out the door before they took the field that night. All were liked in the clubhouse, especially Escobar.
Sano isn’t a general manager, but his play will go a long way in determining whether the Twins can reverse the trend of being sellers at the deadline in the Target Field era.
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