Brock Beauchamp

For sure. Donaldson looks like he still has great range and reaction times but his hands have inexplicably turned to lead at critical times. Like most things about the 2021 Twins, their defense has been inexplicable.

Donaldson has a 133 wRC+ this season. His career mark is 139. Simmon has an 89 wRC+ this season. His career mark is 90. The defensive miscues from both have been a surprise, though.

Fixed it for you

The Twins are in the middle of a long stretch, this is a seven inning game, and the offense is lifeless. Write this one off and try again in a few hours.

Why bother to replace Thorpe for the fifth?

Three wins just from clutch hitting and we’re only in the middle of May. Woof.

Unless he gets that velo back up, I think the bullpen is his only chance to succeed in MLB (and that’s assuming he can get the 2-3mph bullpen bump).

??????

I’ll just come out and say it: **** this team.

Except his range doesn’t look that diminished and soft hands isn’t exactly one of the first skills to diminish.

When exactly did Donaldson’s hands turn to lead?

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

Ah, I didn't realize his pitch limit was still that restrained. That could easily be the case.

How does this blog entry not have comments? This is really a fantastic take and nails exactly how I feel about this team. I'm frustrated as hell by the Twins' play since starting the season 5-2 but people are scapegoating way too fast and way too readily without a lot of evidence to support these takes. The point I keep hammering at is "how do you explain a team of veterans losing 10% of their OPS in the last third of the game?" These aren't young players being "tainted" by a coaching staff or clubhouse cancer. These are guys with thousands of PAs each, guys who have been in the league 5+ years, guys who never had this problem until roughly five minutes ago. The Twins are unlucky, shades of bad (seemingly different every night), and unlucky. Josh Donaldson, one of the best third basemen of this generation, had three errors in two nights. To that I say "WTF" and there are so many instances of that kind of completely nonsensical situation in the Twins 2021 season.

They really must not like what they're seeing from Randy because he continues to be passed over time and time again.

Fair or unfair, the hitting coach will have to be changed if the offense doesn't right their course. Despite some late-inning heroics last night, here is the Twins offense in 2021: Innings 1-6: .753 OPS Innings 7+: .680 OPS That's absurd and is a huge reason why this team has such a terrible record. They lose 10% of the their OPS the moment the sixth inning ends. Is that the hitting coach's fault? Er, probably not, as he's definitely not out there telling a bunch of veterans to start missing the ball after they've batted twice. Could the team approach at the plate be partially responsible for that huge drop in performance? Sure, that's definitely a possibility but it still doesn't cover even most of that 10% drop in OPS. But while the team can't fire all the players, they can always fire the coach, even if it isn't his fault (or even mostly his fault). And that's what will probably happen if this keeps up for another month or more.

There’s really no point in it. Sano can’t be sent down and the Twins are on the hook if he clears waivers and another team picks him up. If the Twins had someone ready to take his spot, maybe it’d be worth the DFA but they really don’t. Do we really care if they field Sano or Rooker? I don’t, and frankly I’d rather see Sano for at least a little while longer, as he has a much higher ceiling and isn’t that much older than Brent.

xBA doesn’t take into account park factors or any number of things that affect a single ball. All it does is take the exit velo and launch angle data and outputs a number with the batting average on balls similar to that one based on historical data. There will always be fringe cases like this one where a ball doesn’t have a great historical record but goes for a home run in certain parks and certain conditions.