An admired and slightly husky sportswriter crafted a nice column this morning on the ad-libbing Twins manager Ron Gardenhire has had to do this season because of injuries and poor play. 

The Opening Day infield of Justin Morneau, Alexi Casilla, Nick Punto and Joe Crede has been blown up, as has 60 percent of the starting rotation.

A couple days earlier, another slightly husky sportswriter (better looking, by the way) was among the media horde when Gardenhire expressed frustration over not being able to add a couple more players to the roster to help the cause.

A couple players, infielders Trevor Plouffe (USA) and Luke Hughes (Australia) are in Europe for the World Cup and are unavailable. I was surprised to hear Gardenhire express interest in Hughes because he took him deep earlier in the year about how he played at Class AAA Rochester:

“He’s had a lot of issues,” Gardenhire said about Hughes at the time, “He hasn’t played very well and didn’t endear himself to the staff…He’s just real sloppy. Laid-back kid. His demeanor made people wonder what he cares about.”

Someone mentioned first baseman Brock Peterson, who hit .344 at Rochester after the All-Star break. Gardenhire pointed out that Peterson  - and third base prospect Danny Valencia -are not on the 40-man roster, so they aren’t eligible to be called up,

Valencia is an interesting case. He began the year at Class AA New Britain, where he batted .284 with 7 homers and 29 RBI in 57 games. He was promoted to Class AAA Rochester when Hughes was injured and played there the rest of the season. In 71 games at Rochester, Valencia was .286-7-41.

About the same? Somewhat. After walking 31 times at New Britain, Valencia walked just 8 times (in 71 games, mind you) at Rochester. His on base percentage dipped from .373 at New Britain to .305.

That did not stop a slew of Twins officials, from GM Bill Smith down to Tom Kelly and Paul Molitor, to focus on Valencia when they pondered September call ups. In the end, obviously, they decided not to call him up.

He wasn’t lighting it up late in the season, batting .231 over his final 10 games of the season. He has the talent to play third base well, but someone who watched him play pointed out he needs to work on positioning and understanding the defensive side of the game more.

There’s also an opinion out there that Valencia needs a little more time to mature. In one incident, Valencia tried to score standing up and missed the plate. He was tagged out, got angry, yelled at the umpire, tossed his helmet and was ejected.

I don’t intend to paint a bad picture here. Just printing things I’ve been told. I watched Valencia during spring training, when he made a couple nice plays at third and looked like he knew what he was doing at the plate. He’ll be in my top ten Twins prospects list, which will be released in the next couple of weeks. He’s the most complete third baseman they’ve had reached the high minors in several years.

But, based on the evidence, he didn’t do enough to deserve a call up.

But who’s playing third next season for this team? Will the Twins try Crede again? Don’t think so Will they look outside the organization? Maybe, but they have other needs, too.

If a team thinks a player has a chance to contribute the next season - and the Twins appear to be at that point with Valencia -then that player should get a September promotion to get the baptism out of the way. And now Crede’s out, creating an opening.

Even if Valencia sits on the bench, gets a few at-bats and mostly watches games, there’s some benefit to that. That’s an opinion many people in the game have about prospects that I agree with.

Then again, are the Twins trying to send Valencia a message by not calling him up? And they might be the type of team that doesn’t want rookies sitting around unused while they are trying to make the playoffs. Maybe their decision would be different if the Twins were 10 games out. Maybe it goes back to what I wrote earlier, he didn’t do enough.

This is another example of how many things a club has to consider when pondering promotions.

Side note: In case you missed it, here’s a Rochester Red Wings season wrap-up by Rochester D and C beat writer Jim Mandelaro. Rochester was one of the youngest teams in the International League this season and, apparently, it showed.

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 17th, 2009 at 10:27 am and is filed under Random thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.