Doctor Gast

After the '24 offseason, I predicted that the Twins would finish in 4th place because of the offseason transactions. I had predicted the same after this offseason. While still being a firm believer in this core & deep hope that the Twins would change their mindset of big bat is everything & heck to with everything else. It's a pleasure to watch a team like MIL playing baseball the right way & wish the Twins could copy them instead of the NYY. You wonder why we always get embarrassed by the NYY? It's because we are a very inferior copy of them, because we can't come close to competing with them in FA to fill our needs. You say it's not too late. If we don't change our identity, it's too late & a long time overdue. Twins need to be a lot more proactive. Lopez has been injured for almost 3 weeks & nothing has been done. They are waiting for everything to unravel 1st & put a band-aid on it. IMO, we can be a better version of MIL.

Thank you, T&R, rest assured, my objective has remained the same. That is to win a World Series. So, what or who is standing in the way of obtaining that objective? Is it Byron or Carlos? If it is, how much can we get in return for them? I'm all for trading away any player at their high trade value to obtain a player that fills a greater need (which I'm often highly criticized for). We've had many great players to go through this organization the past 20+ years, 1st ballot HoF Mauer tops that list, and you can add Morneau, Hunter, Santana, & Liriano. But none of them helped MN win a postseason game. Lopez & Correa not only helped us win a postseason game but also a postseason series. Falvey boasted how his "all or nothing" hitting approach was the factor that took us to the postseason. But I differ; we won despite this philosophy. (They went all in on this philosophy in '24 to our demise.) I believe we could have gone further w/o Failvey's philosophies. Correa & Lopez fell into our laps, they bring w/ them a lot of intangibles. Do you know how difficult it is to bring in this caliber of talent? Yeah, we wasted their talents & our open window in '24, This season, Lopez is on the IL, Correa starts slow & seems to be playing hurt & the Twins are losing. Falvey loves social media blaming the core for our problems because it takes our eyes off our real problem. The point of my post of not trading off our core, isn't that I'm sentimental. It's because I see them as part of the solution of obtaining my hopeful objective not a deterrent. & my lack of confidence in Falvey to be able to produce a core that'll take us to the big dance (which I won't list because I've posted & blogged so many times before.) I don't hate Falvey, I just see him as a deterrent of that objective (it's not subjective). IMO, our main core can show the next core how to do it & mentor them. This is the best way to prepare them, not having them floundering under Falvey & Co.

Twins did a great job trying to climb out a very deep hole. Our pitching is going down the crapper since Lopez got hurt almost 3 weeks ago & the Twins haven't done anything to get us out of it. I don't like the talk of trading the core, of blaming them for management mistakes. Management likes to blame, the health trainers, hitting coaches & now the core. Yeah, it's not management's fault so get rid of all the core, trade them away for nothing & start all over again & make all the same mistakes all over again & sign management to extensions again. & lose a lot of fans while you're at it. IMO, for Twins to win, they need a new identity. That means that we need to ditch the old big bat, poor defense, poor fundamentals, poor baserunning, poor clutch hitting, Ks, ignoring intangibles, etc., philosophy. "You can't put new wine into old wine skins". If you want better defense, fundamentals, baserunning, clutch-hitting, etc., we may need different personnel.

The main point on my post isn't about Lewis or Wallner. It's the correlation of the change of how Baldelli changed his managing & us winning & losing.

Like I posted earlier on the game thread. MIL is playing smart ball & MN can't handle it. Now this isn't a knock on Wallner. When Wallner was out, Baldelli decided he wanted to change things up more. The team played better defense, smarter baseball, more aggressive baserunning, less micromanaging, more fire with return of Lewis & Castro & more clutch-hitting. & we went on a 13-game winning streak. When Wallner returned, Baldelli went back to his old losing way of doing things.

Good point, I took what you said under consideration. But IMO, right now we have Ryan, Ober, Paddack, SWR, & Festa with no long relief. IMO, we don't have anyone in AAA ready to be called up any time soon. Our rotation is spread very thin. Lopez is out (I thought he'd be the last to be affected), Matthews is on the IL already, Festa had a fatigue arm already, Ober & especially Paddack's (arm history) velos are down, SWR arm is young and Ryan had problems last season. IMO, the best thing is not to overextend & put too much pressure on our young guys so they don't end up on the IL & or not pitch enough quality innings. Gibson can be the best thing for our young arms, besides eating innings & also be that extra veteran presence & mentor. One of the biggest reasons we won't make it to the postseason is by ignoring failing starting pitching from the beginning. If our young arms don't land on the IL & not peter out, they'll pitch more.

MIL is playing good baseball & MN can't handle it

Ufta Twins!

Looks like Sims is having some command problems

I don't understand why Baldelli likes to place Jeffers at the top of the order. He's not fast, has others with better OBP & IMO as a catcher he should have less ABs to conserve him.

Kyle Gibson, had a great AAA time with TB. He just became a FA. He's ready to pitch MLB now. Twins should jump all over him right now. He'd be a great veteran clubhouse presence, an inning-eater, cheap & Twins desperately need him.

Here where I live, the low of around 60 degree & high around 80. Not bad for winter, yet my wife still complains that's it's too cold. I sure won't complain.

Defense is very important & yet is so very difficult to measure. I basically agree with the assessment, IMO, Buck should be higher. Correa was not listed, but he hasn't been the same. INF is fragile, France has been surprisingly solid (although his score seems a little high), For all the 2Bmen we have on hand, it's still a weak position defensively (valuable up the middle position should be better). IMO, Lewis is better at 3B. I'm satisfied with Vazquez & Jeffers but could use some help to be better.

You probably want McCrusher up instead, which is fair. Keirsey w/o regular ABs will never adapt to MLB pitching, nobody can. If he won't get it in MLB, he should be in AAA. But this seems like an undeserved rip at him. What did you expect from him last night? With 1 AB, single-handedly carry the team to victory? He did get on base & scored at that AB & played good defense. What more can you ask?

Twins bringing home the "road kill", I still stand by our core but it seems Correa is playing hurt. Ryan pitched a good game but Misiorowski was better. Congratulations to Lee on his hitting streak. Twins won't amount to anything as long Falvey & Co are at the helm. They have put together a pitching pipeline which I give them credit but they have failed at everything else. MIL is a small market but they know what they have to do.

I feel sorry for Buxton because he is very deserving of being an all-star this year. But because Twins fans are so indifferent to the team, many don't bother to vote. I'm don't care about HR derby, I don't care who's in it or wins. I do care that it often screws up our hitters after they're in it. So I'm against Buxton or any other Twin in the contest.

I think anyone of these plus Vazquez could be interesting for teams that need help in those positions. But I doubt we could receive anything much more than a lotto ticket for any of those. Yet w/o some of these players we could really tank if this is what they want. IMO we don't need anymore lotto tickets, We need players that can impact this club sooner rather than later. I have conceded that we won't compete this season so I don't mind if we are going to trade all of them if we are going to lose them anyway.

I'm very concerned about Paddack's arm history & the amount he has pitched prior. The reduction in velo, IMO, is a red flag to dial him back. The offense has let him down when he was doing well, but now picked him up when he wasn't so great. If we want to compete, we needed to pick up a SP to eat innings when Lopez went down. Right now, our rotation is fragile, it won't take much to completely unravel. Buxton is an all-star, he should be in this All-Star game. We have the offense that can score a bunch of runs in a row, but can they hit in the clutch?

Buxton is an all-star, he needs to be in it this year.

Varland is impressive

1st game I've been able to follow for a long time

Good job

Lee was able to keep his hitting streak alive

Here we go, a flurry of runs

Many don't realize the years of work that's involved for catchers to get to know their pitching staff & to get that edge. So I prefer for the Twins if possible to bring up promising catchers alongside their promising pitchers, But that hasn't happened. Maybe the most promising catcher we have in the system is Noah Cardenas, who hasn't caught any of our pitchers & probably won't see any MLB time this year. While we are fortunate that both Jeffers & Vazquez have been healthy, even so it's hard for them to stay fresh to maintain their performance. It's to the Twins advantage to keep both because of their experience with our pitchers. But I still think, for the Twins to pick up a promising young catcher to get familiar with our pitchers & supplement our duo.