Guardians 3, Twins 2 (10 Innings): Twins Walked Off Again, Cleveland Clinches Playoff Berth, Twins and Tigers Tied

[Hosken Bombo Disco]

4 hours ago, Fezig said:

Obviously a manager problem.

https://x.com/Cle_Brendan52/status/1836881407114637480

 

Now, about the decision to walk Thomas ahead of Gimenez. While setting up the possibility for a double play makes sense, Thomas is strikeout prone and was 0-for-1 with a walk in his career against Thielbar. In fact, Thomas has struck out in 40.9% of his at-bats since being traded to Cleveland. 

Gimenez was 3-for-7 with a double and a triple lifetime against Thielbar and now he's 4-for-8. Baldelli clearly thought he was making the right decision and Thielbar was going to face Gimenez one way or another, but it might've lit a fire under Gimenez and he made Baldelli and the Twins pay.

https://www.si.com/mlb/twins/minnesota-twins-news/thanks-rocco-new-video-shows-andres-gimenez-trolling-twins-manager-01j87qfxjvfm

[NYCTK]

33 minutes ago, karcherd said:

Maybe Cleveland is doing a better of developing their bullpen arms, the top three guys after Clase are either in their first or second year.  So maybe some of it is on the FO for the construction of the roster, but Rocco very clearly has stated he tries to match up to hitters instead of a set role for the pitchers.  So there is a difference in philosophy and it does not seem to be working for the Twins,  They try to emulate other teams maybe try to build a bullpen like Cleveland has.

This is the benefit of the Twins farm seemingly improving. There are a lot of interesting arms down there, and while most are going to stall out, some will chug along and become good BP arms. 

I have no faith in Raya ever becoming a valuable starter. But he seems exactly the type that could be a lights out guy at the end of the game. 

[Fire Dan Gladden]

They should have put Alcala in to pitch the 10th.

Oh... wait.

[LambchoP]

Hopefully this late season collapse and missed playoffs will result in at least a few positives. Someone needs to be held accountable, so the coaching staff should be shaken up. If not Rocco I'd say the hitting coaches need to go. As far as ownership, they'll have to admit that trying to put together a playoff team on a tight budget with cast offs and injured players ,and then not improving the team at all in July is not a strategy for winning. They try to cry poverty because attendance is down, well the best way to boost attendance is to field a winning team. Nobody wants to spend a lot of money to come watch the twins when we have a young starter pitch three innings and the offense, with no Buxton, no Correa, no Lewis, get maybe 3 hits all night and score one or two runs. No thank you. Put a better team together, attendance will go up. Especially if the team is good enough for the playoffs, because that would add to profit too. The deeper a team plays into the playoffs, the more money there is. Of course it's not very likely that extra money would be put back into the team with this ownership:(

[JD-TWINS]

16 hours ago, BH67 said:

When he wrote the allegory of the cave in The Republic nearly 2500 years ago, Plato surely never fathomed the gut punches to be experienced regularly by Minnesota sports fans. Yet his point remains true that those of us seeing only shadows of reality and not what's actually happening are insufficiently knowledgeable about the reasons.

We can see the end result. However, much opinion is given here to the why. I interpret the shadows thus:

• Given a slump of at least a week's duration, Rocco Baldelli's Twins are rudderless, and this happened in late 2022 as well. Yet these Twins never quit trying to play their best.
• The Twins of the Falvine era consistently suffer injuries to key players above the number and duration experienced by other teams. Yet they are building a deep farm system that concentrates on maximizing strikeouts for pitchers and OPS for field players.
• The Twins have not solved their media revenue issues durably, and that will limit payroll to below what fans here seek to remain competitive.

What to do given these assumptions? That's someone else's job. Go Twins, regardless.

1) To me, ‘22 & ‘24 are completely different from a health standpoint. As beat up as this current club seems, the ‘22 club was starting 3 AAA outfielders for a pretty long stretch the last couple months……Cave - Celestino - Wallner - Larnach - Contreras etc…………Rudderless is maybe true, but I gotta point to 3 hits yesterday - 6 guys going 0-24 on Wednesday -  previously, 2 straight days of losses with 5 hits. The lack of offense goes way beyond the Manager’s responsibility.

2) I cannot let myself believe that the organization nor the upper management has control of injuries to players. Muscle pulls - soft tissue, sure the training staff can influence those. The rest is just the way it goes, IMO. MANY other Teams have numerous injuries throughout their rosters - particularly pitchers. High strikeout rates for the Staff & solid OPS guys seems to be a pretty smart goal.

3)I live in Cincinnati & can’t really comment accurately on the media issues and effects on revenue. It surely seems to be an ongoing problem that will obviously ripple into payroll.

[JD-TWINS]

4 minutes ago, Fire Dan Gladden said:

They should have put Alcala in to pitch the 10th.

Oh... wait.

…….& Jorge may have only needed one pitch to give up a dinger and ended the misery more quickly.

If’s & but’s……….. guys gotta get more than 3 hits in 10 innings!

[JD-TWINS]

5 minutes ago, LambchoP said:

Hopefully this late season collapse and missed playoffs will result in at least a few positives. Someone needs to be held accountable, so the coaching staff should be shaken up. If not Rocco I'd say the hitting coaches need to go. As far as ownership, they'll have to admit that trying to put together a playoff team on a tight budget with cast offs and injured players ,and then not improving the team at all in July is not a strategy for winning. They try to cry poverty because attendance is down, well the best way to boost attendance is to field a winning team. Nobody wants to spend a lot of money to come watch the twins when we have a young starter pitch three innings and the offense, with no Buxton, no Correa, no Lewis, get maybe 3 hits all night and score one or two runs. No thank you. Put a better team together, attendance will go up. Especially if the team is good enough for the playoffs, because that would add to profit too. The deeper a team plays into the playoffs, the more money there is. Of course it's not very likely that extra money would be put back into the team with this ownership:(

I get the Angst ……..a month ago the Team was 17 games over .500 & cruising to playoffs. Don’t recall any attendance records being set back then. Wins & winning are ASSUMED in most markets…..if it’s early in the year fans “…..can always get out to see a game later in the year - more meaningful…” or wait til they aren’t doing as well & complain about not being good enough to watch or spend money on…….it’s a personal choice that can always be rationalized.

[JD-TWINS]

2 hours ago, Mark G said:

Exactly.  Their top 4 guys are all under 2.00 ERA, and have all pitched 71 or more games.  Clase is an absolute beast at the end; geez, the guy has given up 5 earned runs all year.  We could definitely learn a lesson from them.   

Cleveland’s Pen is a bit of an outlier - they are excellent!!! Essentially every other Team in MLB would love to emulate the Guardian bullpen……Twins being just one of probably 26 other Teams.

[saviking]

12 hours ago, twinssporto said:

I've said this before and will say it again. I really don't care if they win the division or not. The wild card system has made winning the division a somewhat moot objective. Over the last 10-15 years, the teams that win the World Series go into the playoffs with spirit and momentum. The Twins have neither. If they make the wild card I have almost zero faith they have the stamina, excitement or drive to last longer than a few games.

As a Twins fan and baseball fan for almost 40 years, I just don't see the swagger or confidence in this team at all. Sorry if that sounds negative but just sayin' what I'm seein'...

What's sad is our 4 starting pitchers had a combined 2.35 era .. 

[JD-TWINS]

Larnach - 114 OPS+
Buxton - 136 OPS+
Wallner - 151 OPS+
 

Lewis - 122 OPS+
Correa - 152 OPS+
Castro - 105 OPS+
Santana - 108 OPS+
 

Jeffers - 106 OPS+
Miranda - 116 OPS+
 

Farmer hitting .406 in September 

If Larnach can run, this would be the probable starting line-up v. RH pitching. NINE starters all over 100 OPS+. 2 months ago, only Orioles could compete with these numbers through the line-up………doubt anyone else is better top to bottom. Hitters gotta hit………13 runs in a 4 game series isn’t going to get it done! Can’t pitch nor Manage around not scoring/hitting.

[UK Twin]

1 hour ago, NYCTK said:

This is just not true. The Twins bullpen is 20th in IP. 

The Guardians have 7 pitchers that have 54+ IP. The Twins have 3. 

It's not just physical burn out. It's mental burn out too. Besides, it's mainly since Ryan went down where the problems have really started - I'd be interested to know the Twins bullpen usage since then compared to the rest of the league. 

And you're seriously going to compare Cleveland's bullpen to ours? Theirs is the best in baseball so it makes sense to use it as much as they have. Over the last month, the Twins bullpen has been massively overworked - the offense can be partly blamed for that as they've been constantly trying to protect 1 and 2 run leads. But Rocco's not helping either by pulling SWR out early like he did yesterday. 

[NYCTK]

11 minutes ago, UK Twin said:

It's not just physical burn out. It's mental burn out too. Besides, it's mainly since Ryan went down where the problems have really started - I'd be interested to know the Twins bullpen usage since then compared to the rest of the league. 

And you're seriously going to compare Cleveland's bullpen to ours? Theirs is the best in baseball so it makes sense to use it as much as they have. Over the last month, the Twins bullpen has been massively overworked - the offense can be partly blamed for that as they've been constantly trying to protect 1 and 2 run leads. But Rocco's not helping either by pulling SWR out early like he did yesterday. 

I just used to the comparison as a point that the Twins arms are not burnt out. If anything, they're coddled. 

Let's adjust our view a bit. Since August 1st, they're 10th in the majors in batters faced. Ironically, Detroit is #1, and by a wide margin. They must be using openers? I guess I haven't noticed but it seems that way, as Brant Hurter and Maeda are the bulk of their "RP" innings. 

Anyways, point being, Griffin Jax being the biggest workhorse in the bullpen isn't actually being worked that much. 67.2 IP is not a large load. He's faced the 48th most batters in the majors since August 1st. 

So, yeah, our bullpen is actually coddled, not overworked. 

[USAFChief]

1 hour ago, chpettit19 said:

 If Rocco had an entire bullpen of shutdown guys he might (notice, I said might) do things differently. 

Maybe part of the problem is, if Rocco did things differently, he might have a better bullpen. 

Vogt gets both more innings AND better results. 

Perhaps one inning usage, plus defined roles, is part of the reason.

 

[chpettit19]

13 minutes ago, USAFChief said:

Maybe part of the problem is, if Rocco did things differently, he might have a better bullpen. 

Vogt gets both more innings AND better results. 

Perhaps one inning usage, plus defined roles, is part of the reason.

 

Certainly could be. I acknowledged that in multiple posts, but you chose to leave that part of my statements out.

But which reliever in the Twins pen this year do you believe would have performed much better if managed differently? Tonkin on his 3rd team of the year? 37 year old Thielbar? Staumont who couldn't stick in the Cubs minor league system? Randy freaking Dobnak? Trevor Richards who actually beat career norms in many stats in his time here? Diego Castillo? Steven Okert? Jay Jackson?

You and I were both telling people to settle down on the "best bullpen in baseball" talk before the year because of all these massive question marks. But now they'd have actually been close to the best bullpen in baseball if Rocco were just better? Fascinating. 

[BillyBallLives]

I'm actually thinking of becoming a Lynx fan just so I can witness a team from Minnesota win a championship in my lifetime. 

[USAFChief]

53 minutes ago, chpettit19 said:

Certainly could be. I acknowledged that in multiple posts, but you chose to leave that part of my statements out.

 

Sorry, I didn't read the rest of the thread before responding to your post.

A lesson I've now learned approximately 348 times, which I doubt will be enough.

As to the rest: yes?

Some of them? Most of them? Duran for sure, Jax maybe. Enough of the rest so as maybe not to suffer through the meltdown?

I dunno who. I just know I don't like the "we're smarter by half" theory.

[bean5302]

2 hours ago, hitterscount said:

Agree with everything you are saying other than Santana. I cannot dump on the guy. He has bailed us out in several games this season with a a few clutch hits. As far as Miranda, he could not provide the defense that Santana has, poor defense has been a problem for the team this year.

I did not dump on Santana.

[David Maro]

As I said before where's Topa?Everyone said the team needed BP help to start the season.The trade of Polanco did bring Santana not BP help.It also got the team 2 pitchers that won't see the mound until next year.And 1 of those maybe not until 2026.If the FO was brought in to build a pipeline of pitching they have failed badly.The pitching coach is never talked about and should be.He has 3 rookie pitchers who don't seem to be making progress.SWR still has a problem walking way too many hitters.Festa pitches like he is a BP arm that runs out of gas after 3 innings.And of Varland who thinks he a SP in his mind believes he can blow every hitter away.With any luck Zebby will stay close to Lopez and Ober and let them guide him.

[chpettit19]

2 minutes ago, USAFChief said:

Sorry, I didn't read the rest of the thread before responding to your post.

A lesson I've now learned approximately 348 times, which I doubt will be enough.

As to the rest: yes?

Some of them? Most of them? Duran for sure, Jax maybe. Enough of the rest so as maybe not to suffer through the meltdown?

I dunno who. I just know I don't like the "we're smarter by half" theory.

Yeah, sorry, I'm just not willing to say Jax could've been meaningfully better than he was this year.

And I don't believe for a second you would argue that if I told you Richards, Staumont, Tonkin, Blewett, Thielbar, Winder, Dobnak, Boushley, Castillo, Duarte, Bowman, Funderburk, and Okert accounted for 240 bullpen innings that this bullpen would have performed well. There's no way you think those names have any business being in a top bullpen.

I don't like using Duran outside the 9th. Other teams have success with that strategy, but he pretty clearly doesn't thrive in those spots. Don't like that Rocco ignores that and wants to force him into the strategy instead of building the strategy around his players. Don't think Rocco does everything great when it comes to managing pitchers. But I also think it's pretty ridiculous to look at this roster and suggest there's some great bullpen there if only they'd be used in different ways.

[chpettit19]

@bean5302 What do you disagree with? Rocco doesn't get to pick who the runner at 2nd is. It's the last out of the previous inning. The guys on the bench who could've pinch ran were Vazquez, Larnach, Miranda, Lee, and Julien. What was the brilliant pinch running move there? The backup catcher with the 5th percentile sprint speed, injured outfielder who can't run, 3rd baseman with a slower sprint speed than Farmer, rookie with a slower sprint speed than Farmer, or Julien?

That game goes drastically different if the also slow, but slightly faster Julien runs in the 10th and Lee fields in the bottom of the 10th? That was Rocco's big mistake? Which play does Julien's added speed score him on? The hit by pitch, sac bunt, walk, foul pop to first, or line out to right with 2 outs? 

[USAFChief]

9 minutes ago, chpettit19 said:

@bean5302 What do you disagree with? Rocco doesn't get to pick who the runner at 2nd is. It's the last out of the previous inning. The guys on the bench who could've pinch ran were Vazquez, Larnach, Miranda, Lee, and Julien. What was the brilliant pinch running move there? The backup catcher with the 5th percentile sprint speed, injured outfielder who can't run, 3rd baseman with a slower sprint speed than Farmer, rookie with a slower sprint speed than Farmer, or Julien?

That game goes drastically different if the also slow, but slightly faster Julien runs in the 10th and Lee fields in the bottom of the 10th? That was Rocco's big mistake? Which play does Julien's added speed score him on? The hit by pitch, sac bunt, walk, foul pop to first, or line out to right with 2 outs? 

Why wouldn't Rocco PH Julien for Farmer against a RH reliever in the 9th?

We know he would have done the opposite.

[chpettit19]

6 minutes ago, USAFChief said:

Why wouldn't Rocco PH Julien for Farmer against a RH reliever in the 9th?

We know he would have done the opposite.

Now that I agree with. And why is Margot getting to hit against righties all the time?

My guess is the answer is defense and Farmer has been their best hitter lately. But the recent lineups/pinch hitting decisions have left me a little confused. Buxton and Correa situations aren't helping anything. I really hope the reason they aren't in CF and at SS everyday is because they physically can't do it and the team isn't trying to prevent possible problems. But them being so limited causes guys like Margot to have to play everyday instead of being a 25% player. Which I've done enough complaining about throughout the season.

[NYCTK]

6 minutes ago, USAFChief said:

Why wouldn't Rocco PH Julien for Farmer against a RH reliever in the 9th?

We know he would have done the opposite.

Let's not pretend any one of us would have liked that. 

[USAFChief]

33 minutes ago, NYCTK said:

Let's not pretend any one of us would have liked that. 

I wouldn't have needed to pretend.

 

[NYCTK]

4 minutes ago, USAFChief said:

I wouldn't have needed to pretend.

Well, all of your criticism of Rocco just lost of a lot of bite then, because that would have been a pretty weak move. To take out the only bat that can currently be classified as "hot" for a minimal platoon advantage against the best reliever in baseball with 2 outs that would make the team worse on the other side of the ball in the near certain chance they go into extras? 

 

[USAFChief]

4 minutes ago, NYCTK said:

Well, all of your criticism of Rocco just lost of a lot of bite then, because that would have been a pretty weak move. To take out the only bat that can currently be classified as "hot" for a minimal platoon advantage against the best reliever in baseball with 2 outs that would make the team worse on the other side of the ball in the near certain chance they go into extras? 

 

1. I don't much believe in "hot."

2. Rocco can't WAIT to play a platoon advantage all season. He'll pull Wallner in the 4th for Margot. Why not now?

[NYCTK]

21 minutes ago, USAFChief said:

1. I don't much believe in "hot."

2. Rocco can't WAIT to play a platoon advantage all season. He'll pull Wallner in the 4th for Margot. Why not now?

Why criticize him for not compounding mistakes?

[BillyBallLives]

"But if your direct competitor does more with less."

 

CLE is doing more with less regarding budget, but the Dolan's are bigger tight wads than the Twins ownership....the Dolan's spent more money on their daughter's wedding and they're paying 12 players in Cleveland.