Riverbrian

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.

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