stringer bell

The IL for position players is only 10 days at the minimum. Polanco won't have played for 5 days at this point. Hindsight is 20-20 but Kirilloff could have come up for Polanco easily enough.

A lot of key at bats, as well as pitching and fielding highlights. 1) Urshela made a do or die play that broke up a possible rally. 2) Gray retired the side after Trammel reached third with no one out. He made a great 3-2 pitch to France. 3) Jeffers and Correa with big RBI hits. 4) Thielbar retiring the pinch hitter on a routine fly ball. Getting ahead in the count made a real difference in what kind of swing the batter had. 5) Arraez’ 2-run single pretty much iced the game.

I don’t think there would be any problem finding at-bats for Kirilloff. However there are no easy demotions to make roster room for AK.

It is true that there are a lot of guys like Chi Chi Gonzalez out there. Outcomes are varied. Most move around and get occasional opportunities (guys like Andrew Albers and Aaron Slegers), some find a home in an organization. Most don't make much of a mark. It looks like Gonzalez will get an opportunity with the Brew Crew. Good for him.

In 61 games last season, Buck had 4.5 WAR. He isn’t outperforming that this year, although if he does get into 120 games, he’ll easily eclipse that 4.5 aggregate WAR total. Since the start of 2021, his HR frequency is on top of the charts, but the OBP and slugging are down from last season. He’s been basically an “all or nothing at all” hitter this year. To me, he’s only using a fraction of his skills and yet he’s a very good baseball player. I want to add that load management and injury are why he’s only using a fraction of his skills, not lack of effort or anything else.

With Garlick nearly ready to return, there already is a position player crunch. Assuming Soto goes down plus two pitchers when Gray, Ryan and Garlick are activated, who is demoted to bring up Kirilloff? Gordon and Garlick would likely be lost to the team. Larnach has done well and has played a good corner OF, Celestino is hitting well over .300 and is Buxton’s primary backup. Miranda has come on and provides an alternate at third and first against lefties. No easy choices. I do expect AK to return fairly soon. I expect a decent contributor once he gets here with plenty of at-bats.

I was wondering about Steer, as well. Glad that his absence isn't injury related. I guess the Saints don't need him!

The Twins have used Sánchez at DH frequently against RH pitching. I would think that having Kirilloff in the lineup instead would make a better attack. For now, neither catcher is hitting much and it seems a waste to have both in the lineup so often.

Hey, Buck is on another amazing power run. However, I still don't see the same guy we saw in April--a nightmare on the base paths, all-world center field and a guy who hits ropes all over the field. Maybe I'm nit-picking, but Buxton is not running full-speed very often, only playing center about half to 60% of the time and is hitting the ball over the fence a lot. I fear we may go through times where he's not barrelling balls and he slumps (not 0-30, but twenty or thirty unproductive at-bats). That said, this version of Buxton is still pretty doggone valuable. Ideally Smeltzer would be a fifth starter. Right now, he's the top starter on the active roster. Much like Dylan Bundy's first few starts, if his command is excellent, he can get guys out, but the margin for error is tiny. I like that the Twins can put at least one lefty in the rotation and still have to like Smeltzer's story. He's easy to root for.

The best cure for what ails the bullpen is longer starts. The second best cure is multi-inning relief outings. When healthy, Smeltzer, Gray and Ryan look like they can give six or seven innings on a fairly regular basis. It appears both Gray and Ryan will be back within the next ten days, however we'll probably see caution exercised since they will both have been out for a while. I disagree that Baldelli has overused his short relief guys. Thanks to an expanded roster, back-to-back appearances are infrequent as are appearances with over 30 pitches. Much criticism has been leveled at Rocco for his bullpen management. I think the underlying reason for what might appear as questionable decisions is avoiding overuse. Jax, Duran and Cotton have thrown multiple innings more than once IIRC. Having a potential starter (Winder, Gonzalez or Bundy) in the bullpen might also fill a need for longer relief.

If, and it is a huge if, the Twins can get their starters healthy and have a rotation of Gray, Ryan, Smeltzer, Ober, Archer with Winder filling a role, they have a competent, but unexciting rotation. I submit they need two bullpen arms if they really want to compete with the likes of the beasts of the east and Houston. Tier One: Duran + two acquired BP arms. Tier Two: Pagan, Smith, Thielbar, Jax, Moran, perhaps Megill.

Other third basemen have come to the majors for the Twins with bad fielding reps (Koskie and Plouffe to name a couple) and turned into acceptable or better defenders. Varland had a very nice game. I've seen some saying he is going to end up in the bullpen, but outings like today might give some pause. I presume if he feels all right, the Twins will want to give Winder another rehab start.

Bundy has to have near-perfect command to be effective. When he doesn't he'll get hit around. Of the starters who should be available at some time this month, here is my list: 1) Gray. 2) Ryan. 3) Ober. 4) Smeltzer. 5) Archer. 6) Winder. 7) Bundy. Getting everyone healthy has been like herding cats, but if they can all take regular turns, I don't see a place for Bundy.

I think we need to consider Duffey and Thielbar separately. Duffey has been among the worst relief pitchers in baseball, Thielbar got off to a rocky start, but has righted the ship. Duffey’s FIP is 5.05, Thielbar is 3.65.

I would say that command is the biggest problem. He's reduced his repertoire to the two pitches--fastball and curve--and they are both major league quality, but he has to throw more strikes in the right spots. Right now, I would say he is certainly worth a look.

There was a day off in between. The Twins got 3+ out of Sands and have Archer, who has only gone as much as 5 innings in one start and then Bundy, who has struggled against good offenses. Yes, the bullpen will pitch a lot of innings in the Yankee series. When dividing the bullpen between high leverage and low, who gets high leverage? I would say Duran, Smith, Pagán, Jax and Thielbar. That is not exactly the Nasty Boys or a shutdown group, but it is better than Canó, Megill, Minaya and Duffey.

1) The Twins were behind the entire game and no ML manager uses his high-leverage bullpen arms when trailing in a game in June. Baldelli had already used. Minaya and Canó. I guess it was the experienced, but struggling Duffey or Megill for the seventh inning. 2) Baldelli has seen Duffey recover from rough spots before, particularly last year. I think he and Wes have as good a handle on how effective they can expect him to be going forward. 3)If you look back, Duffey retired the first two batters quickly and easily. One batter reached when a hopper got through the shift and the next AB was a walk—bring in another low-leverage guy with two on and two out? We are all too quick to give up on guys. Pitcher and hitters slump. I don’t know if Tyler Duffey is good enough any more to get out good major league hitters regularly, but he has in the past. If there’s not something physically wrong with Duffey, I would advocate his DFA, but if he’s on the team last night in the seventh inning was as good a time as any to have him pitch an inning.

The starting rotation is depleted. The Twins are using starters #5, #6 and #8 against a good Yankee offense. They are facing three very good pitchers. It is a near certainty that the Twins will need to empty their bullpen in the three games, unlikely to get as many as 15 innings from their starters, probably much less. I think it is folly to say that Duran should have been used for two innings in a game where the Twins never caught up, as well as any other higher leverage arms. The problem is that there aren't enough high leverage arms in the bullpen. Using Cano, Minaya, Megill and Duffey wasn't great, but pitching when your team is behind is where they should be used.

That's what I'm seeing too, Chief. I suspect that the choice is playing less than 100% or surgery with a longish recovery. Ever since I saw the item that they drained fluid from his knee, I felt like it was a matter of time before he would be placed on the IL, but I don't think it would be to rest for a week to ten days.

I just fed my obsession by playing golf for about the fifteenth day out of sixteen. Well, it wasn't pretty and I left the course pretty frustrated. Before I got home, I had a chance to read the latest on Twins Daily and Major League Trade Rumors. The Twins will face the high-flying Yankees with three red-hot pitchers going for the Evil Empire. The Twins will counter with Cole Sands, Chris Archer and Dylan Bundy. I don't think I've ever seen such a lopsided matchup in favor of the visiting team when both teams are leading their divisions. Ever. As frustrated as I am with my golf game, the Twins continuing use of the Injured List and granting days off for their most dynamic talent provides me and plenty of other Twins fans with continual angst. It is like they are trying to win with one arm behind their back. Let's examine the components of my frustration; Injured List (pitchers)--A key bullpen arm (Alcala) has missed two months with an arm issue. That happens and all teams run into that on occasion. A marginal projected contributor (Dobnak) has missed the entire season so far and isn't close to coming back. Again not unexpected and all teams run into this. Currently, Gray (pectoral), Ryan (COVID) and Ober (groin) are all out. This is where the frustration builds for me. These aren't arm injuries and both of the injuries were borderline enough that the player wasn't disabled immediately. It seems that maximum caution has been used in all three cases. But these three are the top three starters on the team and none of them will face the Yankees this week. Beyond the immediate frustration is the fact that the team has been very conservative in extending the starts of all of their starters, yet here come the injuries. Add the cherry on top of a COVID case for their top young starter that has caused him to miss about three weeks and you start to wonder, what will happen next. One (frustrating) thing we can count on--there will be more short starts when the Injured List guys return to the rotation. Again, it seems that it is a constant, not the exception. Part two--position players. Having players who are breaking out miss time to injury and illness happens, but the Twins seem to have that as a rule. Gilberto Celestino, Kyle Garlick, Trevor Larnach and Royce Lewis all seemed on the way to proving they were valuable major league players and all were detoured to the injured list for a period of time. The Buxton management scheme seems to have accomplished one thing--make Byron Buxton an ordinary ballplayer. We've seen little of the blazing speed (don't "open it up" unless you absolutely have to) and he's no longer even causes anxiety for teams when he's on base. Buxton has only played about half the time in center field and when I last looked, he wasn't even a plus defender this year (that is a big portion of his value). Buck has hit homers at a prolific rate, but he's not getting on base enough and, as mentioned, he is not displaying many of his off the charts tools. Next Carlos Correa. After a slow start, Correa has shown himself to be a premium player, but because of a bad bruise when he was hit by a pitch and a case of COVID, he will have missed over a third of the Twins games to date when he returns. The COVID absence wouldn't have been so bad, but his heir apparent was hurt the day before he was diagnosed, so the Twins have used a career minor leaguer as their shortstop (Palacios has looked like a big leaguer. Good for him!). From what I can tell the Blue Jays have all of their top position players and top starters healthy and playing every day. Same for the Yankees. Since the middle of April, that hasn't been the case with the Twins. Why can't we have nice things? Agree? Give some feedback if you'd like. Go Twins!

I too wonder how much rope the Twins will give for Duffey. He has been Colume-like bad so far this season. The numbers don't lie.

I thought it was the right call to take Smeltzer out especially after the fourth inning where he allowed only one run thanks to a nice defensive play by Larnach to hold Springer to a single, a nice GDP, then a homer and another hit. My only gripe was that I thought that either Cotton or Jax might have gone two innings. I agree with 2Twins87 about Duran’s usage. He has done two innings frequently and having someone capable of dominating two of the late innings is huge. The looming off day and return of a couple or three bullpen arms also figured into the pitching decisions. There are a number of players making statements about being big leaguers—-Cotton, Moran, Jax, Miranda, Celestino, Larnach, Palacios and Gordon.

Kirilloff's numbers are very good. He has a .348 BA and .992 OPS. It looks like he's too good for AAA, but the question is whether his wrist is healed to the point that he can swing freely.

Is Kirilloff ready to come back to the Twins?

The Twins finished the month of May with an 18-12 record. Given the schedule they faced in that month, 18 wins isn't exactly dominating. They closed with a 4-5 record in their last nine games playing bottom-dwellers in those last games. Here are the stats for May per ESPN. https://www.espn.com/mlb/team/stats/_/name/min/split/41/table/batting/sort/OPS/dir/desc and https://www.espn.com/mlb/team/stats/_/type/pitching/name/min/split/41 Just a few highlights. Luis Arraez, Trevor Larnach, and Gary Sanchez had fine months. Arraez was an OBP machine. Trevor Larnach had a fine month, but only played in 16 games due to injury. Lowlights: Buxton, Jeffers, and Miranda. Pitching highlights included excellent months from Sonny Gray, Joe Ryan, Devin Smeltzer and Jhoan Duran. Disappointments included Chris Archer and Yennier Cano. The team outscored their opponents 137-120. The hitters walked 105 times, while Twins' pitchers walked 83 hitters, they struck out 256 batters while the hitters struck out 231 times. The Twins allowed 249 hits while getting 266 hits from their offense. The home run discrepency was 30-27 in favor of the Al Central leaders. Looking at stats provides a little longer view of the season and the month. My view of the month was that there were some interludes where they were very good, but they finished the month playing less than their best. Injuries and COVID-19 have flipped the roster sideways. Byron Buxton needs to either get right or get well and the pitching staff needs health or reinforcements.