Dodecahedron

Wait, the Twins won a game?

Do horses run faster if they have butt fungus? It seems like my cats do.

A circus show could be what the team needs to snap out of this funk.

The Twins are learning that talent and experience are great, but execution is what ultimately matters. Many of the teams who padded their stats v. the Twins are not good.

I think we knew Polanco would not be batting .200 forever. Thanks to small sample sizes, he has now climbed up to league average.

It's as if every game is a playoff game against the Yankees.

I think the number of lefties in the league is more like 30%, and even that might be high. 105 pitches in 6 innings: ~17 pitches per inning and ~6 pitches per out. Pitches per batter would be less than 6, calculated on the number of plate appearances in the game you are mentioning. Without looking, I am comfortable guessing the number of pitches per batter was around 4. I'll take this all day long from a pitcher. Wouldn't you? Improving the outcome when a pitcher is performing this well is on the defense.

Yeah, I think it's inevitable that Sano gets traded at some point, most likely in a midseason trade, after sucking for the first half. Some contender will take that risk for sure. Maybe this is the year.

True, but I'm always surprised by the caliber of players who move in these trades. Often it seems like contending teams are picking up bench players. Sure, eye-opening trades happen every year, but the majority of trades are for depth. What I am getting at is it's impossible to determine what "value" means. Every team has different needs and is thinking in different ways. Literally anyone on this team could be interesting to someone else. Yes, even Astudillo could be traded, and there has been no shortage of cruddy pitchers or infielders moving to contending teams at the trade deadline.

I can't think of a time the Twins ever got a good prospect by selling players at the trade deadline. Does anyone have any examples? If this is just about shedding salary, meh. I don't care about how fat the owner's wallets are, I care about the team's ability to compete in the future, and yes that includes finishing out the year respectably. I get it that when a team is doing poorly, for some people their minds automatically go into sell mode. But what kind of player return would the Twins get? I honestly can't remember a good return the Twins got in one of these trades, though I admit I don't keep track of how every player came to the club. It just simply never happens where a team sheds 20% of their salary one year and adds that to the budget in the next year, so I admit I don't see the point unless a good player comes back to the team in the trade.

Some tall & skinny people have connective tissue diseases, such as Marfan Syndrome, Nail-Patella Syndrome, or various other diseases in the same family. People who have these diseases can also run like the wind, if they so choose and keep in shape. Affected areas are knees, hips, angles, elbows, wrists. One has to wonder with Buxton. I'm certainly not advocating that he get tested, as a positive result would kill his career.

There are common threads between the year to date and the old "Total System Failure." A group of "power hitters" that suddenly can't hit at all. A bullpen that cannot finish games. Slow-reacting coaches sticking to their bad approaches. A couple of good players playing really well, seemingly in their own bubbles, Bad defense late in games. Free agent pitching add-ons that did not work out. A poor game manager. Baldelli is a good guy and he's probably a good coach. At this point, he does not appear to be a good game manager. Tyler Duffey sucking. Key difference from 2016: This team has a promising starting pitching staff. Shoemaker won't be starting for long, and Maeda won't be this bad for long (though Maeda may not be "great" this year, he should at least move to the middle). Reasons for optimism: The 2016 team had a couple of players in the bullpen who finished strong. Some of these guys in the pen, or maybe some new guys, might finish OK. Outside of the bullpen, overall this group of players is better than the 2016 group.

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There is a vocal minority that doesn't like him. This post isn't to stir up controversy, but I would add it's not going to change their opinion. However, this doesn't mean it's not worth talking about.

Lots of stuff happened last week. None of it was surprising, none of it was new. Astudillo is the best #26 guy around. Cruz is having a good time, and is doing his best to be a positive in the clubhouse. Dobnak is too good to be in AAA, though he has to be due to past mgmt decisions. Buxton is injured. The bullpen needs an overhaul. We talked a bit about if the Twins are still struggling at the end of May, they are in real trouble. I think their performance last week pushed that forward two weeks. They are now 8 games under .500, any more sub-.500 weeks in the near future puts this thing out of reach.

Hello, First time caller, long time listener. Looks good. Nice bold style. I admit it will take some time to get used to. Techies are moving toward a preference for "dark mode." Will the site ever support user-choosable color palates? Is "palate" the right spelling for this context? I was going to ask if the new site has an "ignore user" function. I see it does. Thank you. I have no immediate plans to use it, but this will help us block Fox & Friends divisive conversationalists. Our new meme can be, "Don't block me, bro." I see in the source code that OpenGraph tagging is supported. Don't be afraid to go crazy with that, the more OG tags you put in, the more Google will love the content. Anything pulled from the database can and should have a tag around it. Usernames (authors), message titles, message content, response dates and times, etc. What font is this? Kudos on making the font large for us "middle aged" guys who have blurry vision on some days.

Thank you, Minnesota, for loosening these restrictions. Twister is a good choice for this article. Everyone thought that movie was great when it came out. You have to see it, everyone said, it's so awesome, such wonderful special effects. When I saw it, I could not help but to laugh at the acting and story. I still think it's probably the worst thing I have ever seen, and yes I have seen the Kimmy Schmidt "Choose your own adventure" episode. This is a great metaphor for the expectations v. the reality of the Twins season. Though, honestly, that film is so bad, I would prefer to watch the Twins even if they were losing big. The Twins have yet to lay an egg as bad as Twister, so at least we have that! Heck, I don't think it's even possible for a baseball team to be as bad as that movie. I just can't imagine a 0-162 team being more painful to watch than Twister.

Putting on my Twins thinking cap here, I suggest the Twins sign Pujols and play him at either 3B or LF. Donaldson can also play 3B or LF. The set of prospects we bounce out of LF can then be the backup catcher or the meatball pitcher in the losses that will follow. The prospects will be OK with this and will continue to be great prospects for the team in the future. We'll just give them the talk where we say, "This is the hard part about baseball..." as we make them change their uniform numbers and move their lockers to the end furthest away from us, over by the trash cans, dirty laundry, and the so-called "jockstrap cemetery." Let's GO!

I agree that it's not luck. The hot streaks in previous years match up well with Buxton being on the field. Now that they're not winning but Buxton is even better, well, most of us are at a loss of words. This team is shaping up to be in real deep doo-doo when Buxton inevitably hits the IL for the obligatory 3-6 weeks. But, yeah, the Twins replaced Molitor with a manager who seems to have the same problems, but has the same problems for completely different reasons. Should Baldelli be fired? No, not really. He's here now, he's young, he can learn. But let's hope Twins brass is having daily retrospectives with him to analyze each game and learn from his mistakes. The great thing about the retrospective process is it does not require any experts to be present, it simply requires those who were there "when it happened" to analyze their decisions and decide to stop making the bad ones. Plus, it only takes half an hour of time.

Yes, the Twins should definitely do this. Pujols was last good five years ago*. Shoemaker was last good five years ago. Thus, there is precedent for signing Pujols, but only if he can block a prospect as Shoemaker did. The Twins can just play the prospect Pujols blocks out of position. Prospects are like rubber, not like real people, they can handle anything. They'll always smile in the clubhouse just for the team giving them an opportunity to wear the uniform. Pujols is the career all-time record holder for GIDP. This would fit on the mantle perfectly right next to the Twins playoff loss record. Why hasn't this signing happened already? Maybe the Twins could convince him to go into the HOF as a Twin if they promise him a statue at Target Field. *He was last great more like 7-10 years ago.

We could start using the median instead of the mean. The median for the Twins is a hell of a lot lower, and heck it accurately describes what happens more often by its very definition. Median runs scored per game: 3. Median runs allowed per game: 4.

The pitch framing metrics were designed to keep umpires honest and make them accountable. Largely this has succeeded, yes there are still bad calls and bad games but it's not like it was 10-15 years ago. Yes, I strongly believe the Twins were bounced out of the playoffs more than once in that era by bad-intentioned umpires. I'm not sure where Garver and Jeffers rank for pitch framing, so I can't say if this is what they are trying to do. In any case, the best pitch framers get one extra strike per game. There was a strong narrative that this was a huge difference maker, there were many vocal pundits around saying what a huge difference this was. Logically we knew this was never the case. We have enough data now to show that no team has gone deep in the playoffs solely due to the performance art of the catcher. Umpires have vastly improved their ball-strike accuracy in the last decade, but not due to catcher finesse. It's due to umpire accuracy being measured.

This is your opinion. I think Baldelli shoulders much more of the blame. He legitimately seems to be out of step with the players. You could say Baldelli is in his own bubble. It's clear to see with the pitching that has not adequately assessed who should be pitching where and when. The front office shoulders more blame as well. Yes they had good intentions, and yes they used the same method to build out the bullpen that they used in previous years. Personally, I expected this year's result in those previous years too, so although I was not happy with the bullpen this year, I held back on judging it. As for the players, I'm sure none of them want to be hitting or pitching as badly as they are. Let's be serious, would any of us be building a team around the likes of Kepler, Sano, Polanco, Shoemaker, Colome, etc.? Yes, all of us would probably have kept one or two of these guys around, but not all of them. For me, the biggest disappointment is Polanco, but I can't honestly say any of the others would still be on this team if I were in charge. Not that getting rid of all of them now is the answer, gutting the team by cleaning house is a recipe for disaster. The Twins should be looking to improve continuously by moving a couple of these marginal pieces year over year. In any case, the players are who they are. Blaming them for that is not productive, unless we know they are not taking the job seriously. If any of us believed, for example, that Kepler was a difference-maker, that's on us. The Twins team of the 00s had a lot of turnover, but kept improving. Sure, the late 80s teams had roster consistency, but they also had a team of all-stars and were setting attendance records.

Trading for relievers is scary. If the Twins pull the trigger and make a trade, I'm hoping it is strategic beyond "These are the players who seem available." The Twins should be trying to solve a problem at a deeper level than, "Stop the runs." The Twins should analyze what the gap actually is before throwing more players at it or they will not solve the problem, and losing prospects without solving the problem is a bad thing.

Right. Heck, it can just be one or two more batters. Anything to move a bit closer to the finish line.