Nine of twelve

Regarding Varela, here are the relevant OPS data: 2019 AL: .761 2019 Twins: .832 2020 AL: .732 2020 Twins: .743 While we were better than average in 2020 the drop in our OPS was much larger than the league-wide drop. I don't have enough inside knowledge to say how much of this should be laid at the feet of Varela. The Twins should try to employ the best coaches available and if there is someone they deem better than Varela then that's who should be hired.

I don't think this strategy is inexplicable or even bad. The explanation is that starting pitchers have a high likelihood of doing much less well the third time through the lineup. It seems pretty obvious to me that this should be expected. Opposing batters have had two plate appearances to see what the pitcher has got and the pitcher is starting to fatigue and thereby become less capable of further adjustments needed to get batters out. There are certainly exceptions, but those pitchers are not common. (I think Maeda is one because he is able to add to and subtract from almost every pitch in his repertoire.) In terms of roster construction this makes the bullpen more important, especially middle relief, but to me the most important thing is to have a reliable, consistent closer. Having such a closer makes the rest of the bullpen much easier to construct and manage.

It's time to thank Romo for his service and wish him the best of luck in his future endeavors elsewhere. I think May will finally reach his full potential next year so we should see to it that he stays. The outfield roster needs to change. The ideal situation is to have four good players, at least two of whom can play center field, with two batting from each side. With all the left-handed outfield bats on our current roster it seems to me that a trade or two would be indicated.

That would do it for me.

It's even more subjective, to the point of being totally arbitrary, when people start defining pitchers as 2's, 3's, or 4's.

It would emphasize the lack of starting rotation depth.

We still have the rest of the game to play, you know. Although the top half of the inning was indeed pathetic.

I think this is correct. A Min loss and an Oak win gives us Hou. A Min win gives us 50/50 between CWS and Cle, as does a Min loss and and Oak loss.

This play made Eddie one of my favorites. He timed his bluff exactly perfectly, with the pitcher engaging the rubber but unsettled before working into his stretch. All he needed was to induce a little tiny flinch and he got it.

The other question is whether Gray had started a pitching movement before stepping off. If so, it's a balk.

I wonder if one of the base umpires called it.

I think the Reds are saying that it's not a balk since Gray stepped off before throwing. That may mean it's not a pitch but rather a throw. I don't know the rule.

I was just going to post this.

Yeesh, that was a lucky non-event.

Yeah, but it's only the Vikings. I like it when they win but if they lose I don't care.

NIce play. Too bad it was made by the Reds.

OK, boys, let's get him in.

If the Twins can hold 2 or 3 it means we cannot play the Yankees in the ALDS if we both advance.

Nicely done on the 6-4-3.

Knowing just enough about probability to be dangerous I'll condense this to list only the probabilities for the Twins: Cle at Min: 46.875% NYY at Min: 18.75% CWS at Min: 15.625% Hou at Min: 12.5% Tor at Min: 6.25%

This is awesome! Now give us the probabilities of all possible sets of four first-round series. (JK)

A 2 seed would install us as the home team for the first round and the ALDS. We would be the home team in the ALCS if Tampa Bay is eliminated before then.

According to the flow chart above it's possible for us to lose and play Cleveland.

The following is a post by jiminy, made on the "MIN 7, CIN 3: Arraez and Shine" thread. IMHO what s/he posted is worth reading and belongs here as well. For those who may not have read it there I'm copying and pasting. In defense of Houston, remember that teams played zero games against the other AL divisions. You can't compare records from one division to the next; they might as well have been in different leagues. Taking the top two from each division plus two wild cards only fair. If Houston made it instead of Cleveland or Chicago, I might say that was unfair, but that didn't happen, because of the wild cards. If the second best team in the west got bumped by the fourth place team in the East or Central, however, that would not be fair. They literally didn't play ANY of the same teams, so their records are not comparable. If you have to pick 8 teams, I think this is a good solution. Whether taking 8 teams from each league is a good idea, however, is another question entirely. In a short season with no interdivisional play, it makes sense, because the results haven't reliably filtered out the best teams. If Minnesota could still finish from 1st to 7th on the last day, the rankings are still too volatile to mean much. Abs dive we never played most other teams,rankings based on records are dubious anyway. But if they do this next year, I think it would be terrible. It would make both the regular season and the playoffs virtually meaningless. Take the AL Central race for instance. Three really good teams battling it out till the final day should have been incredibly dramatic! Instead, it was irrelevant, and felt that way. We've all known for months that all three would make the playoffs. If you have to have a losing record not to make the playoffs, it turns the regular season into a snooze. This was okay during a pandemic--I had plenty of stress already and didn't mind not having to worry about whether the Twins wouk make the playoffs. But during a normal year, it would be like watching spring training for 162 games. Six months is a long time to wait for meaningful competition to begin! Worse yet, when the playoffs finally do start, half the teams get eliminated before the real first round even starts, in a virtual coin flip! Subjecting the best team in baseball to a 3 game series against some rando that shouldn't even be in the playoffs makes a mockery of both the regular season, and the playoffs. You haven't winnowed out the best teams in either. That's not all bad, if it keeps a team like the Giants or Mariners from bailing on the season halfway through, trading away their best players, and leaving their fans a hollow shell of a team to root for. It definitely makes the season more exciting for teams like that, and could reduce tanking. And as a midmarket team ourselves, we would probably benefit from that more often than we would be hurt by it. But I still don't like it. Maybe it is just because we have finally put together a legitimate contender; but after waiting so long to see a team that can go toe to toe with anybody, would we want to watch them lose in 2 to a third place team and never get a crack at ending the Yankees curse? That would be horrible. And while it was nice for Giants fans that they weren't eliminated until the final week, whay if they had made it, and the Dodgers lost in 2 to a Giants team with a losing record in the play-in round? Would anyone really feel like winning a world series meant you were the best team anymore? Would anyone really care who won a joke of a tournament like that, except the two finalists? It reduces every playoff game to instantly forgettable instant gratification. What is uniquely great about baseball is the vast mental construct of meaning hovering around every event. Each pitch is a battle between pitcher and batter. But that battle is much more dramatic when seen in context of the full at-bat. A borderline pitch is much more exciting with 2 strikes, or 3 balls. The courage, and potential cost, of a pitcher throwing a 3-2 slider that drops out of the strike zone, knowing the batter has to protect the plate, is what makes it so interesting. And the drama of each at-bat in turn depends on knowing where you are in the inning, whether there are men on base, and how many outs there are. And that, in turn, depends on what inning it is, and the score. And knowing it is just one game in a 3 game series adds further narrative context. But the tension and meaning of all these games within a game get ramped up exponentially by a pennant race. The excitement of two teams that have been dogging each other for months finally facing off in September adds another whole layer of meaning and drama. Which the long wait only increases. And the context guess well beyond the season. A September game against Cleveland is much more meaningful knowing they are the defending champs, here been for years. Rivalries can extend for decades. When the Twins finally beat the Yankees in the playoffs it will be the culmination of a 20 year struggle. And we will feel the weight of all this history and context on every single pitch! That is what makes baseball so special. People complain that not much happens. But in no other sport is so much happening in your head. That is what MLB is throwing away for a few extra days of playoff excitement. By expanding the playoffs so much, they are trivializing the meaning of both the regular season AND the playoffs. I would happily trade the "excitement" of a three game playoff series against a team with a losing record -- a series that has a very real chance if costing us our chance at redemption against the Yankees, and our first shot at a title since 1991. I would much prefer the actual, ongoing excitement of a tension-filled, season-long race against Cleveland and Chicago, which could have provided months of gripping entertainment, precisely because one or more of these proud and deserving teams would NOT make the playoffs! That's what it means for a game to mean something. And if it can take years to build a team capable of playing meaningful games in September, that's what makes it mean so much when they finally do. That is what was lost this year, and quite possibly forever, if they expand the playoffs permanently.

I'm not going to quote jiminy's post because it would take up a lot of space here, but I have to say it's rare that I completely agree with such a long post and this is one such time. Very well done!