Twins

2016 Minnesota Twins Report Card: Randy Rosario

This is a series of evaluations that will be done this offseason on every player that closed the season on the 40-man roster for the Minnesota Twins, with one appearing every weekday from now until each player has been evaluated. The plan is to start with Mr. Albers and move all the way through the pitchers, then to the catchers, infielders, outfielders and finally those listed as designated hitters on the club’s official MLB.com roster. That means we’ll wrap it up with Miguel Sano sometime in the first week of December.

  • Name: Randy Rosario
  • 2016 Role: After missing nearly all of 2014 with Tommy John surgery, Rosario has bounced back with a couple solid seasons as he’s progressed to a cup of coffee with Chattanooga last season. That stretch did not go well, but he’ll still open next season just 22 years old.
  • Expected 2017 Role: He’ll be pushed aggressively, and probably start next season in the rotation at Double-A Chattanooga. He’ll probably be capped around 140-150 innings.
  • MLB Stats: 3.77 ERA in 100.1 innings between High-A and Double-A, 1.47 WHIP, 7.0 K/9 and 3.5 BB/9.  
  • MiLB Stats: N/A
  • Contract Status: Two more option years, though it’s unclear/uncertain he’ll remain on the 40-man roster this entire offseason.

2016 Lowdown:

Rosario has been on the radar for some time in the Twins’ system. Baseball America ranked him the club’s No. 22 prospect after both the 2013 and 2015 seasons, with him losing almost a full season to Tommy John surgery in between the two. But what’s most encouraging about that — if there’s anything encouraging about a 20-year-old undergoing such a serious surgery — is that he showed enough on his comeback trail the next season to get right back to where he was.  

Though, for what it’s worth, MLB.com’s MLB Pipeline ranking — which is updated all season long — doesn’t have Rosario anywhere in the team’s current top-30 prospects, which may be cause for concern. John Sickels of MinorLeagueBall doesn’t have Rosario in his top-20 list, instead calling Rosario a C+ prospect, which by the looks of things means he’s somewhere between 21-30 on the team’s list. That might make it difficult for him to last on the 40-man roster this offseason, especially when considering he’s barely pitched above High-A, and not well when he did.

Baseball America’s post-2015 report on him comp’d his frame to a young Francisco Liriano, and said that while he’d worked 89-92 early in the season, he was running it up as high as 95 by the MWL playoffs. They also said his command got better as the season went on — typical for a Tommy John returnee — and that he’s got a very good slider but his changeup “lacks the proper arm speed.”    

Another thing they lauded was Rosario’s ability to keep the ball in the ballpark. That continued last season, though not to the same level. He’d allowed only three professional home runs coming into 2016, but allowed four in just over 100 innings this season — still a fine rate. Rosario’s walk rate spiked a little bit, but not tremendously so as he went from 2.9 BB/9 in 2015 to 3.5 in 2016. The WHIP was troublesome, as he allowed nearly three baserunners for every two innings last season.

Overall, 2016 was a bit Jekyll and Hyde for Rosario. He alternated good and bad months pretty much all season.

Month | OPS against | ERA

  • April – .509 – 1.02
  • May – .904 – 6.00
  • June – .664 – 2.49
  • July – .806 – 4.55
  • August – .570 – 3.97

Overall, opposing batters hit him at a .276/.343/.381 slash line — a .724 OPS that on the surface isn’t all that worrisome but at the same time could progress poorly if more advanced batters elevate the ball on him. That was less of an issue this season at Fort Myers, where he was able to maintain a 56 percent groundball rate this season. Rosario did not fare as well in a four-game stint at Chattanooga, where he allowed seven earned runs in six innings over four appearances. Still, it wasn’t like Double-A batters crushed him, either. He faced 29 batters and they hit a collective .250/.379/.375 against him — again thanks to a 46 percent groundball rate.

Rosario didn’t have wild splits this season, either. He handled righties quite well with a .706 OPS against, while it was same-sided batters that gave him a bit more trouble at .789. He stymied younger batters this season (.628 OPS) while older batters smacked him around at a .761 mark. That was part of the issue, as Rosario saw about three times as many older batters than younger.

That’s a double-edged sword, however. Even despite missing nearly a full season, Rosario played 2016 as a fairly young player for both levels. He was 1.1 years younger than the average High-A player — not as impressive on its own but again, remember that he missed a full season of development and progress — and still showed enough for a late season cup of coffee at Double-A.

It’s going to be difficult for the new brain trust to evaluate Rosario, who certainly is the kind of pitcher who is more projectable than he is a statistical darling. Lefties who can run the ball into the mid-90s don’t come around every day, and he is still impossibly young. He was still an infant during the MLB strike, for crying out loud.

There’s literally no chance he could have stayed in anyone’s bullpen all last season at the MLB level.

The best guess here is that he’ll survive the offseason on the 40-man roster, with the only potential for him to be taken off as a corresponding move for if the baseball bosses make a few moves in free agency. Another possibility would be to get Rosario moving quickly as a reliever, with the potential to transition him back to starting later in his career. Rosario’s work in the bullpen when he was moved there to ostensibly conserve innings late in the season at Fort Myers was very, very good:

  • 16-6 K/BB ratio in 9.1 innings
  • .550 OPS against
  • 71 percent groundball rate

That’s iffy control to be sure, but that’s super elite in terms of a combination of grounders and strikeouts.

Since Rosario had to be added to the 40-man roster at such a young age, speed to the major leagues will become a factor when it might not have been otherwise. In retrospect, it may have been a hasty move to add him to the 40-man roster when the Twins did. Sure, it makes sense to protect a lefty who can throw in the upper 90s; but at the same time, what were the odds he was going to be taken in the Rule 5 draft? There’s literally no chance he could have stayed in anyone’s bullpen all last season at the MLB level.

Nevertheless, Rosario will probably spend this winter as a fringe case, and will need a strong 2017 season to stay on the radar. Luckily for him, it seems unlikely the Twins will make too many 40-man additions this winter.

Grade: B-. Continued to make adequate progress coming back from Tommy John surgery, but allowed too many baserunners and had very few sustained stretches where he was dominant.

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