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And Jax gets one final high stakes WC tryout.

To force a double play? They must have thought there was only 1 out.

Well.... Madea as the third starter, Winder and Larnach miss the WC playoff roster. Good to know.

Home runs are great, but this scrappy baseball is exciting. Also, if the World Series happens to be played in Target Field in the snow, there are likely going to be a drop off in long balls. Good to see they can scrape runs out the hard way too.

Seriously using this game as playoff tryouts with throwing Winder in on a close one like this.

Boss is in the office today. Gonna have to slip this one in under the radar. Glad to see Ober get under the microscope for a decent team that needs a win. Madea put up a good show yesterday, let's see him try to outcompete.

While I can't possibly know how bad, or not bad, Correa's foot is, I wouldn't call a 10 day IL stint the end of his season. This is a great opportunity to bring up a guy like Larnach to see if he can rock it into high gear as a potential playoff replacement. If Correa should be sitting out much of the remainder, as many here seem to think is a good idea, why not put him on the IL for a replacement tryout?

A modern day Dave Stieb. The best pitcher nobody remembers. No matter how good you are, it's hard to win games when your team just can't win games.

Players are worth oodles more money now. I’m sure it’s in everyone’s interest to play it on the safe side and not sacrifice years off of a career.

I also don't miss 50 monster-sized human cyborgs hitting 50+ home runs every year.

I'll admit that some of the new changes have been good. I also don't miss 25 minute at bats and catchers being destroyed by huge dudes trying to score. It's also nice not to have 2-3 pitching changes to get through an inning with no outs. I DO miss, however, 10th innings with 0 out and nobody on base and the NL and AL meeting each other for the first time in the World Series. And the Montreal Expos with their confusing poorly designed ELB? EB? EMB? M? logo.

True, but I think they could call in the entire Saints team and handily beat the White Six 3 of 4.

Right. If he hit as well with 0 and 1 outs as he does with 2 outs he’d have a much higher WPA.

Not saying Vazquez has been great, or even good... just that his situational stats with 2 outs (which make up about 1/3 of his plate appearances) are abnormally better than with 0 or 1 out. Maybe this has something to do with the pinch hit situation the other day that angered so many.

In the remining season, I'd try to play Gallo and Wallner, and Nick Gordon (if he comes back) as much as possible to see if any of them are struck by lightning and manage to figure it out. A Gallo that could reasonably be expected to hit would be great for a post season team. Wallner looks like he might be coming around. If they continue to stink it up... nothing lost, just leave them off the lineup going forward.

One of the things that strikes me about this team compared to previous years' teams is that this group manages to squeak out wins against good teams without superstars (except Royce Lewis who is new on the scene). There are no Mauers or Morneaus. No Kirby Pucketts or Torii Hunters. Even the would-be superstars, Correa and Buxton, are hitting like minor leaguers. Nevertheless, we keep seeing relatively unknowns club in winning runs late in games (As Castro did yesterday). So I got to looking at deeper stats and found a couple of really interesting tidbits. While last year, Nick Gordon was one of the team's best clutch hitters -- meaning he was at least somewhat less likely to strike out with the bases loaded -- this year the Twins have a few truly talented guys who do much better under pressure. I looked at a few of the player's slash lines with RISP and 2 outs, compared to their overall slash lines, and found a few gems. Exhibit 1. Donovan Solano. Solano BA OBP SLG OPS Overall 0.287 0.372 0.404 0.776 RISP 0.365 0.51 0.527 1.037 2 Outs 0.283 0.392 0.472 0.864 I've heard some compare the light hitting high average hitter as our new Arraez. He gets on base, but that's about it. But with RISP Solano is a much different beast. And this is with 98 PAs, which I'd guess is not insignificant. A 1.037 OPS with RISP! Exhibit 2. Kyle Farmer Farmer BA OBP SLG OPS Overall 0.255 0.312 0.407 0.719 RISP 0.349 0.423 0.561 0.984 2 Outs 0.322 0.385 0.552 0.937 Farmer also is a drastically different player putting up superstar numbers with second and/or third occupied. Not only that, with 2 outs, Farmer appears much more likely than others to get on base and get things going (possibly the pitchers handedness has an impact, but his overall numbers against RHP vs LHP aren't that different). Exhibit 3. Royce Lewis And, surprising nobody, Royce Lewis has been massacring with RSIP, but isn't doing very will with 2 outs. Lewis BA OBP SLG OPS Overall 0.306 0.356 0.528 0.884 RISP 0.39 0.455 0.78 1.235 2 Outs 0.237 0.308 0.475 0.783 Exhibit 4. Other points of interest: Castro BA OBP SLG OPS Overall 0.255 0.332 0.405 0.737 RISP 0.275 0.403 0.392 0.795 2 Outs 0.231 0.364 0.363 0.727 Castro, whose late inning heroics led me down this rabbit hole, doesn't actually appear much better with RISP, but he does look to have a significantly higher OBP, which, compared to years past is likely the opposite of most Twins hitters. Vazquez BA OBP SLG OPS Overall 0.221 0.277 0.321 0.598 RISP 0.246 0.333 0.339 0.672 2 Outs 0.333 0.364 0.452 0.816 Jeffers BA OBP SLG OPS Overall 0.269 0.368 0.457 0.825 RISP 0.222 0.321 0.417 0.738 2 Outs 0.161 0.366 0.419 0.785 I tend to remember seeing Jeffers come off the bench on his off days to pinch hit late in games. In fact, he recently had a heroic walk off HR if I remember correctly. The numbers would indicate that Vazquez might be the better option to move a runner up with a base hit. They both have comparable OBPs with 2 outs and RISP, but Vazquez' BA is much higher. While normally we could look at these situational stats and claim that the N is too low to make solid references, I'd suggest that this late in the season we are probably past that point as most of these situational stat have nearly 100 PAs. But still, I'd leave it to the statisticians in the back office to determine if any of these differences are really significant. My eye test says that they are.

This bench is different from previous benches in that a lot of these guys could be legitimately decent situational starters. And Rocco uses them that way. In the past you'd only expect to see people like Jake Cave or Ehire Adrianza starting the game when someone else was injured or sick. If I see someone like Farmer or MAT starting the game I'm not gonna be groaning about the end times. Also, its time to stop our Vazquez hating. The guy is slowing getting it together, or at least maybe Jeffers is finally starting to cool down to his level. Vazquez is a decent defending catcher and his numbers in August have been better than sub-par. Jeffers is tending the opposite direction. Either one of them is a solid backup catcher at this point. This team's strength is its depth. They might not be great at anything, but they are good at everything.

It's a lot easier to overlook long slumps like Wallner's when the rest of the lineup is performing and you still have a Joey Gallo punching bag at the bottom of the roster. Wallner is a rookie who it seems clearly needs time to learn to adjust to the major leagues. I think he's blocking a roster spot from others who probably could make better use of it.

I like Gordon's game. He's kind of like a Nick Punto type. He's good enough at a lot of things and he can sometimes provide that spark that gets things going. He's might not be great at any one thing, but every few years he'll surprise you with some good defense or a near .300 BA. Remember last year he was one of the only Twins who was somewhat consistent in clutch situations. But people here don't care about those types of things. As soon as he goes 3 weeks hitting .200 everyone wants his head. I don't know if he makes it to the post season, but I hope next year he finds a team that can appreciate his talent and whatever potential he has left. He won't find that here. Personally, I'd like to see Gordon in the post season, but as others have mentioned, Willi Castro has been very Gordonesque this year, but a bit better, and not on the IL all season.

I like Ober and Madea as starer/pen pieces. They can start situationally or piggyback. Depending on how Ober does down the stretch or in St. Paul, I'd lean Ober, but both of them are a bit risky. I'd expect them to manage the pitching much different in the playoffs with more multi inning starts if needed when the second pitcher is cruising, and relying less on back to back to back appearances by their streaky relief lineup. With Pagan finally finding his way, and the option to put starters in the pen, I like this bullpen much better than a few weeks ago. That said, it is still their biggest weakness (assuming they can keep hitting like they have been in August).

AK up. Gallo on 10 day IL.

For eligibility in the MLB playoff roster, the player has to be on the 40-man team or the 60 Days of Injured list by 31 August, 11:59 pm ET. Any player not on the list cannot be awarded the postseason playoff.Jun 23, 2023

He has a little defensive upside. It's not nothing, but that is it.

Any chance we can get Correa to strikeout more? One out is always preferrable to two.

It isn't uncommon for young players to show some flashes of brilliance then fade into mediocrity or obscurity. It might be this teams biggest reason for false optimism. I'll take a stacked lineup of rookies that are outperforming Miranda for now, but I'm not going to count my chickens until they are in their third year. As for Miranda. Good luck to the guy. He doesn't look like the bright prospect he once was, but maybe he'll find a few teams that can use him for a half dozen years. Hopefully he'll end up better than Danny Valencia.