May Awards/Rochester Red Wings

Today I will continue to look at the month of May in the Twins system. Today I will be moving to the Rochester Red Wings who did not have a very good month of May as a team, but collectively there was some solid performances. I thought I would acknowledge those performances. If you have a comment on my selections I welcome you to leave a comment in the comment box or shoot me an email at travis_aune@yahoo.com.

• Hitter of the Month: Jose Morales- Jose Morales came on the scene in May for the Red Wings and had a very solid month at the plate. He has played mostly as the designated hitter with Wilson Ramos getting most of the catching duties. That has hurt Morales chances to make it back up to the Twins as he just has not had enough opportunities to show he ready to take over the backup catching duties for the Twins. However, swinging the bat was not a problem in May and I know he has struggled in June so far, but he is too good to not hit. He may not be a gold glove catcher or hit a lot of homeruns, but he is a 300 hitter and by years end that is where he will be if he is in Rochester that long and right now I think it is a 50-50 chance he spends the season in Rochester. In May Morales hit a very good .309 along with four doubles and five rbi's. He walked eight times while striking out eleven times. Morales had a very good .397 on base percentage which is very good for someone not taking a lot of walks. His .382 slugging percentage is pretty typical for a guy that is a singles hitter who does not hit for much power so that is not surprising. Morales OPS was a very respectable .779 at the plate and the big thing for him is if he can keep his on base percentage up he will be just fine. It will be interesting if he can bounce back the second half of June and get his average back in the 300's like it belongs. If that should happen I happen to think it would not be long before he gets called back up to the big leagues.
• Others Considered: Brock Peterson, Trevor Plouffe, Danny Valencia

• Pitcher of the Month: Kyle Waldrop- Normally I don't like to give this award to a reliever so one of two things needed to happen for a reliever to get the award. One if the starters weren't worthy of it, but that is not the case as their was a starter that was heavily considered. The second is if a reliever has an especially good month and that is totally the case in the month of May. Kyle Waldrop was filthy in the month of May and got himself in position for a promotion to the Twins if their is a need. Kyle Waldrop is a name many Twins fans are not familiar with as he has kind of came out of nowhere, but he was a 1st round pick in 2004 out of high school in Knoxville, Tennessee. He suffered a shoulder injury that forced him to miss the entire 2008 season and finally now he is completely healthy and showing what people thought of him coming out of high school. He has been awesome this year, but May was especially good for Waldrop as he put up great numbers in May for the Red Wings. In May, Waldrop went 1-0 with a miniscule 0.84 era in 11 games along with a save. Waldrop worked 21.1 innings and only gave up two earned runs. He only walked four guys while striking out 16. He held opponents to a very good .214 batting average. The stat that really stood out to me in May for Waldrop was he had a 3.27 to 1 ground ball to fly out rate which means he is a ground ball machine and that really transfers well into the Major Leagues. If Waldrop keeps it up it will not be long before he is up with the Twins.
• Others Considered: Matt Fox, Anthony Slama