umterp23

If Maeda comes back soon enough, send him to the bullpen. Allow him to get back up to strength vs 3-4 inning start in the rotation.

One game doesn't make a season, but it does initiate confidence for Julien, Castro & Wallner. So let's say we need bullpen help at the deadline and these guys are continuing really good play, do we dangle Miranda, Larnach, Pagan and Jorge Lopez to see what we can grab? Not opposed to it but Twins have to be in win-now playoff mode. Just me enjoying a Sunday morning thinking out loud

Rod Carew in the booth is a nice break from the love fest normally

2nd and 3rd no outs and one job for Buxton! Don't Strikeout. Oh, wait, not in his tool belt to put ball in play with 2 strikes. Useless at bat

%'s to describe something over 100% is worthless. The max you give on any given day is guess what 100%, not anything over that. Plain and simple if he confident and ready to go, then he is 100%. If not, then he can say less than 100%. Glorified % doesn't mean anything. If he is ready, throw him in the lineup.

or maybe he felt guilty for cashing his pay checks and being so bad to start the season

Why Garlick and not Wallner? Bottom half of this lineup doesn't strike fear in anyone. Hell, could you say whole lineup doesn't but trying to stay positive I guess.

I would part ways with Miranda in a heartbeat. His defense is offensive and his offense is just as offensive. He doesn't have a home defensively and with Buxton being full time DH, where does he fit long term. Not sure he does. Miranda, Kepler and Lopez for Hader? not sure it is enticing enough. Throw in Wood-Richardson as well.

Baseball to me is the hardest professional sport to be really successful in all of pro sports. Think about a hitter who has to square up a baseball that is round and his bat is round to get a hit 3 x's out of 10. Tough task when pitchers throw up to 102MPH or craft guys can changes speeds +/- 10 mph. Tough to do. Basketball, shooting the ball and begging for a foul when it doesn't go in when you run down the court to not play defense. Pretty easy. Hockey and the goalie position is hard. Football, players stronger/faster/bigger but with new rules it's more like 2-hand touch. NBA/NFL, you get drafted you pretty much make roster. Dog eat dog world but year one you are in the league. Hockey, top picks on team, Baseball, top pick unless your Robin Yount, you take busses for 10 hours to play a game you love for no money. Getting to the bigs well versed by RiverBrian shows you how difficult it can be and the heart and desire to chase a dream really starts for MLB guys after high school or college.

This team very well could be in 2nd or 3rd place by end of May and snowball to KC level by July. Team as a whole has no plate discipline to put any pressure on opposing pitchers or their defense. Swing and miss or caught looking, Twins are excellent at it. Managerial musical chairs of a lineup day in and day out is quite laughable. Bullpen pitches in tight sphincter moments every game and with no rest for the weary or room to give up a one or two runs. We have 13 batters and 0 Hitters on this team. Blind squirrel finds a nut every now and then, so maybe we have one good hitter in each game, but I'd be hard pressed to find one. 485K's on the year confirms he have plenty of swingers. The Moran experiment, when will we move on from this guy? Not soon enough.

Problem with last night is we take out our best hitter because oh my god, they put a lefty in! Besides Kirilloff, we have no one and absolutely no one that scares me on a nightly basis. Correa and Buxton have turned into Sano 2.0 A & B. They look awful majority of the time at the plate. Correa's swing is long and slow and if guesses right he may hit it hard. Gallo is what we thought he would be, nothing more there. Gallo batting leadoff wasn't a bad thing but let's bat him in the bottom part of the lineup and put Kirilloff in leadoff which he isn't a leadoff hitter. Auto pencil in Correa and Buxton in 3 & 4 holes in lineup is about the only constant thing we get from Rocco. 2 highest paid players get what they want wether they produce or not. Guys growing up batted no matter who was on the mound and if you are a Hitter and not a swinger, doesn't matter if it is a lefty or righty. When a spreadsheet drives 99% of all decisions as a manager, you don't need a manager, you just need a babysitter. Rocco is just that. No gut, no feel, let me check my printout and go from there.

1 run or 10 runs doesn't matter, just need one more than the other team and it is a W. A couple breaks here and there and the road trip is 5-1 or at least 4-2. Umps gave the home teams a couple favorable calls vs Dodgers and Jeffers gets rung up on pitch outside with bases loaded which then has Gallo having to protect anything close late in game yesterday. We benefit from time time and when we don't always seems to be in the wrong spot. Time to move on and keep battling. Correa has to turn into something more than he is, which at the moment is an 80 lb lighter weight version of Sano. No matter what the count is, his swing is so long and not quick at all and then he stares at the ball once he hits or stares at the video screen to see himself K again walking back to the dugout. Farmer sure has stepped up in a big way on left side of infield. Glad we have him. Go Twins

Buxton CF Train retreating back into the station. It never left the station to begin with.

Gordon getting injured (not a fan of injuries or losing time because of it for any player) but is a good thing for the Twins at this time. He just wasn't hitting like he did last year, pretty simple when you look at .176 avg, .319 slugging & .504 OPS. Yes, he helps in pitching matchups by playing some CF but doesn't have a strong arm to play that position. So tough that he suffered an injury but could be a good thing for us in long term with limited value in positions compared to others.

The Buxton experiment as I keep calling it to myself, truly has created a trickle down effect of position players. Still not buying that can't play CF mantra spewed by FO, as clearly they didn't extend him handsomely to be just the DH. With that being said, I'm not sold on Gordon as part of the future plans to man CF consistently on daily basis. Taylor has acclimated himself very nicely in that role. Come Mid-June, if Buxton isn't playing some in OF, then Lewis has to be looked at again there. Farmer is more than capable of staying at 3rd to Lewis if ready can spell him on his needed days off. Castro has surprised me some here lately and gives the team a multi-position backup. Miranda is the wild card and only for his hitting if he gets back to last year. Off-season he would be a nice trade bait option because he is no matter what a liability in the field.

Farmer a really good story for the Twins this year. I know people are clamoring for Lewis to take 3rd in June, but if Farmer keeps playing the way he is, why bump him off the bag? Castro under the radar type of contributor and Solano has his moments. Do we try and trade Gordon for minor league prospect if we bring Lewis up? Tough decision and but nice to have to make one vs a necessity move because guys aren't worthy.

My understanding of the challenge is that the electronic call can overturn a bad human umpire call, thus the challenge capability exists in the minor leagues at select levels and games to work out the kinks. While yes umpires had their moments last night of being awful, let's not forget that we were 4-17 with RISP. If we could have come up clutch prior to the extra inning opportunities we wouldn't have to worry about umps getting in the way. Tough road ahead, character of the team will be on display tonight

Vazquez superior defense isn't that superior and for game calling, how do we measure something like that? I have no idea. In the other post about Jeffers, I summarized it as such for games they have started: So everyone makes it sound like Vasquez is so much better than Jeffers on defensive side and or calling a game: Vasquez - 15 wins / 12 losses as starting catcher, 8 assists, 2 DP's, .986 Fldg %, 4 - 18 caught stealing for .222 CS %, ranked 18th in MLB in catching defense category Jeffers - 10 wins / 8 losses as starting catcher, 5 assists, 2 DP's. 1.000 Fldg % - 5 - 12 caught stealing for .417 CS %. ranked 14th in MLB in catching defense category So it looks like Jeffers isn't as crappy as majority think on the non-hitting side of the position. Quality backup that has given way to a $10MM starter. Jeffers has earned more playing time than just being a get-away day catcher as he is positioned now. By no means is he the weakest link or catcher position is weakest link on the team at the moment. For some reason wins don't add up to team total so maybe Vasquez had a DH spot in there somewhere. One can say small sample size for Jeffers but he hasn't been brutal behind the plate. Calling the game is part of the battle, pitchers executing is the other half based on pitch selection. Go Twins!

So everyone makes it sound like Vasquez is so much better than Jeffers on defensive side and or calling a game: Vasquez - 15 wins / 12 losses as starting catcher, 8 assists, 2 DP's, .986 Fldg %, 4 - 18 caught stealing for .222 CS %, ranked 18th in MLB in catching defense category Jeffers - 10 wins / 8 losses as starting catcher, 5 assists, 2 DP's. 1.000 Fldg % - 5 - 12 caught stealing for .417 CS %. ranked 14th in MLB in catching defense category So it looks like Jeffers isn't as crappy as majority think on the non-hitting side of the position. Quality backup that has given way to a $10MM starter. Jeffers has earned more playing time than just being a get-away day catcher as he is positioned now. By no means is he the weakest link or catcher is weakest link on the team at the moment.

Vasquez gets another majority start vs Jeffers who had been pegged for playing vs Lefties. Makes me laugh that Vasquez hasn't played a full game in about a week because he hasn't been good. Gets pinch-hit for late in games and we thought it was Jeffers who was the weakest link. I guess it is FO mandate if we pay Multi $$MM's on the guy, play him no matter what is the memo to Rocco. Jeffers has been very serviceable especially getting such random time behind dish.

Twins K machine will be in high gear today. Darvish has a knack for making batters look like little leaguers

Twins signed Buxton to be face of franchise for $MM's cash and it wasn't to be the DH. 5 Tool player is truly 1 tool player. Hitting for Power, Hitting for Avg,, Fielding Ability, Throwing Ability, Speed. Hitting for Power: 16th out of 100 for all MLB two have hit at least 5 HR = mediocre Hitting for Avg: 132nd out of 162 for all MLB players hitting above .200 = poor Fielding Ability: No Rank = N/A Throwing Ability: No Rank unless you call 8 bat flips throwing ability = N/A Speed: SB with 2 is tied for 114th = poor (only chose SB's but extra base hits, snagging fly balls, keeping singles from becoming extra base hits, etc. you get my drift So are we really saying he has been good DH which has created trickle down effect for other players as Buck has positioned himself as DH. Mgmt didn't sign him for DH role, Fans didn't sign up for DH limited use role. Who cares if he appears in over 100 games when we see him 4 times a game walking to the plate for 45 second at bats. So if doesn't get on base, he impacts the game for about 3 minutes a game. Sure nice paycheck for him!

Buxton does break a sweat every now and then but also does a lot of walking to and from the batters box after a K. Some days he doesn't need to shower and just uses fancy cologne that Correa recommends.

Correa, performance #'s speak for themselves including his guaranteed money = very painful that he is sucking so bad at the moment. Buxton trickle down effect by not being a true everyday player hurts this lineup. DH is special mindset and by not playing the field he is very one dimensional. Not an impact player by any stretch. Twins mgmt paying him $15MM is a steal if he is in the field, but as a DH, not so much. Vasquez, yikes on the overpay for his services. Calls a good game we keep hearing, but other aspects of his game, not so much. Money paid equals line share of the starts, he needs to step it up Solano, Castro, Gordon, all nice stories at some point but we are stuck with at least 2 of them on this roster when Farmer comes back. Pitching staff, minus Mahle and Maeda have been really good and have put our team in position to win almost every game. When the offense is the worst and yes dead last in batting avg and bottom 10 in many categories in all of baseball, requires the staff to not give up more than 2 runs a game. Not sustainable. Arraez doesn't help this team (so move on from him). Kepler, Miranda and Larnach the future of the twins? Miranda was lightening in the bottle last year and this year, so called sophomore slump syndrome has reared its ugly head. If we are so enamored with Lee, Julien, Lewis, dangle Miranda at trading deadline and see who bites along with Larnach/Kepler. Can't hurt to hear the asking price, even if there is one above a Ruth Chris steak dinner.

Sure Twins didn't pay him $MM's to be part time player. So 3-4 at bats per game, strikes out about 30% of time, so walks back to dugout without influencing the game. Sure would be nice to get our full monies worth with the deal vs part time player. On pace for games doesn't mean much when you get about 1/2 the package. Guess it is better than being on DL with another injury.