Doctor Gast

I see that some react to our pitching after we traded Berrios as a drowning person. They deparately grab onto anyone that faintly resemble an ace. that's what happened to Ryan. Ryan's not an ace & shouldn't have been treated as one, constantly over extending him. He;s a rookie & should have been treated as one, gradually eased into a 6+ innings routine. I see also 2 flawed attitudes of the Twins. They are being overwhelmed by team like NYY & LAD, they play uptight and never really get anything going to compete and the other being under whelmed with bad teams where they are way too laid back figuring they'll eventually pull one out but don't. The Twins need to master both to win the division. With Tim Anderson out, maybe our greatest threat isn't CWS but CLE. Let's set our goal to salvage this last game w/ LAD and sweep both LAA and KC.

You have a point Cody, I still don't understand why they took such a high risk on Paddack that with odds that we don't get anything from him. Mets flatly turned down the SD offer on him. Hopefully Mahle might prove himself as a 6+ inning guy thru out the season but I'll have to see it to believe it. Since almost all these SPs would only go 5 innings which should open the door to long relief for some of these guys. If long relief isn't implemented we'll have to try to extend our starters which we'll need to use all of them after losing most of them to the IL & ineffectiveness. I don't know how soon or ever our prospects will be able to make that jump but long relief is a great way to get their feet wet when that time comes. If they do implement long relief, then there could be a few we could use to upgrade our rotation. as trade bait.

That's why I mentioned Ober as a long relief possibility, not as a starter. I too don't put too much hope in those you mentioned to come in and make a great impact on the team. Actually our candidates for long relief that are available right now are more than enough capable to greatly help us, Our need for long relief has been long over due and needs to be implemented yesterday and regularly used.

Thanks Tarheel, I really appreciate it.

Great article, Cody. It's very important to find our weakness and improve on them. I also agree w/ TopGun that another area is lack of training in small ball- bunting, stealing, hit & run, hit the other way. After the year of the "live ball" (2019) our game strategy can longer be hit "moon blasts". Now in close games the strategy has to change from SO or FO as a result from the "moon blast" strategy to small ball, getting our runners in scoring postions & capitalize. But our greatest problem is the innings gap between the SP to closer. Our current strategy is (on the average) 1 SP- 5 innings + 4-5 short RPs to go 1 inning each in a 9 inning game if there's overtime or doubleheaders will cause additional strain . That means we have to have IMO maybe 11 short RPs that we can interchange & at least 2 to close and that we can trust to compete. After we traded Rogers it turned out that we could only trust Duran as closer & Jax & sometimes Theilbar. So that means we have to go mostly go with short RPs which can't trust to complete games. Management solution was to over extend the rotation, result was having all our SPs on the IL at some time or another, tired arms and lost games, so that's not the solution. We have a great rotation but we have what we have, they can give us 5 quality innings sometimes 6 but not consecutively on a regular basis. At deadline we added to the short RPs that we can trust, a SP who supposingly can pitch 6+ innings regularly, released Duffy and put Pagan on the IL. This was a vast improvement but was it enough? Mahle who were depending to give us atleast 6 quality innings, in the 5th& 6th innings gave up 3 HRs & 4 runs. After 2 games we completely depleted our BP leaving high ERA Sands & LHP Theilbar to face a dominating RH batters. They used Sands in long relief and proved as w/ Cotton that they are terrible in short relief but does well in long. My solution is long relief and use them regularly to fill that terrible gap. We have disgruntal A Sanchez, Smeltzer and Cotton sitting in AAA, that are very capable & trust worthy as present candidates with Winder and Ober soon returning, Why waste them all in AAA? Makes no sense to me, especially when we have a gap to fill. So the solution is not over relying on short relief or over extending our SP with added innings, it is to implement long relief to keep everyone healthy, fresh & happy to get us to & thru the post season.

Great job Nick, We have 5 highly reliable short RPs and the rest can't be trusted as you said needs to pick it up. I suggest to finally replace those short RPs that we don't trust with long RPs that we do trust. A Sanchez, who did a very good job for us, Smeltzer as well as Cotton. Sands as well as Cotton who failed at short relief has shown that they are very capable at long relief. Once Winder & Ober get well they are excellent candidates for long relief. Also a prospect like SWR, long relief would be a great way to get his feet wet some day. We desperately needed long relief prior to the Mahle/Lopez/Fulmer additions but like last nite game shows long relief is still needed. As always long relief is needed to releave the pressure off the SPs & short relief. To keep all pitchers healthy, refreshed and happy for the post season. Everyone is so concern with the OF, but I differ in opinion. Yes Larnach. Kiriloff, Garlic are down, & Kepler isn't 100% & Buxton has always been a concern with his health problems. In the past we should have been concerned about our OF because we really didn't have anyone to sub Buck and when Buck wasn't in CF odds were we lost the game. Now we have Gordon & Celestino to sub Buck, we still have a good chance to win the game if Buck isn't in the game and if we do it isn't because of CF normally. Yes we are missing some pretty good corner OF bats but if we keep Kepler or Cave out ot CF & keep Buck, Celestino and Gordon there, we'll be iust fine.

Gordon's pedigree made a large impact on why he was selected so high. I was very disappointed with his performance in the minors knowing he wouldn't stick as a starting SS. But I was very impressed with him willing to take on a totally alien postion and transitioning himself into a legit CF. I believed he'd improve his hitting but he has surpassed all my expectations and he probably has more space to be better. Gordon has transformed himself from a bust into a very valuable asset for the Twins. Go Gordon!

IMO Dman is spot on. We didn't develop Joe Ryan but maybe you used him only as an example. Which further states the fact that this organization can't develop pitching which is the main reason why we hired them. There has been some bad drafts picks, evaluations and trades by present & previous FOs which has hurt this club and farm system. But we have to look at what is a farm system for? It's not for winning MiLB championships although that's great. It's for developing valuable players core & continue to supply the MLB club w/ an influx of MiLB players to compliment the core. Any redundancy needs to be traded to fill hole in the MLB team. Although I've criticized this FO for not being proactive in trades, they have evolved into a pretty good trader which finally appeared this deadline. I've been very patient with this FO because they have had many bad mindsets but slowly they are evolving into a pretty good one. Pitching still needs a lot of work, they are still a long way from that "Ace Factory" that I had hoped. But as long as we can trade for some of them, I'm happy.

Starting the game, the cards were stacked against us. We had no big guns in the BP available, no Correa, no Buxton and I'd preferred that Leon started because I don't like how Sanchez calls the game & would have been very interesting to see how Leon handles Archer. Archer toned down his game (as I hoped), which resulted in less SOs but no BBs & able to go 5 innings. After a long wait they finally used long relief, although it's not the situation or RP I'd preferred, it worked out very well having Sands pitching 3 scoreless innings. Theilbar was put in a very awkward situation who is not a closer and a LHP against a dominating RH hitting line-up. Now if we use long relief more often we'd win more games and have a well rested & happy pitching staff.The pitching was great but the line up was mainly dead, only scratching out 2 runs when in the 8th & 9th when they finally got there lead batters on. When they should've been slaughtered they end up losing the game only on a bad over turn. Hats off to today's pitching corp.

You are spot on, when Lopez isn't able to close we need Duran to. Although using them in tandem is awesome but it leaves us high & dry when they aren't pitching because the others aren't qualified to do so. In the 5th or 6th a long RP (A Sanchez, Smeltzer, Cotton) should be used 1st & see how far they can go and now with added quality high leverage RP depth we can get by with 4-5 short RPs to complete more games w/o over stretching the BP. With overtime games we need a RP like Duran to mow down the batters

I'd consider Moran over Pagan, IMO the others are no better. But our more desperate need is long relief so I'd go with pitchers that I'd trust (A Sanchez, Smeltzer, Cotton now and later Winder & Ober) than any short RP that I do not.

Now Arraez it's all on you!

Pretty lame 3 pitch SO

Holy crap! they hit Correa!

Yes, bring in Correa for Cave (he's dead today)