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He has been released per Dick Bremer on tonight's telecast.

Good chance to practice for extra innings. Runner on second and no outs.....

Good for Madea. Gives up two first pitch homers and doesn't even get close to Mahle. He is a nice guy.

"You guys 'member that time when the Twins had that one pitcher, who could get outs an' stuff? 'Member that? That was awesome."

This is where you walk Votto.....

Hmmm. Maybe Kenta's 5 game resurgence had more to do with facing the Royals once and the Tigers thrice. If so, punting on 2022 by trading Berrios looks to have been a very prudent move.

With our defensive outfield, best to pitch no hitters.

Wow. 2 pitches. Two right down the middle. Two homers.... and Mahle comes to the plate........

Boy, Kenta just clearly is not there mentally. He should probably pull himself out of this game so he doesn't keep hurting the team.

First pitch meat. There goes the shutout.

Total mental breakdown there by Kenta, giving up that homer.

Sorry TwinsDr2021, I drafted a detailed reply and it disappeared when I posted it. I will keep this shorter. Here are the guys likely to be jettisoned from the current 40 man roster, either released or FA's: Burrows; Colome; Farrell; Gant; Law; Minaya; Pineda; Simmons; Cave; on the bubble Smeltzer; Thorpe; Gordon; Astudillo; Garlick; Refsnyder. That is potentially up to 15 players, absent trades, or 37.5% of their roster. So I see plenty of roster flexibility to avoid losing the next Baddoo in the Rule V draft.

Polanco should be very, very proud. He's made every adjustment and fought through every adversity so far. I look forward to him leading a younger, hungry team into the postseason in the (hopefully near) future.

There goes the Reds' shutout.

Ok! Stay tuned, game hasn't started yet.

How many mlb teams would pay Berrios $30 million per? I know it only takes one, but it surely is less than 5(maybe only the Dodgers). There are so many horrible contracts in baseball. Look at the top 30 paid pitchers in baseball. How many of those contracts are are just God awful, ridiculous? I counted at least half, if not a bit more.

Smalley, talking about Votto, opines that when you get on a hot streak where your mechanics are just right, it makes hitting a homer just as easy as hitting a single. Which suggests that almost every hitter has broken mechanics more often than not.

Boy, both pitchers just having mental struggles tonight, giving up all these baserunners.

There goes the perfect game and the no-hitter..... again.

There goes the perfect game and the no-hitter......

Keep us posted ... might be the more interesting game

Austin Martin batting leadoff for Wichita tonight.

We often comment on whether current Twins are good, average or bad hitters by using OPS. The problem I see is we're using a broad average for everyone not broken down by position. I looked around the Internet and found an article in ScoreSheetWiz where the author had taken the average of the top 30 players in each position over the last 3 years and averaged their OPS. That should give you what the average starter in MLB does at that position by taking out emergency fill ins, utility players, etc. and sounds like a good basis for comparison. Here's the comparison to current Twins, based on their performance for this season to date. I've also put their career OPS in parenthesis with the YTD comparison where they'd been around long enough to make that meaningful. The positions go from lowest to highest by MLB average OPS. Position Average/Expected OPS Current Twin OPS/(Career) Difference Catcher .748 Garver .889 (.834) Plus .151 (+ .86) Jeffers .720 Minus .028 Shortstop .749 Simmons .576 (.688) Minus .173 (-.061) Second Base .763 Polanco .797 (.774) Plus .034 (+.011) Centerfield .777 Buxton 1.176 (.751) Plus .409 (-.026) Kepler .759 Minus .018 Third Base .805 Donaldson .840 (.875) Plus .035 (+.070) Arraez .747 (.793) Minus .058 (-.012) Corner OF .819 Kepler .722 (.759) Minus .097 (-060) Larnach .676 Minus .143 Rooker .750 Minus .069 First Base .859 Kirilloff .722 Minus .137 Sano .746 (C .819) Minus .113 (-.040) I thought this was kind of interesting and helps explain where our holes are forward. For example, Arraez is a below average hitting starter this year either at 3rd or left-field, about average in 2nd base, but career wise above average at 2nd base, average at 3rd, and below average for corner outfield. Since he adds no surplus defensive value, he really needs to OPS >.800 if he's not going to play 2nd base. Kepler is a little tougher to evaluate since his bat is clearly significantly below average for a corner outfielder, and a little below average for centerfielder, but he does offer surplus defensive value in a corner outfield spots, not so much centerfield. That's why I think is an ideal 3rd or 4th outfielder, but not 1 of our top 2. The 2 Rookies are way below average but this is their 1st year so you hope for improvement and it's a small sample size. Same for Kirilloff. Sano is also a below average hitting starter at 1st Base who doesn't offer any surplus defensive value. I didn't bother with guys like Jake Cave (.508 (.735)) or Willians Astudillo (.721 (.738)) since they are way below an average starter unless they play shortstop, and even then they're not very strong. Both are classic back end roster filler and we should be looking for upgrades like Gordon, Refsnyder and others. I do think this helps explain why were having trouble scoring runs. We only have 3 above average hitters for their position now that Cruz is gone, Donaldson, Polanco and Garver, and only Polanco really plays every day. Most days we're liable only have 2 players who are average or better hitters for their position. The batting order is really weighed down by poor performance at the corner outfield spots, centerfield when Buxton isn't there (even worse when someone other than Kepler is playing centerfield), and shortstop. I guess this tells me 4 things 1st, re-sign Buxton. He is critical to the order. 2nd, I was wrong about Donaldson. He is pretty valuable at the plate and Arraez is not an adequate replacement. 3rd, we need better hitting corner outfielders and Kepler is not the answer. The current strategy of playing Rooker and Larnach every day is the right one because those guys have to improve to give us more balance in the order. 4th, Arraez is probably best used as a utility player with Polanco the better hitter and better fielder at 2nd base. He's a good utility player, more of an average hitter for a starter, and we can get him 400 – 500 bats to utilize his on-base skills by playing him at a variety of spots. We talk a lot about how the pitching has to improve to truly contend. I postulate the lineup has to improve as well. I think most contending have average or better hitters for their positions in at least 5 or 6 of the 9 spots. We have 4 if you assume that someone like that Cruz is the DH, a position where I was unable to find an average OPS. otherwise 3. The current lineup isn't good enough to compete and absolutely isn't good enough if the pitching is below average. Helps explain this year's performance and helps us know what we need to do for next year.

Before the pandemic hit last year I had the chance to drive down the road to Hawkins field and watch the commodores. This guy looked like a man among boys which judging by his stats to start the season he truly was! This guy is gonna be an OBP machine. On a team of elite players in the country he was by far the best player. No questions. He’s gonna be fine and I can’t wait for him to get the call because he’s a gamer for sure! He’s calm in the box. You can tell he’s got a plan. He was watching the pitcher intently in the on deck circle. He worked the count and when he got his pitch which he knew was coming he attacked the pitchAnd barreled it! He looked like a right handed Mauer in the box. In his prime that is. That kind of hitter! In college!

Here is the failure. The Twins let go of a top 25 starting pitcher who is under 30 and has remained very healthy over his career when they have very little quality starting pitching. People will argue that he wouldn't re-sign with Minnesota but I challenge that. If the Twins would have offered him 30 mil per year, I think he definitely would have signed that deal. Before anyone balks at that number, that is the cost of young talented pitching and it isn't getting lower. It would have made him a top 10 paid SP but that isn't a huge overpay when considering his age and consistency. The Twins could have also chose to offer him a significant contract extension instead of letting it go to arbitration and trying to get a deal. Instead of doing either, the Twins tried to play it frugally (cheap) like they consistently do which leads to talented players heading out the door and the team once again searching for quality starting pitching.