Minnesota Twins Daily Morning Dip: White Hot Stove

Minnesota Twins Daily Dip, December 9th, 2017

Welcome to the December 9th edition of the Daily Dip, your daily piece of news and notes here on Puckett’s Pond, offseason edition. You’ll find the most recent news of the Minnesota Twins organization, stories from around the game, and links to any information you may want to know about the Minnesota Twins or baseball as we work our way through the hot stove season!

Minnesota Twins Organizational Scores

Australian Baseball League Update
For Brisbane, Aaron Whitefield continues to be a solid leadoff guy, going 1-4 and stealing his 5th base of the ABL season. Whitefield is hitting .326/.400/.488 with 4 doubles, a home run, and a handful of steals, while posting a 6/13 BB/K ratio.

Dominican Winter League Update
Kennys Vargas on Thursday had another rough day making contact, going 0-3 for Aguilas Cibaenas, but he did have two walks and a strikeout. On Friday, he had another 0-3 game with a walk. In the DWL, he’s hit .130/.231/.304 with a double and a home run, posting a 3/9 BB/K ratio.

Venezuelan Winter League Update
Williams Astudillo played left field on Thursday, going 0-3 with an RBI and actually had a strikeout for Caribes de Anzoategui. On Friday, he split time between left field and catcher, going 2-6 with a double, a run, and an RBI. He also stole a base. In Venezuela, Astudillo has hit .318/.367/.430 with 8 doubles, 3 home runs, and a stolen base while posting a 9/4 BB/K ratio so far.

Minnesota Twins news and notes

Johan pick at ’99 meetings was gold
MLB.com highlights the Rule 5 selection of Johan Santana, which is one of a number of excellent Rule 5 picks the Twins have made over the years, including Shane Mack.

Twins sign Severino
The Minnesota Twins on Friday announced the signing of former Braves prospect Yunior Severino. Severino was among the prospects that were released from the Braves as punishment for international violations recently.

Twins still working on Marte
Even after signing Severino, the Twins could still re-sign Jelfrey Marte, their top international signing this summer who had his contract cancelled when vision issues were found that were significant enough to negate the contract’s initial terms.

Twins bring in pitching analytics expert Kalk
One of the original pioneers of PitchF/X pitching analysis was signed by the Twins to do pitching analysis. Josh Kalk had been working with the Rays organization. Mentioned in this article is minor league managerial movement in a bullet point at the end of the article.

Twins announce winter caravan dates/locations
The Minnesota Twins announced the players who will participate in the Winter Caravan and the locations and dates for the trip. One notable thing is that while there are multiple stops in Iowa, a stop in North Dakota, and a stop in Wisconsin, none of the 40 stops includes “Twins Territory” state South Dakota.

Notes from around baseball

Next: Twins sign former Braves prospect

One Last Thing

While not a Twin directly in his career, the impact of Branch Rickey is certainly felt throughout the game, and indirectly impacted the existence of the Twins in Minnesota. While owner Calvin Griffith was the driving force behind the move out of Washington, D.C., the Continental League that Rickey pushed in 1959 significantly expanded the push to the midwest and not JUST to the west coast.

Rickey is known significantly for his role as the general manager to sign Jackie Robinson and help to integrate the game of baseball, but he has many significant impacts on the game beyond that.

Rickey worked with the St. Louis Cardinals from 1919 to 1942, and he very notably developed the minor leagues as a way to develop players to be ready for the major leagues before they arrived rather than having players sink or swim at the big league level. He also innovated scouting as a way to fill his minor league rosters.

Rickey passed away 52 years ago today, which is incredible to consider, thinking of the impact things he did still have today. RIP, Branch.