What’s Wrong & What to do About It

[alskntwnsfn]

I’m gonna put some thoughts out there, mostly about what is going wrong with this club. I’m just a schmo who played some college ball and has watched about 3/4 of the games. I guess other creds are I had a Twins blog way back in the day and traded emails with Josh Kalk back then, and am kinda a nerd for hitting and pitching mechanics. I’ve played with pro players through the years and think I have some well founded insights but mostly will just let the observations speak for themselves. 

Correa. After watching his first spring training game on TV I texted a buddy saying he’s gonna struggle this year if he doesn’t fix his swing plane. His swing path was all messed up. Way too much chopping down. Not good. Not meeting the pitch path, meaning he has to be absolutely perfect with his timing. Remember that graphic in Ted Williams book on hitting? Zero margin for error, and even if you hit it, it’s a ground ball (usually to the left side). He’s started to come around and acknowledged how messed up his swing was several weeks ago, BUT it should have been rectified MUCH sooner! Some of this is on Correa, but this is a coaching and self scouting problem mostly. 

Wallner. He’s got a timing problem due to his pre-swing mechanics. He needs to get his front foot down but stay back/coiled. His leg kick does not work unless he’s guessed right on the pitch type, location, AND hit the right timing. He’s got power to spare. He doesn’t need a big leg kick. Look at Ohtani! He coils, gets the front foot DOWN and then unloads as a reaction to the pitch. That’s why he is rarely fooled! My mom even complained about this back in May. Plouffe mentioned his “pre-pitch” movement on the broadcast tonight. ****… google Richard Schenck. Launch preparedness and launch quickness. His **** works. Ask Aaron Judge or Kerry Carpenter. Why hasn’t this been fixed!?

Lewis. This one is more of a head scratcher. IDK. He’s just a different player this year. There’s lot of things we could point to as excuses/reasons. With the benefit of hindsight, they obviously need to be laser focused on analyzing what he did the last couple years that was working and get back to that. Maybe part of it is conditioning? But I’m sure it’s hard not to wear down with all the injuries he’s had. So, I’m not ragging on the guy if it’s just that, just might be an is what it is situation. 

Pitching. This should be the biggest strength of the team, and has been in stretches. We got a lot of guys with the stuff to dominate. But too often we do not. One thing I picked up on a bit watching the second COL game is Zebby threw two front door cutters that got taken for strikes. They fooled the hitters. I don’t see many of those from Twins pitchers (as I see Jeffers strike out with bases loaded on an up/in slider). I also don’t see too much “pitching backward.” Yes, we all know it’s a high percentage play to throw sliders or cutters that break off the plate outside when you’re ahead in the count, but MLB hitters spit on most of those. Hitters expect those! Go front door more with those! Or even up in the zone if you can still get movement. Those are hard to barrel. I think the thing I’m trying to say here is while most of our guys have above average stuff, you can’t be too predictable. And then there’s the rumblings about maybe teams having some tips on pitches. The moment there is any concern about that, the coaching and scouting staff should be sleeping in the video room to figure out if pitches are being tipped. Another thing I don’t recall ever seeing a Twins pitcher do… hesitation move (where you pause a beat at the top of your leg kick). Or many slide steps. This is common from many Asian pitchers, and as a hitter it’s frustrating because it screws up your timing. Right now it seems like opposing hitters are WAY too comfortable, even if a guy throws 97-98 with a touch slider. But c’mon, altering your delivery isn’t like saying the n-word. Any body can legally do it. We need hitters to be off balance and not knowing what to expect or where. And think about it… who is the Twins most unpredictable pitcher? Joe Ryan. He’ll throw anything, anywhere, in any count. That’s why he’s our only all-star pitcher (outside of Pedro’s injury). 

Ultimately, it’s the players that win or lose games, but this team is clearly underachieving relative to the talent of its players. So TALENT is what I think we have going for us, BUT the coaching and self scouting need to step it up. It’s not translating to success for the reasons I outlined above.  

Finally, Baldelli has said several times… “we do this *bleep* everyday.” I understand the sentiment, but to me that insinuates that there’s an element of going through the motions here or playing to a script. Which brings me back to the predictablilty aspect. We need more from Correa and Wallner at the plate. We need Lewis to find his way back, and we need opposing hitters to have ZERO idea about what is coming. AND we need our pitchers to be less predictable.  I don’t think we necessarily need new coaches (though IDK, Falvey… figure it out). I’m guessing the coaching and scouting staff are capable of implementing these changes, but IMO these are the biggest things that explain why the club has underperformed expectations this year. Can you bring in better players than we already have? I doubt it, unless the payroll goes way up or we gut the farm system. But TALENT isn’t our biggest problem. Deadline moves won’t move that needle enough. Our biggest problems are lack of self scouting and being too predictable. 

One more aspect, after watching Senzatela carve up the lineup… why do so many inferior pitchers carve us up? Do they even, do the numbers bear this out? I’m not sure what to do about this, but almost every other team lights these types of guys up. If I was Falvey or the Pohlads, I’d want an analysis about why that is. Is it poor preparation? Poor scouting? Just poor execution? Bad luck? What is the plan for crushing the next guy with a 5.00 ERA? 

/end rant.