Santana ranked 26th on Zach Sanders’ rankings, behind Drew Stubbs and ahead of Lorenzo Cain.
The Twins have been painfully short on innovation the last four years — not incidentally all 90-loss seasons — but one of the most creative things the club has done was moving infielder Danny Santana from the infield to center field.
The beginning to Aaron Hicks’ career has not been pretty, and with the Twins’ pre-Fuld outfield loaded with trudgers like Josh Willingham, Chris Parmelee and Oswaldo Arcia, it was clear the club needed another option in center. In fact, even with Sam Fuld around both he and Hicks suffered concussions right around the same time — necessitating another option out there.
Santana came up in early May and stayed up for good. He played shortstop for about the first week and then was pretty much a full-time center fielder with the exception of a couple spurts at short — one a little ways down the road and then to end the season.
And that might be where Santana, whose minor league track record clearly doesn’t match what he did this year, will end up. The early indications from new Twins manager Paul Molitor is that Santana will likely be the club’s regular shortstop, which not only creates a second hold in a ghastly Twins outfield — left field being the other — but displaces the erstwhile Eduardo Escobar, who in fact had a rather nice season at that spot (.275/.315/.406). Read the rest of this entry »
