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This would put them in danger of losing every 5th game 1-0.

One problem is that both Kyles play at least as much against righties as lefties. New Kyle had more than twice as many at bats against righties. If he ends up playing most days,.... bad news. I'd prefer Urshela's glove and bat next door at third. But... this is the modern era and we need to have almost completely new teams every year... so it goes.

Holy cow. If you look at Stephen Strasburg's stats, it looks like the Nats have paid him more than $100m to pitch 30 innings over the past 3 years. That's the kind of luck the Twins would have if they spent everything on an ace. I like (in theory) the strategy of having pitchers pitch fewer innings. It would seem that more less-than-ace pitchers might perform better if not going the couple of extra innings after they wear down. But that strategy clearly isn't working when they are replaced by 1 inning relievers maxing out at 6-7 pitchers throwing every night. I'd like to see what happens when 3 above average pitchers can complete a game.

I hope they look first for a great pitching coach and a trainer. Otherwise they'll spend a ton of money for a guy that gets injured after 6 starts and all the other pitchers will be overworked with sub-par stuff.

I'd like to see them be able to get through a game without using more than 4 pitchers. Maybe sometimes the 'starter' goes 3 innings, maybe sometimes he goes 7 innings. But when they go 3-4 innings, the following pitchers need to be able to get 6+ outs as well. It is somewhat maddening to see them pull a pitcher who is performing well after 5 only to have 5 or 6 more pitchers finish up the game leaving them depleted for the coming few games. I like that they are experimenting and doing new things with pitching, knowing that they won't ever be able (or willing) to afford top tier pitching, but when the plan isn't working they need to adapt. This whole season has been a demonstration of failing to adapt to a plan that isn't working.

Cave will be an All Star next year.

Exactly. I think the front office should hire me right away. I have more tricks like this up my sleeve.

With an OPS of .644, Jake Cave is more than half as good as Judge (1.111), but is much much cheaper than half of Judge's salary. If we got two Jake Caves then their combined OPS would be 1.288. What a deal! Think of the money they'll save!

Ok. I've had plenty of time to go through the five stages of grief. Now that I'm out at the other end, I'm going to just say it. All things considered, this was a pretty good season. The Twins were a good team. Not a great team and not a terrible team. Sure they didn't win the division or a wild card spot, but the only reason anyone expected them to win in the first place was because the Guardians and White Sox were also not very good teams. We had times where the bullpen was great before it collapsed from overuse and regression to the mean. There were times when the starting pitching was better than expected before everyone got injured one by one. We had Ryan flashing elite stuff here and there. We had interesting experimentation with how to manipulate a pitching staff to compete with better pitching teams elsewhere by limiting starters (though this obviously didn't work as there were no innings-eaters to back them up and they ended up blowing through bullpen pieces... and keeping with the plan well past its utility... but... oh well... we got to see exactly how and why the plan imploded). Arraez broke out. Correa was fun to watch. Buxton had what most could consider a career year with just several dozen at bats. We got to see the potential in AK, Trevor Larnach, Miranda, and others. And I think they even beat the Yankees once or twice (though I could be misremembering). No the Twins didn't make the playoffs. And no... they weren't a great team. I'm not sure they would have made the playoffs with Polonco, Buxton, Kepler, et al in the lineup every day either. Baseball is fun. It has to be fun when the team sucks too. Otherwise you'll be disappointed almost every year no matter what team you're rooting for. I blame everyone's expectations. They lost. But the season is over. Let's move on.

Woo hoo! A new scoreboard! NOW I'm fired up about 2023.

Seems to me they should gamble bigger on coaches, trainers, and team psychologists.

Bah. Good luck for one team is often bad luck for the other. Without luck this would have been the last game in the 1986 world series.

This Twins team is not good. That's OK. I believe in luck.

He'll be fired by the Twins. Next year, he'll be picked up by the Tigers... or maybe the Pirates... and lead that team to win the World Series.

Jeez. Calm down. This team isn't great, but that doesn't mean they aren't fun. They are in a division with three teams doing everything they can to give the playoff spot to their rivals. But no one team is likely to win the world series. The Twins can pull it off... unlikely... but not impossible. If they did, I bet it would be much more exciting as a Twins' fan to watch them win than as a Dodger fan to watch them take it. If they don't make it to the playoffs, we got to watch Arraez make a bid for batting champ, Miranda and Duran with great rookie seasons, Nick Gordon come back to be a solid player. We saw Joe Ryan show flashes of the brilliant pitcher he might become. We have a solid pack of young players in Kirriloff, Larnach, (as well as Miranda, Gordon, etc) that might provide some real stability in the next couple of years. Plus we got to forget all about Sano. This is a great spot to be in for a team that was utter trash last year. Plus, if the Twins DO win it all, you know it will be due to an unlikely clutch homerun in the 9th inning by our unwitting savior Jake Cave.

They’ll be lucky if they get the chance to add to that streak this year

Just for fun I compared Byron Buxton's numbers this year to Vince Coleman's in 1987. Why? Because as a 10 year old in the 1987 season, Vince Coleman was by far the best player in the universe (as far as 10 year old St. Louis Cardinals fans are concerned). While they are slightly different players (e.g. Buxton can hit a home run), if Buxton had been playing in 1987 he would have been expected to steal somewhere between 40-100 bases. So, to see if it matters, I normalized both players numbers by the number of plate appearances Coleman had to compare the two projecting Buxton to have the same number of PAs. VC BB BB^ BA 0.289 0.224 PA 702 382 702 H 180 76 140 Singles 153 32 59 BB 70 34 62 On first 223 66 121 R 121 61 112 SB 109 6 11 %sb/o1 0.488789 0.090909 R+RBI-HR 161 84 154 Buxton has fewer hits (as would be obvious with a lower batting average), but he is also only hitting 59 singles compared to Vince's 153. So add BBs to singles and get a rough estimate of 223 times on first base for VC versus 121 for BB (not counting ROEs, HBPs, etc... sorry). So then, BB steals 11 bases compared to VC's 109 which is (very) roughly 49% vs 9% of times VC steals second when on first vs BB. (Big caveat, VC stole 3rd many times and home 2 or 3 times as well... so the numbers aren't perfect). So... does all this matter? Well.. if we look at the number of runs each generate by calculating their runs scored plus RBIs minus HRs, we have Byron Buxton generating 154 runs while Vince Coleman generated 161. Sure, there are a lot of missing factors, so make your own conclusions. I conclude that given the potential for stolen bases to generate runs (without even considering the increase number of throwing errors, passed balls, increased pitch counts, holding the first baseman on the line, etc...) yes... in fact stolen bases do matter.

I stand by my words from April 4. Those of you who put in wagers, prepare to pay out big.

From a brief look at the box score, the only thing that looks like a dumb move to me was putting in Pagan when the game wasn't a blowout. Assuming that Ryan was pulled because there was something wrong with him.

At the very minimum, they should be expected to take the lead in the top of the 10th.

I'm rooting for the underdog. If someone gets injured and a spot opens up, bring up Jake Cave. DFA Sano. Cave will be the black horse WS MVP!

It's a streaky game. He's been HR or K lately. But... I'll take a few well placed game winning HRs any day.

Buck is the new Sano (-150 pounds, + great defense + unused speed)

Predictions for 2nd half: Polonco starts to look like an MVP; Buxton does NOT get injured; Duffy is back; Sano comes back and is traded for a mid level AA pitching prospect so someone like the Reds who hope they can entice him to a couple more years and squeeze 15 HRs/year out of him. Pagan gets injured and, miraculously, the pitching starts to figure itself out. One of Miranda, Larnach, or Kirilloff goes on a tear (the other two continue to be hit or miss). Twins are a much better team in September than they are in July. They make the world series. And by a dramatic and unforeseen act of fate, Jake Cave is the Twins' 2022 world series MVP.

Many times in the past couple of years I had hoped that he'd get traded to a team that will play him more, appreciate him, and let him develop. He seems to have always been a bit of an afterthought here. I would imagine he'd get a few extra years playing MLB if he played somewhere else. This guy is a gamer. He's always one of the first to slap someone's hand when they score that tight run. He's always full of energy in the bench. He'd probably be more likely to get a hit with two outs and a runner on second than half the team. But everyone has always been quick to find reasons to hate on him.