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  • Twins Promote Alex Meyer

    John Bonnes

    By John Bonnes

    The Minnesota Twins have announced that they will recall right-handed reliever Alex Meyer prior to Friday night's game vs. the Milwaukee Brewers. Meyer was Twins Daily's #5 Twins prospect before the 2015 season and this will be his first time with the big league club.

    Meyer was acquired in a trade with the Washington Nationals for Denard Span in November of 2012. Armed with a 95+ mph fastball, he was considered a top starting pitching prospect and was moved up to Triple-A Rochester last year where he posted a 3.52 ERA and 153 strikeouts in 130.2 innings.

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    However, his 6' 9" frame has always contributed to control problems and he seemingly took a step backward this year, walking 24 batters in 39.1 innings pitched (along with a 7.09 ERA) as a starting pitcher, before he was moved to the bullpen. That move has seemingly paid off. Since that move, Meyer has posted a 0.53 ERA with 20 strikeouts in 17 innings pitched. Most tellingly, he has only walked six batters, nearly halving his walk rate as a starter.

    Meyer's role in the Rochester Red Wing's bullpen was mostly as a long reliever; he pitched more than an inning in most of his appearances, including three appearances that were three innings or longer. His role in the Twins bullpen is less clear. He replaces Michael Tonkin, who served as more of a secondary right-handed setup man. It's possible that Meyer could take that role with the goal of moving towards a higher-leverage setup role in the future.

    Or he could continue to work long relief. The Twins have not said if they now view his future role as a starter or reliever, and longer appearances would allow allow an easier transition back to a starting role later this year. However, given the Twins continued struggles with consistent success at the back of their bullpen, if Meyer succeeds, he'll likely stay in that role with the Twins for the rest of this year.

    John cofounded Twins Daily and co-hosts the Gleeman and the Geek podcast. 
    Follow John Bonnes on Twitter: @TwinsGeek

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    Featured Comments

    Oxtung

    Oxtung 516

  • Verified Member

    • Posted

    who will pitch more innings this season for the Twins, Meyer or J.R. Graham? I'm hoping for Meyer.

    Since Graham has already thrown 31 innings with the Twins it would be hard for Meyer to catch up barring an injury.

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    Dantes929

    Dantes929 4,529

  • Verified Member

    • Posted

     

    Every starter outside of Tommy Milone has a worse career ERA than Ervin Santana. It is incredibly flawed to use career stats to make conclusions about a player. Santana has out performed his career numbers 4 out of the past 5 years in regards to ERA. 

    Funny that Milone is the lone starter with the best ERA and is a likely candidate for being the one to be replaced.    If this were spring training  I am fine with putting Santana in ink but I never like the idea of replacing players that are doing well currently.   For example I would take Santana's career over Scot Diamond's career in a heart beat but I would not take him over Scot Diamond of 2012.   Rotation is doing well and Santana will fit in for someone eventually.   I just see no need for it to be now. 

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    howieramone2

    howieramone2 1,198

  • Verified Member

    • Posted

     

    I don't get the Tyler Jay nonsense. The Twins didn't draft Jay as the sixth overall pick so he could be a middle reliever.

    He's going to the minors to work on becoming a starter. And that's the right decision.

    Brock, I think it's so important to make the playoffs this season, that I would arm the women and children, so to speak.

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    Steve Lein

    Steve Lein 3,180

  • Twins Daily Contributor

    • Posted

     

    Why did you say "recall," John? This is his first time up...right?

     

    He's on the 40-man roster, therefore already "on the team," and was "sent down" to the minors as part of Spring Training. Thus, he's "recalled" now!

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    Brock Beauchamp

    Brock Beauchamp 39,328

  • Administrator

    • Posted

     

    Brock, I think it's so important to make the playoffs this season, that I would arm the women and children, so to speak.

    The problem is that Jay is probably not the answer.

     

    See Example A: Burdi, Nick

     

    And why is making the playoffs so important that the Twins stunt the development of a first round pick? I'd rather see them trade off a marginal prospect to pick up a reliever (what they should do is dig into their deep farm system to fix the problem internally) than screw with a guy who they obviously believe has the potential to be a long-term solution in the rotation. That's bad management of prospects.

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    howieramone2

    howieramone2 1,198

  • Verified Member

    • Posted

     

    The problem is that Jay is probably not the answer.

     

    See Example A: Burdi, Nick

     

    And why is making the playoffs so important that the Twins stunt the development of a first round pick? I'd rather see them trade off a marginal prospect to pick up a reliever (what they should do is dig into their deep farm system to fix the problem internally) than screw with a guy who they obviously believe has the potential to be a long-term solution in the rotation. That's bad management of prospects.

    We will have to agree to disagree. I disagree with the words stunt, screw, and bad.

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    Brock Beauchamp

    Brock Beauchamp 39,328

  • Administrator

    • Posted

     

    We will have to agree to disagree. I disagree with the words stunt, screw, and bad.

    They want him to be a starter. The longer they punt on making him a starter, the longer it will take for him to reach MLB. That's pretty much the definition of "stunt".

     

    They've already signed Jay. He's going to head to the minors very soon and he'll get half a season to start stretching out and facing MiLB hitters. That's half a season wasted if they keep him as a reliever, put him in the minors, and hope hope hope he's good enough to face MLB hitters in the next two months.

     

    Nick Burdi had very similar stats to Jay in college. He went to the minor leagues and performed well in A/A+ but then lit himself on fire the moment he was promoted to AA. What makes you think Jay is ready to go to Minnesota straight from college? Virtually nobody else does it anymore, what makes Jay so different?

     

    There's a lot of hope in your opinion and not much else. There's no indication that Jay would fool MLB hitters when it took Nick Burdi over a month to start fooling AA hitters (and that was after he got a taste of the lower minors).

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    nicksaviking

    nicksaviking 26,755

  • Community Moderator

    • Posted

     

    Brock, I think it's so important to make the playoffs this season, that I would arm the women and children, so to speak.

     

    I would have to disagree.  I think it's important to not only make the playoffs, but win in the playoffs in the years ahead.  This team is not built to win in the playoffs even if they should happen to sneak into it. 

     

    I want to see them play in October, but let's try on the hypothetical situation where the Twins make the playoffs, but once again are knocked out ASAP.  Fair or not, the fans and media will say this is the same old Twins and nothing has changed. 

     

    I think it's more important for the Twins to be relevant most of the year, even if they fall short of the playoffs.  If they can hang on and contend for another month, it will be a wildly successful campaign from what I can see.  It will whet the fans appitite, much as it did when they came up just short in 2001.

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    howieramone2

    howieramone2 1,198

  • Verified Member

    • Posted

     

    They want him to be a starter. The longer they punt on making him a starter, the longer it will take for him to reach MLB. That's pretty much the definition of "stunt".

     

    They've already signed Jay. He's going to head to the minors very soon and he'll get half a season to start stretching out and facing MiLB hitters. That's half a season wasted if they keep him as a reliever, put him in the minors, and hope hope hope he's good enough to face MLB hitters in the next two months.

     

    Nick Burdi had very similar stats to Jay in college. He went to the minor leagues and performed well in A/A+ but then lit himself on fire the moment he was promoted to AA. What makes you think Jay is ready to go to Minnesota straight from college? Virtually nobody else does it anymore, what makes Jay so different?

     

    There's a lot of hope in your opinion and not much else. There's no indication that Jay would fool MLB hitters when it took Nick Burdi over a month to start fooling AA hitters (and that was after he got a taste of the lower minors).

    I have no idea if he is good enough to help this season. Obviously percentages show it is remote. I do know the last thing a team learns how to do, is how to win. If push comes to shove, I would arm the women and children.

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    Brock Beauchamp

    Brock Beauchamp 39,328

  • Administrator

    • Posted

     

    I have no idea if he is good enough to help this season. Obviously percentages show it is remote. I do know the last thing a team learns how to do, is how to win. If push comes to shove, I would arm the women and children.

    But why? From a numbers and common sense perspective, if you're going to take a gamble on a lefty who can help the team in 2015, you start and end the conversation with Taylor Rogers. He's a starter but as we saw with Meyer, moving from starter to reliever shouldn't be much of an issue. He's not only dominating lefties, he's making them look foolish... and he's doing it at the highest level of MiLB, not a second-rate college conference.

     

    There are multiple ways to fix this problem. Jay shouldn't even be in the conversation.

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    USAFChief

    USAFChief 58,010

  • Community Moderator

    • Posted

    But why? From a numbers and common sense perspective, if you're going to take a gamble on a lefty who can help the team in 2015, you start and end the conversation with Taylor Rogers. He's a starter but as we saw with Meyer, moving from starter to reliever shouldn't be much of an issue. He's not only dominating lefties, he's making them look foolish... and he's doing it at the highest level of MiLB, not a second-rate college conference.

     

    There are multiple ways to fix this problem. Jay shouldn't even be in the conversation.

    today he shouldn't be in the conversation.

     

    There's no reason he couldn't put himself in the conversation later this summer.

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    Brock Beauchamp

    Brock Beauchamp 39,328

  • Administrator

    • Posted

     

    today he shouldn't be in the conversation.

    There's no reason he couldn't put himself in the conversation later this summer.

    Sure, but it's a mistake to bank on that being a possibility. Make the guy force his way into the conversation, don't alter his development cycle in hopes there's a remote chance he'll be a fit.

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    drjim

    drjim 7,100

  • Provisional Member

    • Posted

     

    Sure, but it's a mistake to bank on that being a possibility. Make the guy force his way into the conversation, don't alter his development cycle in hopes there's a remote chance he'll be a fit.

     

    But they aren't altering his development cycle - he is going to be a reliever the rest of the year and start next year as a starter. The issue, if he performs, is how aggressive does the front office want to be and do they want to deal with 40 man issues prematurely.

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    Secondary User

    Secondary User 209

  • Verified Member

    • Posted

     

    They want him to be a starter. The longer they punt on making him a starter, the longer it will take for him to reach MLB. That's pretty much the definition of "stunt".

     

     

    The thing is, he's not going to be a starter in the minors this year anyway.  He'll finish off the season coming out of the bullpen and they'll stretch him out over the off season.  So the idea (which is basically what Kansas City was thinking last year with Finnegan) is, even if our long term plan is to stretch this guy out, but that won't start until the offseason, why not make use of him out of the bullpen if we think he's capable.

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    spinowner

    spinowner 5,271

  • Provisional Member

    • Posted

     

    They've already signed Jay. He's going to head to the minors very soon and he'll get half a season to start stretching out and facing MiLB hitters.

    The thing is, there are already six other starters on the Ft. Myers roster. I thought I had read that the plan was to use him in relief for now and then work him in as a starter next spring. Guess we'll see.

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    diehardtwinsfan

    diehardtwinsfan 14,830

  • Community Moderator

    • Posted

     

    But why? From a numbers and common sense perspective, if you're going to take a gamble on a lefty who can help the team in 2015, you start and end the conversation with Taylor Rogers. He's a starter but as we saw with Meyer, moving from starter to reliever shouldn't be much of an issue. He's not only dominating lefties, he's making them look foolish... and he's doing it at the highest level of MiLB, not a second-rate college conference.

     

    There are multiple ways to fix this problem. Jay shouldn't even be in the conversation.

     

    This.  Jay should be pretty far down on the depth chart, and I have a very hard time believing that he would be better out of then pen than both Rogers, Meyer, or O'Rourke. 

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    Otto von Ballpark

    Otto von Ballpark 20,320

  • Community Leader

    • Posted

    Jay would have to be pretty incredible for me to call him up this season.  Chris Sale in 2010 had 15 K's in 6.1 IP at AAA and got called up August 6th, I am thinking near that level of incredible, with us still in the race at that point too.

     

    If he takes longer to get going or posts good but more sane minor league numbers (like Finnegan last year), or we fade in July, I'm not sure there's enough potential benefit opportunities in a month's relief work to offset losing the 40-man roster spot this winter.  Even Finnegan was basically a non-factor for the Royals until an elimination game went extra innings.  (Jay could obviously fill a bigger role in our pen, but I'm not going to push him into it -- he's going to have to definitively claim it.)

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