In 2002 he was promoted again to the High-A California League's San Jose Giants. Bonser continued to impress with a 2.88 ERA in 28 games and 128 innings pitched. He was promoted again to the AA Texas league Shreveport franchise where he went 1-2 but his ERA dropped to a stingy 1.11 with 23 strikeouts and only 3 earned runs.
Spring camp broke in 2003 with his assignment to the new affiliate at Class AA the Norwich Navigators as a starter. He struggled more against the batting in the Eastern League, giving up 60 earned runs, 11 home runs and 67 walks for a 4.00 ERA on 135 innings of work and 24 games. His record was 7-10. He was nonetheless promoted to AAA Fresno where he brought his ERA down to 3.13 with 8 earned runs and 28 strikeouts. He got a taste of the big leagues in 2003, pitching 3 innings for San Francisco.
As high as the Giants had been on Bonser, apparently they felt that he was deal-worthy. He was traded, along with Francisco Liriano and Joe Nathan to the Twins as part of the deal for A.J. Pierzynski.
He began the 2004 season with the Twins. On evaluation, some of their pitching staff thought he might have been brought along a bit too quickly, and he couldn't beat out some of the depth of talent that they had in Rochester. They sent him back to Class AA to their New Britain RockCats affiliate.
Boof got all boo-hoo: The petulant pitcher became a bit moody, and took his debut year with the Twins down a peg or two in the process. He had a winning record, but his ERA climbed to 4.37 largely on the 22 dingers, most of which were delivered during the dour days of April and May. He got it back on track, though, and still wound up his stint there with an impressive 146 strike outs and only 35 earned runs.
He was promoted to Rochester where Boof met Roof. Phil Roof, the skipper of the RedWings in 2004, is a great judge of talent and character. You want to impress him. So Boof stepped it up, delivering a 1.29 ERA with 7 strikeouts and 1 earned run, a dinger, in 7 innings of audition work.
Bonser has been in Rochester in 2005, where he's delivered a 10-7 performance and a 3.99 ERA with another triple digit year in Ks (148). Unfortunately, his earned-run count is up (64) as is his home run count (20).
Those who've followed the FAB50 know that it's not usual for us to have Triple-A players this low down on the list (49). So how did Boof bop to the bottom of the count?
There is no question that Bonser can be a contributor to the Twins. He already unfortunately seems to have the mercurial major league attitude. Now he needs to work on getting his location more consistent and refine his range of pitches to compensate for a drop in speed on his fastball that may be partially a weight issue.
His Fernando Valenzuela-like 230 lbs. makes Boof beefy, but it may not be helping him hurl with heft. What we hear from the organization is that Bonser could find himself a long to middle reliever with the Twins if he can improve location and get his dinger count down. He enters the FAB50 at 49 because we believe that he has that pretty good shot at the bullpen. He may end up with some time in Rochester for re-tuning if he's bullpen bound. Boof is used to starting, and he may need a bit of time in less stressful surroundings for bullpen duty.
Our talent mavens tell us that his shot as a starter in the competitive world of Twins pitching is below average in likelihood unless there are significant performance and attitudinal changes that make him more comptetitive within the organization.
