When Is It Time To Take Action?

Thanks for preaching the gospel of Small Sample Size.  Well said.  The walks and strikeouts stand out to me.  So far in 40-plus PAs, Rosario has two walks and 14 Ks.  Hicks has 5 walks and 12 Ks.  Meanwhile in Chattanooga, Buxton has one walk and 13 Ks.  Schafer in fewer PAs (30) has one walk and 10 whiffs.

Even walks and strikeouts have limited use at this point in the season. If a guy faces a particularly tough pitcher or a guy he doesn't see well, he might golden sombrero and skew the numbers.

Right now, it's all about the eye evaluation and incorporating player attitude and demeanor, which we can't do as outsiders. The stats mean virtually nothing.

Except for the stats that guys have put up for years......and are still getting playing time.

Well, sure. If the guy has a long track record of awful play, that's a different situation entirely.

Though offhand, I'm not really sure what I'd change about the current roster other than blowing up the bullpen and calling up prospects. I'm fine with the rotation in the short-term now that May is in it. I don't like Robinson, Nunez, & Co but I'd rather see the minor leaguers stay in a place where they can play every day for the time being.

But the moment Rosario, Hicks, Pinto, or whomever looks ready, they should be in Minnesota playing every day. Hopefully that time comes soon.

Pinto looks ready now. Right. Now. 

With Pinto, it has always been about his defense. He has eight games played defensively at Rochester, seven of them at catcher. He should stay there and play every day until the Twins are convinced he's ready for MLB defensively or that he'll never be an MLB catcher.

They should have been playing him every day at catcher last season but that's a bridge already crossed and debated to no end.

If we had a good defensive catcher on the team now, it'd be easier to back the idea we need to continue to wait for Pinto to get better at catcher.  But we don't. Pinto has 400 games at catcher in the minors.  Not sure how much better we can expect him to get.

And that's fair but the Twins just aren't going to push Suzuki out of the lineup in April. That's the reality of the situation.

Until the Twins are ready to give Pinto more than 1-2 games behind the plate a week, he should be refining his defensive game in Rochester.

And while it's early in the season, Suzuki is hitting well for the second year in a row.

It's really unlikely that Pinto would be an upgrade at this point and there's a better than 50% chance he'd be a significant downgrade at the position.

Why? Is he really going to learn that much in the next two months? And, if you aren't calling him this year, why do they care if he learns, since he's in his mid-20s already.

 

Suzuki is at replacement level hitting right now, with a wRC+ of 104. I'm not sure "hitting well" is accurate at all.

wRC+ does not adjust for position. That's a good number for a guy behind the dish.

Also, a wRC+ of 100 is "average", not to be confused with "replacement level", which is *considerably* lower than that, probably around 80 or so.

As I said earlier, it's highly unlikely that Pinto is an improvement over Suzuki while there's a better than average chance he's a significant step backward.

My bad, I thought it was replacement.

 

He has .1 WAR so far this year on offense, or about 1.3 WAR or 1.5 WAR if he keeps that up. Hardly inspiring, given his inability to frame a pitch or otherwise do anything on defense other than "handle a staff".

 

of course it is possible Pinto is worse, how will we know if he sits in AAA?

It's not possible Pinto will be worse, it's likely. And it's likely that he'll make the pitching staff - already on very shaky ground - worse along with him.

Why are we champing at the bit to lose more games in April? There's a lot of baseball left to be played. Let Josmil play every day in Rochester and if Suzuki stumbles or gets injured, then give him a call and let him play every day.

What the Twins are doing now is what I wanted to see in 2013 and 2014; Pinto getting every day reps behind the plate. Let him do that for awhile and see what happens. The catcher position is not a position of weakness for the team right now so they don't need to fall over themselves to make a change behind the plate, especially at the risk of losing more early season games in 2015.

Not sure I like that "more than 2" threshold.  2 games a week is basically one per series, or 1/3 of the season.  That's 54 starts right there, without really taking away playing time from Suzuki (who started 115 games at catcher last year, within 1 game per month of 2/3 time).

 

How many games is Pinto going to catch in AAA?  Getting 2/3 of the starts down there will give him 96 for the season, but that's probably close to the maximum for a AAA catcher rather an expectation.  With bus travel, more makeup doubleheaders, etc, I suspect the average number of games caught for AAA catchers is lower than that.  Pinto himself has never caught more than 74 in a minor league season.

 

So that's a difference of 20-42 starts over a full season.  An extra 20-42 starts over 6 months isn't going to mean squat to his defensive "refinement" when he's been a pro catcher for 9 years already.  Especially when he's catching AAA pitchers and in front of AAA umpires.

 

I think the advantage of having those starts in MLB, building a rapport with the MLB pitchers and umpires who ultimately will provide a lot of feedback about his future position, easily outweighs a handful of extra AAA games at this point.  Not to mention getting AB against MLB pitchers.  And given his bat potential, getting Pinto those MLB opportunities is more valuable than giving them to Herrmann who realistically has backup upside.

And that's fair. 1-2 starts was just an approximation. If Pinto was *guaranteed* two starts a week (plus 1-2 starts at DH), then it might make sense to call him up earlier... But in all likelihood, he'd probably get more around 1.5 starts a week and little/no starts at DH.

And that's where my problem lies. Pinto needs to play as much as possible right now and he can't really do that in Minnesota.

If he's raking in June and the Twins can't find room for him, then I'll start to get irritated about the situation but right now, I think there isn't a lot of upside in calling him up and there are certainly more pressing concerns on the roster.