The evolution of Brian Dozier included a position switch and a major change to his swing, but first came two significant blows to the ego for the former Twins minor league player of the year.

It was Fall 2012, and looking back, Dozier said recently, those disappointments were the beginning to what is becoming a good major league career. The first was the Twins’ decision not to recall him after an August demotion; the second was the team’s decision to move him from shortstop to second base.

“It was difficult at the time,” Dozier said, “but I finally embraced it, and that was probably the turning point of my career.”

With fan voting for the July 14 All-Star Game in full swing, one can make a strong case that Dozier, 28, is the majors’ best second baseman. Yet despite ranking first in home runs (15), runs batted in (37), runs scored (57) and slugging percentage (.534) — and second in doubles (23) — he hasn’t cracked the top 5 in American League voting at his position.

That has surprised Twins manager Paul Molitor.

“I don’t know what the Minnesota fan base has done as far as trying to make a stand,” he said last week. “A lot of times those votes are fueled by your own fan base and how much commitment there is to making those things happen.”

Regardless, Dozier is about where the Twins expected him to be, an everyday starter on a competitive team. That seemed far away on Sept. 1, 2012.

A BITTER PILL

Dozier had played 84 games with the Twins, all at short, when he was sent back to Triple-A Rochester on Aug. 14. He was hitting .234 with 33 RBIs and six walks and expected to be back as soon as major league rosters expanded on Sept. 1.

As the season wound down, then-Red Wings manager Gene Glynn told a handful of players to be ready.

“I remember Geno calling me and saying, ‘Probably a handful of you will be going up, get your bags,’ all that kind of stuff,” Dozier recalled. “I hadn’t heard anything, and sure enough, everyone went up but me.”

It was a bitter pill to swallow for Dozier, but it soon got worse during a three-way phone call with then-Twins manager Ron Gardenhire and general manager Terry Ryan, who told him he’d be switching positions until further notice.

“I wanted to punch somebody in the face when I heard that I was not going to be a shortstop anymore,” Dozier said.

Three years later, that one still appears to sting a little, even as Dozier acknowledges the move as successful.

“In my mind right now, will I tell you I can still play shortstop? In my mind, I can,” he said. “But I think that was the best move for my career. I don’t know if that took a little bit of pressure off and allowed me to just go and play, rather than fight for shortstop.”

Neither decision was easy, Ryan said, even as Dozier finished his Triple-A season with a .229 batting average in 55 games and struggled defensively with the Twins (15 errors).

“That wasn’t a pleasant call to me, because I know how much it meant to him to come back,” Ryan said. “But at that time, between Gardy and some of the staff, and some of the Triple-A staff — and I was there quite a bit at the end — he just didn’t warrant that promotion again. So we made the call and said, ‘Listen, we’re not down on you by any stretch, but we don’t think you deserve the call-up. Get to work.’ ”

He did, but it took him a while. Asked how long it took him to stop being angry and start accepting the situation, Dozier said, “I’d probably say till January.”

“Not that I deserved to get called back up,” he added. “We were struggling at the big league level, and not winning games, so it was a ‘Why not?’ kind of thing. There was a lot of disappointment.”

But just before TwinsFest in January, he called Molitor — then a roving infield and base-running instructor — and asked him to tutor him in the fine points of second base. They worked together at Molitor’s alma mater, the University of Minnesota.

MAKING ADJUSTMENTS

“It became pretty obvious right away that it wasn’t going to be a big challenge for him to get footwork down and to understand the speed of the play,” Molitor said. “We knew he had arm strength from being at shortstop, so it was just a matter of kind of doing it for awhile until it took over for him.”

Dozier hasn’t taken a grounder at shortstop since.

“My impression was, ‘Hey, I’ve got to make this defensive thing to give myself a chance to get back,’ ” Molitor said.

Correct, Dozier said. After the demotion, the snub, the position change — and later a new approach in the batter’s box — Dozier said he came to accept the fact that it wasn’t the Twins, it was him.

“If you get sent down, you’ve got to make adjustments,” he says now. “A lot of people that get sent down and don’t come back, or keep going up and down, are those that don’t take in the fact that you have to make adjustments. That’s the reason you’re not getting the job done.”

Even after winning the second base job in spring training 2013, Dozier changed his swing after a long back-and-forth with batting coach Tom Brunansky during an April trip to Detroit.

“He felt that he was doing enough, and I felt there was a little more there, so we kind of had a ‘Come to Jesus’ meeting,” Brunansky said. “It was kind of one-sided.”

After looking at a lot of video — of himself and other hitters — Dozier finally was convinced he was shorting himself on power. He starting stepping earlier and concentrated on generating power through his legs.

He hit 18 homers in 2013, 23 last season and is now on pace for 30. He hit 33 doubles in each of the past two seasons, and already has 23 this season.

“To his credit,” Brunansky said, “he went out and implemented it, and it’s kind of taken off. I use the term ‘turn the page,’ where he’s come from a young guy hoping to be a big league ballplayer to realizing that he belongs here. And he’s one of the best second basemen in the game.”

BRUNO’S BLOWUP

Brunansky understands the frustrations of young players. After not making the then-California Angels’ 25-man roster out of spring training in 1981, he asked to be traded. A year later he was, to the Twins, with whom he started a 12-year major league career.

“When I got sent out, I remember telling our general manager at the time, it was Buzzie Bavazi, I told him if I wasn’t one of the best 25 athletes on this club, then get rid of me,” Brunansky said. “Here I am, 20, 21 years old telling this to a seasoned general manager, and our manager at the time — Gene Mauch — was there.

“You sit back and look at those things and ’embarrassing’ is probably a pretty good word for that.”

Dozier internalized his disappointment, and anger.

“It wasn’t a big blowup dialog,” Ryan recalled.

But it did the trick.

“What I respect about (Ryan) is he’s always honest, even if it’s something you don’t want to hear,” Dozier said. “I like a man that’s straight up with you, whether you want to hear it or not. I didn’t want to hear that, because I wanted to be a shortstop. Looking back at it now, that was just the young side of me not willing to change, not willing to do whatever it takes to be up here.

“I wanted to prove to everybody I could still play shortstop, and not listening to the fact that he’s giving me the opportunity to be a second baseman up here.”

Not at first, anyway.

Follow John Shipley at twitter.com/shipleykid.