Riverbrian

I've waited a long time. Seems like by now I'd be a subject of a TD article.

I agree with you on the importance of Buxton. However, I disagree that 1 player can take this team down. (You may not have said that exactly). I think the offense in general was beyond incredible for awhile and simply bound to stabilize. I think it can heat up again and cool off again but all in all... it's going to be a good year offensively with or without Buxton. Besides... Buxton... I fear we will have to get use to losing him from time to time based on past history... or even current history and that's OK.

I don't know what to believe but he says it was you... so it was you. Benefit of the doubt.

Even Trout takes a day off every once in awhile. Polanco has been in the lineup every day... mostly at SS with the occasional DH. After a 17 Inning game... seems like as good a time as any to give him a rest when selected who rests after a 17 inning game. Garver... he caught all 17 innings. There should have been no question that Garver was going to take the night off. As for the third guy selected to take it easy last night after the 17. Somebody who played the full 17 was probably going to be the choice and Nelson Cruz as the DH for all 17 wouldn't necessarily be as taxed as someone running around in the field so Cruz should stay in. Schoop? No idea... maybe it was his turn... maybe he was dinged. Maybe Rocco wanted Sano to battle through his rough night. We have 12 players who can play and perform... Days off are going to be something for all of the players from time to time. Schoop was selected. I would have guessed one of the left handed outfielders against a left handed starter but it wasn't and that's OK. In the end... Arraez and Astudillo up the middle didn't end up being a defensive issue as far as I can remember so maybe they can play those positions a little bit. With Adrianza and Marwin out... Arraez would be by default our backup SS... I think it's OK to have a look see. Besides Astudillo and Arraez each drove in a run. They ended up being plus players last night. I continue to have no complaints with how Rocco is managing the playing time of the position players.

If Cruz isn’t a consideration. Astudillo and Arraez are the OF considerations. I’m going to assume Sano isn’t.

It is certainly understandable to fixate on the bullpen but you are going to fixate on it even more if one of our starters goes down... or two starters go down and this sort of thing happens all the time. We've been extremely lucky so far. I'm also fixating on that bullpen... fixating both directly and indirectly. Indirectly, I believe finding a starter is priority one and perhaps the biggest thing we can do to help the bullpen going forward. I believe we need a starter and bullpen and that may be the order. I'm reasonably certain the front office sees this and reasonably certain they will do something. I can't wait to see what they do. Fun times!

Keep working with him. But yeah... Arraez and Marwin can play a little 3B from time to time until he comes around. I watched him last night and never felt like he was going to put the ball in play. He was more off than normal.

General question for the audience If it was Adrianza or Castro at the plate in that situation. Is it OK to bunt then?

Bingo

It's a completely sensible take (as long as it includes the sentence... he should slide down in the pecking order). Temporarily... We don't have to Baby with the Bathwater Blake. Just give him some low leverage work as he works the kinks out.

Well... We have 8 relievers in the bullpen and the starting pitching still carrying the bulk of the water so nobody is being overused in that sense. But... you are right... He is simply not very good (as of lately). Parker has made 7 appearances in June. 8 appearances since spitting up a couple of runs against the Brewers (which was the beginning of his slide downward) on May 28th. He hasn't had a clean inning in any of those appearances with his ERA rising from 1.04 to 4.44 in a very short span of time. Those appearances have been high leverage primarily especially with Rogers down for a significant portion of the time. Prior to this downward slide... Parker had made 19 appearances... Not Allowing a run in 17 of those 19 appearances. These things happen from time to time and I'm not saying that we should just toss him aside for good but at the moment he is struggling so lessen his work load at least in terms of leverage (at least temporarily) and give those innings to someone else. Yeah... I know the big question... Just who is Baldelli supposed to turn to? I don't care... Anybody else not named Magill because Magill is in the same boat as Parker at the moment. It is not my job to staff the roster. It is the job of the front office to provide the manager with options who can (at the very least) perform better than a guy who has a 1.83 WHIP in high leverage and can't seem to find the zero to hang. . It's the Logan Morrison from last year argument all over again. Riverbrian: Quit Playing Logan Morrison everyday Others: Who else is Molitor going to play... We don't have anybody else to play. Riverbrian: I don't care... We are allowed a roster of 25 players just like everybody else. If we can't find a player to out perform Logan Morrison we have failed as an organization and we won't ever find a player who can out perform Logan Morrison if you don't play that player. I'm allowing the front office to choose who they roster without complaint... I am going to stay consistent with what I said I was going to do. That is watch deployment of that roster. It's June and I have for the first time reached the point of taking issue.

Dear Rocco, I'm lodging my first official complaint of 2019. You are overusing Blake Parker at the moment. I'm not saying that he should be cut, I'm not saying that you can never use him again but, you've got to back off on his usage at the moment. Sincerely, Riverbrian

Polanco made the decision to bunt. Rocco did not make the decision but he supported the decision. The decision was completely justifiable in that situation. Polanco is our best hitter but are we going to lose our minds because he gets on base 4 times out of 10 AB's compared to the other guy who gets on base 3 times out of 10. We were down a run in the 8th. The bunt moves two runners into scoring position with Nelson Cruz at the plate. Schoop was out at home on a contact play. He stopped because he was going to be out and a rundown allowed others to advance. Kepler did not advance... therefore Cruz did not advance. Kepler made the tough to explain mistake but this can be good because the Manager gets to talk with Kepler about it and hopefully Kepler gets better as a result. In the end, Kepler's mistake didn't matter because Rosario is awfully cold right now. Tomorrow is another day!!!

In my opinion... the Yankees were already extremely deep offensively. So much so... that I think it is quite possible that the acquisition of EE doesn't move the offensive needle upward that much. However... Where EE can really move the needle for the Yankees is in the form of the next trade they make for starting pitching. EE allows them to trade a quality position player for a starter and not move the offensive needle downward and really moving the needle on the mound. The Twins were always capable of this type of creativity. If the price was cheap for EE... I hope that the front office didn't say to themselves... "We got Cron and Cruz so where are we going to put EE"? But Yeah... The Yankees had the advantage because they could easily shift Stanton to the OF and then move an OF for starting pitching. That's the beauty of depth and flexibility.

I have no issues with Marwin defensively at any position. I think as a whole, we've had a stretch of defensive mistakes lately that will ebb and flow as the season rolls along but in the end we will be just fine defensively. I’m not sure there is anything that needs a remedy.

That train may have left the station.

SP - Franklin Perez was ranked 3rd in the Astros system in 2016. He was 19 years old in High A at the time of the trade. After the Trade... Perez became the 1st ranked player in the Tigers system. OF- Daz Cameron was ranked 9th in the Astros system in 2016. He was 20 years old playing in Low A at the time of the trade in 2017. After the Trade... Cameron became the 5th ranked player in the Tigers system. C - Jake Rogers was the 11th ranked player in the Astros system in 2016. He was 22 years old playing in High A at the time of the trade. After the trade... Rogers became the 7th ranked player in the Tigers system. Based solely on rankings and the assumption that the Astros system was better than the Twins system. A comparable deal for the Twins to acquire Verlander would have been: Gonsalves, Kiriloff and Diaz.

Gibson pitched great, Rogers is back. The Twins win. "Unfortunately" is the first word you type.

Great post and you hit the nail on the head. The bullpen had been sufficient for the needs at a time. The bullpen wasn’t being tested the way it MAY (probably) need to be tested. It’s like a company truck repair shop with two bays. Business was booming and the trucks regular maintenance was being handled and the freight was being delivered without interruption. All of a sudden the breakdowns started occurring in bunches. The trucks started stacking up because two bays were not enough and now the company is turning down freight and losing money as a result. The Twins have a choice. A. Carry on as normal and wait for things to stabilize dropping the occasional loss in the short term with the likely risk of things not stabilizing. B. Since business is good. Grow with the business and don’t let something that can be fixed slow you down. I choose B

Thank You for getting out of bed each morning.

The very second we have an injury to the rotation, or end up with a larger number of short starts... the bullpen will have to pick up the slack. It works that way. This team is playoff bound, offensively this team is World Series possible. The front office HAS TO add depth on the mound... this means finding either starters or a complete bullpen full of talent to make up any quality innings loss from our current rotation. Plus, we have 3 free agents in our midst. I fully expect the front office to make a trade for a starter with at least another year of control and I expect a couple of high impact bullpen arms in addition. If the front office doesn't support this team with mound acquisitions... they should have their drivers license suspended.

EE auditioning for another team would be like you auditioning for a bowling team. You've rolled a ball or two in front of others.

This is how a team becomes bulletproof. The Dodgers and Cubs have been doing it this way for awhile now. I am so pleased that the Twins have followed that path and are doing even better with it at the moment. Now if the Twins can take the same approach on the mound... We might end up being used to this contention thing for a long long time.

I just wanted to mention that I appreciate your consistency of these posts.