LAD 6, MIN 5: Uff Da

I hope Molitor gives Rogers and Kintzler the day off Friday along with the scheduled day off Thursday. They are burning out and need a couple days rest to regroup.

Twins missed Buxton last night. Dodgers were running wild with pea shooter Granite out there in center. I can think of a couple instances where they got an extra base.

I went to bed with the Twins up 5-1 last night and didn't feel very good about their chances.  I'm sure many of you felt the same. What a gut punch for a team that seems to not be able to pull themselves off the mat right now.

Another strikeout with a man on third and less than 2 outs in an important spot in the game.  The theme of the series, happened in all 3 games.  

Nothing less than a sweep of the Padres and winning 2-out-of-3 in Oakland can save any hope of a wildcard berth at this point. 

The bungled Garcia trade is looking worse and worse every day. 

Can't wait for a win.  Been way too long.

 It would have been nice to have Garver to PH instead.  

Garver seems like a good player, but I think it's too early to assume we're sitting on Barry Bonds down there in AAA.  Byron Buxton was supposed to be Andrew McCutcheon, and it took him 2 years to start hitting MLB pitches.  A guy like Garver isn't going to save this team nor do I think he'd have even a minor impact. Just my opinion....in your scenario, who does he replace and what role does he have on the team?

How do you get "assume he's Barry Bonds" from "it would be nice to have him PH"?
 

I do not think we should assume Garver is going to provide a spark for this team. He has not proven himself and I do not think his presence on the Minnesota Twins Baseball Club will affect the team's place in the standings as much as you think it will. That is what I meant, and I think you probably knew that.

Byron Buxton was supposed to be Andrew McCutcheon, and it took him 2 years to start hitting MLB pitches.  

ehhh he still really isn't hitting major league pitching effectively, unfortunately.

I like the deadline approach Levine stated, with the caveat that I think they should lean much more towards sellers than anything else.  This roster is simply not built to compete against the teams that we know are stocked, nor is it just a matter of more service time for the roster to improve.

Obviously winning and losing is what matters... but we're talking about a team that is 71-31, and the Twins should have won two of the three games. Maybe it's too simplistic, but the idea that if they had two more relievers they could rely upon, they could be much better. 

 

At the end of the day, they are now 49-51 or whatever they are and instead of being Buyers, they probably should be at least partial sellers. But it shouldn't be lost upon people that this team isn't terrible and they may not be all that far off. 

 

I don't think that's jumping too far.

Saying they "should have won" kind of hand waves away the reasons they didn't win though. They lost because their starting pitching is wobbly and the bullpen is overworked and lacks both depth and high-end talent. Those are real flaws that they haven't been able to fix for too long now. Even the offense has been streaky and too dependant on performance from a few core hitters, lacking the depth to compensate when those guys occassionally can't come through. Over several games these things starkly separate us from the upper echelon teams and make it difficult to beat them consistently. I think that's all people are expressing here, not that they're outright terrible.