MMMordabito

Just give Arraez a deal today

Wow ... One of the best!

I know there's still plenty of game left, but that seemed like the most harmless 2nd deck bomb given up for awhile.

Add in the Yankees for me, and then throw in not being able to hate Lindor ... I have very little as well

Odorizzi = Really good five inning pitcher ... Make it work, Rocco.

In a vacuum, I didn't hate the walk to Kipnis, but, yeah, it's ridiculous this series.

Gotta do something to justify adding talent to the 40-man ... These guys are going to get picked off left and right come Rule 5 time otherwise.

... and a .500 OBP for the top 4 .... Great day!

Time to catch up on Lucifer.

The wheels on the bus are falling off, falling off, falling off.

Didn't we do this Smeltzer/Bieber thing in Cleveland already? Expecting the same result. Last time Cleveland won to even up their record. This time they will just even up the race for the division.

David Hernadez is out there now .... That seems like a Falvine type of target.

"Pineda and Jose Berrios both have ERA’s south of 3.20 since June 1st, and Kyle Gibson is performing well with a 3.97 mark. Throwing out his nine-run blowup against the Yankees, Jake Odorizzi owns a 3.18 ERA in his last 4 turns and was the ERA leader early in the season. Wanting a starter at the deadline was a fair hope for the front office and fans alike, but with only Marcus Stroman as a realistic option, opportunity was hardly missed by passing on guys like Mike Leake, Tanner Roark, and Jordan Lyles." Giving Berrios a pass on a terrible day at the park is OK, because he has been really good otherwise. The rest of this take is nonsense. Pineda is hurt again. How can the team realistically count on him when it's going to count? Anyone can throw out a terrible start and make numbers look better overall. That's misrepresentation with Odorizzi, because the guy can't go deep in ballgames and hurts the team in other ways by doing that. Sweeping his turd against the Yankees under the rug is a huge cop-out. Gibson only performs well against bad teams when nothing extra is asked of him. Needs some innings eaten up after an extra-innings marathon. Nope. Fail. Need to set the tone early in a huge series with your biggest competitor. Nope. Fail. Badly. You know what Mike Leake does well. He pitches deep into ballgames. Writing him off in sour grapes fashion isn't really fair. I'd much rather have him that Martin Perez or Kyle Gibson in the rotation. I would trade both for Leake today, if given the opportunity, and never look back. I'd even throw in another prospect to sweeten the pot for the other party. It's going to be very interesting this off-season right around the time of the Rule 5 draft. The Twins will have to expose some guys. They might even have to expose some guys that they traded for in 2018. If they get selected, that will be a big Falvine fail, because they made the bed by not properly utilizing the assets. If they couldn't get takers on those assets when there was a chance to improve the team, then they are bad salespeople and perhaps someone else should be in charge. Twisting the parts around to present a better picture is lame. Painting the pitching issues as not-as-bad-as-it-seems and then stating that the Atlanta series was only lost because of some clunker pitching performances is self-contradiction. Calling it like I see it ... One and done on October 2, or at best a series loss (3-1) at Target Field on October 8. This pitching staff just doesn't have the depth for anything more.

Done with Gibson. He's not a gamer. As loosely stated above, he never delivers when it really matters. I suppose one could argue that all the games are either worth one win or one loss, but there are times when the tone needs to be set or the team needs a pickup. Gibson never delivers in those situations. Don't even think about QO. Just let him walk and he can go disappoint a different fanbase.

Baldy and Gibby just took Littell out to Subway and ordered him a **** sandwich. He responded appropriately.

Adrianza is arguably worse against RHP than Cron. Especially when you consider the power threat.

Good riddance to the Nibbler in 2020. DFA.

Thanks for sharing! My brother is a Marlins fan, so we went to the first game at that stadium against the Cardinals a few years ago. It was hopping at the ballpark that day until ownership carted the shadow of Muhammed Ali out on the field. I've never been a member of a larger group of people in awkward silence. Kyle Lohse beat Josh Johnson. The Marlins had cheerleaders then. Do they still have them now? I haven't seen cheerleaders at too many baseball fields. The Bobbleheads were cool. Sound like you had a fun trip. Good stuff!

At least Polanco's contract doesn't put a damper on this possibility. Don't get me wrong, I like Polanco and I'm confident his numbers against LHP will improve with seasoning. He obviously gets fat on RHP (glad it isn't the other way around). I am open-minded on how to improve the team though. Ehire Adrianza's capability at SS and 134 wRC+ against LHP this season should give pause to any drastic moves though. It's pretty easy to just offer him Arb again in 2020. Adrianza's career 93 wRC+ against LHP is still quite a bit better than Polanco's 82. Given all that and the fact that getting constant above average offense from SS can sometimes be a luxury, I don't think this is a priority on the list of shortcomings that the Twins have as a whole.

I cherry-picked the cream of the low K% crop .... Perhaps my qualifiers should have been WAR greater than Martin Perez with AA/AAA/MLB K% +/- 1% Randy Dobnak .... I'm too lazy to do it again though

All of his days off should definitely come against lefties.

18% career K-Rate for Randy, but 21.7% at AA/AAA. The following pitchers this year have over 2 WAR with a K-Rate under 21.7: (Player/K-Rate/WAR) Marco Gonzalez / 16.8 / 2.8 Miles Mikolas / 17.7 / 2.1 Marcus Stroman / 19.1 / 3.0 Mike Soroka / 19.8 / 3.0 Masahiro Tanaka / 19.9 / 2.1 Jose Quintana / 20.1 / 2.5 Michael Pineda / 21.3 / 2.0 Kyle Hendriks / 21.6 / 2.8 Not going to say that Dobnak is going to provide that value, but there are definitely some pitchers that are useful with lower K-Rates. I think we take any of those guys as a #5, and there are a couple that would be at least #2. Also had to grab this from his Adopt-A-Prospect page last year (updated by his father): Apparently, he's Iceman.

I wonder if Dobnak can make Jack Morris bawl during a broadcast.