The Twins have reportedly inked catcher/first baseman Wilin Rosario to a minors deal, with Roberto Carlos Feble seemingly first to tweet the news. It comes with a MLB spring invite, per Darren Wolfson of 1500 ESPN (Twitter link).
After running out of opportunities with the Rockies, Rosario took his slugging talents to Asia for the past three seasons. He thrived as a power-hitting first baseman in the KBO for two years before landing in Japan’s Nippon Professional Baseball in 2018. He struggled there, however, producing a meager .242/.285/.374 slash in 302 plate appearances.
Rosario remains most notable for his pop, which is significant enough largely to make up for his on-base deficiencies — or, perhaps more accurately, that was the case when he was still considered capable of serving behind the dish. Unfortunately, Rosario never impressed defensively as a backstop, so he’s now mostly limited to playing first base or serving as a DH. He’ll have to do better than his lifetime MLB 98 OPS+ if he hopes to carve out a role at the game’s highest level. Rosario turns thirty later this month.
That’s a solid deal
Meh
These signings don’t do much to make a guy feel like they are putting a team together to compete. Reminds me of Ted Thompson always signing “street” FA’s that we’re pushing a broom and hadn’t been in a camp for a couple of years.
It’s a minors deal.. chill out man.
I get the plan, sign guys for cheap who don’t block the current young prospects and who can be flipped at the deadline for even more prospects (if they flash their former value) but it would be nice to see them spend money on a free agent who was actually good at baseball last year.
Did you not hear that Nelson Cruz signed with them?
Nelson Cruz signed with the Twins because he’s shrewd.
1. He’s absolutely guaranteed plate appearances.
2. He’ll be padding his stats in the worst division in baseball.
3. He’ll likely be in the playoffs when the Twins trade him at the deadline to a contender.
I don’t think that’s the plan here. They are just giving him a shot, I doubt teams will be lining up at the deadline to acquire this guy. To be honest, it would take a VERY hot spring training for him to even make the team.
Every team takes a few MiLB flyers. Relax.
Its clearly a depth move. No risk, unknown reward @ a shallow position league wide. It toally works for me.
1B/DH is not a shallow position league wide. Because he is definitely not a catcher.
Twins continuing to work on cornering the market on RH sluggers with no other skills.
I thought this guy was going to be a stud after his first few seasons.
Good no risk high reward signing. He could possibly have a good enough st’ing to play some catcher v.s. lh’ed pitchers. The guy isn’t much of an option at dh 1st compared to the other three or four guys they already have and I can’t imagine they’re very stupid so I’m sure he could play in 30 games at catcher. The Twins problem seems to be even worse than many mid-market teams in that they don’t consolidate enough mlb players into higher end usually late twenties players with medium contracts and lose too many “prospects” to other teams for nothing. David Peraltra would be (have been) a good example of the type I’m talking about. Trading the Erving Santana’s (Whichever one they have, same type if not him) Max Keppler could have been one of the pieces in a deal for a young pitcher. The Ray’s are worse off right now if they don’t start consolidating but run the risk of trading off the next Zobrist too soon. I wonder what they could have gotten for him after his best season offensively.
I would be shocked if he played a single inning behind the plate. He isn’t a catcher, at all. Not even part-time.
Bad milb signing then.
Shout out to Roberto Carlos Feble for getting this scoop. I can just see it now, Roberto is at the local watering hole and he’s trying to get free beer… “Don’t you know who I am?” Then he whips out his IPad and brings up MLBTR and finds this thread and says “See? I’m somebody”
they need guys who can shovel the manure out of the rings after the elephant show. Nothing harmed here, but the circus looks a little thin in the ball jugglers and gymnastic department. 220 HR here we come.. of course 200 was good for 103 losses 3 seasons ago.. Pitching is so defense dependent and while the outfield looks mainly up to the task with the starters, the infield looks a little porous: Joe won’t be there to save that 30+ errors on the bad throws from the left side.. and gibson and Perez I believe are very ground ball dependent..
Cool; now we have the catcher that we need to expose in the expansion draft…… Oh, wait.
See you in Rochester, Wilin!
dang, incredible how hard it is to keep the ball in front of yourself for some guys. Really, withought that, he’d have been an acceptable bat-first catcher.
Interesting anecdotal example of how the Japanese league is more competitive than the Korean league.
Rick Vandenhurk as well
RH with pop that can play serviceable 1b/dh………Hmmmmm………..Austin/Cron/Sano/Cruz already fill that. Austin will already fill that at AAA. How about a closer , starter or in my wildest dreams Marwin G who can fill in forever of whom flops again this year ( Sano/Buxton/Kepler/Schoop or if Polanco tests positive again?? Marwins a switch hitter too right? He makes SOOOOOOOO much sense there’s no way in hell it will happen. At least its a minors deal so not that big of a deal. Just be nice to see them address our REAL needs.
He’ll catch some bullpens in spring training then head back to the Asian leagues if he still wants to play.
Hope this doesn’t mean Willians Astudillo is not an option!!!
An option for what, exactly? Catcher?
Castro, Garver and Astudillo would make 3, but one of them is almost assuredly going to be in AAA.
This is a signing for minor league and spring training depth. The Twins let all of their top catching prospects walk a couple years ago so there’s a dearth of guys at high levels of the minors to fill in gaps.
Rosario has no upside. Even I can’t think the Twins are so ridiculous they’d be expecting him to play on the 25 man this year.
I always thought this guy’s bat had solid potential. His poor showing in Japan last year was a bit of a red flag, but this is a decent lotto-ticket signing.