Brock Beauchamp

I stopped reading here because I'm pretty sure close to 100% of the Twins fanbase assumes this will be the case in pepetuity.

Eh, hard to say. If this group of walking wounded ever get back on the field, the Twins could be competitive (just Buxton by himself is a massive team upgrade). If they continue sputtering and getting injured as they have, I don't like their chances.

I don't think the game was terrible but there were a lot of plate appearances that just didn't look good from both offenses. Loads of misses on hittable pitches and weak contact on pitches that could have been driven. The Twins offense is going to have to hit those pitches when they face the Yankees and Astros or they're going to lose... badly.

Not a pretty win but it still counts in the column that matters.

I don't even have anything to say, I just wanted to post the obvious GIF.

Oh, I think pretty much everyone agrees he is underperforming, the only quibbling seems to be over to what degree he is underperforming. Everyone I know agrees that those errors have been killing the team but they're also wildly uncharacteristic of Donaldson and errors aren't something I really think of as the first thing to decline. In other words, I don't think the blundering stone handed errors we've seen continue going forward, though they sure stung in the moment. It should also be pointed out that Donaldson only recently stopped hitting. Until a week or so ago, his offensive production was quite good. Is he in a minor slump or something else? Hard to say and time will tell. Season Totals Split G GS PA AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI SB CS BB SO BA OBP SLG OPS BAbip tOPS+ sOPS+ 2021 Totals 36 34 143 119 17 28 7 0 5 19 0 0 21 22 .235 .343 .420 .763 .242 100 116 Last 7 days 8 7 32 24 4 2 0 0 0 3 0 0 6 5 .083 .250 .083 .333 .095 -7 -1 Last 14 days 15 14 63 50 6 8 1 0 2 9 0 0 11 11 .160 .302 .300 .602 .154 60 69 Last 28 days 26 24 108 88 13 17 6 0 4 15 0 0 18 18 .193 .324 .398 .722 .191 89 102 Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Original Table Generated 5/25/2021.

That's fine if you don't use them but those are incredibly useful tools that are excellent predictors of future performance, far better than any human eye, which tries to trick us or write its own narrative on a regular basis. And nobody really cares about 100 vs 102... but 95 vs 105 is significant and often hard to discern based on different camera angles. Never mind that without that tech, truly useful stats like "barrels" don't exist.

It's all automated by the tracking equipment fitted into every MLB stadium. It's how MLB operates the Baseball Savant website with all its crazy cool data. Without that equipment, we wouldn't have exit velocities, reaction times, sprint speeds, launch angles, the list goes on...

Not a ton of gas on it, which is probably a big part of the reason why he's not really shortstop material, but it was perfectly accurate. I think they said it was an 82mph throw on the broadcast.

Sano has loads of discipline, probably the most on the team (only other real contender is Donaldson). Sano just has a lousy contact rate.

I haven’t thought about Wally Joyner in roughly 3.5 decades.

Also, things like batting average need to be mentally adjusted this season, as .245 is roughly .010 higher than league average last I checked.

Me in the tenth inning:

A nice win but this team needs to stop playing sloppy baseball if they expect to win close games or post a long winning streak. Tonight will be a challenge with Bieber on the mound.

Yeah, I’m tired of losing but Giolito was filthy. If the Twins play like they did the last two days, this season won’t be a total loss.

Yep, that's what I meant, though I didn't really describe it well. Arraez has been marginally better than Sano, though both have been below average.

Ah, finally found on B-Ref where I can sort team by WPA: Team Win Probability* Name Age PA BtRuns BtWins Plays WPA ▼ Jorge Polanco# 27 160 0.7 0.1 165 1.0 Byron Buxton (10-day IL) 27 98 15.5 1.5 105 0.9 Nelson Cruz 40 155 7.2 0.7 157 0.2 Rob Refsnyder 30 9 2.5 0.2 9 0.2 Jake Cave (60-day IL)* 28 93 -5.8 -0.6 96 0.1 Nick Gordon (40-man)* 25 3 0.6 0.1 5 0.1 Jose Berrios 27 2 -0.5 -0.1 2 0.0 Kenta Maeda 33 2 -0.3 0.0 2 0.0 Josh Donaldson 35 116 6.4 0.6 119 -0.1 Michael Pineda 32 2 -0.5 -0.1 2 -0.1 JT Riddle* 29 6 -0.1 0.0 6 -0.1 Kyle Garlick 29 67 -0.1 0.0 68 -0.2 Max Kepler* 28 119 0.8 0.1 127 -0.2 Alex Kirilloff (10-day IL)* 23 44 1.0 0.1 45 -0.2 Ben Rortvedt* 23 26 -2.0 -0.2 27 -0.2 Trevor Larnach* 24 27 1.1 0.1 27 -0.3 Luis Arraez* 24 136 1.3 0.1 142 -0.4 Miguel Sano 28 99 0.5 0.1 99 -0.4 Brent Rooker (40-man) 26 30 -3.6 -0.4 30 -0.5 Willians Astudillo 29 82 1.7 0.2 83 -0.6 Andrelton Simmons 31 110 0.3 0.0 112 -0.7 Ryan Jeffers (40-man) 24 37 -3.7 -0.4 38 -0.9 Mitch Garver 30 99 -0.4 0.0 99 -1.3 League Average Team Total 29.2 1522 22.4 2.2 1565 -3.8 Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Original Table Generated 5/19/2021.

As Mike said, WPA calculates that. And while Sano's WPA is kinda bad this season (-0.4), it's not terrible in the context of the 2021 Twins. Mitch Garver has been much worse at -1.3, Simmons has been marginally worse at -0.7. Sano is actually tied with Arraez at -0.4, though Arraez has played a lot more.

No, wRC+ is not position adjusted and one definitely wants better than league average from a first basemen. My point was to show just how little Sano had played to this point and that a couple of really good games completely changes his season stat line.

Also, Sano's wRC+ is now at 102, just a tick above league average. Which is higher than the 99 wRC+ he had in 2020. His K% is also at 35.4%, which is... wait for it... The lowest mark he's had since... Literally ever. It's his lowest mark since he entered the league.

Microscopic sample size alert, but... Miguel Sano Batting Gamelogs for Career Games 561 to 564 Date Tm G GS Rslt PA AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI BB IBB SO HBP SH SF ROE GDP SB CS BA OBP SLG OPS BAbip aLI WPA acLI cWPA RE24 DFS(DK) DFS(FD) May 15 to May 18, 2021 MIN 4 4 2-2 17 15 5 6 0 0 4 7 1 0 3 1 0 0 0 1 0 0 .400 .471 1.200 1.671 .250 1.38 0.881 .45 0.16% 3.81 74.00 100.50 per 162 games 162 162 689 608 203 244 0 0 162 284 41 0 122 41 0 0 0 41 0 0 35.7 6.5% 154.4 2998 4071