3 Takeaways from Friday's Win Over the White Sox

1: Baldelli showed confidence in Duffey, and it paid off.

Confirmation bias runs rampant in sports fandom, and it's one reason that every coach, manager, and official reliably receives an undue share of criticism. In recognizing this, it's only fair to give Rocco Baldelli his due.

I wrote earlier this week, following Tyler Duffey's second costly meltdown of this young season, that Baldelli should act quickly in reducing the veteran's bullpen role. This was less a reaction to Duffey's two bad outings this year and more with an eye toward his overall regression since 2020. He just seems to have lost a ton.

Alas, Baldelli turned back to Duffey in a big spot on Friday night. With the Twins down 1-0 in the eighth inning and the top of Chicago's order due up, Duffey took the ball and mowed 'em down. He struck out Tim Anderson and Leury Garcia before inducing a groundout from José Abreu. 

Threat neutralized. And along with it, the angry mob. For now. 

2: Correa finally caught a break.

The game started in signature fashion for Carlos Correa. He worked a good first AB against Michael Kopech before smashing a hard drive up the middle ... straight to the shortstop for a double play – his league-leading fifth of the season to quash a modest budding rally.

Correa hasn't looked great at the plate by any means, and his whiff rate says it all. But he's also been dealing with some rotten luck. His exit velocities and hard-hit rates are near the top of the charts, but so often the outcomes have resembled the above.

So it was nice to see fortune finally tilt in his favor in the eighth inning. With runners on the corners and two outs, Correa drilled a 98-MPH one-hopper into the hole between short and third. Anderson made a nice play on it to his right, but his off-balance throw to first missed wide and chaos ensued.

By the end of it all, the Twins were in the lead and Correa was pumping up his teammates in the dugout. It was an unorthodox way to finally come through for the new team but we'll take it.

3: Baseball sure is a boring product right now.

I guess Correa's eventful infield hit could be described as exciting, but there have been few such moments in the many innings of baseball played this week. What a dull and dreary product fans are receiving these days.

Don't get me wrong, I'm happy to have it. I realize that Major League Baseball could've easily been absent from our lives at this point, had the lockout not mercifully ended in March. But the quality of the play has just been really sub-par, with dead-ball era vibes across the league, and Friday was a perfect encapsulation.

The Twins have been a big mess lately, yet Chicago was only messier. The winning runs scored on sloppy defensive plays, and the game featured a familiar lack of compelling offensive sequences. 

I was watching on TV with a few friends who are – I would say – at least moderate Twins fans. None of them could even sustain their attention on the ninth inning of a tightly contested one-run game. Even as a total diehard who revels in every intricacy of the game, I could feel their pain. 

It was a drag to watch. In the waning moments of a game where seemingly nothing ever happened, Emilio Pagán was battling through never-ending at-bats up until he finally escaped his self-made mess with a borderline strike three call. 

It was an unfulfilling end to an unfulfilling victory. I hope better days are ahead.