It's been awhile since I've written about the Twins. I have one Twins Daily blog post, and a few months of inconsistent blogging, under my belt, so The Random Prospect Review seemed like an apt title for this post. It gives me the option of posting again, or disappearing into the abyss. Both very real possibilities.

If there is one infield prospect that we've been over-saturated with the last couple of seasons, it's Brian Dozier. From his minor league hot streak in 2011, to his misguided rave reviews last Spring Training, to his questionable but inevitable call up in 2012, we've all become pretty familiar with Brian Dozier.

The question is, why?

What portion of the prospect test does Dozier pass? Not the saber test. Not the old-school two-eye test. Not the baseball IQ test. Certainly not the hair test. The guy simply doesn't look like a Major League infielder.

The question becomes, who is at fault for pretending that Dozier is a legitimately hot infield prospect? It's partially our fault for wanting so badly to latch onto a Twins prospect during a time when the upper Minor Leagues are so devoid of legitimate talent. It's partially the Twins fault for forcing him down our throats for the same reason. And it's partially the media's fault because they needed a token "prospect who could break with the big club this spring" guy.

Whatever the reason, Dozier is a mediocre prospect at best, who rode an incredible hot streak for a few months in 2011 to an unfortunately prominent position in the Twins infield pecking order.

The one thing I will say is that Dozier reminds me a little of Chuck Knoblauch. A slower, less-savy, untalented version of Knoblauch, and one who has never hit Keith Olberman's mom in the face with an errant throw (yes, Knoblauch actually did that) but a Knoblauch nonetheless.

(Ok, so he's no Knoblauch, I just thought Target Field could use a good hot dog tossin'.)

The problem with Dozier is that he just hasn't been worthy of the accolades he receives. The numbers don't lie, and the numbers ain't great. His age 25 season looks like this:

AAA: .232/.286/.337

MLB: .234/.271/.332

Those, might I add, are both career lines in AAA and MLB.

If you ain't into that fancy book-learnin and prefer to trust your peepers, lets keep in mind how slow Dozier is to the ball. How unsure of himself he looks. And how poor his decision making skills are. He's a defensive liability on his worst day, average on his best day and somewhere in between most days.

All Dozier has proven is that he can be a solid, albeit unspectacular, AA middle infielder. I don't know what's really next for Dozier, but I know I'm not comfortable with him manning the middle infield.

Maybe it would help if he got a haircut...

These are fair points, and you could probably take them a step further by looking at Dozier's career numbers. But I'll also give Dozier this - I think they Twins handled him last year about as poorly as they could, and it sure seems like a lot of that was driven by Gardenhire's mancrush on him.

True, but what is his ceiling in an absolute best case scenario? Is he really capable of being more than a below-average starter? He doesn't have a good enough glove to be a utility guy.