Riverbrian

Not ideal but he was probably due for a bullpen session and that inning probably served as such.

I don’t know what we have but let’s find out. Right Now... I’m saying that you can’t send him down. No matter who comes back healthy. Gonna have to have him cool down a bit before you even consider that. And give him occasional OF work.

It happens. Not worried about anything other than the bullpen. There is enough roster talent to perform well through these injuries. Play Wade tonight... oh yeah and play Arreaz again.

I understand why they bunted. I wouldn’t have bunted in that situation because we had a couple more innings to take a crack at it. I believe the bunt call was questionable but regardless if it should have been called for or not. You have to at least execute. If a bunt is called for... a bunt must be executed. To me that’s the biggest issue. Yet I slept fine.

I would Jeff Goldblum myself to the wall just to hear the inside discussions. I'm not sure I'd want to hold their feet to the fire because they won't be the last mistakes they make. I probably made at least two mistakes at work today myself. I honestly believe that any front office can limit these type of mistakes... not by being better assessors of talent player by player but with an overall shift in the fundamentals of the identification of talent. 600K talents are gifts from the baseball gods. Why wouldn't a team out of contention do everything they can to identify 600K talent with mulitple years of control. Why Belisle? Why did Forsythe play every day? Maybe it's why Molitor isn't here. I don't know but wasting roster spots on those two blocked and filled two roster spots that could be used to find 600K talent for 2020. All they had to do was give Anderson the chance that he earned with his performance in Rochester. They chose Belise? This is so logical... that I can't understand how a professional organization can't see it. Whoever decided that Anderson wasn't worth the effort was wrong. Whoever decided that Belisle made more sense for 2020 was wrong. And now I don't trust them. But then again... keep in mind... I probably made a couple of mistakes at work today myself.

I wasn't for the Pressly deal either because his contract wasn't expiring, but when I personally rank it... I put it below the loss of Anderson because: Because we still don't know what we got in return from Houston... Who knows... we might have got something. We know we got nothing in return for Anderson but yeah... I agree with you. Keep your MLB assets with the control. So both were questionable in my opinion. One area where you and I might differ is the trust in the evaluation process. I trust the front office to better at player evaluation then the average bear and I have no issues with the current front office. However... I can't stress this enough... the margins are razor thin, so thin that every front office makes big evaluation mistakes frequently enough that you can't give them the benefit of the doubt to have the science down pat. This team was going nowhere in 2018... Belisle on this roster was pointless... You traded, Duke and Pressly out of the pen. It's time to start giving players the opportunity to show what they can do for 2019 and beyond. Not doing that was a waste of roster space and it's how you lose players that you should have kept. If the people doing the evaluations determined that Anderson wasn't major league capable therefore no reason to give him a look see in 2018.... They were wrong! That is just another example of how thin those margins are and why the professional evaluations can't be trusted... even if they are good at it. No matter what that small sample size ERA says currently... or his small sample size WAR. He is striking out two batters per inning. This the major leagues and not many pitchers can strike out batters at that pace at this level. We didn't give this type of arm a chance and now we have Morin on the roster who Baldelli will only use if the score is 10-0. Nick Anderson would be an important part of this current bullpen. They blew it and now we will have to give back our Pressly gains to reacquire a Pressly type when Anderson or Bard or Burdi might have lessened that need. This is part of the reason why I'm all about opportunity. This is why we can't let Morrison hog all the AB's. Every 660K player that helps you win games is money that can be applied toward more other players that can help you win games. Every 600K player you identify through performance is a rising stock for higher trade value. I respect the front office but in no way do I trust them and they shouldn't trust themselves either. Let the players prove it. It just makes these razor thin decisions so much easier. As for the screaming about it. I'm used to it. Hand your players the ball.

Presly might have been a mistake in Hindsight. But at least we got something back. The real organizational mistake was not providing opportunity for Anderson, Burdi and even Chargois and of course others. Bullpens across the league are full of players who are getting opportunity after not getting opportunity elsewhere. Identify your own guys before they are tossed aside. Getting better at this will fix your bullpen at a much lower cost.

Great Article Nick I invite everyone to take a look at every bullpen in the Majors. Look at the names in each bullpen on each team. Spoiler Alert: There will be a bunch of players that you have either never heard of, or players that you've heard of but had no idea who they were before that. We've heard of Will Smith so we want him (I do to). However, before he was the Will Smith we've heard of, he was the Will Smith that Keith Law didn't talk about. Clearly, Bullpen arms are made in a Nevada lab.

I was just listening to George Thorogood covering Bo Diddley's "Who do you Love?" At no point in the song do they mention Magill or Morin.

Who knows what the future holds for Arraez. But at this point you gotta keep putting him in the lineup.

They gotta trust someone.

The Twins have Options. Sano has an Option so yeah AAA becomes an Option. I'd allow him a little time to work through it but that has a moment of reckoning down the road if it doesn't change.

Agreed And this could turn into a hot streak later so you keep working with him. It’s awesome that we have 11 other players who potentially contribute so Sano doesn’t kill us. All Rocco has to do at the moment is just play Sano a little less and keep working with him. If Sano doesn’t snap out of it. We have the option to use. We got until 2022 to make a decision on him. There is currently no reason at all to rush to judgement.

Agreed Rocco can’t rake his players over the coals publicly. And the reason is our fault and not his. We simply don’t know how to behave with the information.

He has an option. You are corrected.

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