Entering his 10th professional season, it’s safe to say that 2012 was his best year in Samuel Deduno’s career thus far. Not only did Deduno end the year in the Minnesota Twins rotation, but he also had the opportunity to pitch for the Dominican Republic, his home country, in the World Baseball Classic. Originally signed as an undrafted free agent by the Colorado Rockies in 2003, 19 year old Samuel Deduno was on the road to pursuing his dream ...
At 14-20, the Rochester Red Wings are substantially better than they were two weeks ago. After a 2-11 start, the Red Wings have gone 12-9 in their last 21 games, and after facing the top tier teams in the International league to start the year, it was finally time for Rochester to play teams they have had success against in years past. First Stop Columbus Rochester began the road trip by going to Columbus to play a four game series ...
Updated 05-09-2013 at 10:15 PM by Christopher Fee
Since the Twins won last Sunday to go 4-2, they have lost five consecutive games and fallen to the basement of the AL Central. More to the point, they now have one of the worst run differentials in the AL and their offensive, defensive, and pitching stats are among the worst, as well. There haven't been many positive surprises and there have been disappointments throughout the roster. The #1 disappointment has to be Aaron Hicks, hitting a microscopic .057 with an OPS of .155. Vanimal ...
As we near the end of our introduction to the new and improved Minnesota Twins we consider a few players who might not be around as much as we in the "let's-have-fun-and-laugh-a-little-at-the-Twins" crowd might like. Meet Jamey Carroll! (Infielder) Player's Background: Jamey Carroll is many things, a scrappy infielder (hey, where have we heard that before?), a clubhouse leader, the last surviving Expo. Above all he is a journeyman utility player who can (and does) play ...
It is probably an indictment of the Minnesota Twins’ rotation when the biggest conversation of the month of March is focused on the performance of a pitcher who is currently not on the team’s 40 man roster. As Mike Pelfrey, Vance Worley and Kevin Correia continue to turn in clunkers in the Grapefruit League, Samuel Deduno’s sometimes sloppy, sometimes dominating but always energetic outings in the World Baseball Classic -- including last night’s five inning, ...
Don’t look now, but Samuel Deduno has not walked a batter yet this spring. I know, I know: It has been five meaningless spring innings. Give it time, right? And, sure, four of those innings were against Spain in the World Baseball Classic, a team whose lineup was littered with players lacking even minor league deals. Pump the brakes, Parker. The reality is that last year he handed out more free passes than the gals standing out front of Dream ...
In yet another Geek-less installment of Gleeman and the Geek, joining Aaron Gleeman on this week’s GATG podcast is Twins Daily’s Parker Hageman -- who fills in for the globetrotting John Bonnes. Podcasting live from Panino Brothers in Eden Prairie, the pair discuss the Twins’ involvement in sabermetrics, projecting the Opening Day roster, why no one wants Kyle Lohse, Shaun Marcum and the best of the remaining free agent pitchers, saying something nice about ...
Pop quiz! What do you do when you've run out of fuel, in a tour-bus, in rural Siberia, with your in-laws?? This is the metaphor for how I see the current situation with the Twins starting pitching rotation. Our characters are all familiar: the fuel = Pohlads' payroll; the bus = shiny new Target Field; Siberia = Minnesota; the in-laws = our gallery of failed starting pitchers. So...what DO you do? In this case we defer to the NBA. No, we're ...
Updated 02-12-2013 at 02:41 AM by mnfanforlife
The front office will likely do some shopping-n-swapping to infill the rotation this winter however one member of the Twins staff who is almost certain to get an opportunity to win a role next spring is Samuel Deduno. For the most part, Deduno’s unexpected and head-scratching success has continued across his 13 starts. He has struggled to get ahead of hitters (54% first pitch strike rate compared to the 60% league average) and then falls deeper behind in the count (8% of all his plate ...
The beauty of baseball is many-fold. On any given night. You just never know. Teams need stars to play well over the course of a season to be successful. But on any given night, anyone can step up when you least expect it and help you to a win. On Monday night, Samuel Deduno was wild as ever, but he somehow managed to pitch into the 8th inning and gave the Twins offense an opportunity to work without being behind. Darin Mastroianni was in the lineup as Denard Span and his shoulder are day-to-day. ...
It appears that the polarizing Twins topic of the first ten days of spring training is the Twins bullpen. There are many who believe that the Twins messed up by not adding more veteran relief pitchers to major league contracts during the offseason. I’m firmly on the opposite side of that argument. I believe that the Twins took a good, calculated risk that Joel Zumaya could actually stay healthy in 2012. If that happened, they could have a difference-maker in the bullpen. As it turned out, his spring ...
Minnesota Twins Prospect Handbook 2012 – Now Available as an e-book for $6.99 by clicking here. You can, of course, still get the print version for $13.99 by clicking here. Today, we will conclude our Organizational Depth Chart by looking at the Relief Pitchers. Frankly, it is kind of a mess thanks to about 89 minor league veterans brought in, so it will be interesting to see how that plays out. As I said on Monday, many starters will get time as a reliever, and vice versa. ...