Riverbrian

If a runner is on third with less than two outs and we are tied or down by a run and it’s late in the game. When simple contact could tie the game or break a tie. I would consider pinch hitting for him based on his contact rate in that situation. That’s OK. We got a team full of guys who can hit. You can still play Sano tomorrow and it doesn’t mean he’s a waste of roster space. In all the other situations that OPS just might help us. Let Sano be a simple member of a good team. Don’t compare him to Cabrera until he hits comparably.

Buxton dropped his K rate. Sano could accomplish the same. If he does... when he does... the results will be stunning. Keep coaching and working with him. We have enough talent around him so he doesn’t have to carry us.

About a year ago, I was a passenger in a friends car. We were driving through a parking lot, we were laughing and joking about something. Without warning, a car started to back out into his path. The backing car nosed out maybe a foot but must have saw us, because the car stopped and waited for him to go by. Of course, the backing car did start to back out and this made my friend kinda apply the brakes a little and maybe slightly adjust the wheel to the left before straightening out and continuing on as normal. When this happened... my friend went from mid-sentence in the middle of an uncompleted joke to screaming, cussing, out of his mind angry at the idiot driver who started to back out. Twinsdaily can be that way sometimes.

If the umpire will consistently miss calls in the Twins favor, I will withdraw my request for automated balls and strikes. Last night was a step in that direction.

The bullpen needs to be attacked in the same fashion as the position players on our current roster. Find out who your guys will be and you can only find that through opportunity. Every member of the bullpen must be trusted... if you don't trust them and therefore don't use them as a result. Cut them, demote them and move on in search of a guy that you will trust and use. Rinse and repeat until you got a pen that is worthy of winning us a world series. This isn't as simple as trading for Ken Giles, Will Smith and Brad Hand, declaring your work done for the year and just letting it buck the rest of the way. We don't know who will be healthy and ready come playoff time October. Circumstances change all the time in baseball. Players get hurt or get the case of the struggles. You trade for Giles and you cut Magill to make room. You sign Will Smith and you cut Morin to make room... You trade for Hand and send Duffey down to AAA. The Twinsdaily forum posters will applaud and be very excited about the upgrades and I will join you all in the celebration because we need to acquire arms. but... sometime after the acquisitions... we can expect injury, poor performance or something. It happens all the time. Chalk it up to bad luck is the easy answer but that answer is a cop out. Trade for all 3... I encourage it but ignoring your depth is an excuse that I will pin right back on the management team if they try to use injury as an excuse. Bullpens are built by providing opportunity. Depth is important on the mound just like it's important on offense and defense. We are looking at a largely untested bullpen right now. The starting rotation has been primarily carrying the water. Look how quickly things changed for the Indians... Kluber hurt, Carrasco Hurt, Clevinger Hurt, Bauer struggling all of a sudden. Now imagine if our Twins went through something similar to that in the coming months. Chalk it up to bad luck, is the quick and easy answer as you just lay down and die. However, we just got done watching the Brewers, get by without a rotation by relying on the bullpen in the playoffs last year. We watched the Rays and A's do it last year. The team doesn't have to lay down and die. It can still compete if they get bullpen serious... right now. I'm not saying it's ideal but it isn't a death sentence unless you let it be one. You are right Doc... Terry Ryan found some good options over the years and he found almost all of them on the scrap heap... In my opinion, the reason he was seemingly good at finding cheap help was because he seemed to settle for scrap heap finds as a bullpen staffing philosophy and therefore provided them opportunity to become a good option by not pursuing better options and it worked out a good portion of the time. But again... Opportunity was the key component of finding them. We need to pursue all options and never stop searching for a bullpen full of talent. Pursue the top of the line, while simultaneously testing our in house options whenever we can. To do this... you need to expose them all to the opportunity. 25 players who can play is the only way to do it. We are all watching the offense do this right now. We lose Cruz and Garver and keep on... keeping on. They all take an occasional day off so others can play and we keep on... keeping on. We need depth and this is how you find and develop depth... You play it.

You are right! Same with the Brewers, Astros and Yankees. Using the Dodgers as an example... Check out the creative way they assembled that bullpen for the playoffs. 3 starters Maeda, Wood and Urias joining mainstays Jansen and Baez. Madson was a trade acquisition after the Nats placed him on waivers. Dylan Floro was reacquired in a trade with the Reds after the Dodgers waived him in 2018. Floro was previously waived by the Dodgers in 2018, The Cubs in 2017 and the Rays in 2017.

I'm using Morin as an example because we hadn't seen him in a week. During the week we didn't see him... The Bullpen was Bad that week. Magill and Parker were both lit up multiple times while Morin was on the beach. I'm saying... you either trust him or you don't. The bullpen is struggling and Morin is not being utilized with an 0.64 WHIP. Now I got others telling me that we can't use Eades either. If you don't plan to utilize a guy even while peers are being lit up. Neither have a place on the roster. It's we must play Morrison because we got nobody better all over again.

I agree with you. The Twins haven't had to rely on the bullpen this year. The starters have been doing the heavy lifting. This could change quickly. Can our bullpen pick up the slack, if things shift with no warning, like it often does in the game of baseball? I have no idea what happens because our starters have been doing the heavy lifting and it disguises the bullpen. Kinda like a mother who does laundry for her kid in college. We really don't know if the kid can really do laundry if Mom gets hit by a bus. This front office should be fully focused on October right now in June. I know that Baldelli places his trust in Rogers, Parker, May and Harper. Is that enough if Perez extends his rough start streak to 5 starts in a row? Is that enough if Odorizzi and Gibson suffer injuries? Is that enough if Rogers gets hurt? I was OK with Kimbrel... I'm OK with Will Smith... And I'll be OK with Nick Anderson. Whoever they come up with, I'm gonna trust the data they are looking at but there better be a "whoever" and it better be someone that Baldelli will use more than he uses Mike Morin.

I’m willing to believe I might have but I’m always willing to believe the ole “more to the story” bit.

I get that and I’m not missing that. I’m saying there are guys who have been developed out there. They just haven’t been labeled as “the guys yet”. Everybody keeps bringing up the famous. There are others. It’s not Will Smith or bust. As for the patience needed to develop... yeah we have failed as an organization for a decade or longer

I frequently use the term "bullpen serious". When I say I want them to get "bullpen serious". I am kinda talking about what you are talking about. Take a tour around the rosters of the other MLB teams. The guys who are producing the high K/9 rates, the guys who are hanging the hard zeroes and destroying the come back hopes of the other team, were primarily guys that Keith Law didn't have ranked. Our guy Taylor Rogers wasn't one of those guys, he was a failed starter and look at him now. Ryan Pressly was a rule 5 pick. Everybody wants Taylor Rogers now but they wouldn't paid much for him 3 years ago. Who was Kirby Yates? We know who he is now. How Bout' LeClerc? Did we know who Edwin Diaz was when he arrived on the scene with the Mariners? When I think about Gallegos with the Cardinals... I think about the Islands but the dude is blowing batters out of the water right now. Amir Garrett? Diekman? Who was Kahnle when he showed up with the White Sox? Workman? Brad Hand nobody knew who Brad Hand was until he became Brad Hand. Alverado and Roe with the Rays? We've all heard of Kimbrel... He excites us because we've heard of him but there are bullpen arms that we haven't heard of, arms that can hang hard zeroes and destroy hope for the opposing team. Nearly every roster has one or two, including the ones who will be selling.

I don't know why Molitor was let go. I seem to remember a quote from either Derek or Thad stating that they were looking for a manager that was little more future focused or something along those lines. I do remember a recent quote from Falvey on MLB radio that they were aware of Pressly's potential but were having trouble in execution. All of these are just clues that may or may not mean anything. However... when I look at it from the outside. Pressly is an example we all keep bringing up and I agree... but I can at least justify it because we got some value back... but... to me a bigger question is this. How can there be a reliever currently pitching with the Marlins striking out 45 batters in 24 innings while we had Matt Belisle on the roster during a season we are going nowhere? We have to be able to make better assessments then that? We should have been able to realize that Nick Anderson was worth a run up the flagpole instead of Belisle. This is what has to stop and if Molitor played a role in this... maybe it's part of the reason he is gone.

"liability" "pray" "sentenced" I disagree 1,000,000% and in my opinion... it's a horrible waste of prayer.

The Rays have two starters to get past. 60% of all games. It is bullpen from start to finish. Watch tonight

https://www.rosterresource.com/mlb-tampa-bay-rays/ 2 man Starting Rotation: Check 11 Man Bullpen: Check Lots of players on the disabled list: Check No big name position players: Check Everybody plays: Check 64 Million Dollar Payroll: Check This team has everything it needs.

If Sano loses by one vote!

I've seen Buxton over run balls before. Not only does he get to the ball. He is so fast that often times he over runs it and has to reach behind him to make the catch.

Pole Vaulting began a long time ago. Europeans used to use poles to cross water filled canals with the goal being distance and not height. In the late 1800's they started competing for height. They used Bamboo Poles with a sharp point on the end. The competition was held on grass and the pole vaulters landed on grass. The record back in 1896 was 10 feet 2 inches. As time progressed they improved technique and materials and the record of 10 feet 2 inches started increasing until pole vaulters were falling too far and landing on a hard surface, naturally injuries started to occur. The injuries would have stopped the sport all together if it wasn't for the... Umm... MAT and as pole vaulters continued to go higher... the mat was replaced by the full scale landing pit because they realized that the mat needed to be improved. The history of all sports is to go higher and faster than ever before. Telling a baseball player to lay up goes against the history of all sports. Improving the surroundings in the name of safety so the athlete can go higher and faster is how it is supposed to work.

I don't want him to stop doing that. Pad the walls with Marshmellows or something. On a hot summer day... Let Buxton come out of the wall looking like this with the ball in his glove.

In all seriousness... This is what baseball needs right now... this very second and shouldn't wait until tomorrow. They need to market their players and their stories. Baseball sucks at this. The baseball audience is primarily old white and male. They are not going to grow trying to get more old, white and male audiences. They will grow by reaching all the others. Telling the stories of players will help baseball reach new audiences. My wife will sit and watch Survivor, the Bachelor and the Voice just to see who gets voted off. She watches the produced biographies of each contestant and she listens to what they have to say and why these moments are important to them and she lets those production pieces determine who she wants to get chosen and then she watches to see who gets chosen. While my wife watches these shows... I tell her that Baseball has all of this ten times over. Players are voted off the island all the time but baseball does a crappy job of telling their stories and as a result... declining numbers and poor name recognition beyond the baseball fan elite. I told my wife about Smeltzer surviving cancer as a 9 year old... She listened to his parents being interviewed... She watched the game and cared about Smeltzer. I love the Smeltzer story but there are a lot of stories that need to be told. Tell them and baseball has a chance of increasing it's audience base.

I have no idea what is happening in that clubhouse but I do know this. I've seen Momentum. I've seen teams that win continue to win and you notice the confidence, good times and good play. All of that is a natural by-product of winning. I've seen teams that lose continue to lose as they smash water coolers trying to figure out why things are just not happening for them and I've seen the finger pointing when the missed cuts occur and all the frustration that is a natural by-product of losing. Chicken or the Egg? I have no idea but if all it takes for winning is clubhouse chemistry and happiness. Put Bobby McFerrin on a loop over the loudspeaker and go wins some baseball games with the positive mojo that you create for yourself.

After watching Smeltzer last night. This morning I'm thinking."I really love baseball".

Last year the bullpen was over used. This year the bullpen is under used. I've have some friends who are farmers and it is either not raining enough or raining too much.

The big question for me with Jefferies is this. How in the... did he catch that ball?