Brock Beauchamp

My anger mostly lays in the past offseason (but we've been over that dozens of times) and the fact that the bullpen needs, say, three arms. Only one of those arms needs to be great/elite. That arm probably won't come around until July 30th or later. But it has been painfully apparent with the emergence of Rogers that the Twins needed a lefty specialist... about two months ago. Did we get Thorpe? Nope. Did we get a trade? Nope. The bullpen also needed another good righty arm. Did we get Stashak three weeks ago? Nope. Did we get Kennedy or another rough-but-potential arm a month ago? Nope. And that's what pisses me off, the exact same way it pissed me off in 2015. July 31st doesn't need to be some magical date where things can be done only with the 48 hours leading to that day. If you need a quantity of players, not all of which need to be great, it's not impossible to target players in that range from June 15th forward and pick up one or two pieces (even if it requires a slight overpay, which will still be very little) well before the deadline so that when the deadline comes, you're focused on picking up the truly great players that will help the team down the stretch. And in the meantime, you won't get games like that abomination last night or the other abomination from last week (or two weeks ago, it's all a blur now).

Also, there's something to be said for "you know your farm system better than anyone and should have faith in your ability to give away the prospects you care least about going forward".

Yep, and that's what I've basically been saying since they failed to nab Kimbrel. They're not going to go out and nab an elite reliever on July 1st and that's okay. But the fact that they didn't aggressively go after a Kennedy or a LOOGY is really pissing me off right now. Even if you "overpay" for that guy, the cost is still pretty low and easily done with a farm system this deep through the middle. There are options and I don't know which ones are best. What I do know is that "no option" is the worst choice possible, particularly when the team's bullpen has been teetering on the brink almost since Opening Day and has been costing the Twins games pretty consistently for the past six weeks. Hell, they didn't even give Lewis or Stashak a real shot before two days ago. Do something.

I don't care about the name on the back of the jersey. I care about timeliness and effectiveness. The timeliness aspect has already begun to slip by them. The effectiveness piece remains to be seen.

The Yankees are a really good offense. So are the Twins. Think of it this way: the Twins starters have outpitched the Yankees starters this series. This is modern baseball. Gibson didn't look good but he battled against a damned good lineup and, had the front office equipped Baldelli with a real bullpen, would have almost certainly been pulled after 4.2 IP with a six run lead. He walks off, gets a huge ovation from the crowd, and the bullpen steps in to hold down a pretty easy six run lead over 4.1 innings. I don't even blame the pitchers in the bullpen. Rogers has been overused, Stashak pitched his ass off, Duffey held it together and would look like a hero if not for one awful call, Harper is who he is (and probably a useful piece at the back of a pen). Parker has no business pitching in that situation. Stewart has no business pitching in that situation. There was no LOOGY to pitch to Gregorius. That's on the front office. There is no one move that I can point to and say "they screwed up" but they failed to acquire a real reliever in the offseason. They balked on paying Kimbrel. They didn't acquire even a lefty specialist which, even if you overpay, the cost is still "peanuts". They didn't aggressively promote guys like Stashak or Lewis two weeks ago in hopes that they'd be better than Magill, Morin, or some other M name I've successfully wiped from my mind. Add all those things together and last night's game wasn't close and fun, it was infuriating. When Blake Parker stepped to the mound, I was seething. Not at Parker, he's just not very good. Not at Baldelli, his choices sucked. I was seething at the front office for failing to give the other 24 guys on that roster a chance to dominate a Yankees ballclub and get back on track during a pennant race, something that was badly needed after this team scuffled for six straight weeks.

I don’t expect them to pick up a stellar reliever in the middle of June. But do you know what they could have found? A LOOGY. Boy, sure would have been nice to have one of those with, oh I don’t know, two outs in the fifth.

Too bad Baldelli didn't have a competent bullpen because you just know he wanted to pull Kyle after putting two men on with two outs in the fifth. We've seen Baldelli yank the starter in that situation several times this year. The pitcher win doesn't matter and therefore, neither does the 0.1 IP. Get out of that inning with no damage and it's highly likely the Twins cruise to an easy victory. Again, all of this is on the front office. Gibson didn't look good but made it through 4.2 IP with an acceptable line. Had the bullpen been even half stocked, he doesn't pitch against Gregorius and the rest is history.

This loss is on the front office. That Baldelli had to put Blake Parker on the mound in the eighth inning of a game against the Yankees on July 23rd is inexcusable. And then he had to use Harper. And Stewart. Unacceptable.

He was yelling and dropping F bombs so it’s not like he was sleeping in the dugout.

Wow. If a pitcher throws that ball in a 3-2 count, it’s a ****ing strike.

While Parker isn’t a good pitcher, at least he’s irritating to watch pitch.

*facepalm*

You may want to put a bit more thought into that particular nickname.

DAMMNNNNN BOYS

Stashak stood up and put on his hat. Is he really going out there again? I have to admit I have no idea what Baldelli is going to do next most of the time.

Now THERE is the Miggy I’ve been waiting to see in big situations.

B-Ref catcher WAR is close to useless. FanGraphs tries to incorporate the unique nature of catchers into WAR and Castro has slightly more than half the WAR of Realmuto in less than half as many plate appearances (ie. Castro is slightly outplaying him, albeit much closer than I expected).

Gibson didn’t take long to remind me that I’m really tired and don’t need to watch baseball tonight.

Castro is also outplaying Realmuto by a considerable margin.

Here’s hoping we get to see the good Gibson tonight. This Yankee team will walk him to death if he tries to get cute instead of putting the ball over the plate.

From what I’ve seen at a glance, it’s mostly because the offense remembered that teams must score runs to win baseball games.

Very few trades have happened at all compared to previous years. I'm also disappointed that a deal hasn't been finalized but the NL bunching up around the WC berths has put a real damper on the deadline thus far, I think. Particularly the Giants going on a run. They have a deep bullpen with lots of arms that should have been available... then they started winning 90% of their games.

I caught that around the third or fourth inning. Cheeky, but kinda funny. And New York fans attempting to take the high ground on basically anything is even funnier.

Same.

Interesting. So that leads me to believe a pitcher cannot get a Hold before the winning pitcher steps to the mound. I never thought about that but it makes sense.