tony&rodney

It is a long season but to this mark (a third of the season) Sanchez has been a big surprise offensively and and even bigger surprise behind the plate. The last two years Gary was plain and simply a horrible catcher. The movement to adequate has been massive really. I like what Sanchez brings to the game. Can he maintain the changes we have seen throughout the remainder of the schedule?

Kirilloff needs to produce in his next opportunity. He is a pretty fair first baseman and has a sweet swing. When he gets his shot, and he will within the month, Alex must show his worth because he is likely to push aside a pretty good player. The Twins are better defensively with Kirilloff at first base. They are better with him hitting .280-320 with power. He can do be a solid player on both sides of the ball.

The main issue with Duffey this year is that even his outings where it was clean the batters looked very eager to get to the plate. I don't think he is fooling any hitters at this point. An IL move and rehab stint may allow Duffey to reset. It is always tough to see the cruelty of competition eat up a declining athlete. Hopefully, Duffey can rebound - it just seems farfetched right now.

Baseball can be a really tough business. It takes years to make a team and get somewhat established and then if a pitcher loses their command and control ... poof there goes their career. Duffey and Pagan get longer looks than Cotton, Moran, or a few others but it is approaching a time to get the gang together to chat over how long the Twins hang in there with those guys. Based purely on stuff, command, control, and the eye test of how batters look against the relief staff, my personal ranking goes something like Duran, a healthy Alcala, Jax, Moran, Cotton, and then the others: Smith, Megill, Stashak, Minaya, Cano, Thielbar, Coulonbe, Pagan, and Duffey. I think they use those options until it is obvious that a few vets need to be DFA. I guess we will see in the next six weeks or sooner.

Yes, situational hitting is a real problem ... and not only for the Twins. these type of things go in cycles (hopefully) and maybe we will begin to see more astute hitting as the players become accustomed to a new ball that doesn't lend itself to the simple rip and launch strategy. Who knows though ...? Agree with the frustration in general and did think the same exact thoughts on that specific at bat. As a long time coach that would have left an impression with me toward a player, and actually it still does.

Kirillof could be coming back. Polanco needs to be healthy. Lewis could easily take over 3B. Correa can still have a year worth noting. Larnach has a future and what that looks like is his task. Buxton and Kepler should be fine. The Twins are lucky to have Gordon and Celestino to back up their regulars. Catching loks a little substandard. The Twins should be fine.

Teams that have any future goals of becoming better always look for ways to improve, both in in the short term and looking forward. Prospects are capital to spend and sometimes you need a new roof or refrigerator; go ahead and splurge because life is short.

Polo is the Twins leader despite the high profile of Buxton and Correa. Several days ago he seemed to be back in a mode of favoring his ankles with his swing. I hope he is ok because the team needs a healthy Jorge Polanco.

I guess we can put to bed the notion that trading Berrios was a net gain for the Twins. The odds of Austin Martin and Simeon Woods Richardson, no matter how much we like them, being as good of MLB players as Berrios is very remote indeed. Does anyone really believe/think that Woods-Richardson will ever strike out 13 batters against a first place team in the major leagues? I'm afraid many have underrated Jose Berrios.

I'm realatively bullish on this Twins team. I would like to see Polanco get going. Is he hurting more than we know? Hopefully Buxton can move forward off of his last three at bats last night as well. Full support for TopGun#22 and his ideas. My add is Montas and Puk and there are guys the Twins can trade for them. I have no idea what Oakland might look for ... maybe three of Martin, Steer, Wallner, Cruz, Woods-Richardson, Varland ??? More importantly, perhaps is the mentioned possibility of Kirilloff returning and holding down first base. He has looked good the past few games from the camera angle on milb.com. The ball is coming off his bat and Alex has shown more aggressive swings than earlier this year. Maybe the scar tissue is gone. He just has looked more comfortable. The defense has looked better for the Twins this year and hopefully it even gets better as players return to full health. Palacios has looked outstanding as the replacement for Correa. He goes down when Carlos returns but should not be forgotten. Jermaine is also getting in some solid at bats and looks like a player that is improving his offense. Finally, I'm liking many of the guys in the bullpen and do believe that Alcala could be a big boost to that group. The only three (Duffey, Pagan, Thielbar) that look shaky have actually not been too bad, although I'm hoping others step forward to push those guys well down the list of options for Baldelli.

Fun read and yes it was obviously tongue in cheek. Baseball has fewer teams tank than football, hockey , or basketball and even the dynasty teams like The Big Red Machine, Oakland's 3-Peat, the several Yankee runs, or the current Dodgers lose a third of their games.

Dylan Lesko. The name is pretty close to let's go and Dylan (Bob, Thomas) predict a great future.

The Berrios trade has been reviewed and discussed pretty regularly. I suppose it will continue to be discussed later in this season and into the offseason. My take is the Twins would be better off with Berrios this year because he is a MLB pitcher and both Martin and Woods-Richardson are minor leaguers. Maybe in a year or three circumstances will change. It should be interesting to see how a struggling Berrios fares versus a struggling Twins offense this weekend.

That was a bad idea because it caused some malfunctions for the Twins; Iowa is never a good idea. I think they get to go to Canada, specifically Toronto which is such an amazing city. Baseball has a long season and the All Star game is a good time to look at where your team is and how they project going forward. Well, they may or may not be smarter but Duran was injured for much of the last few years. He has the tools obviously and belongs in the big leagues. There is going to be some restrictions on how many innings Duran can pitch this year. In the future he may return to being a starting pitcher. For now he fits in relief. Today he was brought in to face the top six batters in Detroit's lineup. He did well.

Smeltzer has shown he belongs in the rotation right now, His ability to keep batters off balance is noteworthy and we should see if he can do the same against a top team like Toronto.

..... and we just saw again why Gordon is still a valuable player for this team.

I'm a big fan of Nick Gordon, but he is the type of player who can be packaged with a couple of other guys to gain someone needed for the team. I would not release him even though he deserves to get a chance with another team.

My preference is for speed and athleticism when we compare relatively similarly skilled batters. I really think Miranda is going to be an excellent gap hitter who hits for a high average but if Steer is quite similar with better speed and defense, then it is an easy call. Let's find a way to entice Oakland into giving us Frankie Montas for a few talented blocked players. There seems to be a bit of a logjam coming to the 40 person roster.

Well, this will make you crazy .... Twins coulda signed Miguel Cabrera and drafted Mike Trout, etc. An IPA is a better choice.

Celestino?

Martin looks like he could be a really good hitter if he just stuck to slashing line drives for base hits instead of taking huge hacks in an attempt to add power to his game. Once on base he creates a little chaos which is an unused/seldom used portion of the MLB game. It is interesting to see that Witt from KC has speed that he uses as part of his game. Keep Martin away from shortstop because he is not comfortable there and lacks the tools to fill the position. I think he could be like Arraez as a major league player and there is value in high OBP bats.

Canterino looks really good on milb.com, but there is likely some deeper analysis from the Twins staff concerning whether he is ready or not for MLB bats. I think he would be best served as an opener which is mol the role for him thus far this season. One thing to consider is that Canterino has been hurt a few times by shoddy defense causing his pitch count to run higher in an inning than it ordinarily would, and the Twins put solid defenders behind their pitchers this year. I would like to see how he presents with the Twins as a 45-60 pitch reliever. He is old enough to move up.

Computers crash all the time and F*** up regularly. Joe Mauer? Easy HOF pick, no sweat.

Even when Duffey goes multiple outings without giving up a run he looks very uncomfortable to me. Duffey seems like the relief pitching twin of Jack Cave. They both seem like decent guys, they play hard, have some talent, but are doomed. Pitchers always seemed comfortable pitching to Cave and hitters seem very comfy versus Duffey.

"Today, MLB's Baseball Savant released a "Pitch Tempo Leaderboard", which measures the median time between pitches (release to release thrown to the same batter)." - When I watch minor league games (milb.com) the clock starts when the pitcher receives the ball back from the catcher and the clock stops when the pitcher enters their motion. This is based on those games where the clock is visible from the televised angle. I also noticed an umpire shake their head from side to side ( no ) when a pitcher asked for a new ball. I think there may be some discrepancies between how the clocks work in actual game action as well as a few additional other mitigating factors to account for the added time recorded. I'm not sure how this would affect the data and I'm not sure how the data is collected by MLB, except to read what was written in the quote from the article (info from Baseball Savant). I have used a stopwatch on a few hundred occasions this year to time pitchers from getting the ball in their glove to the beginning of the pitching motion. Most pitchers are quite prompt but there some complete outliers that routinely come in at 25-40 seconds (MLB only). I remain in favor of encouraging (allowing) the umpires to use the rules in the book to push the players forward toward getting in the batter's box (only a few really) and pitching the ball in a timely manner. Enforcement is bound to cause a few arguments and ejections initially but could become normal quite quickly. Of course, enforcement has NOT been the practice in MLB and I believe that is dictated from above. Perhaps we can all hope that Manfred wakes up this morning, issues an edict to the umpires that they must follow the rules, and also announces an end to the ghost runner Manfredball (arguably the worst practice ever put into play in MLB history). He could make this effective immediately.