MackMan

I think its a combination. ESPN had an amazing article here: https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/31454952/how-k-became-most-destructive-letter-major-league-baseball In this article they break down how the game has changed. Tim Kirkjian (author), Reggie Jackson, Mark Teixeira, Nolan Ryan, and Ryan Zimmerman all break down how the game has changed. They go on saying that the game has changed by teams using more analytics than ever before. Also, stated in the article are that pitchers really don't know how "pitch" properly. Stated in the article is also that hitters don't have multiple swings, depending on the count they have. They only have one swing. A swing that sends the ball well over 400 ft. A swing that is being hindered by the players not developing into a multi-faceted player. A swing that is only used for one thing: Money. It is widely thought that if you aren't hitting HR's and getting a ton of RBI's, you aren't winning games, which in turn means you aren't getting paid. The whole analytics aspect of hitting has forced hitter to become too predictable and only caring about hitting HR's. Which has helped pitchers out tremendously. All the pitchers have to do is avoid the hitters swing path that they have worked on over and over again, they will strike the hitter out. This is why you see players with 3-4 K's every other game. Look at Sano, Garver and Jeffers, just to point out a few, strike out rate. At one point the 3 of them were striking out at almost 50% of their AB's. In today's game a strike out is seen just as a regular out. Strike outs are seen as its better than hitting into a DP, which sometimes it is, but that shouldn't be the mentality the player goes into the AB with. As a Twins fan, we are seeing this day-in and day-out. The Twins are one of the worst at leaving runners on base. Usually that does correlate into a horrible avg. w/ RISP. Because they have the mentality of the Bomba Squad, the players believe that they need to hit HR's to score.

As a person who has grown up playing the game within the last 20 years, I would say that what Yermin did was definitely not okay. But at the same time I look at it as this: If you don't want a position player pitching in the game, don't fall behind by so much. Now do I agree with Duffey throwing behind him. Not necessarily. Do I think it was the fire the Twins and Baldelli needed to show the fans that the players and still care? Absolutely. Sometimes things like this do light a fire underneath teams and create a good rivalry for years. Look at the D-backs and the Dodgers. For the win. This team looked like a team that didn't look defeated going into the 8th down by 2. They looked like a team that wanted to win. This game showed us that the Twins looked hungry. Sano looked on top of his game. The defense looked solid (for the most part), the bullpen looked fired up and ready to go on all cylinders, and the hitters never once looked like they were out of the game. Ober pitched as well as he could on such short notice and given he is very young and inexperienced. I'm assuming he was nervous as hell (I mean who wouldn't be at that point in their career.) facing a very competitive and play-off bound ChiSox team that has absolutely demolished Twins pitching this year.

One of the leaders on this team needs to have a closed door meeting. They need let the whole team know that this is not acceptable. Something needs to change. We all know what needs to be changed, it just takes a whole team to make that change. Will we see a turnaround soon? Who knows. But it definitely needs to happen shortly or our season is pretty much toast.

My goodness. These commentators just don't bring the electricity that our normal commentators do. This is so bland to listen to.

I'm seeing quite a big strike zone today. As long as it is consistent I'm okay with that

Especially if you take the 15, 12, and 10 run games out of the mix, the team is only averaging about 2.8 runs/game. Tough to win a game when the other team is able to keep their ERA below 3.00