A surge at the plate by Logan Morrison would be more than welcomed by the Twins, who have watched Eduardo Escobar and Eddie Rosario carry the offense the past few weeks.
But it's hard to do that from the bench, where Morrison was at the start of Tuesday's game against Boston.
Despite being 5-for-15 in his career against Red Sox lefthander Chris Sale, Morrison did not start. All five of those hits were singles, and apparently weren't that impressive to the person writing out the lineup card.
"We looked at that pretty closely, trying to gauge how we are going to go about the next couple of days," manager Paul Molitor said. "You can look at the hits and see how many you liked and how many you didn't."
So Joe Mauer started at first and Robbie Grossman was the designated hitter while Morrison, batting .191 with seven homers and 24 RBI, was not in the lineup.
But Morrison believes that surge will come.
"I feel good at the plate," he said. "I'm seeing the ball good."
It hasn't clicked yet for the free agent, who belted a career-high 38 home runs for Tampa Bay last season. But hitting coach James Rowson said he believes Morrison is taking good at-bats and agrees the slugger will eventually get going.
"The work ethic is there," Rowson said. "The way he is getting after it is there. The confidence, to me, is still there because he is putting in the work. I'm just going to rely on the fact that this guy has a track record and what he did last year. I think he's going to come along. He just needs to keep grinding at it."
Puerto Rican pride
One person not surprised by Rosario's success this season is Red Sox manager Alex Cora, a fellow Puerto Rico native.
"Eddie's one of my favorite players," said Cora, who played against Rosario in winter ball and was his general manager for the 2017 World Baseball Classic. "He's a very athletic kid that tool-wise was always up there. It was just a matter of him slowing down the game."
Cora also had Twins pitcher Jose Berrios on that Puerto Rico team that finished second in the 2017 WBC, behind Team USA.
"[Berrios'] work ethic is unreal," Cora said. "I still remember that [2012 amateur] draft. Everybody talks about Carlos [Correa, the Astros shortstop], obviously. But they played against each other in the biggest showcases, and it was fun to watch, [Berrios] dominating Carlos and all of a sudden, Carlos would hit one out."
Plays one, sits one
Miguel Sano, down at Class A Fort Myers to rediscover himself, was 2-for-4 with a double, a walk, two runs and no strikeouts in his first game for the Miracle.
On Tuesday, he was not in the lineup.
That is all according to plan, as the Twins intend to hold Sano out of games from time to time for extra work.
"We're monitoring it fairly closely," Molitor said. "I know about the workouts he's had. I know about his performance last night. It's not etched in stone, the day-to-day stuff, in terms of what days he's going to play and what days he's going to back off and that kind of stuff.
"We tried to be very mindful of how we were going to put it together, in a general sense. We just have to carry it out."
Etc.
• The Twins aren't too concerned about the soreness righthander Trevor May is experiencing at Class AAA Rochester. May came down with the problem after appearing in seven games, three of them starts, for the Red Wings. "Just general soreness," Chief Baseball Officer Derek Falvey said.
• Ervin Santana threw 35 pitches during a bullpen session Monday and will face hitters Friday. Molitor said he threw his full repertoire of pitches.
Staff writer Joe Christensen contributed to this report.
