Devon Young

Just a short note for now ’cause college is eating up my time and so is work. I’m sure I’ll adjust in a couple of weeks and give you plenty to read in the IL offseason. But for now, I want to express surprise and disbelief that the Twins are not calling up Danny Valencia anytime soon, despite Justin Morneau’s injury. Some of you might not quite grasp why this is shocking to me, partly because of what Joe Posnanski wrote today about Replacement Level Players. Note the part where he uses two examples of players who’ve lived in AAA but when given the chance this year, they’ve done quite well in the majors. Oh, the part that stings is that the two players he uses as examples are Garrett Jones and Randy Ruiz… who were both Rochester Red Wings in 2008. Yeah, they could’ve been doing their damage as Twins this year. Which just makes me want to ask why Danny Valencia isn’t getting a deserved September call up.

Before anyone tells me that Jones stunk when he played 31 games in Minnesota in ‘07, please go check his splits. His weakness was that he couldn’t hit lefties, but he seemed to come out of his funk in September, hitting a solid .297/.341/.486 in 14 games (more games than any other month that year), so he started to adjust to major league pitching and then the Twins gave up on him. It should also be noted that when Jones was batting in the 6th spot in the order, he was getting on base at a .368 clip and slugged a purdy .588! Then the Twins sent him packing for some odd reason and the next time he’s in the majors, he just picks up where he left off and everybody’s wowwed.

PS. if you don’t know what VORP is, here’s the definition.