AaronGleeman.com
Friday, February 22, 2008

Link-O-Rama

  • I'm not sure how this happened, but The Onion mentioned me this week in an amusing article about the Yankees facing off against the media:
    In a spring showdown between two venerable organizations that will battle one another daily during the 2008 regular season, the New York Yankees are scheduled to play a nine-inning game Sunday against their greatest rivals: the media.

    [...]

    The upcoming game poses a challenge for many players, including Yankee superstar Alex Rodriguez, who tends to try too hard when facing the media.

    "The media has a great team with a proud tradition of excellence, professionalism, and fairness," Rodriguez told members of the media Tuesday. "Tim Kurkjian has electric stuff, NBC Sports writer/blogger Aaron Gleeman is young and talented, and The New York Post's George King is one of the greatest defensive centerfielders I have ever seen. To be honest, I wouldn't mind being a part of the media someday."
    Pretend or not, that "Aaron Gleeman is young and talented" quote from Alex Rodriguez may find its way on to my resume. I'm by far the least-known of the two dozen or so media members mentioned in the article, so I'm guessing that someone at The Onion is an AG.com reader and decided to throw me a bone (although I'm not thrilled about playing on the same team as Mike Lupica and Buster Olney).


  • It's early yet, but considering the source this might be the leader in the clubhouse for Quote of the Year: "It's cool, I'm pregnant. I can't get pregnant again!"


  • At long last, a job in baseball that I'm over-qualified for.


  • The bad news is that this week's "Fantasy Fix" show on NBCSports.com doesn't feature regular host and AG.com comments section favorite Tiffany Simons, who was away in New Orleans covering the NBA All-Star game. The good news is that Gregg Rosenthal subbed for her while providing his own special brand of eye candy and we spent the entire show comparing players coming back from injuries to various Sylvester Stallone movies (seriously):


    The show gets going with me comparing a post-surgery Francisco Liriano to the original Rocky and there's a Frank Stallone joke in there somewhere, so it's worth watching.


  • Actually, it was a big week for Rosenthal. In addition to hosting a multi-camera, NBC-produced video shoot that involved talking with me about how B.J. Ryan compares to Judge Dredd, fantasy football's foremost Fred Savage look-a-like also turned 12 years old and celebrated by blowing out the candles on his football-shaped birthday cake. We kid because we care, of course. And because his wife's blog provides plenty of material.


  • As hinted about in this space last month, longtime AG.com reader Thor Nystrom has officially joined the staff at MLB.com and will be assisting Twins beat writer Kelly Thesier this season.


  • Prince Fielder provides definitive proof that "fat" and "vegetarian" are not mutually exclusive.


  • Minneapolis Star Tribune columnist Jim Souhan has been and likely will continue to be the target of frequent criticism here, but his recent lengthy article about Ralph Sampson III was well done and totally different than his typical "Shecky" writing style. It's a shame that Souhan is far more interested in filling his columns with lame pop-culture references, unfunny jokes, and attacks on Joe Mauer than he is in writing more pieces like that one.


  • YouTube cult hero and former street-fighter Kimbo Slice's second mixed martial arts fight involved making $175,000 for 43 seconds of work against a completely washed up Tank Abbott:


    Slice is packing arenas and making plenty of money by beating up opponents who present little threat, but hopefully at some point he'll have a matchup against someone capable of presenting a challenge.


  • My chronicling of the newspaper industry's decline more or less ceased because the situation has gone from interesting to sort of sad at this point, but AngryJournalist.com is still worth checking out.


  • I'm probably going to suffer through an episode or two just because I'm such a big fan of everything that Adam Carolla does, but hopefully he'll get booted from the new season of Dancing With The Stars sooner rather than later.


  • Dustin Pedroia deservedly won the AL Rookie of the Year last season, but still apparently puts about as much stock in the MLB awards process as me: "That's just something that sportswriters voted on."


  • Friend of AG.com and Sports Illustrated senior editor Jacob Luft--who was nice enough to ask me to write a column for SI.com about the Johan Santana trade last month--recently started a personal blog that looks very promising.


  • Another new blog to check out: What Would A.C. Do?


  • Finally, this week's AG.com-approved music video is Jimi Hendrix performing an extended version of "Voodoo Child" at Woodstock:


    If nothing else, check out the drummer at the 32-second mark (trust me, you won't be disappointed).



  • Thursday, February 21, 2008

    Twins Notes: Liriano Throws, LeCroy Plays, Miller Blogs

  • Francisco Liriano remains in the Dominican Republic because of visa problems stemming from his 2006 drunken-driving arrest, but Official Twins Beat Writer of AG.com LaVelle E. Neal III passed along this encouraging Ron Gardenhire quote about Liriano's comeback from Tommy John surgery: "He's letting it fly. He threw two innings at the [Twins' Dominican] academy and they said he was averaging 93 and throwing it up to 96. Free and easy." He's expected to be in camp by next week.


  • Gardenhire revealed that he plans to begin the season with a 12-man pitching staff. If Liriano and Jesse Crain are healthy, there are seemingly 11 near-locks for the Opening Day roster:
    SP  Livan Hernandez           CL  Joe Nathan
    SP Scott Baker RP Pat Neshek
    SP Boof Bonser RP Juan Rincon
    SP Kevin Slowey RP Matt Guerrier
    SP Francisco Liriano RP Jesse Crain
    RP Dennys Reyes
    If all of the above pitchers make the team out of spring training, that would leave Glen Perkins, Nick Blackburn, and Philip Humber as the most likely candidates to fight over the final spot, with the two losers heading the rotation at Triple-A.


  • When the Twins gave Matthew LeCroy a September call-up last season despite his hitting .194 in 80 games at Triple-A, it seemed like the team's way of giving him a nice send off before welcoming him into the coaching ranks. Instead, LeCroy has decided to continue playing, signing a minor-league contract with the A's. Perhaps fittingly, LeCroy will be the Triple-A catching depth that Oakland needed following the sudden retirement of Jeremy Brown, the so-called "fat-bodied catcher" from Moneyball:

    Amusingly, a blurb about his signing in the San Francisco Chronicle notes that "LeCroy has gray hair, grayer even than that of general manager Billy Beane." Of course, there's no shame in that, because as Moneyball readers can attest to Beane fancies himself "the best-looking GM in the game." LeCroy told MLB.com that he "really didn't have too many options to go anywhere." As the 32-year-old veteran of eight big-league seasons put it: "I guess the older you are, the harder it gets."


  • Sean McAdam's recent ESPN.com article about the Twins' offseason was mostly forgettable--he began by calling Torii Hunter "arguably their best player and inarguably their best leader"--but it did include this interesting tidbit: Johan Santana went 70-32 with a 2.89 ERA during his four full seasons as a starter, while the rest of the Twins' rotation combined to go 172-190 with a 4.60 ERA over that same span. Santana was 38 games above .500, while everyone else was 18 games below .500.


  • Speaking of Santana, he follows Marisa Miller on Sports Illustrated's cover this week:

    Given that he's been the best pitcher in baseball since 2004 (or perhaps even 2002), it's a shame that Santana never made the cover while with the Twins.


  • The Rays' all-time leader in games played and most major offensive categories, Carl Crawford said earlier this week that he was happy to see both Delmon Young and Elijah Dukes leave Tampa Bay this offseason:
    I just feel like it's going to be a little more peaceful this year. I think it will be more at ease. Not so much crazy stuff. ... They're both just young players who've got some growing up and maturing to do. I just don't think the maturing part would have happened over here. It might happen somewhere else, but at the pace they were going I don't think they would have matured over here because they had too much free range to do whatever they wanted to.

    Being loud, talking too much, saying whatever they wanted to whoever they wanted to say it to. There weren't no rules for those guys. Now they're going to somewhere where they have rules, so I don't know what's going to happen then. They'd been getting in trouble and they got rewarded for it every year, so you couldn't expect them to come here and think that they were going to do something different and they were going to be good all of a sudden. That doesn't happen. It can only get worse. They've been doing that since Day 1. It didn't surprise me at all.
    Young has said the right things since being traded to the Twins and has many people convinced that he's already gotten past the problems that helped facilitate his exit from Tampa Bay, but it's interesting to hear what Crawford has to say after actually spending a season with him. Crawford's frustration likely had a lot more to do with Dukes than Young, but his willingness to group them together is telling. On several different levels Young is far from the sure-thing superstar that many fans seem to assume.


  • Livan Hernandez's one-year contract was initially reported as being worth $5 million plus incentives, but Joe Christensen notes that Hernandez will make $6.2 million if he reaches 200 innings and $7 million if he cracks 230 innings.


  • Gardenhire has expressed confidence that the Twins will sign impending free agent Joe Nathan to a multi-year contract extension, but it's unclear whether doing so would be a smart move. Nathan has been about as good as a reliever can be since coming over from the Giants as part of the haul for A.J. Pierzynski, but committing what figures to be in excess of $10 million per season for 70 innings of work is extremely risky for a small-payroll team, especially given that Nathan is already 33 years old.

    From Rick Aguilera and Eddie Guardado to Nathan himself the Twins have shown the ability to create outstanding closers, and beginning with top setup man Pat Neshek there are no shortage of quality relief options throughout the organization. Keeping Nathan in Minnesota is a luxury that the Twins can't afford if it requires something like $50 million over four seasons, and they'd be better off cashing him in for prospects at the trading deadline or taking compensatory draft picks when he walks as a free agent.


  • Mike DiGiovanna of the Los Angeles Times recently wrote a lengthy, well-done article about Hunter's difficult path to the major leagues.


  • Since taking over as the Twins beat writer from the highly unlikable and only moderately readable Jason Williams last season, Phil Miller has become just about the only good thing to be found in the St. Paul Pioneer Press. And now he's joined the blogging world. As someone who regularly reads the baseball coverage from nearly every major newspaper in the country as part of my gig at Rotoworld, trust me that Twins fans are incredibly lucky to have LEN3, Christensen, and Miller covering the team.



  • Tuesday, February 19, 2008

    Top 40 Twins Prospects of 2008: 20, 19, 18, 17, 16

    Previous Top 40 Twins Prospects of 2008: 21-25, 26-30, 31-35, 36-40
    20. Jason Pridie | Center Field | DOB: 10/83 | Bats: Left | Trade: Rays

    YEAR LV PA AVG OBP SLG HR XBH BB SO
    2005 AA 104 .213 .275 .394 3 9 8 29
    2006 AA 503 .230 .281 .304 5 20 31 93
    2007 AA 300 .290 .331 .441 4 27 14 45
    AAA 274 .318 .375 .539 10 30 22 47
    Selected by the Rays out of an Arizona high school in the second round of the 2002 draft, Jason Pridie hit well at rookie-ball after signing before struggling with the move up to low Single-A in 2003. Asked to repeat the level in 2004, he hit .276/.327/.470 in 128 games and then made the jump up to Double-A in 2005. Pridie hit just .213/.275/.394 there, missing all but 28 games because of injuries, and the Rays chose not to protect him from the Rule 5 draft that winter.

    A 21-year-old with about a month's worth of experience above Single-A, the Twins selected Pridie only to offer him back to the Rays prior to Opening Day. He struggled again at Double-A in 2006, hitting just .230/.281/.304 in 132 games to show how overmatched he would have been spending an entire year in the majors, but followed that up by hitting .303/.352/.487 with 14 homers, 57 total extra-base hits, and a 92-to-36 strikeout-to-walk ratio in 134 games between Double-A and Triple-A last year.

    That caught the Twins' eye again and they re-acquired him as part of this offseason's six-player swap headlined by Delmon Young and Matt Garza. Unfortunately, Pridie's success in 2007 sticks out from the rest of an otherwise mediocre track record of .279/.326/.432 hitting. He's still young, has the speed to play center field, and has occasionally shown the ability to hit, but Pridie's plate discipline is sub par and unless 2007 is the beginning of a sustained breakout he looks like a fourth outfielder.
    19. Alex Burnett | Starter | DOB: 7/87 | Throws: Right | Draft: 2005-12

    YEAR LV G GS ERA IP H HR SO BB
    2005 RK 13 8 4.10 48.1 50 6 33 14
    2006 RK 13 13 4.04 71.1 66 6 71 13
    2007 A- 27 27 3.02 155.0 140 9 117 38
    In ranking Alex Burnett as the Twins' 30th-best prospect last year despite his having zero experience above rookie-ball, I wrote that "it wouldn't be surprising to see Burnett a dozen spots higher in a year." The four-prospect haul from the Johan Santana trade narrowly keeps him from making that dozen-spot jump, but Burnett had an impressive full-season debut in 2007 and has now firmly established himself as a strong prospect.

    Taken by the Twins out of a California high school in the 12th round of the 2005 draft, Burnett posted a 4.07 ERA and 104-to-27 strikeout-to-walk ratio in 119.2 innings at rookie-ball during his first two pro seasons before jumping to low Single-A last year. Still a teenager, Burnett had a 3.07 ERA, 117-to-38 strikeout-to-walk ratio, and .239 opponent's batting average while ranking fourth in the Midwest League with 155 innings.

    Burnett's strikeout rate last season was modest, but there's room for more missed bats in the future given his low-90s fastball velocity combined with a hard slider and changeup that are considered to be assets already. A 19-year-old posting a 3.02 ERA while walking 38 batters and serving up nine homers in 155 innings at low Single-A is impressive, and Burnett's low opponent's batting average shows that he's been very tough to hit even without racking up huge strikeout totals yet.
    18. Danny Valencia | Third Base | DOB: 9/84 | Bats: Right | Draft: 2006-19

    YEAR LV PA AVG OBP SLG HR XBH BB SO
    2006 RK 211 .311 .365 .505 8 21 15 34
    2007 A- 271 .302 .374 .500 11 26 28 54
    A+ 250 .291 .332 .422 6 16 16 48
    Selected by the Twins in the 19th round of the 2006 draft despite putting up relatively modest numbers at the University of Miami, Danny Valencia skipped his senior season to begin his pro career and then immediately bested his college production by hitting .311/.365/.505 in 48 games at rookie-ball. After playing primarily first base during his pro debut, the Twins made Valencia a full-time third baseman last year and he made the jump to full-season ball by starting out at low Single-A.

    He hit .302/.374/.500 with 11 homers, 26 total extra-base hits, and a 54-to-28 strikeout-to-walk ratio in 66 games to earn a midseason promotion to high Single-A. Valencia continued to hit for average at Fort Myers, batting .291 in 61 games, but saw both his power and plate discipline decline significantly. Between the two levels of Single-A he batted .297/.354/.462 with 17 homers, 42 total extra-base hits, and a 102-to-44 strikeout-to-walk ratio in 127 games.

    Valencia played well in his first full season, but an experienced college hitter beating up on low-minors competition is to be expected and the deterioration of his strikeout-to-walk ratio after moving up to high Single-A is concerning. His bat will ultimately have to carry him thanks to limited defensive skills, although Valencia's long-term outlook improved by spending the entire season at third base given the organization's lack of quality options at the position.
    17. Ryan Mullins | Starter | DOB: 11/83 | Throws: Left | Draft: 2005-3

    YEAR LV G GS ERA IP H HR SO BB
    2005 RK 11 11 2.18 53.2 34 4 60 13
    2006 A- 27 26 3.86 156.1 157 14 139 53
    2007 A+ 10 9 1.98 54.2 50 4 56 12
    AA 14 14 3.99 85.2 87 5 68 23
    AAA 4 4 10.57 15.1 28 2 11 5
    Ryan Mullins posted a 3.12 ERA and 223-to-62 strikeout-to-walk ratio in 271.2 innings as a three-year starter at Vanderbilt University before the Twins grabbed him in the third round of the 2005 draft that has already produced Garza and Kevin Slowey. A 6-foot-6 southpaw with modest velocity, Mullins had a 2.18 ERA and 60-to-13 strikeout-to-walk ratio in 53.2 innings at rookie-ball after signing and then posted a 3.86 ERA and 139-to-53 strikeout-to-walk ratio in 156.1 innings at low Single-A in 2006.

    He began last year by posting a 1.98 ERA and 56-to-12 strikeout-to-walk ratio in 54.2 innings at high Single-A and had a 3.99 ERA and 68-to-23 strikeout-to-walk ratio in 85.2 innings at Double-A after a midseason promotion. A second promotion followed, this time to Triple-A, but he was knocked around in four starts at Rochester. Mullins' limited stuff will likely keep him from developing into more than a mid-rotation starter, but southpaws who throw strikes and keep the ball on the ground are good bets.

    Mullins induced nearly two ground balls for every fly ball last season and has served up a total of 29 homers in 365.1 career innings, including just 11 long balls in 155.2 innings between three levels last season. Between coaxing ground balls and handing out just 2.6 walks per nine innings during his career, Mullins figures to continue having success despite mediocre strikeout rates and should reach Minnesota at some point this season.
    16. Brian Duensing | Starter | DOB: 2/83 | Throws: Left | Draft: 2005-3

    YEAR LV G GS ERA IP H HR SO BB
    2005 RK 12 9 2.32 50.1 49 4 55 16
    2006 A- 11 11 2.94 70.1 68 3 55 14
    A+ 7 7 4.24 40.1 47 4 33 8
    AA 10 9 3.65 49.1 51 6 30 18
    2007 AA 9 9 2.66 50.2 47 2 38 7
    AAA 19 19 3.24 116.2 115 13 86 30
    Brian Duensing missed nearly two seasons following Tommy John surgery while at the University of Nebraska, but returned to go 8-0 with a 3.00 ERA in 2005 before the Twins selected him in the third round of the draft that June. Duensing signed quickly and debuted at rookie-level Elizabethton, where he predictably thrived against inexperienced competition. Already 23 years old when the 2006 season began, the Twins decided to push Duensing aggressively through the system in his first full year.

    He started out at low Single-A, moved up to high Single-A around midseason, and ended the year at Double-A, posting a 3.51 ERA in 159 innings between the three levels. Duensing stayed at Double-A to begin last season, posting a 2.66 ERA in nine starts, and then made 19 starts with a 3.24 ERA after a promotion to Triple-A. His rapid rise through the system and 3.25 ERA in 216.1 career innings between Double-A and Triple-A are impressive, but Duensing's secondary numbers aren't nearly as strong.

    Since moving past Single-A he's managed just 6.4 strikeouts per nine innings while allowing a .262 opponent's batting average, which hint against future stardom. Those numbers certainly aren't bad and his control is good, but beyond ERAs there's little in his track record to suggest that he's capable of being more than a mid-rotation starter. Duensing is nearly MLB-ready, but he's already 25 years old and his limited upside is closer to Mullins than previous fast-rising pitchers like Garza or Slowey.