Let's add Cruz to the exempt list. I'm not going to bag on the team or the poster. Bottom line, they've looked listless, flat and gutless. Doesn't mean it stays that way. But the sample size thus far has been piss poor. Let's hope this inning or game turn it around.
Hindsight's 20-20 - and, when they made the decision to let Eddie walk, I wasn't too upset. But after seeing Jake Cave and Kyle Garlick and just the overall malaise of this group, I think the front office made a mistake.
I have more confidence in Rocco holding a closed door team meeting to sing Kumbaya than I do his doing anything to push the right buttons or light a fire under the team. Rocco is who he is.
And one more thing... The Twins have Jake Cave and Kyle Garlick starting in the OF. With Buxton's injury issues and Kepler seeming to have regressed, I don't think it was too smart of the front office to operate under the assumption that you could make it through the season with two AAA+ outfielders as your contingency plan.
RE Rocco... He has zero feel for the game. Sure he relates well to the players and the club house has a positive vibe despite the on-field result. But...I'm not seeing much from him in terms of in-game management.
Great. And who is responsible for those 'bad seeds' being in the bullpen in the first place? And, second, why does nearly every other playoff contender not have similar issues with bad seeds - to the extreme point that the Twins do?
Pet peeve of mine is 'whom would have signed or traded for'... Does the heart surgeon ask the relatives of a dead patient what they would've done differently? It's not my job to build an effective bullpen. It is the job of Falvey and Levine. And they failed.
It's not fantasy baseball. But when you have DFA'ed more than half of the bullpen arms that you started the season with, and you've jettisoned 5+ pitchers to and from the major league roster over the course of weeks, something is wrong.