stringer bell

I thought he was inches on the SS side, but the people in New York get more angles.

Shift violation?

Great play by Correa on the second softly hit ball of the inning.

Twins pitchers get a lot of strikeouts and fly balls. Not so much for grounders.

Still not sold on Sands, although I've seen a lot of good pitches from him. I still think his command is suspect and he doesn't have enough stuff when pitching down in the count.

On track to hit into nine double plays today.

Now 3-36. I didn't see the Yankee series, but it looked like he hit the ball hard a few times.

I was encouraged about Martin this spring by a positive article by Patrick Reusse (hardly a starry-eyed optimist) and later the decision by Rocco (a former CF) to put Martin in center over either Castro or Margot. My hope was that Martin could win near-regular playing time in left field and as an alternate when Buxton was rested or injured. It hasn't panned out that way. Martin is 25. It's hard to expect big leaps in the areas where he is lacking. Perhaps he can become an elite OBP guy who wreaks some havoc on the bases.

I think Martin will be headed back to St. Paul after the Yankee series, barring a disabling injury for a current Twins player and I think the demotion is fair, if not deserved. At the plate, Martin has performed pretty much as expected—good contact skills, little power. The batting average and OBP are low, but for essentially a maiden voyage in the majors, he’s done okay. Defensively, Martin has divided his time between left and center field, with just a cameo at second base. From what I’ve seen, the results are disappointing and I missed seeing the game last night and the one on Easter Sunday—two games where Martin’s play in the OF was panned. Teams have taken extra bases on Martin’s arm and he’s made that problem worse by throwing to the wrong base. His route running has been at best adequate. Austin has good speed and has been able to easily swipe bases, but from my observation that good speed hasn’t converted to great range in the outfield. Martin has played about twice as many minor league innings in the infield, but it does seem like opportunity with the Twins is in the outfield. If he wants to thrive, he needs to be a much better defensive outfielder and perhaps he will make better decisions with more experience, but it doesn’t make his arm an asset. So far, Martin looks like a marginal player with minimal upside. Unless his assets (base running, OBP) become elite or he improves his outfield defense significantly, his role in the majors will remain limited (IMHO obviously).

I’ve sung Willi’s praises for a while, but he’s not a regular center fielder. I didn’t see the game on Tuesday, but it sounds like he had a rough game out there. It’s a continuation of his defensive struggles at a key position. I think Willi’s best defensive position is left field and he’s been good at third base. He was passable at short filling in for Correa and has struggled in center.

It was only one game, granted one of their worst of the season. The Twins start two of their top guys the next two days. Winning today and tomorrow afternoon would make it a lot easier to forget last night's poor performance.

Life of Brian?

Ahem

Some of the worst strikeout rates (Gallo, Taylor) are no longer Twins. That would explain quite a bit of the decrease in Ks. Individual improvement in guys in like Jeffers and Correa should be noted as well. Twins pitchers lead MLB in strikeouts, despite having middle of the road numbers for runs allowed, homers allowed and WHIP. It seems getting strikeouts from the pitchers is a priority, but striking out for the hitters is the cost for hitting the ball hard. Not sure that makes sense.

Before the season started, many thought that the Twins' bullpen would be a team strength. There certainly was reason for optimism. The back end had Griffin Jax, Brock Stewart and Jhoan Durán, with Caleb Thielbar and Justin Topa as other late inning options. The middle relief had lots of options--Jay Jackson, Josh Staumont, Jorge Alcalá, lefties Steven Okert and Kory Funderburk. Honestly, it looked like too much major league talent for the roster. Then, injuries happened. In quick succession, Durán, Topa, Thielbar and Staumont were ruled out for the beginning of the season. As a group, the bullpen handled the injuries quite well, having a low ERA and high strikeout rate through April. The return of Durán was mitigated by the loss of Stewart. Thielbar returned, but so far hasn't been that effective. Guys who looked decent in April--Jackson, Cole Sands and Okert haven't been able to get key outs. The team bullpen ERA has skyrocketed in May (next to the worst in baseball). Meanwhile, all the injuries resulted in cameos for Ronny Henriquez, Matt Bowman, Mike Tonkin and the promotion to the 40-man roster for Caleb Boushley. Staumont has thrown one inning so far and Topa is still on the Injured List with a knee injury. What does the near future hold? With relief pitchers, it is anyone's guess. Relievers are so volatile. Optimistically, having Stewart return sometime in May would really strengthen the BP. Getting health and effectiveness from Alcalá, Thielbar, Topa and Okert would bridge the gap to the back end. There are enough guys who have had success that it should be expected that some will be effective going forward. Individually, Caleb Thielbar appears to have had a lot of bad luck in his 8 plus innings of work. Hitter BABiP against him is .423 despite allowing only 29.6% hard hit rate. He's walked too many, but one might expect that number to improve as he shakes off the rust of his IL stint. Cole Sands was a revelation in April, not so much in May. As noted by many, he might have been overused recently. However, it might also be regression to the mean for a guy allowing a 40.9% hard-hit rate with a 90.7 mph average exit velocity. Jay Jackson has pitched poorly in his last three outings, all games where the Twins' bullpen melted down. He's allowed seven runs while getting seven outs in those games. There is no underlying stat that really promises a turnaround. There has been speculation among the TD faithful that Louie Varland should go back to the bullpen to help the parent team. I think that given the lack of proven depth in the starting rotation, it is a bit premature and unnecessary at this point. There are a lot of unknowns going forward, but there is some hope as well. In the end, I think Twins' bullpen success will end up in line with the team's success (or failure).

Santana was briefly a third baseman for Cleveland, but they quickly saw that he was a better fit at the other side of the infield.

Do we ever really know how a relief pitcher will fare? I tagged five disappointing relief arms that were acquired by the Falvey/Levine front office and didn't even list Emilio Pagán. Many of the pitchers came to Minnesota with good credentials, but crashed and burned. What is interesting is that the two active guys, Floro and López have thrived in their new environments (for now). The Twins added several relief pitchers this year, none of whom had a big salary. So far, Jackson has been pretty bad, Okert probably just passable, and Topa and Staumont injured. I guess if you have enough bodies, somebody will thrive, but until they succeed no one really knows how they will do.

I was "meh" about the Santana signing. I am not convinced yet that it will be regarded as a mistake by the end of the season, but right now, like the rest of the team, there is a split between the first 20 games where Smooth was brutal to the last 20 games where CS has been very good. If Carlos lifts his BA closer to .250 and continues to be respectable against right handed pitching, it would appear that the Twins knew what they were doing. It should be noted that having Santana around makes Kirilloff's struggles more of a curious note than a four-alarm fire.

Dylan Bundy officially retired. I know he was in AAA last year. https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2024/05/dylan-bundy-retires.html

I think that is true in the United States. The increased number of international players (particularly Hispanics) indicates to me that there are still plenty of youths playing baseball.

There are reinforcements available. It does seem they don't want to toss away Jackson/Okert just yet and they can't be sent down. I'm honestly surprised they didn't call up Boushley for some length out of the 'pen for the next two days.

As the season wears on, Jeffers will probably get more full days off, especially if he cools off. He’s going to be behind the plate for at least half of the starts vs. lefties, meaning there’s room to use Miranda as a DH.

Triple A has seemed a long way from the majors for a while IMHO. The Twins have had a large number of players at AAA put up great numbers, but they aren't able to carry that over to the majors. Two examples in recent years are Andrew Stevenson and Tim Beckham.

The 2024 season is approaching the quarter pole and it appears that the much maligned AL Central is much improved in 2024. Despite the Chicago White Sox sporting one of the worst records in baseball, the AL Central has a net winning record, eight games above .500 and the division is +42 in run differential. The Twins were the biggest favorite in the American League (according to betting lines) coming into the season and at eight games over .500 they are performing as expected over the first quarter of the season. The surprise is in the other teams. Cleveland is coming off a losing season, didn't spend much on improving their team and still they are atop the division at this point with a 24-15 record. Kansas City had an active off season, adding arms and spending some money to enhance their young base. The Royals have surprised baseball so far with a 24-16 record. Detroit added pitching and hitting to a team that seemed on the rise in 2023. They have hit a rough patch and sit at .500 (19-19). I have enclosed a poll for the Twins Daily faithful to post their opinion of who is the biggest threat to a Twins' repeat as division champions. I think the Twins should remain the favorite, but the improvement of everyone but Chicago will make this an interesting race deep into September.

You mean Castro not Castillo? Matt Wallner is also 26 (I believe he's a month younger than AK). The Twins don't need all of their young left handed corner OF/1Bs to succeed, but they need a couple to thrive. It's probably fair to include Miranda as a corner IF/DH.