Jocko87

Glad to see you mention the adjustment curve. Pretty early in that process.

Paddack, Festa and Zebby will compete for it. Varland and Morris are dark horses. No reason to sign anything short of the very top of the rotation. It's as good of a situation as any team in baseball. You didn't expect a starting pitcher to be fully formed in their first big league action?

I know this is a game thread but this is absolutely nonsense. The bar is high here at TD but wow.

I love that view with the MPH on the scoreboard. Corey still selling maaaybe and it flashes to the scoreboard showing 110 and ruins the call.

That's basically my point. We all see and know the times when putting in a reliever goes wrong because it's spectacular. When it works, nobody notices. Hit rate can be 99% and we only remember the bad times. He also did that in years when he was pulling them early in the regular season too. He will let them go longer mostly because he trusts them more. The weaker bullpen probably helps that he's only going to be using the good options in the playoffs unless things go horribly bad. In a Pablo or Ober start in the playoffs, i think it will be similar to this past few weeks. If he gets a game like Ober against KC last week, I think he plays it the same way no matter how good Ober looks. He generally manages differently in crunch time/postseason and we are seeing it now. I think much of the frustration expressed in the past few days ties to this. We as fans want to win every night and want him to keep the pedal mashed but that's not reality over a long season.

And here I thought this was going to be a watched third strike article. Huh. I generally support aggressive sends, especially for a team that doesn't attempt to manufacture runs but several times I see Watkins swing his arm as a Miranda turns the corner and it's suddenly uphill to home. I'm almost as curious about why everyone seems sluggish rounding third even when they are obviously hustling. Uphill, both ways.

The problem with this is that the absolute worst possible thing a manager, in any organization, can do-is over-manage. Has he pulled Alcala after say, 4 pitches, you would have questioned him. We all recognize that. Quick, give me a single instance of Rocco pulling a pitcher early that we all hated. What's that? There are hundreds? Do we have the server capacity? Now, and this is the important part, tell me which one of those early pulls that saved a situation where 4-5 runs were about to be given up in very short order. No way to know, but probably a lot of them. So if, for the sake of argument, we concede that this Alcala incident you are stuck on didn't work out, what would his success rate be in that situation? Probably pretty good, overall, but that won't change your mind. The cardinal rule of evaluating managers, in any organization, is to not assign too much value to any one standard decision, regardless of how bad the result is. The first ( and last) question on the decision tree is "would we make that same choice again?" In the Alcala case, the answer is probably yes. Or, more simply stated, hindsight is 20/20. I could win 162 if I knew how things would turn out. I'd have to take a heck of a lot of TwinsDaily heat in the process, but I'd win 162. I defend the decision by recognizing that they would do the same thing again in the same situation and it would work ~95% of the time. This incident isn't the indictment of Rocco that you think it is.

Was it these? My favorite brand.

Baldellis job ultimately comes down to deciding what factor or data point is the most important in a certain situation, informed by his bosses wishes as a data point. There will be times he goes against their general wishes if the situation dictates and I believe he has that leeway. There have been a few times recently I would have had a few questions but ultimately I would trust him as that decision maker.

Tying these things together, part of the plan is to manage the regular season so everything comes together for a healthy postseason run. Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face. They embraced depth so they could stay afloat with more IL time than most. They manage pitcher workload aggressively even if the game thread is a dumpster fire of second guessing. They've promoted aggressively and hung onto prospects because they knew they would need far more than 40. They brought in 15 bullpen options just to get through a long season. They require the same performance from Correa, Farmer and Lee-Buxton, Margot and Martin. Not the same output but the same level of professional execution and playing to ability. They have not had that recently and it's a very tricky leadership thread to ride. To my eye, the young guys are struggling with the mixture of being told all season we are pacing ourselves but still go all out for execution. Correa understands that concept naturally, Lewis is obviously struggling with it. Now that it's time for acceleration getting all the way to the bottom of the depth chart is showing. Guys are in roles they haven't seen before. Correa knows how to press the gas, Lewis has never been that guy before. They aren't tired, even though it manifests as such. They are learning on the fly and while it sucks right now it's likely to pay off long term. Baseball is a game of right place, right time-not hustle. We are seeing mental fatigue from learning on the fly. Rocco isn't anywhere near the chopping block, much to the chagrin of a few of us. This is part of the plan even if it wasn't planned to go this deep.

Truth. The injury rate for large contracts is 100% and very few of them return value on balance. They are doing pretty good on these deals and after a slight Donaldson mistake they have spent the big money rather well. I'll offer another reframe on this angle. The Twins have stepped up a weight class in completing for high value assets. There is a whole other weight class above this that just buys another when the first one breaks. When our toys break we have to fix them. We used to not have toys at all.

That is correct. Terminology is "at once".

Any word on what the new miracle plantar fasciitis treatment is? Asking for my baseball team and my left foot.

I’m afraid there is something else going on here, to the point that I think it’s highly tied to the recent troubles and closed door meetings. Baseball is not a game of hustle, it’s a game of being in the right place at the right time-everytime. Sometimes that requires hustle. Recently Lewis wasn’t even jogging to first, that’s unacceptable. At least jog gives a chance on a misplay. He’s not been in the right place several times lately as well but also had bursts of energy that really stuck out as misplaced hustle while looking very healthy. Perk and Provus were positively gushing at him running out a grounder recently, Friday I think. All the team leader, leading by example crap. It really felt staged, to be honest. There is something going on, and even though it feels like it could only be on purpose I don’t really think anything malicious is happening. He’s learning a couple things right now, along with getting through the grind. The first is how to be “the guy” when everyone else is out. He may be feeling a lot of pressure from that as one would expect. The other is how to manage the body. No doubt he’s been told to manage the efforts but knowing when and where to do that could be very tough for a young player with very few reps in his career. Carlos Correa can jog to first occasionally without any blowback because he is in the right place, every time. Lewis doesn’t have those instincts, he doesn’t have the reps to know he should have drawn an interference call on the ball Lee threw away. He doesn’t know which plays to go full bore and is probably frustrated trying to figure out what the team wants from him causing some tension. Nothing that can’t be fixed, but it sucks to do in public. He’s been a sensation on talent, but now it’s time to learn how to be a professional.

While also considering the partial picture, I would put myself in the opposite camp. All the evidence I see would suggest that he would be a terrific boss to work for. What I see right now is a path correction and restatement of expectations. Pretty standard stuff and a leader isn’t judged in the good times. I think there is probably some really concerning stuff with Kepler and Lewis that is polluting the waters, but that is pure conjuncture on my part. Lewis is the current figurehead and has to do some significant learning about what that means. Also, one does not retain a job like this for several years if he never had the clubhouse. Please be reasonable.

I'm generally Rocco positive and also not keyed to rampant speculative anger so I'm very curious to hear Rocco answer some questions postgame. That said, my first question would probably be something along the lines of... -W.T.F. was that?

Just think, two years ago Rocco wouldn't let anyone pitch past the 5th inning. Now it's an uproar that someone didn't get a chance at the 8th inning. Progress, people, progress.

Now its a funeral durge.

That makes more sense. Nothing about that sounds like anything this organization would say out loud. Rosenthal has to comment on it on the TV so he did. No chance someone inthe Twins organization said that outside of the Falveys office.

Lewis could have very easily gotten an interference call on the roller to Lee. That's his ball.

Did Jax just become the closer?

Ober for the 8th has a bit of rhythm to it. Like Henry the 8th song? I'm Ober in the 8th, I am I am. Carry on.

I don't mind it with the runner on second too.