Cooper Carlson

A lot to unpack here. You are correct that one of the main problems with this team is the middle relief pitchers, but you can't say this front office didn't do anything to fix that after they went and acquired Romo and Dyson. Romo has had one bad game (today) and Dyson should definitely be trusted down the road. I have no problem with them not spending big dollars on relievers because almost none of them worked out (not even Kimbrel). The Twins addressed this problem at the deadline and they just have not seen the results yet. Also, very few teams have a quality bullpen. The Twins have one of the better ones and the results will show soon.

Earlier this month, the Twins had a few key players land on the IL, the most notable being Byron Buxton. Losing him definitely hurts more than anyone else on the team. But a key member of the rotation also went down around the same time but has since returned. How good has that pitcher been recently? Do the Twins have the depth to take the blow of him going down? How much can he do to help win the division? Keep reading to find out.In case you haven’t noticed, the Twins starting rotation has been a huge area of concern since August began. Jose Berrios has dropped off a bit, Jake Odorizzi and Kyle Gibson struggle with consistency and then the number five spot is a fight between Martin Perez and Devin Smeltzer with neither of them doing enough to secure a job. The most consistent and reliable starter recently is Michael Pineda, but he hit the IL as August began and since then the Twins rotation holds a 5.55 ERA, 5.16 FIP, 1.61 HR/9, and 3.94 BB/9. Ironically, the Twins lost a key starting pitcher just a couple days after they did not add a starting pitcher at the deadline. That was controversial to some, but that is for a different day. So the Twins came into August fighting for a division, needing all hands on deck, and a few key players, including Pineda, landed on the IL at the worst time. People seem to forget this, but Big Mike began the season with four excellent starts before he started to slow down in his first season back from TJ surgery. There was talk about a long term extension before fans wanted to DFA him during his bad period of starts. He was eventually placed on the IL for the first time as a sort of break/precaution to get him some rest. Since his return he had been lights out, holding a 2.95 ERA, 1.16 WHIP, 4.4 K/BB, and .662 OPS against. The funny thing is that nobody really started talking about how good he has been until the start before the most recent, his second, IL stint. Michael Pineda had quietly been putting up ace numbers since the start of June. A lot of this success has come from his ability to limit walks. He is fourth in the American League with just a 4.4 BB% so keeping guys off the bases has been key for his success. This BB% isn’t even a career high, so maybe he can get even better in that area, which would certainly be impressive. With Cleveland steamrolling through every opponent they face at like a .900 winning percentage, the Twins will need Pineda to return from his stint on the IL and get back into the role he had. It seems as if he stabilizes the rotation every fifth day with a guaranteed quality start. He actually has the second most quality starts on the Twins, trailing only Berrios, so he is definitely reliable. If the playoffs began today, Pineda would likely be the number two starter for the Twins, taking on Gerrit Cole of the Astros ... that’s scary, but it’s the truth. A playoff rotation of Berrios/Pineda/Odorizzi isn’t flashy but hopefully it could get the job done. Overall, the weight on this entire starting staff has only gotten much heavier with the Indians catching the team and no help for the starting staff being added at the deadline. The front office showed they have confidence in this group to get it done in big games this year so let’s see Big Mike step in and prove the Twins are here to stay. The Indians didn’t have to face him in the most recent series, but if they really want to take the division from the Twins then they have to beat the healthy version of the Twins. After this season Pineda will become a free agent and you should not be surprised if he returns to the Twins on a short two-year deal. He has become a solid pitcher and with the Twins having only Berrios and Perez under control, expect the team to make a noticeable effort to keep Pineda around. Before Pineda was put on the IL the second time, it seemed as if he was getting better with every start. It will be crucial for the Twins division chances if he can come back on that same wave he had been riding. On that note, I wonder what he would look like surfing... back to baseball. Keep in mind this is still his first season after TJ surgery so his innings could be limited. The Twins definitely seem to have a plan in place to keep him around for the long haul this season with scheduled breaks or IL stints for him to rest his arm so hopefully fatigue or major injury do not become concerns. He should be returning to this rotation this week so hopefully he can make the group a whole lot more reliable than they have been lately. All five starters will need to contribute if the Twins want to take the division for the first time since 2010, and I expect Michael Pineda to be leading the rotation. Click here to view the article

In this episode of the Leading Off Podcast, Matt and Cooper discuss the Twins past week against the Braves and Indians. Things didn’t exactly go well so we decided to just go all in on our most negative podcast so far. Anyways, give it a listen and drop a comment below.Time stamps: 2:15 Reviewing this frustrating week 17:30 Discussing the division race 44:40 Jonathan Schoop/Luis Arraez 49:30 Injury news (Cruz, Pineda, Dyson) 62:15 Did Martin Perez do his job? 68:10 It is looking like the Twins messed up this deadline 71:00 Prospects (Thorpe, Romero, Alcala, Celestino) 84:50 Looking ahead In this link you can find the Spotify audio of the podcast. https://open.spotify...hS8r8DUFkGRybgl Please be sure to let us know what you think, whether it’s a question, you disagree with us, or anything else by commenting on this post or heading over to our Twitter accounts below Cooper: Carlson_MnTwins Matt: Matthew_bTwins Click here to view the article

The Twins finished off this four game set with the Indians with a frustrating loss highlighted by a Marwin Gonzalez double with Ehire Adrianza being thrown out at home and Carlos Santana crushing a grand slam in extra innings. Cleveland will head home tied with the Twins atop the AL Central.Box Score Berrios: 6.0 IP, 6 H, 3 ER, 1 BB, 4 K, 68.8% strikes (66 of 96 pitches) Bullpen: 4 IP, 3 H, 4 ER, 2 BB, 3 K Home Runs: None Multi-Hit Games: Rosario (2-for-4), Arraez (2-for-3), Cron (2-for-4) Top 3 WPA: Gonzalez (0.21), Arraez (0.18), Rosario (0.14) Bottom 3 WPA: Rogers (-0.48), Schoop (-0.22), Kepler (-0.18) Berrios struggles out of the gate This game started with the Twins ace Jose Berrios on the mound looking for redemption from his last time out. This start certainly didn’t begin the way Berrios wanted with a first inning home run from Greg Allen, followed by a walk and an RBI double from Yasiel Puig. Berrios allowed another run in the third inning on a seeing eye RBI single from Carlos Santana to make it 3-1 Indians. Jose Berrios definitely did not have his best stuff yet again but was able to work through six solid innings. Twins offense nowhere to be found The Minnesota Twins came into this game with an advantage going up against Cleveland’s number five starter Aaron Civale who was making just his third career MLB start. The Twins just could not get the bats going. The only early run was from a Rosario double and then two sacrifice flyballs. The Twins fight back to tie it but another frustrating ending occurs After scoring just one run all day, the Twins fought back in the ninth inning against Brad Hand with a chance to walk it off. Eddie Rosario started the inning with a double, Arraez singled to make it 3-2 and then Cron singled to give Marwin a chance to end it. I’ll just let this tweet do the talking. Gonzalez came up clutch with an RBI double but the momentum was immediately killed when third base coach Tony Diaz decided to send Adrianza and he was about by about a mile. The catcher would have had time to catch the ball, go fill his car with gas, stop for lunch and then come back to home plate and Adrianza still would have been out. It was the second time this series where there was a send from third and it was not a close play at all. You are all welcome to vent in the comments. With the momentum back on the Indians side, the tenth inning went sideways for Minnesota. Rogers gave up a single, walked Lindor on four pitches and then a well- placed bunt single loaded the bases for Carlos Santana. You probably thought “hey it might be all right because Rogers is elite.” Well, Santana crushed a grand slam to give the Indians a 7-3 lead and crush our spirits. Cleveland takes the series and leaves Minnesota with a first place tie. The Twins desperately needed a split at the least in this series. Cleveland was coming at them like an avalanche but starting pitching struggles mixed with untimely hitting came at the worst possible time in the season. The Twins will head to Milwaukee for a two-game set while Cleveland will host Boston for three. The Twins now have to hope to take care of business until they meet up with Cleveland again. Postgame With Baldelli Bullpen Usage Spreadsheet Click here for a review of the number of pitches thrown by each member of the bullpen over the past five days. Click here to view the article

Matt predicts 3-1 in the Twins favor and, although he is never wrong, he will be wrong this time. No way this series doesn't end up as a 2-2 split.

Sup Matt?

Thorpe to the rotation, Perez to the bullpen is something a lot of Twins fans and especially myself are hoping to see. It still seems unlikely, but I think Thorpe has proven enough to be given an extended look in the rotation.

I'm betting $5 that Graterol makes a greater impact to this Twins bullpen than Sam Dyson. #KindaHotTakes

This whole thing with Dyson has seemed odd to me since it began. I considered point two as a possibility but you did a good job of debunking that. It certainly does not feel like Dyson will be playing a pivotal role in the bullpen anytime soon. If that is true, this deadline goes from a B grade to a D grade.

The Minnesota Twins starting staff is being led to October by two-time All-Star Jose Berrios. What makes him so good? What might he be able to do to improve? I take a deep dive into his pitch arsenal in this post which involves four different pitches. Also, he had the worst start of the season last night so perfect time for a Berrios post, right?Jose Berrios is an emerging ace on this young Twins team and he will most likely be at the top of the rotation for years to come. He works with four pitches and all of them can be extremely effective when he is on. He throws a four seamer (30.2%), sinker (24.7%), curveball (30.4%), and a changeup (14.7%). I will be touching on each one of them but my main focus will be on the curveball and the changeup. Here is a graph showing how often he has thrown each of the four pitches to right-handed batters in his first four seasons. Download attachment: pitch ratios.png Four seamer Let's begin with the basic fastball, shall we? Jose is throwing the fastball around 30% of the time and that is normal for him, but the velocity has dropped from 94 mph to 93 mph since his debut in 2016. That's obviously not a huge drop off, but it has allowed for better control as his BB% has gone down every single year on the fastball from 20.2% in 2016, 10.1% in 2017, 8.3% in 2018 and now just 4.5% this season. With the drop in walks came an uptick in strikeouts every season on the fastball and the percentage of strikeouts now sits at 28.8% for Berrios. Opposing hitters have not been doing too well against for the four seamer and the expected stats show that they will get even worse. The fastball gives up an expected batting average of .233, an expected slugging% of .383 and an expected weighted on base average of just .273 so basically opposing hitters against the fastball are just as good as Joe Panik who was just DFA'd by the Giants. One of the main reasons it is so good is because of how it builds off of the other pitches (you will see evidence of this later). For now, here he is fooling Khris Davis with it. Sinker/Two seamer This two seamer from Berrios is one of the nastiest two seamers you will see from any pitcher in baseball when it is working, especially against right-handed hitters where he throws it nearly 30% of the time. He only throws it against lefties 19% of the time and it gets hit pretty hard (.282 xBA against). It is definitely effective against right-handers, allowing just a .208/.256/.292 line. The velocity hangs out around 91-92 mph and he is throwing it more than ever against right-handers. He is striking batters out at a career high 15% as well. This pitch can work well with any of the other pitches, but especially the curveball because of how much they break in opposite ways. I will show another videos from the amazing @PitchingNinja on Twitter. This will outline just how effective the two seamer can be when paired with the curve. Curveball I gave you all a small taste of how effective the curve from Berrios can be with that video above, but I'm going to go a bit more in depth on it. Last season it was easily his best pitch and he was putting hitters away with it at a career high 38.2 whiff%, but it has been a different story in 2019. Hitters went from a .201/.274/.417 line against it in 2018 all the way up to .269/.310/.452 in 2019. The main reason for this has been the location of it. I'll use the right-handed hitter heat maps against the curve for this example. The first one is where his curve was located the most in 2018 and then the second one will show the location in 2019. Download attachment: savant curve 2018.png Download attachment: savant curve 2019.png There is a pretty noticeable difference here in the middle of the zone. While Berrios is at a career high in zone%, a lot of that is due to curveballs left in the hittable part of the zone. In 2018 he didn't throw as many strikes, but that wasn't necessarily a bad thing, as he rarely left a hittable curveball for the hitter. Here is an example of one of the hanging curveballs from this season. Then this is one of the better curveballs from 2018 with some mean break on it. Now I am by no means saying that Berrios has a bad curveball this season. I am saying he has a much higher tendency to hang one than he did last season. There is a ton of good that comes from the curveball. It has insane break which I will show in a moment, it improves the other pitches like I showed above and it is nearly unhittable against left-handers. I'll show a couple of my favorite examples of the curveball next. If he can get the curveball back to where it was last season, he will take another huge step towards becoming the Cy Young caliber pitcher he can definitely become and that is because of how effective his changeup is becoming. Changeup The final pitch in Jose Berrios' arsenal is the changeup and this is the first season he is throwing it more than 10% of the time. It has shown signs of being an elite pitch to pair with the curveball and fastball and with a little bit more time this will be his third or fourth outstanding pitch to throw against opposing hitters. It has been nearly unhittable against right-handers which is surprising because usually you don't see a lot of righty-on-righty changeups but hitters have just a .133 AVG against it in limited appearances. Left handed hitters have given him some trouble when they hit the changeup with a .246/.267/.369 line with the expected stats looking worse by at least 30 points in each category. When Berrios has the changeup working in his favor, it is likely going to be a good day for him. The best improvement for the changeup has been Berrios' ability to keep it down in the zone so hitters are forced to swing, otherwise it'll be a called strike. Here is the changeup location from 2018 (top) compared to 2019 (bottom). Download attachment: savant heatmap 2018.png Download attachment: savant heatmap.png Here are a couple of his best changeups along with what an entire team looks like when the pitch is working well. Final remarks I was actually going to write a "could Berrios win Cy Young" post but then the Braves basically shoved that in my face so I changed it up and stayed up a bit later to write this instead. I think I had some interesting finds with the curveball and changeup location from last year to now. If Jose Berrios has both of those pitches working how he likes, along with his elite two seam fastball then the opponent doesn't stand a chance. Berrios is quickly becoming the ace the Twins need and a lot of people would say he may already be there. It's always pretty cool to have a two-time All-Star starting pitcher at just 25-years-old leading the pitching staff. Here is one final video of his three better pitches when they are all on. Big shoutout to PitchingNinja on Twitter. Everyone go follow him for daily pitching highlights. Click here to view the article

Thanks a lot! We’re extremely happy with the feedback we’ve been getting. With the audio, we are getting better each week and mine should be fixed for this upcoming week because I know what I did wrong I think.

Sup Matt?

Thanks! We love to hear that you are enjoying it.

In this episode of the Leading Off Podcast, Matt and Cooper discuss some hard hitting topics like the trade deadline, the red hot Cleveland Indians, Devin Smeltzer, Brusdar Graterol and so much more.Scroll to the bottom for time stamps. Hey everyone! Click the link below for the iTunes audio of the podcast. In this link you can find the Spotify audio of the podcast. https://open.spotify...qRD6UihC2QG1EaQ Please be sure to let us know what you think whether it’s a question, you disagree with us, or you just hate my voice by commenting on this post or heading over to our Twitter accounts below Cooper: Carlson_MnTwins Matt: Matthew_bTwins Time stamps: 7:50 lengthy trade deadline talk (Dyson, so SP trade for the Twins, etc) 27:50 Zack Greinke 31:00 Did Cleveland get better by trading Bauer? 37:20 Should Smeltzer stick around? 44:20 More Injuries… 56:40 Fan questions (when will we see Kirilloff/Graterol) 1:15:40 Looking ahead Click here to view the article

My bad

The Twins were able to pull off a much needed series sweep against the Kansas City Royals. The pitching was outstanding from Devin Smeltzer and the newly improved bullpen and the offense did just enough for the win. The Twins topped the Royals 3-0 to win the series 3-0.Box Score Smeltzer: 6.0 IP, 2 H, 0 ER, 1 BB, 4 K, 67.8% strikes (61 of 90 pitches) Bullpen: 3 IP, 0 H, 0 ER, 0 BB, 3 K Home Runs: Castro (11) Multi-Hit Games: Arraez (2-for-3), Rosario (2-for-3) Top 3 WPA: Smeltzer (0.30), Duffey (0.17), Arraez (0.10) Bottom 3 WPA: Sano (-0.08), Adrianza (-0.07), Cruz (-0.06) Pitchers duel between Smeltzer and Keller This game started just like everyone predicted between a Twins AAA pitcher and literally anyone on the Royals pitching staff. Five quick shutout innings on both sides. Both Devin Smeltzer and Brad Keller were rolling and it was looking like the first team to score was going to win. Ehire Adrianza also made a play that made us all say “No way he gets to that ball… wow! Well no way he throws out the runner… WOW!” Luckily for the Twins, they were able to score a run on a 92 MPH single from Arraez, followed by a wild pitch, a productive groundout to move him to third and then a sacrifice fly from Rosario on a nice diving catch by Jorge Soler. Smeltzer makes his case to stay in the big leagues Twins starter Devin Smeltzer showed yet again that the Twins won the Brian Dozier trade last season with six shutout innings. These six innings helped to lower his ERA to just 2.28 in 28.2 career innings. He came up to fill in for Michael Pineda and he did exactly what the Twins needed from him. It wouldn’t be surprising to see him take Pineda’s next start against Cleveland as well. Late offense is just enough for the Twins After the sacrifice fly from Rosario in the sixth inning, Jason Castro homered in the seventh and then Rosario singled on a ball he thought was going 450 feet and he ended up getting caught in a rundown and then Nelson Cruz was thrown out at the plate. It was a very odd play, but the Twins were up 3-0 going into the ninth. The Twins bullpen finishes off the game strong After Devin Smeltzer was taken out in the seventh inning, Tyler Duffey was the first out of the bullpen and he did his job by throwing a clean 1-2-3 inning with a couple of strikeouts. In the eighth the Twins brought in new fan favorite reliever Sergio Romo and he did his job as well, throwing just six pitches (all strikes) and getting three outs. Taylor Rogers finished it off in the ninth with another 1-2-3 inning and that capped off a perfect game for the bullpen and a series sweep. Twins finish off the sweep with a three game lead over Cleveland The Twins won the game by a final score of 3-0 and there was really no doubt at any point despite it being a close game throughout. It looks like the Twins may have finally returned to the team we knew and loved in April and May. Tomorrow a great Atlanta Braves team comes to town with the Twins still leading the Central Division by three games. Twins win! Postgame With Baldelli Bullpen Usage Spreadsheet Click here for a review of the number of pitches thrown by each member of the bullpen over the past five days. Click here to view the article

Ned Yost could have easily played Iron Man

Shoutout to whoever picked the picture for this post. I always love me some menacing Ned Yost staring into my soul as I open up Twins Daily.

It'll be alright, we won the series. Sometimes teams lose games because baseball is weird. No need to overreact like it was game seven. The Twins had a 5-2 road trip which is really good. They also moved another game up on Cleveland. Be happier.