Make It Official! Twins 4, Rangers 3: Carlos Santana Homers, Same As It Ever Was

[USAFChief]

1 hour ago, JD-TWINS said:

It’s easy to critique if the only thought is the game that day……they got the win, that’s great! Problem Baldelli (mgrs) has is he is responsible for the next game & the game after that, etc. Can’t always have your foot on the accelerator to win today and everything else be damned.

Pen isn’t looking too good for today’s game relative to availability……hoping Festa can at least get 5 innings plus and then cross our fingers.

Sands was a bit shaky and then missing 1B - that made things a bit more tense than needed. Overall, Pen was really good again.

I think you play to win today’s winnable game and worry about tomorrow tomorrow. 

 

[madtowntwin]

The Milwaukee Brewers traded for Carlos at last season's deadline in a ho-hum move (at the time) which proved pivotal in their stretch drive.  The Twins have observed his talent in other team iterations up close and personal as well....He would have to be given serious consideration as team MVP for this season"s performance. His bat, glove. leadership, and durability have been central in my opinion...Pick a corner outfield position for 2025 Royce Lewis - And come up with a viable offseason hamstring regimen. 

[LambchoP]

Will be tough to pull out a win this afternoon. Festa probably won't go too deep and our available bullpen guys are less than encouraging lol. Hopefully Festa can give us at least five, and our lineup slugs in enough runs to scrape out a win. Julien looks like an automatic out at this point. Calling him up rather than an outfielder to replace Buxton made no sense to me. Would much rather have seen Keirsey get his much deserved chance... And as far as offering Santana another one year deal, I say absolutely:)

[bean5302]

4 hours ago, Fezig said:

I hate that this has to be considered, but unfortunately it needs to be done.

https://puckettspond.com/posts/new-mlb-rule-could-make-it-harder-for-rocco-baldelli-to-pull-his-starters-01j5bd1yeasy

It's being considered, but I'd be surprised if it was actually pushed through. Regardless of whether or not there is any science of any type behind it, pitch counts exceeding 100 by much are uncommon, and with today's focus on strikeouts, pitchers can hit that limit before 6 innings. Fatigue leads to sloppy mechanics which leads to major injury. There would probably have to be a stipulation for pitch count or something and that would defeat the whole purpose of the considered rule.

It's worth noting most pitchers already pitch 6+ innings per start with regularity. Flaherty has the lowest number of innings of any qualified starters. He's gone 6.0+ innings in 13 of 21 starts. I looked at the league a couple years ago. The average starting pitcher goes 6 innings like 70% of the time.

Baldelli has typically brandished a quick hook so some proposed rule change to lengthen starts might impact his spreadsheet in the future, but a 6 inning rule seems awfully unlikely to happen to me.

[William K Johnson]

6 hours ago, jmlease1 said:

It was his first game back against a LHP. He's been looking good at the plate again in AAA, so maybe give him a few games before you throw him on the trash heap. 

Where is going to play at on this team?   Not so sure he was "looking good" at AAA.   Must admit I have never been a big fan of his as I just see a lot of issues with his game.

[wabene]

5 hours ago, bean5302 said:

Baldelli has typically brandished a quick hook so some proposed rule change to lengthen starts might impact his spreadsheet in the future, but a 6 inning rule seems awfully unlikely to happen to me.

Last year the Twins ranked #4 in MLB in innings pitched per start at 5.52 with 1st place at 5.56.

This year they sit at #6 with 5.42 innings per start. 

The quick hook Baldelli narrative is a false one.

[Mike Sixel]

1 minute ago, wabene said:

Last year the Twins ranked #4 in MLB in innings pitched per start at 5.52 with 1st place at 5.56.

This year they sit at #6 with 5.42 innings per start. 

The quick hook Baldelli narrative is a false one.

Stop with the facts

[stringer bell]

17 minutes ago, wabene said:

Last year the Twins ranked #4 in MLB in innings pitched per start at 5.52 with 1st place at 5.56.

This year they sit at #6 with 5.42 innings per start. 

The quick hook Baldelli narrative is a false one.

With three rookies in the rotation for the foreseeable future, I would expect the average number of innings goes down.

You go with what you’ve got and with middle relief currently being a soft spot, Rocco has stayed with starters a bit more than average. 

[jorgenswest]

8 hours ago, USAFChief said:

I think you play to win today’s winnable game and worry about tomorrow tomorrow. 

 

Concur and further evidence that there are no low leverage jobs in the bullpen.

[bean5302]

1 hour ago, wabene said:

Last year the Twins ranked #4 in MLB in innings pitched per start at 5.52 with 1st place at 5.56.

This year they sit at #6 with 5.42 innings per start. 

The quick hook Baldelli narrative is a false one.

 

1 hour ago, Mike Sixel said:

Stop with the facts

Total innings can be a poor metric when attempting to gauge pitcher usage on a usual game basis. It seems simple enough, but it doesn't work when determining how many 6.0 inning starts a single starter has since a handful of bad starts can muck up the "average" vs. consistent usage quite a bit.

Woods Richardson averages 5.1 innings per start. He has 33% of his starts reach 6.0 innings.
Frankie Montas averages 5.0 innings per start. He has 36% of his starts reach 6.0 innings.
Nick Pivetta averages 5.1 innings per start. He has 42% of his starts reach 6.0 innings.
Garret Crochet averages 5.0 innings per start. He has 44% of his starts reach 6.0 innings.

When it comes to last year with a dominant rotation which was also exceedingly healthy, you'd certainly expect lots of innings...

Putting innings aside and looking at pitch count for starts for the 127 pitchers with 70+ innings this year, not one Twins pitcher ranks in the top 37, where you'd expect 25 pitchers per rotation spot.
#38 Joe Ryan = 92
#46 Pablo Lopez = 91
Median Average = 89
#69 Bailey Ober = 88
#92 Chris Paddack = 86
#107 SWR = 85

The Twins are below average in pitch count per start. I don't feel like wasting hrs of my time looking at game logs, but I'd be willing to bet money apart from Joe Ryan, Twins pitchers are below average in terms of percentage of of 6.0+ inning starts.

[wabene]

20 minutes ago, bean5302 said:

 

Total innings can be a poor metric when attempting to gauge pitcher usage on a usual game basis. It seems simple enough, but it doesn't work when determining how many 6.0 inning starts a single starter has since a handful of bad starts can muck up the "average" vs. consistent usage quite a bit.

Woods Richardson averages 5.1 innings per start. He has 33% of his starts reach 6.0 innings.
Frankie Montas averages 5.0 innings per start. He has 36% of his starts reach 6.0 innings.
Nick Pivetta averages 5.1 innings per start. He has 42% of his starts reach 6.0 innings.
Garret Crochet averages 5.0 innings per start. He has 44% of his starts reach 6.0 innings.

When it comes to last year with a dominant rotation which was also exceedingly healthy, you'd certainly expect lots of innings...

Putting innings aside and looking at pitch count for starts for the 127 pitchers with 70+ innings this year, not one Twins pitcher ranks in the top 37, where you'd expect 25 pitchers per rotation spot.
#38 Joe Ryan = 92
#46 Pablo Lopez = 91
Median Average = 89
#69 Bailey Ober = 88
#92 Chris Paddack = 86
#107 SWR = 85

The Twins are below average in pitch count per start. I don't feel like wasting hrs of my time looking at game logs, but I'd be willing to bet money apart from Joe Ryan, Twins pitchers are below average in terms of percentage of of 6.0+ inning starts.

So we're just going to move the goalposts around? Don't like the innings pitched data so now it's pitches per start that matters? Total innings is a poor metric, but starts with 6+ innings pitched is not? I'm not following. Nothing you stated convinces me that Baldelli pulls his pitchers early. Why? Because he doesn't when he has a decent staff. He does when he has Archer and Bundy etc. Shoemaker. That crappy rotation created a narrative that still lives to this day, lol.

[jmlease1]

18 hours ago, William K Johnson said:

Where is going to play at on this team?   Not so sure he was "looking good" at AAA.   Must admit I have never been a big fan of his as I just see a lot of issues with his game.

Right now there's plenty of room with the injuries. Before getting called back up Julien had gotten a hit in 12 out of 13 games while hitting 6 doubles, 2HRs and drawing 10 walks. He was looking a lot like the player from last season. But it kinda feels like you've made up your mind on him based on his style of play.