First Spring Training Cuts cometh...

The Twins will make their first Spring Training cuts next week sometime. Based on their minor league spring training schedule, the first minor league games this Spring is next Wed. the 14th. I suspect that the first cuts will be made as early as Monday, or as late as Tuesday to accommodate those games (there are no official announcements yet from the Twins.) I have been creating dashboards to track the performance of pitchers who are battling for the 3 bullpen spots and for the position players who are batting for the 2-3 bench spots, and I think that it is pretty clear who the first cuts will be. Here is my take:

I think that the position player cuts (all relegated to the minor league camp) will be:

Oswaldo Arcia
Danny Rams

And the pitchers:

Deolis Guerra
Tyler Robertson
Daryl Thompson

with:

Joe Benson
Brian Dinkelman
Jason Bulger
Samuel Deduno

on the bubble. The last 2 might walk.

What do you think?

Guys on the 40 man roster who have no chance of making the Opening Day roster are always first to go. Why? Because they don't want them hurt in big league camp and losing one full year of service time. It just makes sense. So, that includes Oswaldo Arcia and Tyler Robertson. They may want a little more time with Guerra. Rams will certainly go to minor league camp as he was added late.

Please Mr. Ryan cut Terry Doyle now. What a disaster!! Please give Kyle Waldrop and Carlos Gutierrez a chance to make the roster.

Geeze, Terry Doyle has only pitched in two games, and I think all the hits and runs he's given up came in the second game. People have bad days, give the kid a chance

Terry Doyle may need a year of pitching AAA Ball. Something he has yet to do.

What is wrong with Terry Doyle? The Twins should have drafted a better pitcher with the 2nd pick in the Rule 5 draft. I think it would have been better if they would selected a hard thrower and used him out of the bullpen, like they did with Santana. Maybe they can make a deal with Chicago and send him to Rochester. As long as they don't have to give up as much as they did for Diamond who was more like a waste of time.

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Originally Posted by darin617

What is wrong with Terry Doyle? The Twins should have drafted a better pitcher with the 2nd pick in the Rule 5 draft. I think it would have been better if they would selected a hard thrower and used him out of the bullpen, like they did with Santana. Maybe they can make a deal with Chicago and send him to Rochester. As long as they don't have to give up as much as they did for Diamond who was more like a waste of time.

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The rule V draft has changed so much since Santana. Teams have an extra year of control of players so a guy like Santana is much less likely to slip through the cracks. Most analysis going in of the rule v draft concluded that no good players were available. The Twins probably picked Doyle b/c he potentially gives them back end pitching depth depth like Diamond did last year. He might also be better as a relief pitcher. He has good control, doesn't walk many and doesn't give up many home runs. Perhaps he becomes an effective relief pitcher. In any event, it's hard to criticize the Twins for taking a chance on him.

I think taking a chance on Doyle should be limited to ST. If it looks like he can help in the pen or as the 5th starter, should one of the top 5 go down then fine. But I'll be pretty ticked if the Twins deal a player with a high ceiling just to keep him in the minors like they did Diamond. He doesn't have the skills to be anything but a back of the rotation starter or long reliever. Spending 50k to find out if he's a fit there is fine, but spending 50k and a guy that has a chance to be a lot better makes no sense. Let's hope the Twins learned from their mistake with Diamond. Seriously how many soft tossing "strike throwers" do we need?

The irony is that the better Doyle performs in ST games, the tougher it will be for the Twins to keep him. Assuming he doesn't pitch so well that they feel he's worth keeping on the 25-man roster, their only shot at keeping him would be by working out a deal with the White Sox. If he doesn't pitch well, the Twins probably wouldn't need to give up much at all to keep him. But if he starts getting guys out regularly, the Sox can demand more in compensation to allow the Twins to keep him at AAA.

So... maybe we should hope he sucks at least a little bit? :)

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Originally Posted by Jim Crikket

The irony is that the better Doyle performs in ST games, the tougher it will be for the Twins to keep him. Assuming he doesn't pitch so well that they feel he's worth keeping on the 25-man roster, their only shot at keeping him would be by working out a deal with the White Sox. If he doesn't pitch well, the Twins probably wouldn't need to give up much at all to keep him. But if he starts getting guys out regularly, the Sox can demand more in compensation to allow the Twins to keep him at AAA.

So... maybe we should hope he sucks at least a little bit? :)

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The other way around. I don't think that there is a chance in hey that the Twins work out a trade with the White Sox for Doyle. So best case scenario would be to make the team as the long man/spot starter out of ST.

Funny enough, Dazzle was yacking the other day when Doyle pitching about the possibility of the Twins working a trade with the White Sox, sending Swarzak there and keeping Doyle... That would be a disaster.

I dunno. If Doyle doesn't look any better this spring than what the White Sox thought he would (and they left him unprotected, so they can't be TOO high on him), they could be open to some kind of deal. Given what normally happens with Rule 5 picks, I can't believe the Twins would use the #2 pick on a guy from an organization that they don't think would be at all open to a trade. I just think fans take these "rivalry" things more serious than GMs do.

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Originally Posted by Jim Crikket

I dunno. If Doyle doesn't look any better this spring than what the White Sox thought he would (and they left him unprotected, so they can't be TOO high on him), they could be open to some kind of deal. Given what normally happens with Rule 5 picks, I can't believe the Twins would use the #2 pick on a guy from an organization that they don't think would be at all open to a trade. I just think fans take these "rivalry" things more serious than GMs do.

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But if Doyle does not look too good, why would the Twins want to keep him and give away a better player, like they did to keep Diamond?

This is involving a lot more conversation than the subject is worth, but...

My thought was simply that IF the Twins really feel they've seen enough of something in Doyle that they liked in the past, whether last season or in AFL, that they think he could develop in to a Big League pitcher... but not necessarily ready to make the jump from AA to MLB... then there's some irony in that they might be better off if he sucks just a bit this spring so Chicago is willing to trade him for something marginal in return. The Twins definitely shouldn't give away a "better player," or at least not one that has a better chance of contributing to the Twins at some point. Of course, "better" is a subjective term.

Naturally, if he totally blows, there's no point in a discussion