Riverbrian

Then you still look for a first baseman who can play. And then you look at your roster and be thankful that you have Correa, Lee, Lewis and Keaschall to cover the rest of the infield.

As I watched this latest Cleveland series. One thing kept hitting me over the head. Actually it is something that has been hitting me over the head since the two pickoff attempt rule and the extra inches added to the bag.... but it was something that was really hitting me over the head this week. STEALING is back and a part of this game. It isn't back for the Twins but Cleveland sure seems to be taking advantage. The Twins are last in baseball with 64 swipes which is exactly how many bases Elly De La Cruz has. Could you imagine if your entire team hit as many home runs as Aaron Judge has. That's how far down we are on the spectrum. A single player is producing as much as the entire team does. There have been 1,851 bases stolen in 2024 so far. This is back to the level it was at in 1980's. Back when Tim Raines was raining down. I remember when I used to say things like... it's nice to have a patient Joe Mauer hitting after Carlos Gomez so Gomez could go take a bag. Teams will go up and down offensively throughout a season. When a team goes through those teamwide slumps were they just are not producing... The theft of a bag can produce a run when we struggle to produce them in the traditional way. Speed never sleeps is what I heard someone say. Can't remember who. It might have Usain Bolt or Herschal Walker or somebody like that. When they put together the 2025 roster in the off-season. I am hopeful that they work on trying to balance the roster out a bit by adding some base stealers and then... of course... letting them do just that. Adding another club to the bag when needed... creating another way to win a game when needed. Just go get that Ohtani guy whoever he is... 51 bags is pretty good. He might help.

I wouldn't be regretting it. And I wasn't sure I wanted Kikuchi in the first place.

It wasn't the bullpens finest hour. In my opinion... Bullpens are Martha and the Vandelas. There is nowhere to run... Nowhere to hide from leverage. Bullpens need to be 7 deep. It doesn't take money but you need a bullpen full of arms with stuff. The good thing is that most teams are in the same boat. Bullpens are gassed or with arms with tanks that shouldn't get fuel in the first place across the league.

I've seen enough comebacks and I've seen enough rallies to never feel good or bad in September or June. I'm just plain nerves regardless knowing each pitch and each AB matters. However, what you are describing is how you are feeling because I never allowed my nerves to feel like the Twins had no chance. Although I admit not feeling confident whenever Clase hit the rubber. What you are saying sounds like the typical Lions fan I was hanging out with in Michigan back in 2015. I was at a party on a Thursday night in Grand Rapids. I was surrounded by Lions Fans. The Lions were playing the Packers and everybody was negative before the game began and I was just laughing and shaking my head at them wondering how they get up in the morning. It was sometime in the 3rd quarter. The Lions were up 20-0 and all the Lions Fans were saying "****ing Lions" here we go again every time they gained only two yards on the ground despite being up by 20. Then the Packers started to come back. The groaning got worse as they got closer. It's late in the 4th quarter... Detroit is up 23-14. They are still convinced they are going to lose. Green Bay scores to make it 23-21 around the two minute mark and doesn't onside. Everyone is pissed. The Lions ran a bunch of clock off before punting. Green Bay had the ball on maybe the 20 yard line and about 20 seconds left. The first passes are incomplete. On third and ten from the 20... THEY ARE STILL CONVINCED THAT THEY ARE GOING TO LOSE. Finally... I say something "I don't get this at all. Green Bay has no timeouts... No Time and 80 yards to cover. The Odds are probably 99.9% that you are going to win this game and you are already acting like you are going to lose". They responded with... Brian... You are not from Michigan... It's been this way forever. We are going to lose". 3rd and Ten maybe 80 yards from the goal line. Rodgers completes a pass and they lateral it around backwards... about the same distance of the completed pass. Maybe 5 seconds left when Detroit gets hit with a penalty... Facemask? maybe. The Lions fans look at me and say... "See... Told Ya... This is what it's like to be Lions Fan". And I'm like... "The Packers can only Hail Mary this thing". Which is exactly what the Packers did!!! The moral to this story Chief... For Gods sake... Quit acting like a Lions Fan!!!

I will not... I am fully aware what happened in those 26 games. Those games are history. They got us where we are right now but today they don't matter anymore. Sequencing (hot and cold streaks) are going to happen in a 162 game schedule. Controlling when they happen is impossible. The Astros started the season 7-19. Put a fork in them. Then won 5 of their next 6 games. Then dropped their next 4 games to go 12 and 24. They played slightly over .500 ball before rolling 7 wins in a row to reach .500 for the first time on June 26th and continued on to a 13-2 stretch before the Twins took two games in a row from them. When October 30th rolls around. None of those streaks for the Astros matter. Hot or Cold they are history. They are 0-0 and looking at the Twins, Tigers, Royals or Mariners in the opposing dugout at Minute Maid Park. You won't get me to bet one red cent on who is going to win that game or the next one. Right now the Twins are 0-0 with 9 games to go. So are the Tigers.

I understand that an L is an L. However, the Twins just played 4 games against Cleveland. Every game was inches apart. Runs were 13 a piece for the 4 game series. Again... I understand that an L is an L. The games didn't turn out the way we wanted or needed but it's not like the Twins were not inches from any of those games. These were extremely tense nail biting games where nobody in Minnesota or Ohio felt comfortable for 38 innings and you are saying that they are going to get swept by the Astros anyway. A team that has 3 more wins than the Twins have over 153 games out of 162.

I honestly stopped looking at the schedule in an attempt to figure out who has the best chances. Been watching Septembers for decades and I see absolutely no evidence that wishing for certain matchups matters at all. Baseball has never been that cut and dried. It's September 20th. (My birthday today BTW). Everything that has happened from September 19th and prior no longer matters. The Tigers going 26-10 since August 11th has no effect on what will happen today and tomorrow. The Twins going 10-20 since August 18th does not effect what will happen today and tomorrow. Today is a new day. The Past is the Past. The next 9 games will decide this thing and then the buzzer goes off. Every year... I've asked for baseball to matter in September. Boy Oh Boy... Does it matter this year. 😎

I agree. I could watch Correa play SS all day long. Hit it the ball his way... Out will be made. His arm strength is pretty special. That's why... I'm not even thinking about moving him anywhere. Wallner and Lewis have become the must watch AB's for me. Can't really say that about anybody else. Even with the lengthy Lewis slump... I'm not going to the fridge when he's up. I know that Lewis has a specialness that will be evident again when his timing returns. I'll add Wallner's Arm to your list. Every time the ball hits that RF wall... I'm wondering if the runner is going for two. Normally a ball striking a wall means extra bases so this isn't something that I would typically wonder about until Wallner showed up. Wallner has taught me not to take that double for granted. I really appreciate Santana's play at 1B. Not just the scoops... I think a lot of 1B across the league can make those scoops. It's the scoops plus the 38 year old guy diving to snare a hot shot and the very smooth underhand flip to the pitcher that I've seen quite a few times from Santana. His defense has been first rate. I'm fan of Byron across the board. The baserunning, the defense and the ability to hit the ball 450 feet. Although I would trade distance on some of those homers for a better OBP. Duran's heater is eye popping and same with Jax when he combines it with that slider. Lopez and Ober... it's the changeup for both of them that I like watching. Joe Ryan I like watching because for the life of me... I don't know how he does it but... he does it. GO TWINS!!!

The trade deadline is the last chance to stock up. Not stocking up is incredibly risky. Injuries, slumps... just plain things still occur to a baseball team in August and September. There are no guarantees the trade deadline acquisitions won't blow up in our faces as we all know but it you have to make the attempt because you won't know what you need in August or September or the playoffs. I often say Buyers Buy and Sellers sell... anything else is standing still. And I mean it with all of my heart but with that said... I can't completely throw any front office under the bus because I have no idea what other teams were asking for. I agree with Chief... A.J. Puk would have been near the top of my shopping list but I can't judge what players Miami liked and didn't like. We can look at what Miami got from Arizona and say Minnesota could have topped that. It sure looks like they could have but what if Miami really really really really liked De Los Santos and Pintar. I have no way of knowing how Miami felt about players... other than assume they liked those guys because they acquired them. There have to be limits because you are not going to give up Jenkins for a rental bullpen guy. That's an extreme example obviously but there has to be limits to what you will give up and I have to assume that it's possible that Miami was asking for more from Minnesota than they asked from Arizona because they liked the players Arizona was willing to part with. And will all of that said... Other contending teams were able to acquire talent at the deadline. The Twins were not. Whatever the reason we didn't acquire help... in the end... this is two years in a row and that makes me uncomfortable. On the other hand... Detroit sold and exploded afterwards with youth piled upon youth.

Team need starters to be... capable in the playoffs. Who those capable starters will be is much much harder to determine. During the 2023 Playoffs: Clayton Kershaw had a 2.46 ERA during the regular season. He still doesn't know what hit him in Game 1 against the D-Backs. He gave up 6 runs and got one out. Burnes and Peralta were pretty capable during the regular season for the Breweres. Not quite as capable in the playoffs. The Rangers pounced on Glasnow for 4 runs over 5 innings. Efflin had a 3,50 ERA regular season in 2023. It did him no good against the Rangers in the playoffs. Cristian Javier was a 4.56 ERA in 2023 for the Astros. Against the Twins in the playoffs he threw 5 innings of one hit ball while striking out 9. Who could ever explain what a Brandon Pfaadt was.

I've stated often times that I don't have any problem moving players to other positions if it helps put the best lineup on the lineup card. However... Correa... He's fantastic at SS, perhaps the most important defensive position. He stays at SS. Other players capable of playing SS move to other positions so Correa stays at SS. Putting the best lineup in the field means... Correa at SS. If we trade a low level minor league player for Bobby Witt because Kansas City wanted to... Bobby Witt moves to a different position or positions to accommodate.

I don't think so. Levi only comes out at night.

It's a pretty incredible record considering he only struck out 5 times. It's actually 34 Pinch Hit Plate Appearances total. He did manage to walk 5 times. 24 of those pinch hit plate appearances were against left handed pitching. So... it's pretty clear that we lost the advantage that we were trying to gain with those 24 pinch hit attempts. Let's just use one player (Trevor Larnach) for the example because Trevor has 23 plate appearances against left handers this year. For the sake of discussion. Let's say that all of Margot's pinch hit attempts were coming for Trevor Larnach. Larnach has 5 more hits in those 23 PA's. All of this maneuvering resulted in 5 less hits. Let's say that Margot had a decent year pinch hitting against left handers. Let's say he got 10 hits in those 24 PA's. All of this maneuvering would have resulted in 5 more hits. Over what is now 152 games. You have to wonder about the point of it all.

You made me look up the word "vicissitudes". I'm not sure that I have the talent to use that in a sentence. Luck has always been a component of the game of baseball. Timing is another large part of it and the timing is multiple pendulums swinging back in forth. You can't control when your opponent is hot or cold and the timing of when you face them is going to make a difference. Ultimately... to declare that this team or any team is mediocre to bad is subjective. I'll only say that every team has the talent to masquerade as a good one or bad one. What are the Orioles masquerading as right now? If you are right... Let's hope the Twins put the mask on today and wear it throughout the playoffs.

Yeah but... doesn't it also mean that the teams we are 55-68 against have a worse record against those 5 teams. Doesn't that also say something?

It's baseball. It's non-linear. What we as fans perceive as fat margins are actually razor thin. Hot and Cold Streaks stop and start on a dime without warning. Today is a new day... Everything that happened prior to today is history and has no bearing on tomorrow. It's why Baseball is the most beautiful sport and why I love it so.

I promise I won't go back into history any further. But lets go back to last year. The Rangers were the 5th seed with a 90-72 Record. The Blue Jays were the 6th seed with an 89-73 Record. The Astros also won 90 games, The Blue Jays won 89 games and the Twins won 87. Two Teams were above that pile. The Orioles won 101 games and the Rays won 99 games. The Orioles won 11 more games over 162. Which is one more win every 14.7 games. The Rangers lost 4 out of their last 6 regular season games as the backed into the playoffs. They swept the 99 win team Rays in 2 and then swept the 101 win Orioles in 3. Followed by a 7 game series victory over the Playoff Seasoned Astros. The Rangers then won the World Series by beating the National League 6th seed Arizona Diamondbacks. Arizona finished with an 84-78 record. The D-Backs lost their last 4 games of the season to back in past the Cubs. Much like the American League. There were two teams with lofty win totals. The Braves won 104... who many proclaimed to be the greatest team ever and the Dodgers with 101 wins. The Braves won 20 more games than the D-Backs which over the course of 162 game season equates to one more win every 8.1 games. Arizona swept the 92 Win Brewers in two and swept the 101 win Dodgers in three before going toe to toe for 7 games against the 90 win Phillies. Fast forward to September 19, 2024. The Yankees have the best record in the American League with a 89-63 record. The Twins are currently hanging on to the 6th seed with a record of 80-72. 9 games separate the Yankees and Twins over 152 games with 10 to go. Which is 1 more win every 16.8 games. I will not go to 2022 or beyond to show this all over again.... But I do type all of this to say that I don't except your definition of mediocre. 😎

I have been consistently vocal about some criticisms that I have. However... I don't believe that my criticisms should define the total of anyone or any system. There has to be more to the job than not letting lefties face lefties. No matter how right I think I am... and I do think I'm right. Yet, Here they are in playoff contention. I have been critical of the off-season. I don't think they had a good off season... I don't think they had a good trade deadline. Yet here they are... giving me a September with games that matter. I think we often lose sight of the fact that it's really hard to control your destiny when the other team is trying stop you, while bloops can become hits and rockets can be outs. Did we pitch bad or did they hit well? Who knows but one thing is for sure... if you are mechanic... I'm sure you've done a perfect job every time and never left a lug nut on the floor as the car drives away... but I am reasonably certain that you don't have other mechanics trying to knock the wrench out of your hand as you try to do your job. On every forum for every sports team around the country. There is a large contingent of posters who want the coach fired and many them want them fired for conflicting reasons. One wants Rocco fired because he pulled a pitcher.. the other wants him fired because he left the pitcher in too long. One wants Rocco fired because the team is collapsing down the stretch, another wants the front office fired because they didn't provide good enough players, one wants the owners to choke on their gluttony because they didn't provide enough money to get good players. They all want the same thing... heads on a pike. Yet... here they are playing meaningful games in September.

Go get em. Put a helmet on. This room will throw stuff. 😉

First post home run!!!

I noticed that you got three thumbs down for this. It's a little strong but I wanted to give you a thumbs up for better balance and I appreciate the "this thing ain't over" attitude. Anybody who doesn't want the team in the playoffs isn't worth my time. Today is a new day. Everything to this point happened yesterday.

Levi has been blaming Rocco for everything... things like toast landing on the peanut and jelly side when it hits the floor after dropped. He's blaming Rocco when they win. I believe he is making a statement that the forums of this website have been trampled by posters who think Rocco is to blame for nearly everything.

I would be hesitant to move Jose Ramirez and Bobby Witt at this point myself. Even I... wouldn't suggest a completely willy nilly approach to getting your best players on the field. However. In 2022 when Bobby Witt washed up on the shores. He played 3B for 50 games and then moved to SS. Why? Jose Ramirez was much more interesting. He became the primary 3B in 2018. From 2013 to 2018 he played 3B, SS, 2B and LF. 119 starts at 2B, 100 starts at SS and 49 in LF. Why? Cleveland even made World Series in 2016 and the playoffs in 2017 and 2018 so the player movement didn't damage them too bad. Why did they move Ramirez around? Kyle Tucker... He's primarily RF but he still has some boogers in his nose. 65 Games started in LF and CF. Plus 13 Innings at 1B. Bobby Witt played 3B because that was the open door to the majors. Jose Ramirez moved around under Terry Francona because moving him allowed him to put his best team on the field. It seemed to work out ok.

The Twins and everybody else drafts SS's because they are the best player at Rice University and the coaching staff at Rice would like to have their best player play SS. They get to the major league level and then they get moved once they find that the guy they drafted out of Tulane is a better SS but this Rice is guy still pretty good.