stringer bell

The Twins have completed a sweep of the KC Royals and increased their lead in the AL Central to two games. Just to show they are impartial, the Royals play Cleveland next and send out the worst starting pitcher in MLB (Jordan Lyles) to face the Guardians tonight. The Twins have an off day today and face the Baltimore Orioles for the second weekend in a row, this time at Target Field. The Orioles are a team on the rise. After being the only bad team for years in the AL East, they have become respectable and have a much better record than the Twins. They have been given many top draft choices this decade and those draft choices are bearing fruit. Adley Rutschman, Gunnar Hendrickson, Jordan Westburg and Colton Couser have all been added in the last two years with more premium prospects in the system. Their pitching staff has been built mostly by trial and error--keep churning guys through the system and some will work out--including Jorge López who was flipped to the Twins at last year's trade deadline. On the pitching staff, the '23 Orioles have four pitchers who at one time were property of the Twins, including probably the number one loss on a Rule V claim in recent history. Here's a look at four pitchers who have gone from the Twins directly or indirectly to the Orioles. #4--Kyle Gibson. Kyle Gibson was a #1 draft pick by the Twins. A college pitcher, he debuted midseason in 2013 and gave the Twins six and a half years of starts. Gibson was promoted as a sinkerballer who threw hard enough to get strikeouts and I suspect his stuff would have played better in another era. His body of work is middle of the road, but he has been better than that for stretches, including an All-Star selection in 2021. I have met Kyle and he is one of my favorite ballplayers. Since his time with the Twins, Gibson pitched for Texas and Philadelphia before signing as a free agent with the Orioles. #3--Danny Coulombe. Coulombe pitched parts of three seasons with the Twins. He is a left handed middle reliever and in his time with the Twins he was mostly effective. For the third year in a row, he signed a minor league contract with the Twins. Now 33 years of age, this year's contract had an opt-out clause in the contract. If another club wanted to offer a major league roster spot Coulombe could opt out of his contract with the Twins. The Orioles offered and the Twins had to let him go. Given his history, and the fact that Coulombe signed three straight minor league contracts with the Twins, I think it is defensible that the Twins didn't put him on the major league roster solely to keep him in the organization. On the other hand, did they really need to keep a long reliever (Cole Sands) and Emilio Pagán? Coulombe has performed very well for the Os. His ERA is under 3 and he is averaging over 11 Ks per nine innings. #2--Yennier Cano. Cano was signed by the Twins in 2019 as a 25-year old. He put up excellent strikeout numbers, but displayed command issues. Regardless, Cano advanced through the Twins upper minors and made his debut last year. He got hit hard. The pattern would be some outstanding pitches followed by non-competitive waste pitches and then a grooved fastball or breaking ball. Too many walks, too many pitches out of the strike zone and too many homers. Cano was included in the trade that landed Jorge López and few (including me) thought much about him being added as a throw-in, especially since he was already 28 years old. Baltimore kept him in the majors to close out the year and he continued to be ineffective. However, in 2023, soOmething has clicked. Cano was unscored on in April, allowed no hits and no walks in 11 innings. He pitched very well in May, as well, but has appeared a bit more vulnerable as time has gone on. He's going to the All-Star game and is a great story. #1-Tyler Wells. There's been a lot of angst that Danny Coulombe and Yennier Cano have been important bullpen pieces for the Orioles this year. Less has been said about probably the O's best starter Tyler Wells. Wells was a 2016 draftee for the Twins who had advanced through their organization. During the 2020 COVID year, he didn't compete and was left unprotected in the Rule V draft. The Orioles picked him and he stuck with the club in 2021. He pitched out of the (bad) Orioles bullpen in 2021 and posted okay numbers for a guy who had only pitched 32 innings above A ball. Pitching around injuries, Wells stayed on the major league roster in 2022 and joined the rotation. in 2022. Wells was pretty good last year (7-7 4.25 ERA) and this year has been much better than that. He leads all qualified MLB pitchers in WHIP (Joe Ryan is second) and is 6-4 with a 3.19 ERA. The only thing keeping Wells from being a Cy Yound contender is that he has yielded 21 homers this year while having a pitcher-friendly home park. IMHO, this is the current one that got away for the Twins.

My point is that it isn't automatic that the Twins should be dismissed as a serious World Series contender this year. Trading away assets that can help them win this year (Gray, Maeda) just doesn't make sense when they have been gift-wrapped a chance to compete in the playoffs. To the OP, is it the same for Kepler? He has some value, but if I'm the GM and I can find an upgrade, I'd take it. I'm not sure who that might be, but as noted the Braves found three outfielders for a minimal price three years ago and won the World Series.

Rosario, Soler, Duvall?

I don’t buy that they are a hopeless case just because they stumbled for most of the first half. The recent past is filled with teams that didn’t look like championship caliber, but turned it around (Off the top of my head—‘19 Nationals, ‘21 Braves and ‘22 Phils). The pitching has been top notch and it’s supposed to be between 60 and 75 percent of the game. There is so much room for improvement from established players (Correa, Buxton & Polanco) and some young guys might step forward (Lewis, Kirilloff, Julien Jeffers). The Twins have been handed an invitation to the playoffs. I think they should take that invitation.

López was outstanding. I would rate his performance a tick behind Joe Ryan's shutout last month, just because he beat a last place team and he really didn't need to save the bullpen, as Ryan did. Having three really good starters in their late 20s (López, Ryan, Ober) bodes well for the future of Twins Baseball.

Given that the Twins are in first place and their pitching staff might be the best they've ever had, I think the priority at the trade deadline is to make the club better this year.

I don’t see a reasonable scenario to trade Kepler for anything that will help the club now.

He reached safely eight times in a row. At least a couple of those were walks or HBP and one of the hits was a jam shot that didn't get out of the infield. You can count me among the Wallner doubters, as well. The K-rate is high and the team already fans at a record pace. As far as how the players at AAA are hitting, it wouldn't shock me if Larnach was recalled before they would bring up Wallner. Kepler is on a nice run right now. Maybe he can keep it up for a while. I still don't want him on the club next year.

Another comparatively low K day. Better hitting w/ RISP, two strikes and going the other way. Correa has gotten more hits to right in five days than he had in two months. Buxton has hit a lot of balls hard, today a medium grounder found a hole and he beat out a slow roller.

Mr. Maeda is doing quite well in his return from the IL. The rotation has been so good. Maybe the offense will carry their weight in the second half.

Maybe this club is finally rolling. I'll withhold judgment until after the Orioles series.

My thought this past week was that this isn't a team with enough power to go for the max slugging approach. Buxton and Gallo are slugger types, but they don't have anyone else who is really that type. On the other hand, they lack enough contact types and speed to string together many crooked number innings without homers. Sort of like being late on fastballs and ahead of off-speed pitches.

Can anyone explain why the Saints have been scoring so many runs? My thought is that with all the major league pitching injuries, there isn't much good pitching left in AAA.

Duran's usage hasn't been the pure closer role that we see for most teams with a top arm. He's worked multiple innings several times and come in before the ninth on occasion. Baldelli probably would use him more traditionally if he had more arms that he could count on. Because of this, Duran hasn't put up the kind of save numbers other relievers have put up. That doesn't make him less dominating.

Ryan would be a candidate to replace someone, but he is scheduled to pitch on Sunday.

K% is a better indicator than raw strikeouts. If a team gets through their order five times (45 PAs) and Ks 10 times, it is a 22.2% K rate, about league average. I always get peeved when Bremer quotes strikeouts percentage per at bat as it should be pegged to plate appearances. Percentage of games with 3 runs or more and 4 runs or more would be interesting as well.

Larnach is really going well right now, as is Wallner and it happens to correspond with upticks from Gallo and Kepler.

It doesn’t seem to matter if the Twins are facing 4A starters or All-Stars. They’ve handled Gausman and Strotman, attacked Williams and got Pressly to blow a save. They’ve been shut down by a number of no names. No team is on top of their game every day and the Twins had at best, a mediocre, inconsistent first half. If they can look like they did today in 70 of the last 77 games, they’ll be just fine.

I wouldn’t object to adding a major league arm or two in the bullpen, but right now with López, Thielbar and Stewart all on IL, simply dumping Pagán won’t happen. It could be a bumpy ride until the All-Star break. There isn’t much help available in St. Paul and teams usually don’t make significant deals until closer to the trade deadline.

Only one game, but more evidence there is an effort to make contact with two strikes and to use the whole field. Seven Ks in 39 PAs is not bad. I wonder if they'll use Jax tomorrow after he got up to throw twice (and pitched on both Saturday and Sunday). I think everyone but Duran will pitch if needed tomorrow with Maeda taking the ball. The chances of him going as much as six innings are pretty remote.

I expected that there would be mostly pushback from a pro-Rocco piece at this time. The prevalent thought among those posting was that the manager and front office should be fired and that they are responsible for the underwhelming below .500 record. I was hoping for something significant, but really the Twins need to go with the position player roster they have, for now. I think there were signs in the Baltimore series that better times are ahead. Both Correa and Buxton hit the ball hard and reduced their strikeouts in Baltimore. The key to the Twins' offense going forward will be increased contributions from those two guys. I thought there were better at bats from several players and that the team hit in poor luck (and good defense from the Orioles). Three games does not a season make, and the ship can't be turned around on a dime. This roster is loaded with high strikeout guys and they've been slow to making adjustments to getting balls in play. Will there be more contact, better two-strike hitting and more hits with runners in scoring position? If there isn't, the Twins won't win the woebegone Central Division and one of the team's all time best starting rotations will have been wasted.

López has provided a lot of innings and that alone has value. His underlying metrics are as good or better than his previous seasons and yet his ERA and runs allowed are up. It would make sense for things to normalize, but sometimes they don't over the course of a year. Some guys constantly underperform their metrics (ex-Twin Ricky Nolasco comes to mind), but usually things do normalize. As long as Pablo stays healthy, I would expect his W-L and ERA to improve.

Congratulations to former Twins Luis Arraez, Yennier Canó and Brent Rooker. All are All-Stars—Rooker and Canó were named today, Arraez was elected to start.

In another thread, there was reference to a tweet pointing out how great the Braves offense this month. I looked a little deeper and eight players started every game, with the catchers splitting the ninth position. That’s hard to fathom.

Miranda is in the Twins’ starting lineup, playing third, hitting seventh. Pretty much makes it official that Lewis on the IL and Miranda recalled. Verified on the Twins’ mlb.com website.