Some minor league notes
Posted on April 29th, 2009 – 7:23 PMBy La Velle
The debut of the print edition of minor league notes will debut on Saturday, May 9. Until then, here are some updates.
THE HUNT FOR SHOOTER’S CONTROL
The Twins minor league think tank will head to Beloit over the next couple of days to bear down on righthander Shooter Hunt, who needs GPS to find the strike zone.
In four outings, Hunt has walked four, seven, six and six batters - that’s 23 walks. He’s faced 68 batters, 39 of them reaching base.
So Twins director of minor leagues Jim Rantz and minor league pitching coordinator Eric Rasmussen will be in attendance for Hunt’s next outing. Rantz has not ruled out the possibility of sending Hunt to the bullpen to clear his head and work on his control.
Hunt was the Twins’ sandwich pick between the first and second rounds of last year’s draft.
THE INJURIES
Infielder Ramon Santana is listed at 5 foot 9 and 165 pounds. Paul Molitor, a special instructor and scout for the Twins, said Santana isn’t much to look at, “but he swings the bat and the ball goes 450 feet.”
Santana entered the season a career .247 hitter with a .358 on base percentage, 20 home runs and 82 RBI in 195 minor league games. He got off to a hot start to Class A Beloit, batting .393 with three homers and 10 RBI in 16 games while playing short and second.
His hot start has been derailed by a badly sprained left ankle this week that he suffered while running the bases. He’s out two to three weeks.
Class AAA Rochester first baseman Brock Peterson is out with a sore shoulder.
Rochester outfielder Justin Huber, who just sorted out visa problems, homered in his first at-bat last week and doubled in his second at-bat - but pulled a hamstring and has been out ever since.
THE RETURN OF DREW THOMPSON
Matt Garza was taken in 2005 draft. So was Kevin Slowey.
But the Twins also took Henry Sanchez, Paul Kelly and Drew Thompson - who all have been broken down throughout their minor league careers. Sanchez has taken his inactivity to another level recently with a 50-game suspension for testing positive for a drug of abuse.
Kelly has had multiple surgeries on his left knee. Thompson, an infielder, had a stress fracture in his back in 2006, followed by more back problems that forced him out for the entire 2007 and 2008 seasons. In fact. Thompson was thought to be leaning toward retirement a year ago.
But he hasn’t quit. Thompson, the son of former major leaguer Robbie Thompson, has been assigned to Beloit as he begins his latest comeback attempt.
28 Responses to "Some minor league notes"
thanks for the update LEN
La Velle, thanks!
that’s a real bummer for Santana. He finally seem to get it together this year. His minor league numbers if bunched up are average, but here is another story:
His first pro year in the DSL he hit .313/.448/.528 with 8 HR and 30 RBI in 50 games. Next year he went to the states, assigned to the GCL and mid season due to promotions and injuries (Cates) he moved all the way to Beloit. He was not ready for that. He was not ready for Beloit last season either. Now he got it going. Hopefully he will be back strong and be up to Ft. Myers after their All-star break.
Slama now has 17 SO’s in 9 2/3 innings over 8 appearances while maintaining a 0 ERA at New Britain. Duh
smithtrs,
you could add: and Delaney with 19 K and 1 BB in 14.3 innings is setting him up, while Sean Henn is the closer in Rochester being set up by Bobby Keppel 
t98 - and darkhorse Yohan Pino who has 7 (of 
brilliant outings: 9 innings,3 hits, 1 BB and 10 strikeouts with a zero ERA. The other outing had 9 hits and 6ER in 1.1 iniings. Why in the world would you leave him in that long - unless they were stretching him out to be a starter. Reminds me of some of Rainville’s outings last year
Pino is an enigma. So is Gabino for that matter. These guys are all in or all out… must be which side of the bed they woke up the day they pitch or something.
Here is another bizarre occurence this (young) season:
Guess who leads the Rock Cats with a .368/.478/.421 line?
hint: he even caught for part of a game
Pino doesn’t have much giddy-up on his fastball so he has to be very Slowey like with his control.Like all young pitchers,he has to learn how to change speeds.I think they still like his future!
I’ve always been a Pino fan. But looking at our minor league relievers I’m starting to feel better about the 2nd half of this season.
“Guess who leads the Rock Cats with a .368/.478/.421 line?”
The once and future King - Toby Gardenhire!
His Dad hit .369 in the Majors…
Actually Ron hit .123, three years in a row.
What happened to Jeff Manship, please?
I haven’t followed his story for about a year…..
romer,
The Manship is sinking at New Britain.
W-L. ERA WHIP
1-2 6.63 1.68 (worst on the team)
[…] Twins Insider – […]
Manship is a college pitcher who dominated kids in A ball.
Now he is in AA and he finally has real competition and he has to learn how to pitch all over again.
In A ball you can just throw it over and get guys out.
AA you have to actually pitch.
He is struggling and doesn’t have the dominate pitch to rely on.
He is at least 2-3 years out if he makes it all.
Mulvey is pitching well. (last night he struck out 7!)
So is Swarzak who has been very good in the early season.
They might start putting pressure on some of our struggling starters to get it going.
How long do we keep guys like that down there?
And as much as we beat on Henn he is actually getting guys out. 0.79 ERA, 17 Ks 11 Inns (too many walks though)
Good stuff LaVelle, thanks.
I hope the Twins switch to red unis in a few years, and down the stretch someone writes the headline:
The Hunt for Red October
Ugh, that was bad, which is why it is a likely candidate for a headline.
another minor league note:
anybody doubting the Carlos Gutierrez pick now? He’s been the best performing starting pitcher in the system by far so far this season…
TNG - wait until he gets to some better compeititon.
You are falling into the same trap that we did with Manship
“wait until he gets to some better compeititon. You are falling into the same trap that we did with Manship”
Is failure (instead of dominance) at High-A a better indicator of future success at higher levels?
Or are we supposed to pretend that there are NO indicators of future success until their Hall of Fame inductions?
Nobody is invested in these guys, so nobody is being “trapped”.
They might start putting pressure on some of our struggling starters to get it going.
the starters are getting better. Perkins for the most part has been fine, Blackburn and Slowey are getting it today, Liriano is pitching better and Baker’s last start was his best. They’ll be fine
clutter - you took that statement in a different way then it was meant, bad wording on my part, should have left out the ‘doubting’ him line. I was just trying to point out that he has been the best starter in minors so far by far.
and if you haven’t watched video of him pitching, go look for some. His sinking fastball is retardedly wicked. Best pitch in the system counts for something.
and if were comparing him to Manship, Carlos is doing better already in just 43 IP at Fort Myers than manship ever did…I agree though, shouldn’t say too much until they get to AA or AAA
sid -
If a high schooler or young guy dominates A ball that is one thing
But most decent college pitchers will do well in A ball.
So you never know about a college guy until they face better compeititon.
What I meant by “trap” was many people (including myself) penciled Manship into the rotation based on his dominace of A ball.
Turns out that was premature.
On another note,
The ‘other’ paper here has a great story about an American Legion Baseball nemisis of my team back in the day that is the St. Paul Saints all-time leader in victories, starts, and complete games now.
here’s the link:
http://www.twincities.com/sports/ci_12258833
anyway, why he was a nemisis:
The summer after my junior year of high school, in a season in which my high school baseball team was ranked for a while, our Legion team was dominating heading into the state tournament. We won the first 2 games by a combined score of something like 48-5, i know for a fact we put up 20+ runs those first two games, anyway, the next rounds opponent was Cannon Falls and Charlie Ruud was the pitcher they threw at us.
We also had our ace throwing, a crafty lefty, but not nearly on the level of Ruud as far as ’stuff’ goes.
Anyway, our #3 hitter chinked a single opp-field in the first inning, and we didn’t get a hit the rest of the game. Charlie worked really fast and his curve was pretty much impossible to hit, As soon as you put your back foot in the box he was in his windup, we angered him several times by asking for time cause he was trying to mess up our timing like that, didn’t really matter.
Anyway, our pitcher also happened to throw a 1 hitter, but that hit moved a guy who walked to 2nd, and 2 sac flies later they had the deciding run. We lost 1-0.
Best pitcher’s duel on that level I ever saw, but man our team got derailed by him.
I thought I’d see him in the MLB some day but I guess he only went to a D-III school and caught on with the Saints by chance…
anyway, check out the story.
TNG -
I hope that pitch stays dominate because we will need a ground ball pitcher in target field!
Clutter,
“What I meant by “trap” was many people (including myself) penciled Manship into the rotation based on his dominace of A ball.”
OK.
Yeah, as long as you did it in pencil, no harm, no foul.
Any successful A-ball player has to succeeed at 2 or 3 higher levels with historically high failure rates, so nothing can be taken for granted.
An answer to the catching situation. Make Redmond a coach, right now, and keep him up with the team and working out. If they want, they reactivate him and throw him back in the fray. I saw it done with Mickey Vernon nad others years ago.
I am the allseeing, all knowing smithtrs. Slama just got a blown save - oops. AAAhhh - he got the win. Why do I doubt myself
