Twins Sign OF Shane Robinson

This transaction actually occurred a few days ago, but somehow all of us Twinkie Town writers collectively herped a derp and it got past our social media presence.

To remedy that problem, I'm here to talk about the minor league signing of outfielder Shane Robinson. A career .231/.303/.308 hitter, the 30-year old has spent parts of 5 seasons in the majors with the St. Louis Cardinals.

Now, there's no doubt that Robinson isn't a candidate to be the starting center fielder in Minnesota for the 2015 season. However, he's certainly going to act as organizational depth and may even see some playing time in center field before Byron Buxton's arrival. In limited action, he's also rated as a good defensive outfielder at all three defensive positions, so there's the possibility he may even serve in the role we expect to see Jordan Schafer perform next season.

While Robinson hasn't shown much with the bat, he doesn't even have a full season's worth of plate appearances to his name (452 in his career) and his batting average has been suppressed due to a .259 BABIP, thanks to a career 14.7 infield fly percentage (the MLB average last year was under 10%). Basically, his lack of offense is caused by the same problem Brian Dozier has, which is that he pops the ball up too often. On FanGraphs, his Steamer projection suggests he'll hit .254/.324/.356, which is still pretty light but much more tolerable than his career line.

I still expect Danny Santana and/or Jordan Schafer to man center field for the Twins until Byron Buxton arrives, but if there are any injuries I bet there's a chance that Robinson may see some time with the big league club. No, he won't be a significant difference maker and please don't make any "World Series, here we come!" comments, but we've seen Jason Repko, Darin Mastroianni, Schafer, and similar players in the majors and Robinson certainly fits in that same vein.