Hans Birkeland

Whether you think this team deserves to get there or not, they probably will. It's not fair and it's hard to picture anything going right with this offense, but being able to use Duran every game following a legitimate starter could change a lot. Here's what the New York Post had to say of the Mets on June 30th, 2015 https://nypost.com/2015/06/30/mets-need-lucas-dudas-power-to-avoid-july-burial/

Do middling teams that sneak into October and end up making noise follow a formula? Or is it just a crapshoot? Let's look at the numbers and see if the Twins could be one of those fortunate few. Image courtesy of © Tommy Gilligan-USA TODAY Sports The Twins are currently dysfunctional, with the offense on life support and requiring consistent player-led interventions to avoid going comatose. But part of what was initially exciting about this roster was its combination of playoff-ready ingredients. Like it or not, this team will likely host a playoff series in three months, with a 55.9% chance of winning the division, according to Fangraphs. I have long held a theory that teams need at least three good-to-great hitters, at least two good-to-great pitchers, and an elite closer to compete in October. If this current Twins team has its hitters figure it out to any degree, that is possible, given their quality rotation and Jhoan Duran. I wanted to find out if this year's team is the type of mediocre regular season team that can suddenly thrive in the playoffs, so I took a look at the last ten seasons in MLB and singled out the teams with the best regular season records along with the pennant winners, to see if my theory holds any water. Methodology: A compiled list of all teams with the best regular season record in their respective league and pennant winners. Teams with the best record that also won the pennant were counted in both data sets and added how many 120 OPS+ or better hitters and 120 ERA+ pitchers each team while also including the WPA of their closer. For hitters, I included anyone with 200 plate appearances or more who were available for the playoffs. I used a minimum of fifteen starts for pitchers while being available for the playoffs. For the closer, I used full season stats for whoever the closer was once the playoffs began. The only exception was for the 2022 Phillies. I added Jose Alvarado and Seranthony Dominguez's WPA together because their usage was overly matchup-based when October rolled around. Factor one: Having a group of good-to-great hitters The most significant discrepancy between teams with great regular season records and teams with postseason success was their collection of hitters. Pennant winners averaged 4.5 hitters with a 120 OPS+ or higher, while teams with the best record averaged 4.15. Some outliers include the 2014 Royals, who had zero hitters 20% better than the league average while still winning the pennant, and the 2019 Dodgers, who had seven hitters eclipse that mark while losing in the NLDS. The 2023 Twins have much work to do to assemble a group of plus hitters. Still, based on track record, you can have some hope that Byron Buxton, Carlos Correa, and Jorge Polanco will gravitate to that 120 OPS+ level, with Alex Kirilloff, Edouard Julien , and Royce Lewis having the potential to join them. If you take an optimistic view, they look similar to the 2015 Mets, who had a decent collection of hitters, including Lucas Duda (who was good for a few years), Curtis Granderson, David Wright, and a rookie Michael Conforto. But the team ascended to another level when they acquired Yoenis Cespedes at the trade deadline for then-prospect Michael Fulmer. Going from four plus hitters to five made a massive difference for that team as they went 36-19 in August and September and eventually reached the World Series. Would someone like Paul Goldschmidt or even Justin Turner have a Cespedes-type impact? Factor two: Having a couple of good-to-great starting pitchers It has long been a cliche that elite starting pitching wins in the playoffs, but according to my data, it didn't make much of a difference in separating the regular season champs and the pennant winners. The teams with the best season record averaged 2.70 starters of that type, while pennant winners averaged 2.65. Notables include the 2020 and 2022 Dodgers teams that had five pitchers 20% better than the league average, and the 2013 Red Sox, 2014 Angels, 2014 Giants, 2015 Royals, 2018 Brewers, and 2021 Rays with only one starter of that type each. No team has won a pennant or had the best record in its league without a 120 ERA+ starter on its roster. The 2023 Twins have three such pitchers in Joe Ryan, Sonny Gray, and Bailey Ober. Pablo Lopez (110 ERA+) could get there with a solid second half, and his peripherals make that possible. Only five teams in my data pool had four starters or more eclipse the threshold: the 2015 Cardinals (4), 2016 Cubs (4), and the aforementioned Dodgers teams as well as their 2019 squad (4). Factor three: Having a great closer According to WPA, pennant winners have had better closers than regular season stalwarts, with an average figure of 2.513. Teams with the best records averaged 2.438. The best performer was, far and away Kenley Jansen for the Dodgers in 2017, with a 5.70 mark. Second was Koji Uehara at 4.10 in 2013 for the champion Red Sox, and the worst was Sergio Romo's 0.3 mark for the champion 2014 Giants (oddly enough, Jansen's 0.4 in 2019 was the second worst). Jhoan Duran already has a 1.3 WPA this year after posting an impressive 4.6 in 2022. Being able to deploy him in the playoffs, with all the extra off days, could be a huge advantage for the Twins if they can scrape in. Comparables (Reached World Series with 93 or fewer regular season wins): 2014 Royals: Zero hitters above 120 OPS+, three pitchers above 120 ERA+, 2.8 Closer WPA 2014 Giants: Three hitters, one pitcher, 0.3 Closer WPA 2015 Mets: Five hitters, two pitchers, 3.7 Closer WPA 2018 Dodgers: Eight hitters, three pitchers, 1.5 Closer WPA 2019 Nationals: Three hitters, three pitchers, 1.8 Closer WPA 2021 Braves: Four hitters, three pitchers, 1.9 Closer WPA 2022 Phillies: Four hitters, two pitchers, 2.0 Closer WPA 2014 was a weird year, with the Yankees missing the playoffs, the Astros still coming out of their rebuild, and the Dodgers weren't yet the Dodgers. The thoroughly unimpressive Giants and Royals duked it out in the World Series, and those two teams did not have at least three hitters above a 120 OPS, two pitchers above 120 ERA+, and/or a closer with over a 1.5 WPA (we'll call these thresholds the test). The next five teams did; what about the regular season stalwarts? Teams with the best regular season record that failed that test: 2013 Cardinals* 2013 Red Sox* 2014 Angels 2014 Nationals 2015 Royals* 2015 Cardinals 2016 Rangers 2018 Brewers 2019 Dodgers 2020 Dodgers* 2021 Rays Teams with best regular season record that passed the test: 2016 Cubs* 2017 Guardians 2017 Dodgers* 2018 Red Sox* 2019 Astros* 2020 Rays* 2022 Astros* 2022 Dodgers *Reached World Series So of the teams that paced their league in regular season wins, four of eleven (36%) reached the World Series when failing my test, and six of eight (75%) reached the final round while passing my test. Of the teams that didn't post their league's best record but still reached the World Series, seven of ten passed the test. My most scientific theory is that baseball is a stupid game. For all their success, the Tampa Bay Rays have an injury-battered rotation and a closer with a nerve condition in his fingers that flares up in the cold (does it get cold in October?). Further out West, does anyone expect Nathan Eovaldi to stay healthy? If he doesn't, the now-dominant Rangers will have a rotation of Jon Gray, Martin Perez, and Dane Dunning in October. Their closer signed in March for 1.5M. The Guardians have three rookies, no Triston McKenzie, and the 2023 version of Shane Bieber (who they may trade) pitching in front of one of the worst offenses in the league. The Rangers and Rays have several quality teams trying to chase them down, by contrast. Certainly, the trade deadline could alter some things, but the more balanced schedule looks like a coup for the Twins and Brewers, at least so far. The point is that the Twins are frustrating and don't seem playoff-worthy. But they are better set for October than the two top teams in the AL regarding their path to the playoffs and the roster they could roll out once there. We saw what happened last year with both the Braves and Dodgers exiting in the NLDS after dominant regular seasons, while the seemingly middling Phillies and Padres rode their good-to-great hitters and pitchers with elite closers to surprising postseason success. Like the 2015 Mets, it might take the addition of one good bat to turn this Twins team into a dark horse contender. View full article

The Twins started with a promising first inning, but a catastrophic second doomed the Twins and Sonny Gray. Meanwhile Tyler Wells repeatedly pitched out of trouble to keep Twins hitters outside of striking distance. Image courtesy of Brett Davis-USA TODAY Sports Box Score Starting Pitcher: Sonny Gray: 6 IP 6 H 6 ER 3 BB 5 SO (91 Pitches, 60 Strikes, 65.9%) Home Runs: None Bottom 3 WPA: Gray (-.408), Ryan Jeffers (-.082) Kyle Farmer (-.088) Win Probability Chart (Via Fangraphs): Sonny was pretty good in five of his innings After an easy first inning, newly named All-Star Gray ran into trouble in the second. He left three offspeed pitches up in the zone in consecutive fashion, allowing three singles (one of which should have been field by Ed Julien). He then fell behind rookie Colton Cowser 3-0 and threw a fastball right down the middle that was inexplicably called a ball, tying the game at one. He had a more competitive sequence against Ramon Urias, but lost him, allowing a second run to score. Urias has had a number of excellent at-bats against the Twins this season, with his double against Jhoan Duran leading off the tenth inning in Friday’s game the shining example. As one might expect, two flare singles followed, making the score 5-1 in the blink of an eye. Anthony Santander then roped a single for the sixth and final fun of the inning. Ryan O’Hearn, batting for the second time in the inning, lined into a double play to mercifully end the frame. Gray settled down after that, throwing his secondary pitches below the zone and getting a number of ground balls and grinding through six innings with no further damage. Twins have very few answers for former Twin Tyler Wells Tyler Wells opposed Gray, and he might represent the greatest loss the Twins took from COVID, as he was a part of the minor league system before being left unprotected in the Rule 5 draft following the 2020 season. Having no recent evaluation of Wells, a 15th round pick in 2016 who, of course, didn’t get to pitch in 2020, or in 2019 due to Tommy John surgery the Twins probably felt pretty safe leaving Wells exposed. The Orioles called that bluff, and now Wells pitches atop their rotation, moving his cutter and slider away from righty bats and his sinker and changeup away from lefties to great effect. He does allow quite a few home runs, but held the Twins in check in that regard, with Donovan Solano's three doubles the only minor exception. The Twins started to build a few rallies off of Wells, with multiple doubles in the first resulting in the game’s first run, a leadoff walk in the third by Michael A. Taylor, and a leadoff double by Donovan Solano in the fourth that was followed by a walk to Max Kepler. Double plays extinguished the latter two rallies. Athletic plays by Orioles infielders played a big part in those, with shortstop Henderson making an athletic adjustment on a Kyle Farmer ground ball in the fourth, as he bobbled the ball attempting to make a flip to second, then decided to take it himself, stepping on second and firing first to finish a huge double play. Urias made a great play of a wicked hop off the bat of Farmer in the second, and O'Hearn's spear of Ed Julien's hot ground ball in the sixth that hit the first bag bag was huge in hindsight, as Byron Buxton followed with a hit, and then Solano added his third double of the game to score Buxton. Pablo López earns first All-Star nod It was announced in the seventh inning that López would join the AL All-Star team as a replacement. If that comes as a surprise to Twins fans, keep in mind that Joe Ryan will pitch tomorrow, making him ineligible for the game. If you think Bailey Ober has been better, well, you might have a point. However, López is among the league leaders in strikeouts (11.2 K/9) and his peripheral numbers are exemplary (.639 OPS against, 3.18 FIP). He has been a huge part of the Twins' successful rotation. What’s Next: Joe Ryan (8-5, 3.42 ERA) goes against old friend Kyle Gibson (8-6, 4.73 ERA) looking to salvage one game in the final series of the first half. Postgame Interviews: Bullpen Usage Chart: TUE WED THU FRI SAT TOT Ortega 13 0 0 0 25 38 Durán 0 0 0 21 0 21 J. López 8 0 0 0 13 21 Morán 0 0 0 16 0 16 Jax 0 0 0 13 0 13 Pagán 0 0 0 4 0 4 Balazovic 0 0 0 0 0 0 Sands 0 0 0 0 0 0 View full article

I said "Every year the Twins are decent, the knock against them is starting pitching." That's a comma, not a semicolon.

Tampa would 100% keep Kepler, never let him face a lefty and see him post his best OPS in years while subbing in for defense late in games he doesn't start. Then they would flip him while his value is high.

The Phillies had different needs, and they did a good job fulfilling them. Kepler won't bring back much, maybe an A-ball pitcher with some upside; the days of him having significant trade value are long gone. May as well keep him and let him give you 1.5-2 WAR down the stretch with good clubhouse feels.

I think there is a perception that Kepler doesn't care enough, as well. I was watching him make that catch along the foul line last night, and I noticed he started slowing up when he was still 15 feet from the ball which allowed him to make the catch and avoid any issues with the stands/netting. Jake Cave would have had a worse jump but still made the catch, flown top speed into the stands, busted his lip and worn it as a badge of honor. Kind of a Robinson Cano vs Derek Jeter thing. Same result, but fans tend to embrace the guy who busted his lip for the team.

I meant just the slashers are streaky.. I don't have a lot of evidence, and certainly plenty of boppers are streaky as well. But guys like Gurriel, Adam Frazier, Eddie Rosario, Delmon Young, Alex Bregman, Joey Votto seem to run so hot and so cold. I may be totally off base!

Every year THAT they are decent our rotation is questioned.

The Phillies were terrible defensively and went out and got Brandon Marsh, who solidified center field for them. They also got rid of Didi Gregorius and traded for Edmundo Sosa, who was great defensively for them. As for trading Kepler, it has to be for something that improves the team now. I don't think Lane Thomas is that guy, maybe Connor Joe of the Pirates who can really hit lefties but has no track record of success. Jorge Soler again but he's such a Jekyl and Hyde kind of player I don't think he improves the team much, either with his poor defense. If the team goes out and gets a bat, it needs to be Justin Turner or better, and even that carries risk outside of the prospect capital required.

Every year the Twins are decent, the knock against them is starting pitching. Every year when analysts look at the dark horses or favorites going into the postseason, its the teams with the best starting pitching that are highlighted. Now, the starting pitching has to stay healthy, but imagine Gray, Ryan and Lopez with Ober kicked to the bullpen for the playoffs. This is a golden opportunity with how terrible our division is. If you don't give it a shot, why even try?

Good points. .344 may be on the high side for Kepler, but a .390 SLG is on the low side so I'm just saying give me a .730 OPS however I can get it. As far as him being the 7th best hitter, you're right he does bat high in the order a lot, which I find pretty annoying, but with the injuries it is what it is. For Wallner I was just quoting Law for his K rate in 2022, but he's at over 30% in Triple A this year so I'm just not sure he isn't Kennys Vargas with a better arm.

He could be, but it better be a great one plus a B level prospect coming back.

That's how deadline trades work? How did the Nationals get Wilson Ramos for Matt Capps? The sellers market needs to materialize a lot before we can start throwing names out there but Wallner might be a popular ask.

I would want a lot. A good right-handed bat with team control.

They CAN pick up Kepler's option for next year, and if he finishes strong I wouldn't bet against it getting picked up. Wallner might be good trade bait since there is a good chance he flames out, but his numbers couldn't look better to other teams right now.

Max Kepler has been a little better lately, but Twins' fans still want him gone. What's our deal? Image courtesy of Jeffrey Becker-USA TODAY Sports I get why people are sick of Max Kepler. He looked like a transcendent talent eight years ago; a sweet-swinging lefty who slowly rose to dominance over minor-league competition after signing as a raw 16-year-old wild card out of Germany. He looked great doing everything and the expectations were sky-high. He then treaded water his first few seasons in the big leagues, holding his own offensively, slashing .233/.313/.417, while flourishing defensively. His metrics looked good, his BABIP looked low, and the Twins were so sure of a breakout they gave Kepler a long-term extension, potentially buying out several of his free agent years. The breakout seemed to come in 2019, when he popped 36 home runs and got MVP votes, but in retrospect we all know it had to do with the juiced ball that year. He’s reverted to the form he showed from 2016-2018 since then, which is worth about 3.0 WAR over a 162 game sample. He still plays great defense, doesn’t strike out and offers 20 home run power. His career OBP is .315, which is pretty playable given that. So the crusade against him is a bit much, with Aaron Gleeman-types offering the same critiques (poor contact quality, not being as good as we thought, blocking other prospects) and thinking if they repeat them over and over, it makes the case more compelling. But let’s be real here. The contact quality issue is ever-present, but he nonetheless puts up average offensive numbers, with a career 100 OPS+. He isn’t as good as we thought but who cares; this isn’t a sunk cost... developing average players is good! I had a commenter in a piece I did on Alex Kirilloff complain that seeing Kirilloff having a Kirk Gibson-like career would be a disappointment, so it's no surprise Twins fans are disappointed Kepler didn’t turn into Paul O’Neill . Part of the frustration with Kepler is when he makes an impact. His production comes in drips, not bursts (like Byron Buxton). He needs to get his timing right before he’s impactful, but once he does, he’ll give you a hard hit ball every game against a right-hander. It’s not sexy but it is pretty valuable over time, and even this year, a recent hot drip (.298/.355/.614) has raised his OPS by 107 points since he was chastised for his baserunning mistake in Tampa. And it's not like the Twins’ other options are great. Or, we can't prove that yet. Matt Wallner and Trevor Larnach aren’t exactly Mays and Mantle. Wallner is cited by Gleeman ad-nauseum as the “back-to-back Twins minor league player of the year,” in trying to justify giving him runway. Except Gleeman himself has always been the one to put that honor in quotation marks because the award tends to reward players who dominate the high minors but aren’t anticipated to do well in the majors. Previous winners include Randy Dobnak, Kennys Vargas and Zach Granite. And Wallner may fit that bill, as well. Keith Law placed him 15th on his preseason rankings of Twins prospects, with the following comment: "Wallner has an 80 arm and plus raw power with terrible pitch recognition — the man just does not hit offspeed stuff anywhere near often enough to be a regular, with massive strikeout rates last year: 30 percent in Triple A, 38.5 percent in the majors." Fangraphs puts Wallner eighth on their mid-season Twins prospect rankings, noting that his 70% zone contact rate would have ranked as the lowest in all of baseball, five percent lower than Josh Donaldson who was the next worst. Baseball Prospectus ranked Wallner tenth, with the note that, “Few hitters find sustained success in MLB making such little contact as Wallner did in his debut.” Where did Gleeman rank him? Fourth. Us having collective ADHD and wanting novelty and star level performance at all times is no reason to ditch a perfectly average big league regular like Kepler. Sure, Wallner threw out Brandon Belt and his necrotic knees trying for a double once, but Kepler would have made the catch on that same ball without leaving his feet. And do the Twins need more swing and miss in their lineup? Larnach is a decent fielder, much better than Wallner but without the range of the more athletic Kepler. He also has had a full season’s worth of games in the majors and hasn’t hit for any power, with 18 career home runs in 177 career games. Some of that lack of production happened while Larnach was fighting through injury (more on that next paragraph), but this year his OPS+ sits at a Kepler-ish 92, meaning eight percent below average. Kepler just hasn’t been that bad, especially if you parse out his injuries in your analysis similar to how we evaluate Larnach. He contributed 2.2 bWAR last year despite playing for two months with a broken toe, ranking between Joe Ryan and Nick Gordon for the season totals in bWAR. While playing with that injury he posted a sub .500 OPS. This is where Gleeman in particular is most disingenuous. He has never mentioned Kepler’s toe injury in any of his analyses that I’m aware of, but he has mentioned on a few occasions that Kepler is not one to play through injury, viewing him as a player who likes to be 100%. Which is it? What I expect from Kepler is exactly what he was producing last year prior to the toe injury- .244/.344/.390 with good defense in right field. He’s shown the ability to be a little better than that, but as is, that is a three WAR player, and the sort of production any team should be happy to pencil in from their seventh or eighth best hitter. Look at any team (besides the Braves) and tell me how good their seven-hole hitter is. Of course, this Twins team needs to get their offense going, and Kepler hasn’t helped much overall. But the focus shouldn’t be on sacrificing defense in favor of mystery boxes. Peter Griffin put it best when offered the choice between a mystery box and a boat. “A boat's a boat but the mystery box could be anything, it could even be a boat!” Similarly, on a recent podcast, Gleeman mentioned the downside of cutting Kepler was that Wallner and Larnach don’t perform. “Then you can just trade for another team’s Max Kepler.” was his solution. Kepler is also important to the clubhouse, and you could see he was one of the more emotional players coming out of the much-ballyhooed team meeting, cussing out the plate umpire on a brutal called strike in Baltimore, which I can’t remember him doing, ever, and giving perhaps the most dramatic bat flip for the Twins all year one at-bat later. Max Kepler is playing defense and posting a .730 OPS while not striking out that much. He is not the problem. As much as you, me and Gleeman all want to see the next shiny toy without enough experience to have a cap on their projection, I’m glad the Twins’ brass stuck to their guns and didn’t do a knee-jerk DFA weeks ago when Kepler was struggling the most. Kepler is vegetable lasagna, a lower octane Nick Swisher, a younger Mark Canha, a prettier Austin Kearns. And he’s making less than Gio Urshela. Give him a break. View full article

Let's not go crazy, we're in year nine of Buck getting hurt. Lewis is in year two.

The Twins meeting-fueled offense sputtered in game two of the "new season," but Bailey Ober pitched his best game of the year, Max Kepler made an incredible game-saving catch in the ninth and Joey Gallo homered for the second straight day en route to a tense victory in Baltimore. Image courtesy of © Tommy Gilligan-USA TODAY Sports Box Score: Starting pitcher: Bailey Ober: 7 IP 2 H 0 ER 0 BB 8 SO (85 pitches, 58 for strikes, 68.2%) Home Runs: Joey Gallo (15) Top 3 WPA: Ober (.371), Griffin Jax (.138) Gallo (.133) Win Probability Chart (Via Fangraphs): Coming off of a game that could not have gone any better against a competitive Orioles team on the road, the Twins came out swinging against Orioles starter Kyle Bradish, who has been quite good lately, pitching to a 3.14 ERA since May began. He seemed to have some spotty command early, giving up two singles and a walk to Joey Gallo his first time through the lineup. The Twins put together some good at-bats and made Bradish work, but were held scoreless until Gallo’s home run in the fourth. He made good pitches in key spots, including a gorgeous full count curveball to freeze Max Kepler in the sixth with a man on second. Although the runs did not come easy, the at-bats were competitive and the Twins put traffic on the bases, with only one 1-2-3 inning in the first seven. Unfortunately, they hit into a double-play, were caught stealing and had an unusual situation in the sixth when Kyle Farmer, trying to advance to third on a Christian Vázquez dribbler, interfered with the third baseman Jordan Westburg and was called out to end the inning, and Bradish’s outing. Ober brings it Bailey Ober has pitched well recently but has fallen into the Pablo López trap of having one off inning that inflates his ERA and puts the team behind the eight-ball offensively. Today the Orioles were aggressive early in counts but couldn’t get the barrel on the ball outside of Gunnar Henderson’s two-out single in the second. Ober entered the fourth inning having thrown only 28 pitches. He had command of all three pitches, even mixing in a couple curveballs, and took advantage of the swing-happy Orioles lineup. He didn’t encounter a three ball count until going 3-1 to Cedric Mullins in the sixth. He ended up striking out Mullins looking on a changeup that started as a ball inside and faded to the inside edge of the strike zone. His performance brought to mind his gem against the White Sox last September in which he pitched into the eighth inning, striking out ten and allowing just two hits. Royce Lewis exits with injury Running out a ground ball in the 3rd inning, Lewis appeared to pull something in his oblique area and exited the game. Losing Lewis for any length of time will represent a call for rain on any contact-oriented parade the Twins’ lineup had planned to put on. However, it may allow for the return of Jose Miranda, who has hit better recently in the minors but looked increasingly blocked with his main positions manned by Lewis, Alex Kirilloff and Donovan Solano, arguably the Twins’ best hitters this year. Max Kepler shows off his defensive chops After a challenge overturned Jorge Mateo being thrown out at second with one out in the ninth, Anthony Santander roped a line drive to the right field corner that had game-tying hit written all over it. Max Kepler got to the ball quickly and made a sprawling catch to preserve the lead. No offense to Matt Wallner, but there is only one corner outfielder on the 40-man who can make that play. Buxton makes hard contact, gets robbed After lining a 103 MPH single in the first, Buxton crushed a line drive headed for the left field corner at 106 MPH (.770 expected batting-average) in the third. Orioles left-fielder Austin Hays came out of nowhere and made an incredible catch, saving what may have been the game’s first run. Not to be outdone, Buxton lined out sharply to shortstop Henderson in the fifth with an identical .770 xBA. Joey Gallo lives Perhaps annoyed with fans calling for his ouster with increasing vitriol lately, Gallo has now homered in four of his last seven games, crushing a breaking ball from Bradish 439 feet for the game’s first run in the fourth inning and making a diving catch on a blooper from Adley Rutschman in the first. All of a sudden, Gallo’s OPS is back above .800 and he looks positively playable. What’s Next: Sonny Gray (4-2, 2.67) tries to build off his success against the Braves in Atlanta, facing the Orioles’ Cole Irvin (1-3, 7.18 ERA) who has been a disappointment after they acquired him thinking he could stabilize their young rotation. Postgame Interviews: Bullpen Usage Chart: TUE WED THU FRI SAT TOT Morán 0 36 0 8 0 44 Headrick 35 0 0 0 0 35 Ortega 32 0 0 0 0 32 Balazovic 0 18 0 9 0 27 Pagán 0 0 0 19 0 27 Jax 0 0 0 0 11 11 Durán 0 0 0 0 8 8 Winder 0 0 0 0 0 0 View full article

Swinging hard in baseball was invented by Mel Gibson in 2001 for the movie “Signs.” From that point forward, hitters kept swinging harder while in many cases adding steroids to the mix, resulting in more power across the league. Guys who were teetering on the brink of being labeled “Quad-A Guys,” suddenly realized if they could add 20 home run power to their repertoire, they could cover up all their other glaring flaws. In 2019, a juiced ball turbocharged this trend and not coincidentally that year’s Twins team set the all-time team home run record, featuring big contributions from previously unexciting players like CJ Cron, Max Kepler, Jonathan Schoop and Mitch Garver. After a 101 win season and the surprising addition of Josh Donaldson, the future seemed bright for the Twins lineup. Instead, the team has taken steps backward and now looks as dysfunctional as ever offensively, despite the track record of their hitters being quite good on paper. What happened? To start, the Twins aren’t the only team with a lot of names in their lineup and not a lot of runs on the board. Many teams who employ a multitude of high power hitters with great backsides to their baseball cards, are finding that their performance is suffering. The Yankees have a decent record, but the vibe around them is not positive, with their hitting underwhelming despite employing many successful sluggers like Aaron Judge, Anthony Rizzo, Giancarlo Stanton and Gleyber Torres. The Padres are at the bottom of the league in offense despite boasting four potential MVP candidates in their lineup, most of whom can do more than just slug. The Mets are struggling mightily despite Pete Alonso pacing the sport in homers, Francisco Lindor hitting the ball as hard as ever, and Francisco Alvarez breaking through offensively. The issue is how hard the guys are swinging. And no I’m not saying that swinging a bat is putting undue strain on these precious hitters. I’m saying you need a mix of efforts in terms of swing speed/length of swing, and the Twins have too many guys selling out for power, especially in key situations that require a base hit. I’ve categorized it that there are three types of hitters based on how hard they swing: Knock-getters: Think Luis Arraez, Rod Carew, and maybe Royce Lewis (more on that later). They’ll take a few rips to keep pitchers honest but really they're just trying to get a hit somehow. Slashers: Think Yuli Gurriel or Paul O’Neil. They’ll run into plenty of homers, but mainly they are just trying to get the barrel on the ball. My theory is that medium swingers go into the biggest slumps, perhaps due to oscillations in what “medium swinging” means for a hitter, but can often spark a team in the postseason. Boppers: Think Joey Gallo or Jim Thome. They want to lift at all times, and swing as hard as they reasonably can. The most rigid approach, and most dependent on mistakes. It also includes most of the current Twins lineup. It may seem like I am denigrating the power guys like any old baseball analyst from the 1930’s, but what I’m really saying is you can’t have too many of the same type of hitter on your team. As the Padres have shown, you can have four .900 OPS guys in your lineup and still struggle to score. If all you have is knock-getters you end up like the Cleveland Guardians, which isn’t very effective, either. It would seem that a team made up of slashers, or medium swingers, would be great, but I swear they’re streakier, and not always the best defenders. But a team full of boppers has all the makings of a heartbreaking team. They are scary to face as a pitcher, but importantly, they can be pitched to. For instance, any pitcher knows the game plan on how to get Joey Gallo out: high fastballs and breaking balls below the zone. If you execute that plan Gallo almost certainly will not hurt you; at worst you’ll walk him. A knock-getter, by contrast, can take a pitch you executed well and plop it the other way for a single. Not always, but at a far higher success rate than Gallo just accepting his fate with two strikes. Logically, a shorter, easier swing is easier to control, less deceived by velocity, and easier to pull back on if the pitch is a ball. I don’t think you’ll find a hitter who disagrees with that. And admit it, when Joey Gallo or Byron Buxton come to the plate with a man on second and two outs down a run, it burns you up because you know you would rather have Christian Vazquez hit in that situation, despite his poor overall numbers. It’s like a really physical basketball team with an elite big man. You can counter that team by putting a bunch of quick shooters all around the perimeter and forcing the big to come out and defend, negating his overall impact. He’s still really good, yet his existence is hurting the team. Or it's like a golfer who hits it further than anyone else but is playing a course with tiny fairways and deep rough. He has less margin for error than shorter hitters and his advantage is turned into a weakness. Or a male pickup artist looking to meet women at a lesbian bar. From a baseball strategy standpoint too, having a bunch of slower/shorter-swinging guys can make the opposing pitcher less of a factor. And if you’re facing Gerrit Cole or Shohei Ohtani with your season on the line, you want them to matter as little as possible. Elite pitchers, the kind you often see in the postseason, probably won’t make many mistakes during a game. The beautiful part is, if you’re a good knock-getter, you don’t need them to make any mistakes. You’ve accepted you can’t get a homer without several stars aligning, so you try to guess a location and punch the ball through somewhere. You can’t win the war with one swing, but you can pile up wins in individual battles and accomplish the same thing. That is still hard to do, but not as hard as trying to homer off of an elite pitcher who isn’t making mistakes. After Sunday’s game, Royce Lewis was interviewed and he mentioned that the Tigers approach to Twins’ hitters was to exploit that they were waiting for a mistake. He also said he personally went against that approach by selling out for contact during the game, during which he collected three singles. That was eye-opening because it confirmed what a lot of us fans have witnessed during the Falvey/Baldelli era: Swinging for the fences regardless of situation and hoping for a mistake pitch, resulting in failing to score in too many innings, and falling short offensively even if the total season output was highly ranked. On that note, the Firejoemorgan.com site of the early aughts was a favorite of mine, and one of Morgan’s most mocked beliefs was that sometimes home run hitters could be selfish. “What a load,” we said, “as if hitting a home run was something to be shamed for when it is statistically the best thing you can do as a hitter.” Except most of the time guys try to hit home runs, they don’t. The best home run hitters get a dinger every ten to twelve at-bats, a hugely valuable ratio, no doubt. But it’s easier to make contact if you’re just trying to get a knock, and if that’s what the situation dictates, then yes, trying to hit a home run is selfish, because of the home runs you don’t hit. If you know that a given pitcher is going to start you with a breaking ball outside, and you have the ability to poke a ball the other way, it is your job to ambush that pitcher and get a knock. Good pitchers give up home runs, but good pitches don’t (unless the hitter guesses perfectly), and that’s an important distinction. Sometimes you don’t get the cement mixer breaking ball of your dreams, and already this year, we have seen the reverse approach work against the best of the Twins’ excellent rotation: Sonny Gray, Joe Ryan, Pablo Lopez and Bailey Ober have all been victimized by bloop hits and squibbers the other way, often off of good pitches, and those hits have led to key losses against division rivals Cleveland and Detroit, not to mention the Angels, Red Sox, and Rays. Getting rid of Luis Arraez is then so much more of a blunder by the Twins. He wasn’t just a knock-getter, he was the knock-getter, and the Twins haven’t really had anybody else in recent years who could grind at-bats and was willing to sacrifice almost all his potential power for base hits like Arraez. Lewis has shown this ability at times, notably against Ryan Pressly of the Astros the day he was called up, also mentioning after Sunday’s win that he was trying to channel his “inner-Arraez.” Which brings me to Austin Martin. He recently returned to action after missing three weeks following a collision in one of his first games back from a sprained UCL in his elbow. That's a real shame because Martin is an up and coming knock-getter, and to hear him tell it, his failed experiment with adding power to his profile in 2022 just made him more committed to selling out for base hits and getting on base no matter what. Putting him in left field, if he’s healthy enough to play, might be the best recreation of Arraez the Twins can do at this point. And they’ll need him if what Lewis says about the hitting approach is true. If the team is truly gameplanning, or being gameplanned against, by virtue of its hitters trying to stay in at-bats until the pitcher makes a mistake, that’s a problem. It also matches the eye-test of watching this team. Sometimes pitchers don’t make mistakes, and sometimes when they do, you miss them (we’ve seen plenty of that). Whoever is advocating for that approach is stuck in 2019 and though Lewis surely didn’t mean to stir the pot with his comment, his saying it gives me hope that he may inspire others on the team to follow his lead and sell out for contact when appropriate. The vanishing act this offense has shown since the 2019 postseason is no longer a coincidence, it's a trait, and their league-high strikeout rate confirms it. Furthermore, against better pitching overall, with less power and a less juicy ball, that trait is dooming this team to fail despite an incredible (for the Twins) pitching staff. Gallo and Buxton will continue to swing away no matter what, but everyone else needs to realize what’s been right in front of them (by watching their opposition), and to give up a little power for contact. Not always, just when it matters.