The Twins Need to Shake Things Up with Two Obvious Changes

For once I completely agree with a TD article. Wallner will have growing pains, but let's start letting him go through them. At least at the moment, he has a higher potential ceiling than Kepler. I'd make other moves as well, but these would be the top 2 for me.

Good article, but it's tilting at windmills. This front office, as has been mentioned endlessly, will never admit to a mistake mid-season. We're stuck with Max & Poppy for the rest of the season. It's disgusting what could have been with this pitching staff. 

That Rosenthal piece wasn't scathing enough IMO but it's nice to know we aren't all taking crazy pills here

These changes need to happen. I honestly would also cut bait with Gallo. 

Even if Wallner does not produce we need to see what we have with him and it can’t be any worse than Kepler.  

Popkins absolutely needs to go. Every single free agent addition has regressed from prior years and I don’t want to see him ruin Royce Lewis. It is so obvious that a change is needed. 

Honestly it is obvious even Rocco needs to go. His game decisions are worse than any manager the Twins have had and I sense even the much less talented Twins teams of the mid 1990’s could beat this team because of game management and missing basic fundamentals.  

I used to think that the Terry Ryan/Gardenhire era was bad for the Twins hanging on to unproductive veterans instead of going with higher upside younger players but this era might be even worse. 

Everyone wants to bring up Wallner but Larnach hits just as well and plays a lot better defense.

14 minutes ago, PDX Twin said:

I feel like the organization is being run by Enron alumni. Despite evidence to the contrary, they are convinced that they are smarter than everyone else and that they will eventually rule the world.

Only someone named Pohlad can change things. Is he part of the problem or part of the solution?

Interesting comment, PDX.  I have an old college roommate who was at Harvard B-School when the guy from Enron, I forget his name, who went to jail was in his class.  He always said that there is always a handful of students at B-School who are known to be so much smarter than everyone else.  In his class, that group had the belief that this Enron guy was so much smarter than they were. 

I got a feeling if this Enron guy was running the Twins they would be winning a lot more games than they are.  I gotta believe he is out of jail by now, isn't he?  Does anyone know?

This is not the time to adjust the coaching staff.  That is in the off-season (unless the team gets to 3rd place or 5 games under .500). 

The problem is the Twin's basic philosophy on how to play. And maybe a good portion is the hitting coach. We are a "home run or bust" team. Which means a ton of strikeouts. If nobody gets on base it is hard to score runs. With the shift no longer allowed there are a lot of holes in the infield. Hard hit ground balls should be getting through. Our batting average, in fact all of MLB batting average, should be seeing an increase. Decent pitching is being wasted right now. Do I think we are an elite club? No. But we should be more competitive and that comes down to approach to the game.

What are they waiting for? Next time Kepler hits a HR trade him. 

31 minutes ago, Vanimal46 said:

I don’t disagree with the moves, but I’ve got to ask… What do people think is the impact of replacing the hitting coach right now? I highly doubt it’s going to change the direction this team is heading. 

You're probably right, though I think there's something to be said about the optics of holding someone accountable for poor performance.  Among many other issues this team seems way to comfortable with losing.  

But let's be real, if Popkins does get canned he'll just be replaced by Popkins 2.0:  a young, cheap, inexperienced diamond in the rough who the FO will mold into a genius and who will uncritically carry out the FO's grip-it-and-rip-it philosophy.  

1 hour ago, Cory Engelhardt said:

I think if you are expecting Wallner to outperform Kepler, you will probably be disappointed. 

I mean, I'm expecting to win the powerball. That'll happen at some point, right?

 

(I'm NOT saying to not ditch Kepler. It's been time for a while now. I just don't see Wallner being this massive upgrade, or even an upgrade.)

He couldn't be worse than Kepler, plus he isn't going to get better with AAA pitching.   

20 minutes ago, strumdatjag said:

This is not the time to adjust the coaching staff.  That is in the off-season (unless the team gets to 3rd place or 5 games under .500). 

This is exactly the time.   It isn't Rocco, who we could discuss deserving firing, but hitting isn't there.   They need to do something.   Not addressing it will mean 0-22 in POs

Wallner’s strike out rate is certain to be much higher than Kepler’s. I guess they can be really all in with strike outs. Maybe they let go of Kepler and Gallo while bringing up Wallner and Celestino. I think they need to balance out the strike outs so finding a way to get Miranda back up also would help.

Does the run scoring context in St. Paul really give us a misperception of performance? There are a bunch of players in St. Paul with strike out rates at 30% or greater but a good OPS due a power/walk approach. It works there in the higher run scoring environment. How well will those high strike out rates translate to the majors?

I do think context rate is important and the Twins need more balls in play. Celestino and Miranda put balls in play. The Twins need that balance between contact and the strike out laden power.

59 minutes ago, Loops said:

With the shift no longer allowed there are a lot of holes in the infield. Hard hit ground balls should be getting through. Our batting average, in fact all of MLB batting average, should be seeing an increase.

Sorry to disappoint you but MLB batting average has gone up just slightly from .243 in 2022 to .248 in 2023. That's a far cry from when the league hit .268 way back in 2007 (which includes pitchers hitting). Strikeouts are up 2022->23 from 8.4 per team per game to 8.6. The .706 league OPS from 2022 has increased to .729. Overall offense has barely budged back to 2021 levels.

Without the offseason changes to increase offense I'm pretty sure we would be >9Ks per team per game with league batting average below .240.