Riverbrian

They called up a pinch hitter.

It's interesting that both Clemens and Roden are in the starting lineup tonight so the Jackson in LF is not the plan with this call up. I'm a little surprised that Kreidler isn't in the lineup but... Perez does have neutral splits this year. However... he has been tougher on lefties over his career so recent stats seem to be weighted heavier than career. At least in this instance. I still say this is a platoon move because of the 4 left handed pitchers in the Braves Pen and the 4 left handed pitchers in the Padres pen. Someone is going to need to face Dylan Lee or Morejon when they are brought in to face Larnach. They will figure out the defensive replacement later. I think Jackson will be with us awhile. Another injury will keep him rostered and they are going to need that Martin replacement to replace a left handed hitter against a left handed dude out of the pen. I'm against this but... it's not surprising.

It's possible. My prediction is not the September Call Up. My prediction is that there will be more injuries to... Someone... Somewhere that will keep him in the bigs.

It's really hard to give the front office the benefit of the doubt on this one but that is from my issues with platooning. Others who support the platoon logic utilized by the Twins and most of the the MLB clubs really can't complain about this one. My suspicion and I believe that my suspicion is correct: We will be facing two left handed starting pitchers this series. Perez tonight and Sale on Wednesday. On top of that the Braves house 4 left handers in the bullpen. We will face all right handed starters against the Padres Followed by two left handers against the A's following the Padres. This is a platoon decision. Jackson was added back to the 40 man and chosen over GG who is on the 40 man and also chosen over Sabato who like Jackson was not on the 40 man. Wallner, Erod, Jenkins, Mendez are all left handed hitters. Along with the other consideration Tristan Gray. Now... if we ever get healthy. Jackson will have to go through this exposure process again if we send him back down. I'm not a fan of platooning... and here it is. Calling up players that they don't intend on utilizing just in order to make sure they stand in the correct batters box. If any of you don't think they will platoon Jenkins or Erod when they finally get the call. All I can say... I see no evidence they won't and this call up strongly indicates such. On top of all of this. He probably won't be in the lineup. They can throw 9 hitters that stand in the right handed batters box at them without Jackson or Martin. DH Bell C Jeffers 1B Caratini 2B Lewis 3B Lee SS Culpepper LF Kriedler CF Buxton RF Keaschall. With a bench of Jackson and 3 lefty bats Larnach, Clemens and Roden.

Keaschall, Lewis and Bell are the only players hitting in the past 15 days while we are mid pack in team offense during that time period. During that same past 15 days our pitching ranks 29th. It can be assumed that defense would play some role in that. Our record in those past 15 days is 4-9. You will lose offense improving defense. I'm not sure that's a fair trade.

It's nothing that a good 15 game win streak won't cure.

Last Game Right Handed Starter August 16 - Andrew Painter - Loss - 5 Runs Scored Lineup Composition: 4 RH 3 Switch 2 LH Season Record vs RH Starters: 44-42 Season Average Runs Scored vs RH Starters: 4.74 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Season Record vs LH Starters: 16-23 Season Average Runs Scored vs LH Starters: 4.36

Last Game Left Handed Starter August 15 - Jesus Lazardo - Loss - 1 Run Scored Lineup Composition: 7 RH 2 Switch 0 LH Season Record vs LH Starters: 16-23 Season Average Runs Scored vs LH Starters: 4.36 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Season Record vs RH Starters: 44-41 Season Average Runs Scored vs RH Starters: 4.74

If the trade was actually offered. I know that there is some sort of confirmation out there but I still reserve the right to say if. If that trade was offered... in hindsight it looks terrible. Tolle has stufffffff! However... I'm still not going to blame Falvey or Zoll for not taking the deal at the time if this was indeed a deal offered. Because I'm not sure what the reasoning was. 1. Maybe they thought they could get a better return for Ryan in the off season with more teams involved. 2. Neither Tolle or Arias were as highly valued as they are now. Arias at 20 years old rose from 76th to 3rd overall since the trade deadline. Payton Tolle was the 16th ranked prospect in Red Sox system in 2025. If they redid that 2025 ranking now. He's probably #2 behind Anthony and ahead of Arias. 3. The trade deadline has to be chaotic... especially the trade deadline that the Twins had last year. Maybe they didn't have time to evaluate and reach consensus on it. Maybe #1 and #2 led to #3. Who knows... I wasn't in the room and I"m ok giving them the benefit of the doubt... But Yeah... you are exactly right when you said. It's not a stretch. The Joe Ryan money is then added to the available budget for free agent acquisitions with Tolle replacing Ryan... you have Tolle plus Josh Bell money to spend 15 million on a higher priced free agent acquisition than what Josh Bell cost... in theory because that 15 million acquisition still has to play better than the 7 million Josh Bell). But yeah... exactly... they could have had both! I also agree that something changed in the off-season. I have my suspicion but I have no proof but I do believe that they changed course. They didn't complete what they started at the deadline for whatever reason but I do believe with no proof that Falvey was going to do more selling. I believe that buyers buy and seller sell. This team was in contention no matte how tenuos some of us feel about it. Making the playoffs is worth it and they needed pitching. I worry about the loss of Hill. Hard throwing lefties are like Gold... See Peyton Tolle for example. However other than Hill they got deals done at reasonable prices and they added to a pitching staff that was finding some decent pieces but needed more to support what has been happening thus far.

It's incredibly complicated but yet so simple. Buxton and Correa are tremendous defensive players. They shouldn't move or play any other position. If you have a Nolan Arenado in his prime. You wouldn't move him off of third base. However... if you had someone else on the team that deserves playing time or coming up through the system that also plays third base with Nolan manning the position. You would move the other player to another position out of necessity. You wouldn't strand him at 3B waiting his turn while they put some really questionable player at 1B because he happened to the best they have. Necessity is the mother of invention and flexibility opens doors for the best to come through. Team context is always going to create necessity's that require invention and it's being done mostly on the fly because necessity waits for no one. Necessity comes straight out of the shadows and you don't see it coming so I'd rather players get prepped during the formative years of development. And another complication to add to an already complicated process. More positions means more doors open for the top ranked prospect to walk through. Or the one who is looking the best in AAA. The injury that could get him some work in the majors plays another position. Correa isn't moving off SS so and why would you but it's your SS in AAA that's knocking down the doors and screaming I'm ready. The ability to do a half way decent job at the position where the injury occured and the space opened up would make him the call up when the necessity reveals itself. Instead of waiting for a specific injury at SS. Of if you have the flexibility of moving a Keashall back to 2B (Yeah I know... Nobody wants to see that) but if you had that ability... because his bat is playing pretty good right now and he isn't amazing at either 2B or the OF defensively. An injury at 2B can put Keaschall back at 2B then Jenkins can be the call up. Otherwise... it's Tristan Gray because he's the best 2B in the system.

Great article Parker! You do great work. This is that ole' change of scenery term that the broadcast teams like to throw around when struggling players leave an organization. If the staff can coach, teach, or just find a light switch that others couldn't find. Players can improve quickly and improvement makes past stats irrelevant. This is what coaches and analysts are paid to do. Their job is to Improve players and they have successes and failures. Who knows what the rest of the year (or next year for that matter) has in store for Kramer but right now he is 12 Innings in with a 0.58 WHIP. Go get Em Dean

Parker is the best!

Yes... That's the very important VALUE component. Thank you for the support. I do appreciate you and your thoughts on this topic. It's why Joe Ryan should have been traded in the off-season. His value was at an absolute peak and substantial. The Twins could have traded Joe Ryan and picked up a major prospect close to the equivelent of Jenkins or multiple highly ranked prospects with the ability to fill spaces with players making the minimum and performing decently enough. And you don't even have to do a complete teardown... you can keep Buxton and build a team with young TALENT around him and it would win baseball games. We have precedent... we can all see it happening almost consistently with other clubs as you point out. It's not just about developing talent that the Twins utilize on the field until they are traded or reach free agency. It's not just for the direct benefit on the field. It's also about the indirect benefit of raising the TRADE VALUE through development. If you are promoting young talent successfully... you will also need young talent to trade at the deadline when it works. This means you got to keep stocking those shelves. If you strip mine developing players for parts for MARGINAL theoretical gains today... you intentionally cap their TRADE VALUE. You don't develop them fully when you strip mine them for parts and you do it during their prime development years. It's like refusing to talk to a baby during the time when they are learning so fast that you could be teaching them english, spanish and french at the same time. Why would you cement anyone at age 25 by taking away the things they need some experience to work on. It's doable. You and I both see it and it would fit within our financial constraints and every one should know that we are going to have financial constraints.

Good post as usual. You are correct. 1. There is a strong correlation between payroll and winning it's undeniable. There is also a strong indicator that if you go the money route... if you raise that payroll to create that competitive team... it'll typically take an increase of money to sustain it without development to keep a rising payroll somewhat in check. Without it... she will keep spinning upwards. 2. You won't have development to keep payroll from going unchecked when you are using potential 26 man development space on 1 year contracts of 2nd or 3rd tier free agents that the true free agent winners passed on. 3. Those 1 year contracts to cover for development add 15 million to 40 a year in expenditure. 4. The Twins can only compete for better free agents if they reduce the number of free agents needed. 5. Then consolidating the combined money that would have been required for multiple acquisitions and directing toward the one or two needed because development has filled additional spaces. 6. It's completely doable but it needs to constant development commitment at the major league level.

In recent Twins times. Our best year was 2023 with 87 wins a playoff berth and playoff series win. 2023 was also the year that our payroll reached a record level of 153.7 Case closed... money matters. Well... I suppose it needs to be considered that in 2023. Top Salary belonged to Correa and he did lead the team in AB's and finished the regular season with a 94 OPS+ at a 33.33 Million price tag. 2nd highest expense was Buxton and he was having serious physical issues that limited him to 80 games at DH only and he toughed out a 97 OPS+ at a cost of 15.14 million. The 4th highest salary belonged to Gallo who produced the worst 100 OPS+ in the history of the game for a 11 million dollar price tag. The 5th highest salary belong to Vazquez who produced a 64 OPS+ at 10 million for the year. The total spent on these 4 players for the year was 69.47 Million. That leaves about 84 million spent on everyone else. You will need at least 22 more players to staff 26 players on the MLB roster and then there is money being made on the 40 man. I understand that people won't appreciate my pointing this out but I'm going to point it out. Look what we got for driving that price up. We set a record in club spending. What happened next? Yes we won the Central, We won a playoff series and we did so on the backs of lesser paid talent and then we needed to spend even more in the off-season because of Arb raises and we didn't have cheap talent to prevent the payroll from rising. And after not continuing to drive payroll upward... setting a new payroll record the year prior no longer mattered. It became a PR nightmare and frankly... they deserved it. This club has never spent significant money in its existence. 2023 was the closest we ever came to significant and it made us hate the franchise even more. They will need to find another way to compete.

Last game Right Handed Starter August 13 - Aaron Nola - Loss - 1 Run Scored Lineup Composition - 5 RH - 2 Switch - 2 LH Season Record vs RH Starters: 44-41 Season Average Runs Scored vs RH Starters: 4.74 --------------------------------------------------------------------- Season Record vs LH Starters: 16-22 Season Average Runs Scored vs LH Starters: 4.45

Brooks has been fine this year but I struggle applying "breakout" to his 2026 performance. He has come up big at times in key moments but his production in total has been squarely average and that's OK. Hope he keeps improving.

I made a similar joke to my wife once and she didn't know I was joking. So she went on a journey to find the seriousness in the comment. I didn't know that she would do that and by the time I found out that she took it seriously... she was already mad at me. Humor is a slippery slope.

I agree that the Twins did this to themselves but it's OK because the more players you send through the filter... the better the odds of finding some that become something... But that system doesn't work if you are not prepared to send more players through the filter. Having excess of outfielders is a blessing and a curse. It's simply a curse if there is too many to evaluate and just causes spillage without results. Joey Gallo is a great example of my concerns. They spent 10 million on the guy and then gave him 10 million dollars worth of opportunity. Essentially doubling down on the mistake costing not only money but also costing opportunity for others while they waited for Gallo to be the player they thought they were signing. Now... I didn't like the Gallo signing when it was made however by Late April 2023 I was singing his praises. He was superb but then the crash happened. By May... it was a noticeable problem. He wasn't even close to major league quality. He had a stretch where he struck out 17 times over 24 at bats. I reached a point where I was calling for his immediately dismissal mainly because it looked like he was swinging with his eyes closed but also because he won't be back next year. Gallo gets chance after chance and a Roden for example gets 55 AB's and no matter what his low OPS currently is telling everyone. He has only struck out at 13% clip. He's nowhere near Gallo who struck out 17 out of 24 times. They were wrong about Gallo and if they were wrong about Gallo... they can be wrong about Roden or whoever we plug into the discussion. Players ultimately have to let you know through performance. The Buxton comp... It's absolutely goofy because Buxton is the only guy on the roster that I think deserves every day playing time... but the point still stands. The statistical differences that we illustrate take time to accumulate... in any given game the differences are marginal and any player can go hitless for the game. If Roden gets 1 Single in a game while Buxton goes nil. It doesn't mean Roden is the better player but for that game he was. Roden is one of 9 players in a lineup. One player out of 9 doesn't kill the team.

I did a quick random sampling of 100 fans in Staples, Roseau, Ely, Eden Prairie and Worthington. The results were eye opening. Some of them care and some of them don't.

Nothing against Jackson... I'd honestly have no problem with him remaining on the roster but three Catchers on the MLB roster isn't ideal roster utilization for a contending team. Healthy and one plate appearance in the last 15 days is problematic roster utilization for any team contending or not.

Necessity is the mother of invention.

I don't think we are that far off. I have spent a lot of time on this website talking about the constant need for 13 players who can play and I've read a lot of your posts and you spend a lot of time talking about the need for development and I agree... development is crucial for any organization but the need for development with a budget like the Twins has to have a stronger adjective than crucial. this means that we need Jenkins to become the superstar he is projected to become and we need players like Roden (or someone else) to be at least average and hopefully better and we won't get there if players are tossed aside after a short period of time if they don't hit the ground running. The context of the roster (health and performance) and the sensible choices available are going to determine Roden's immediate fate. I'll stand here and defend Roden today and his small sample but with Buxton back... it might be time to send him back to the minors because the 26 man roster limitations are going to force the front office to cull to make room for Buxton and that culling should occur at the bottom of the performance metrics. Even with his small sample that I will defend.,, Roden just might be at that bottom when the choice needs to be made. If the team doesn't want to lose Jackson who they are not utilizing currently. It is Roden or Martin who has an option available that are your choices to make room for Buxton and somebody has to go before Saturday unless there is an injury somewhere and I'm ok with that being Roden. I'm responding to the 55 AB's and the comments from others that we have seen enough of him. Edit... It was Jackson... Roden is still with us. We might have to show patience with Culpepper and we might have to show that patience while we are trying to reach the playoffs and that's OK with me because Culpepper just like Roden needs to see some 90 MPH sliders and pitchers who can paint corners and work through it on the journey to becoming what they will eventually become. There are people who are OK with Culpepper patience but have no Roden patience and that difference is usually influenced by draft position, rankings put together by others or articles written by others. It's subjective in the end but it leads to players like Lewis or Kepler getting a lot of rope and Kyler Fedko getting almost none. I'm saying that we need Culpepper to develop, we need Jenkins to develop and we need Erod and Roden or Fedko to develop as well because there are 26 roster spots to fill today and there will be 26 roster spots to fill the next year and the year after that and it's the only way to break our dependance on the free agent market and the free agent market is where we can't compete. We have to utilize the 2nd tier. I'd rather we produce a 2nd tier along with that first tier because we all should know that we can't sign a superstar. The Dodgers and the Mets get those guys. Yes we need the obvious superstar developed, we haven't produced superstars lately and I'm wondering where they are. We also need to develop average players along with Jenkins so we stop spending 4 million here and 7 million here filling the holes with average players that we would be better of producing ourselves... it's why I count minimum salary players on each roster. That 2nd teir being tossed aside is spillage and that spillage could be a part of our overall development problem. The impression that they are killing us while they work through some things or the thought they they are a detriment to trying to win baseball games while working through some things. I'm just not sure that letting them work through some things is killing us on a game to game basis right now but I am worried that the lack of patience will kill us in the future. As for the age thing. I get it's importance but it also goes both ways. Jenkins debuting at age 21 would be impressive but it could also mean that his best years will be spent with another club when he reaches free agency at age 27. As for the 28 year old... getting 3 years of average is also a benefit because that replaces the one year contract of a .700 OPS guy at 7 million a pop. Age isn't something that concerns me... again... I understand the difference between a 21 year old and a 27 year old but my concern will always be... will they be back next year. If they make improvements can those be improvements be utilized the following year in a Twins uniform. Our coaches will work with Josh Bell to make him better this year. Making Josh Bell better is great for right now but any improvements that he makes or anything that he fixes will be utilized next year in another uniform. I assume that we have a rather large staff of coaches and analysts who have jobs for the primary purpose of improving players and if they are doing their jobs helping to make players better, if players are putting the work in to get better and I sure hope that they are... they will make past stats irrelevant. Kody Clemens... His past stats in multiple small samples stretches are currently not relevant. He is 30 years old and he could be a Twin for 3 more years if we want him and as long as he is playing above average... we would want him for 3 more years. However... as a fan base if we collectively want to replace him in the next 3 years or find someone better. We won't be finding that player in free agency... we have to develop his replacement and that process starts right now. As far as Kriedler goes. He's been better than expected... he's another example of a player making past stats not relevant. Is he good enough to stop looking for better. No he is not good enough to stop looking for better. However in the current context of this team. We don't have the infield depth to replace him. He's necessary right now and I'm happy for him. This is his chance to carve out a career.

I'll have to repeat myself but I'm not going to get into an subjective argument and get lost in your looks tentative on defense opinion. I don't want to get stuck into becoming a Roden Fan in order to defend him. I had a round and round about Polanco a few years back and I'm not doing that again. And I'm not going to get labeled a Bader Hater when I'm not. I'm watching the games. I know the stats. I apologize but I'm going to have to ask you to prove that Roden is killing us. Dramatic statements like killing us keep getting thrown out as he gets torn apart and I understand that this is what social media is and my presence on this website indicates a willingness to participate. But please... these players are trying to carve out a career and you say killing us as you tie anchors to them. The Twins are 13-11 in the 24 games he has played. They are 9-4 in the 13 games he has received at least 3 plate appearances, He has 30 total defensive chances in those 24 games. He's 11th in AB's with 41 in the past 30 days. He has a .644 OPS while Buxton is 12th in AB's during the same stretch with a .433 OPS. In April we can talk about the OPS and number of AB's given to Lewis and Keaschall. In May in 2026. Josh Bell had 98 AB's in May and a .562 OPS. Caratini had a .475 in May over 56 AB's. It takes time to accumulate the stats that we look at and during that time... there are ups and down. I'm not here to say that Roden is the next Soto... nor to become a Roden fan and I don't want to be here defending him but I guess I have to. I am here to say... that if you want development... patience is required. And we may need a little patience with Jenkins when he gets the call. And we need to develop more than Jenkins. In the meantime... just how much damage does he inflict on an individual game?