Make It Official! Twins 3, White Sox 2: Clutch Kepler, Steely Thielbar Slam Door on Sox

I apologize for saying I thought the Twins needed to replace Santana. Unless he reads TD and wanted to prove me wrong. In which case, Carlos you are still a washed-up bum. You have to hit 3 more HRs this week to convince me.

I can hardly wait for the Twins to win the division with 100 games, and the RBI Sausage to be turning interesting shades of green and blue!

Nice win especially with the offense going pretty stagnant for the majority of the game.  Great to see leadoff double by Buxton in 9th and then Kepler coming up clutch with go ahead line drive RBI single.

Can't agree with headline, ' Thielbar slams the door in 9th' as he allowed a 1-out walk and then a single to Grossman on an 0-2 count to move things to indigestion time.  Glad to see he finished off their rookie catcher relying on his curveball.

Will be feeling much better when Duran (hopefully this weekend) is back as our closer.  Adding Topa to the bullpen mix will make for some interesting decisions.  

My 2 cents with looming additions of Duran and Topa:

1.  Funderburk to SP:  Tough call as he's performed significantly better than Okert.  He has options remaining, wheras I don't believe Okert does.  If either Okert or Thielbar need an IL stint, Funderburk will quickly be back as I'm sure Baldelli wants a second LHP in the pen.

2.  DFA Jay Jackson:  Nothing against Jackson, but imo, Bowman has pitched better and is four years younger.

12 minutes ago, Jocko87 said:

I struggle with Ryan and Thielbar having the same WPA in this game.  Any tough situations Caleb gets credit for he would also get the blame for.  You can't pitch yourself into a save situation.

Joe doesn't get appropriate credit for 6 innings of loss avoidance. 

Duran, on the other hand.  All the WPA tomorrow.

Would his WPA be the same if he had struck out the side? Is it the difference between the time he entered and the time he left?

Can't complain about managing a win with 3 runs on 4 hits while giving up only 2 runs on 8 hits. 

Manuel Mar-got-to-stay-out-of-the-line-up-for-the-foreseeable-future

Didn’t think they had this in them. When Correa and Lewis went down was hoping to hang around.500. They looked like sh** with their plate approaches and weren’t playing fundamental ball. Winning 8 in a row and going over .500, albeit against really bad teams, has them back in the hunt. The schedule stiffens again the next two weeks and will show if this team is for real.

There were eight golden pitches last night; the two to Pham, three to Grossman, and three to Lee.  Once Mendick walked, the game could have ended in a win or a loss on any of those pitches.

The good thing about this 8 game winning streak is that there have been all kinds of different wins. The blow out wins are good for the heart rate but it's those narrow one run wins that really show what you're made of. 

Thielbar hasn't got the stuff to be a closer really, especially in a one run game but mixed his pitches enough to get the job done. Thankfully Duran is now back so we have our closer back. 

Correa is going to make such a difference defensively. When he was out Castro did a decent job at SS but there were some plays he didn't make that I think Correa would have done. Nothing on Castro, it just makes me appreciate just how good a SS Correa is and how lucky we are to have him. 

Nice win, but why is Thielbar closing games? 

7 hours ago, darwin22 said:

Nice win especially with the offense going pretty stagnant for the majority of the game.  Great to see leadoff double by Buxton in 9th and then Kepler coming up clutch with go ahead line drive RBI single.

Can't agree with headline, ' Thielbar slams the door in 9th' as he allowed a 1-out walk and then a single to Grossman on an 0-2 count to move things to indigestion time.  Glad to see he finished off their rookie catcher relying on his curveball.

Will be feeling much better when Duran (hopefully this weekend) is back as our closer.  Adding Topa to the bullpen mix will make for some interesting decisions.  

My 2 cents with looming additions of Duran and Topa:

1.  Funderburk to SP:  Tough call as he's performed significantly better than Okert.  He has options remaining, wheras I don't believe Okert does.  If either Okert or Thielbar need an IL stint, Funderburk will quickly be back as I'm sure Baldelli wants a second LHP in the pen.

2.  DFA Jay Jackson:  Nothing against Jackson, but imo, Bowman has pitched better and is four years younger.

There are some teams that need RPs. We have an overabundance of them. Especially if you include Varland, who I wish they would & Alcala is too good to be in AAA. We should trade some that have no options.

11 SOs it's a game we should lose even with a team like CWS. A win is a win. Give credit to the BP & pinstripes. Go Twins! Make it 10 in a row.

Close game got nervous at end but we got the win!!!

So sad to see Martin sent down.  He needs to be given time to show what he has.  Could they send down Farmer or Margot?

Won't lie. Serious white knuckle time watching Thielbar face the righthanded batters - especially Pham.

Not easy to beat a team 5 straight times - within a week's timeframe. We'll see if they can push it to 6 and then 7. Not going to discredit any of these wins during the streak.

10 hours ago, Jocko87 said:

I struggle with Ryan and Thielbar having the same WPA in this game.  Any tough situations Caleb gets credit for he would also get the blame for.  You can't pitch yourself into a save situation.

Joe doesn't get appropriate credit for 6 innings of loss avoidance. 

What you're noticing is that WPA is a really bad accounting system.

9 hours ago, Jocko87 said:

I'm not sure, I'm going to dig into the math tomorrow.  Walking a guy and giving up a hit increased the leverage index which is part of the equation.  Seems like a closer that's always a wild ride would be off the charts WPA.  

You can see the wild ride in the part of the chart that shows the bottom of the 9th. The three outs are the down slopes and contribute positively to Thielbar’s WPA. The two baserunner’s slope up and contribute negatively to his WPA. In the end they balance out and his final WPA is the same as it would have been if he had struck out the side. The Twins probability of winning went from 83.6% to start the bottom of the 9th to 100% at the end. The difference is Thielbar’s win probability added.

WPA helps to tell the story of the game but really isn’t useful for predicting future performance or even in evaluating in game performance. 

1 hour ago, Karbo said:

Rocco's pen management leaves Jax unavailable and Thielbar closing? Hope Duran comes back for Tue. game.

Would you prefer to throw away last night's game in order to save pitcher's for today's game? Pretty sure Rocco gets buried for that, so guess there's no way for him to win. Jax faced the top of the lineup in the 8th and Thielbar came in with 2 lefty hitters on tap for the 9th. Seems perfectly fine usage, 

Tight game and a good win with quiet bats. Ryan came out slow but really settled down for a good outing on a night when he wasn't getting the usual levels of K's. Nice to see the team turn a couple of double plays behind him.

You play who you play.  Beating up on two terrible teams is a necessity.  The hope is that this builds some confidence going forward.