An ill-advised Twins roster projection

In the real world, baseball teams don’t just look at spring training stats to build their roster before the season. We should always be wary of small sample sizes, because they may not reflect a player’s true skill level.

Let’s throw that out the window.

Today I will make a 25 man roster based entirely on the first week (or so) of spring training games this year. Oh, and I do mean entirely. You’ll see what I mean.

Outfielders

Drew Stubbs, Robbie Grossman, Eddie Rosario, Byron Buxton

Byron Buxton's 2-12 start at the plate places him on the bench as a 4th outfielder in my ill-advised Twins roster. Stubbs is my starting center fielder, Rosario and Grossman in the corners. Max Kepler doesn’t make the team, despite his 2 doubles yesterday.

Infielders

Matt Hague, Benji Gonzalez, Tommy Field, Miguel Sano, Leonardo Reginatto, Danny Santana, Chris Gimenez, Mitch Garver

You’ll notice some names missing here. Joe Mauer and Brian Dozier both fail to make the team with sub .500 OPS marks. Meanwhile, Matt Hague’s OPS is 1.128 thanks to 3 doubles and 5 hits in 12 at bats.

At catcher, Gimenez and Garver have been the top performers, they both have OPS greater than 1. Newly signed Jason Castro doesn’t make the team.

Designated hitter

ByungHo Park

Backed by two homers this spring, Park leads the team in OPS at 1.429. This is one of the only “normal” picks. Don’t get used to it.

Starting rotation

Trevor May, Jose Berrios, Ervin Santana, Stephen Gonsalves, Fernando Romero.

Phil Hughes, Kyle Gibson, and Hector Santiago have struggled in their first few starts, taking them out of consideration. These five have had nice starts to spring training. Gonsalves and Romero get early call ups.

Bullpen

Justin Haley, Craig Breslow, Jake Reed, Taylor Rogers, Ryan Pressly, Drew Rucinski, Brandon Kintzler.

In this bullpen, I’d have Haley be the long man, and Pressly at closer. Breslow makes the team as a LOOGY to accompany Taylor Rogers. There were minor league starters who I decided to not put in the bullpen like Randy Rosario (because they’re mainly starters).

Lineup

Benji Gonzalez, SS

Leonardo Reginatto, 2B

Eddie Rosario, LF

Miguel Sano, 3B

ByungHo Park, DH

Robbie Grossman, RF

Matt Hague, 1B

Mitch Garver, C

Drew Stubbs, CF

Bench:

Danny Santana, Tommy Field, Chris Gimenez, Byron Buxton

How bad would this be?

Pretty bad. Effectively this is a replacement level team with a few good players, and some average players. This team might win 60.

What have we learned?

1. Don’t do this.
2. The Twins have a bunch of non-roster invitees doing pretty well this first week, which is nice.
3. There wasn’t enough news to put into a link dump.

Song of the day because why not? It’s kinda related (okay, just the title of the song).