On Friday, the Minnesota Twins announced their first wave of invitations to Spring Training. In addition to every player on the 40-man roster, teams invite a number of additional players in an attempt to give them an extended look with the big-league team before deciding what to do with them for that season.
A lot of times, teams will bring extra pitchers and catchers to camp. For pitchers, it’s to get a look at more guys who can help the team — a lot of times in the Twins’ case, it’s relievers — and the catchers are there because, well, someone has to catch the pitchers.
The catchers who have been invited to Spring Training this season for the Twins are Eddy Rodriguez and Dan Rohlfing.
Rodriguez is a 31-year-old catcher who spent the last two seasons in the Yankees organization. He has one career major-league hit — a home run in his first-ever plate appearance against Johnny Cueto back in 2012. He’s regarded as a very good teammate and strong clubhouse presence.
Rohlfing is back with the organization which drafted him in the 14th round of the 2007 draft. He spent eight seasons with the Twins organization — peaking at Triple-A Rochester — before spending time in the Mets and Diamondbacks organizations. The 27-year-old Rohlfing is a career .244/.316/.338 hitter in the minor leagues and has thrown out 30 percent of attempted base thieves. He has no MLB experience.
The infielders who have been invited to Spring Training are Tommy Field, Benji Gonzalez, Niko Goodrum, Nick Gordon, Matt Hague, Leonardo Reginatto and Ben Paulsen.
The 29-year-old field has big-league experience across four seasons with three teams, but has hit just .214/.264/.274. He spent a large chunk of his season with Rochester this past season, and hit .226/.311/.387 between Toledo and Rochester spanning 97 games, with probably his biggest highlight being this acrobatic catch:
Gonzalez primarily plays in the middle infield, and is coming off hitting .271/.342/.386 as a 26-year-old at Double-A Jackson (Seattle).
The Twins took Goodrum in the second round of the 2010 draft out of Fayette County (Ga.) High School, and to this point he’s played 547 games in seven seasons in the system. He’s hit .247/.339/.368 while seeing appreciable time all across the diamond. He’s coming off playing mostly shortstop and third base at Chattanooga last year, and could have a future as a utility man for the Twins if his tools continue to develop. He hit .275/.357/.451 last season at Chattanooga, but got into just 49 games as he was beset by injuries that cost him most of the first half of the season.
Gordon was the team’s No. 1 draft pick (fifth overall) in the 2014 draft, and has ranked among the top-100 prospects for MLB.com, Baseball America and Baseball Prospectus in each of the last two seasons. He’s considered a fairly safe bet to remain at shortstop, with the potential to develop into a top-of-the-order hitter that may not be a superstar but perhaps an All Star. Through three seasons in the Twins system, he’s reached High-A Fort Myers and seems likely to begin at Chattanooga after hitting .291/.335/.386 with the Miracle last season. There’s no doubting his baseball pedigree; he’s the son of former MLB pitcher Flash Gordon and the brother of Miami Marlins infielder Dee Gordon.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ytm8y5UIs-g
Hague has three separate cups of coffee with two teams between 2012, 2014 and 2015 which have amounted to just 91 big-league plate appearances. The 31-year-old Hague won the IL MVP Award playing for Buffalo (Toronto) in 2015 before spending 2016 playing just 31 games with the Hanshin Tigers in Japan. He hit just .231/.339/.346 and was only there from late March to early June. Some of his teammates with Hanshin are familiar names, including former Cubs outfielder Kosuke Fukudome, former MLB pitcher Randy Messenger and former Twins infielder Tsuyoshi Nishioka.
Reginatto spent 2016 in the Twins system, hitting .265/.318/.327 between Chattanooga and Rochester. He’s spent eight seasons in the minor leagues, playing primarily third base, and has hit .281/.340/.346 with the Rays and Twins.
Paulsen has significant MLB time with the Rockies over the past three seasons, and has hit a collective .271/.316/.446 (92 OPS+) over that time frame. He was born in Plymouth, Wis. but graduated from Kell (Ga.) High School before going to Clemson, and was a third-round pick of the Rockies in the 2009 draft. He’s played mostly first base in the big leagues (129 games) but has seen time in left (26 games) and right field (four) as well.
The only non-roster outfielder invited to Spring Training for the Twins at this time is J.B. Shuck, who has big-league experience with the White Sox and Angels. Shuck is coming off a difficult (.547 OPS in 81 games) season with the White Sox, but did hit a respectable .266/.340/.350 with the team while playing all across the outfield the season before.
The Twins have also invited seven pitchers to Spring Training, including left-handed pitcher Stephen Gonsalves and righties Raul Fernandez, Jake Reed, Drew Rucinski, Aaron Slegers and Alex Wimmers.
Gonsalves is one of the team’s best pitching prospects, as he reached Double-A last season and closed the season with a flourish. He finished with a 2.06 ERA overall, including a 1.82 mark at Chattanooga, and closed out the season by allowing just one earned run in August (0.28 ERA in 32.2 innings). It would not be unusual for him to see big-league time at some point this season.
The 2016 season was the first for Fernandez in the Twins system. He has spent parts of six seasons in the White Sox organization before joining the Rockies in 2014. After returning to the White Sox system for a year in 2015, he spent last year between High- and Double-A in the Twins system, and threw a combined 65 innings with a 3.05 ERA and 6.5 K/9.
Reed was a fifth-round pick of the Twins in the 2014 draft whose path has perhaps been a bit slower than expected after coming out of the University of Oregon. He got things going in a positive direction with 60 solid innings at Chattanooga last season (3.90 ERA, 9.6 K/9) before spending the latter half of August on at Triple-A Rochester, posting a 1.69 ERA with fairly solid peripherals (6.8 K/9, 0.94 WHIP). With a strong early showing at Rochester this season, he could be beating down the door for a spot in the Twins bullpen by midseason. He’ll turn 25 at the end of next season.
Rucinski joined us on Midwest Swing a couple weeks ago, and despite being a Packers fan proved to be an interesting guy. He has some big-league time logged with the Angels, is a former collegiate teammate of Shuck and Wimmers and is coming off playing with an incredibly interesting Iowa Cubs team last season — one he made more starts for than anyone else in 2016. He didn’t have a particularly good season (5.92 ERA), but has good stuff and could still carve out a big-league role as a swingman in the near future.
Slegers is making a bid to be the tallest Twins pitcher since Jon Rauch a few years ago. At an imposing 6-foot-10 and 245 lbs., Slegers works with less swing-and-miss type stuff than one might expect. He fanned just 104 batters in 145 innings (6.4 K/9) last year with Double-A Chattanooga, instead relying more on solid command (2.8 BB/9) and a pretty good groundball rate (49 percent) across 25 starts. Slegers was not added to the 40-man roster, and was thus eligible but went unselected in the Rule 5 Draft to end the Winter Meetings last month. He has worked almost exclusively as a starter in the minors, but it’ll be interesting to see if the team gives him a look as a reliever at any point to see if there’s more projection in his repertoire and frame in shorter workloads.
Despite being outrighted off the 40-man roster at the end of the season, Wimmers has the ultimate story of perseverance. After the Twins made him their first-round pick in 2010, his career had been waylaid by injuries and a complete lack of control. He got back on track to post a solid year at Triple-A Rochester in 2016, and earned his first big-league cup of coffee with the Twins in September. There isn’t much prospect luster on him at age 28, but carving out a big league career at this point is still a huge feather in his cap based on where he’s been. He’ll look to fight for a role at the front of the Twins bullpen, and failing that, will provide mid-to-late relief for the Red Wings in 2017.
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In addition to the Spring Training invitations, the Twins announced on Friday that they’ve signed three pitchers to minor-league contracts. First, the team re-signed lefty Nick Greenwood while also adding righty Jim Miller and lefty Matt Tracy.
Greenwood, 29, has big-league experience in 2014-15 with the Cardinals, and spent the bulk of 2016 in the Twins system after a brief stint in the Indy Leagues with the New Britain Bees of the Atlantic League. Across Double- and Triple-A, Greenwood made 21 appearances (16 starts) and posted a 3.20 ERA and 1.12 ERA with 4.6 K/9. With his paucity of strikeouts and just a middling groundball rate (48 percent), he doesn’t project as much more than an organizational piece at this juncture.
Miller, 34, is a client of Joshua Kusnick, who appeared on a recent episode of Midwest Swing. Miller has spent parts of five seasons in the big leagues with four teams, including most recently with the Yankees in 2013-’14. He’s thrown 67.1 MLB innings with 59 strikeouts (7.9 K/9) but also 39 walks (5.2 BB/9). After Colorado Springs (Brewers AAA) let him go in May, he caught on with the Somerset Patriots of the Atlantic League in July and pitched 25 straight scoreless innings with 24 strikeouts and just two walks. Just 10 of the 84 batters he faced for the Patriots reached base.
Tracy, 28, made one appearance for the Yankees in relief in 2015, throwing two innings while allowing three unearned runs. His only MLB strikeout was of Pablo Sandoval. Prior to 2016, Tracy had spent his entire minor-league career in the Yankees organization. He was released by the Yankees in late May, and joined the Marlins organization to close out his season. Across two levels last season, Tracy posted a 4.61 ERA with 7.0 K/9, 3.0 BB/9 and a WHIP of 1.49. He has a career minor-league ERA of 3.93.
