jmlease1

Good job by the offense in getting us back in the game and then winning it late. Royce Lewis sure does seem to have that igniter in his skill set (he also made some very nice plays at 3B and looks pretty solid there)
Tough night for the home plate umpire last night, but fortunately it didn't impact the outcome. But it's increasingly frustrating to see umpires not have a consistent (and correct) strike zone. Correa got rung up on a pitch that sure looked outside, and then the ump loses track of the count against Lewis when he struck him out on a ball that definitely looked low. Considering the Twins were in a position to push some more runs across the plate when the ump took the bat out of our players hand again the "I'm bad enough at my job that I can't keep track of the count" was a little maddening.
P.Lopez was rolling along pretty well before imploding in the 6th. A little disappointing, because it sure looked like he was going to cruise through 6 or 7 innings, but the bullpen did a nice job picking him up. It's still hard to trust Pagan, but he did a very nice job holding Cleveland down for a couple of innings and then Jax finished it off. Feels good to only use 3 pitchers last night in a game that ended 7-6 while getting deeper into Cleveland's pen.

I’m sorry, but intentionally throwing at and hitting someone is just plain stupid. At the speed pitchers throw these days, injury isn’t the only concern. 

I've always been a big fan of Kirilloff as a hitter, the only thing holding him back was the bum wrist. Hopefully that's behind him now, but they'll probably need to keep an eye on him. He's got a sweet swing and pretty great eye at the plate. Totally deserving hitter of the month. (I think I'd rather see him at 1B than in the OF, but as long as he's healthy and in the lineup regularly I'm going to be pretty happy)
Jeffers is definitely earning himself more playing time. Be great if he can keep hitting close to this while catching a little more. (a little more time off might help Vazquez anyways) Jeffers had a bumpy season last year between injury and his power stroke abandoning him and it's great to see him hitting the ball hard this season. Glad the team didn't give up on him.

Never understood that, really. but seeing the reactions to Miranda and Julien not being immediate all-stars makes me wonder if some folks just don't have patience for prospects.

The "oh, we can't call anyone up because the Saints are in Buffalo" is pretty silly: this is a billion dollar team, not a tiny non-profit. There's plenty of flights out of Buffalo to get a player here in a few hours if needed. They're not coming in from Katmandu. 
i think the Twins take 3 of 4. (I'd love the sweep, but I'm not gonna be greedy) Their starting pitching will keep them in every game and I'm starting to feel some confidence in the offense again. twins are a good home team and have been a little unlucky so far this year (only 4-10 in 1-run games). Time to get it in gear.
Predictions: Gallo breaks out of his slump and clocks 2 dingers this series, Polanco comes back hitting, and because I keep talking about how we probably need to move on from him Max Kepler makes me look like a fool and has his best series of the season. Lopez goes at least 6, and Joe Ryan acts like the last game never happened and goes 7.
 

The "oh, we can't call anyone up because the Saints are in Buffalo" is pretty silly: this is a billion dollar team, not a tiny non-profit. There's plenty of flights out of Buffalo to get a player here in a few hours if needed. They're not coming in from Katmandu. 
i think the Twins take 3 of 4. (I'd love the sweep, but I'm not gonna be greedy) Their starting pitching will keep them in every game and I'm starting to feel some confidence in the offense again. twins are a good home team and have been a little unlucky so far this year (only 4-10 in 1-run games). Time to get it in gear.
Predictions: Gallo breaks out of his slump and clocks 2 dingers this series, Polanco comes back hitting, and because I keep talking about how we probably need to move on from him Max Kepler makes me look like a fool and has his best series of the season. Lopez goes at least 6, and Joe Ryan acts like the last game never happened and goes 7.
 

I think this is right. We'll see if Steer really can hit enough consistently to stick at 1B; he loses a fair amount of value if he can't play 3B. But it's also possible that he's only over there because they don't have anyone else at 1B right now. Without Votto it's pretty thin at 1B for Cincy.
CES was the player I least wanted to lose because I thought his bat might be special, but you never know how guys like him are going to go when they get to MLB. He's looking like a bad 1B or a DH, so I think chpettit19 is right: he's going to have to hit a LOT in order to make us be "haunted" by him. let's see if he can hit MLB sliders before we decide he's the next David Ortiz.
They rolled the dice on Tyler Mahle being healthy enough to stabilize the rotation last season and be a real contributor this year and crapped out. It's a mark against the front office in their ledger (and maybe they learned a lesson about how some players can't be trusted to tell you the truth about their health?) but I don't think they were wrong in the evaluations of Steer, CES, or Hajjar and how much prospect capital they gave up. 
If the expectation is that we never trade away any prospect that could be good, or even really good, but still expect the front office to bring back real talent in trades, then we have an expectations problem as well. there was a non-zero part of this board that wanted to deal Royce Lewis for pitching last year, and Brooks Lee's name has been thrown around too.

not wrong; it's been 25 years since baseball added any franchises. but there are also teams that are struggling to compete and be financially viable in their markets as well. Until that gets resolved I think MLB would prefer to hold those expansion cities out there as possible relocation threats to bully cities into building a team a free stadium...

Yeah, that’s not my definition. Times through the lineup have NOT been a limiting factor this year, at all, because we finally have a rotation that can actually pitch. Pitch count is and should be. This is why you are seeing pitchers reach further into games than 4 or 5 innings this year in general. This whole back and forth started because Varland came out of the game after going 7, with the score 8-0, and his pitch count in the 80s. I see no purpose or value in having him pitch the 8th. I wouldn’t have cared if he did, though, and I said that above. But not having him pitch the 8th this one game doesn’t mean he’s not going to be able to pitch more pitches in the next, because he already has this year. But we are 2 months into a season. I so no reason in not giving him a bit of a break this time, because next time we might need him to pitch to 105. That’s good managing, imo.

The "oh, we can't call anyone up because the Saints are in Buffalo" is pretty silly: this is a billion dollar team, not a tiny non-profit. There's plenty of flights out of Buffalo to get a player here in a few hours if needed. They're not coming in from Katmandu. 
i think the Twins take 3 of 4. (I'd love the sweep, but I'm not gonna be greedy) Their starting pitching will keep them in every game and I'm starting to feel some confidence in the offense again. twins are a good home team and have been a little unlucky so far this year (only 4-10 in 1-run games). Time to get it in gear.
Predictions: Gallo breaks out of his slump and clocks 2 dingers this series, Polanco comes back hitting, and because I keep talking about how we probably need to move on from him Max Kepler makes me look like a fool and has his best series of the season. Lopez goes at least 6, and Joe Ryan acts like the last game never happened and goes 7.
 

Never understood that, really. but seeing the reactions to Miranda and Julien not being immediate all-stars makes me wonder if some folks just don't have patience for prospects.

Rocco sneaks in (he's over 40 and the early 80's still had teams that arguably had 4-man rotations and 10 pitchers on the active roster; look at the 1982 Orioles for an example) but by the mid-80's you're right that concept had gone away, along with the idea of using your best reliever as a fireman, and multi-inning relievers who weren't the mop-up guy. It's been a long, long time and certainly none of our players were alive for when the 4-man rotation was a significant thing.

Rocco sneaks in (he's over 40 and the early 80's still had teams that arguably had 4-man rotations and 10 pitchers on the active roster; look at the 1982 Orioles for an example) but by the mid-80's you're right that concept had gone away, along with the idea of using your best reliever as a fireman, and multi-inning relievers who weren't the mop-up guy. It's been a long, long time and certainly none of our players were alive for when the 4-man rotation was a significant thing.

I think you've got this backwards. 28 games in 30 days isn't where you need an additional starter unless we end up with a double-header. It's the bullpen where we could get overstretched, especially if we get a couple of short starts. And adding a starter to the roster means one less reliever (remember, we're capped at 13 pitchers now). Maeda makes much more sense in relief right now, especially if as a former starter he could consistently take 2 innings every three days.
Really good start from Varland. I think I would have let him try the 8th; as much as giving Lopez a shot in low leverage makes sense, it was also an opportunity to see how Varland does 3rd time through the order and seeing how his stamina holds up pushing 100 pitches. But I don't have a big objection to giving him 7 shut-out and having him call it a night. (There's almost no chance of him throwing a complete game in this situation, so taking it off the table after 7 is fine)
Really good hitting last night overall too. Seems like every time I get down on Solano and start suggesting it's time to move on from him he has a good game. Castro is having an excellent stretch and is proving to be better that I thought for sure. He played nice defense at 3B too.
I love winning a series against Houston.

Always maintained my belief in Jeffers......so many here wanted to just DFA him.....

He's got the arm to be a quality corner OF, but he needs to keep working on his recognition and route-running because right now he's a liability in the OF. (the throw he made while up with the Twins to nail the runner at 2B was brilliant, but it was also on a ball that most OF simply catch without too much difficulty and he twisted himself around trying to get a line on it and let it hit the wall) He also still has deeply concerning contact numbers that aren't all that much of an issue against AAA pitching, but are problematic at the majors. Maybe he won't K in MLB like he did in 2022 next time he's up, but expecting him to hit like he did in his first stint(s) this season for an extended period and not pile up huge K numbers is overly-optimistic. That said, he's over-qualified for AAA at this point and the only thing holding him back from pushing kepler is his fairly awful defense.
Severino is doing a great job this season. It really looks like he's figured it out; ever since getting out of the FSL he's hit pretty darn well, and when he's repeated a level he's improved his performance since then as well. I think that's meaningful. The real question is: does he have a defensive home, or is he a player whose best position is "hitter"?
 

I mostly meant with the Twins. I'm happy for Rooker that he's playing for the A's, but he's basically had one great month and one bad month this year, so I'm having trouble calling him a solid MLB player. he's been pretty awful lately. We've seen him have hot stretches before, but he's never been able to sustain it.

I've always been a big fan of Kirilloff as a hitter, the only thing holding him back was the bum wrist. Hopefully that's behind him now, but they'll probably need to keep an eye on him. He's got a sweet swing and pretty great eye at the plate. Totally deserving hitter of the month. (I think I'd rather see him at 1B than in the OF, but as long as he's healthy and in the lineup regularly I'm going to be pretty happy)
Jeffers is definitely earning himself more playing time. Be great if he can keep hitting close to this while catching a little more. (a little more time off might help Vazquez anyways) Jeffers had a bumpy season last year between injury and his power stroke abandoning him and it's great to see him hitting the ball hard this season. Glad the team didn't give up on him.

It is looking like that streak is over.....(the good one)....hopefully for him he can get back to close to there, but I have doubts.

Rocco sneaks in (he's over 40 and the early 80's still had teams that arguably had 4-man rotations and 10 pitchers on the active roster; look at the 1982 Orioles for an example) but by the mid-80's you're right that concept had gone away, along with the idea of using your best reliever as a fireman, and multi-inning relievers who weren't the mop-up guy. It's been a long, long time and certainly none of our players were alive for when the 4-man rotation was a significant thing.

I mostly meant with the Twins. I'm happy for Rooker that he's playing for the A's, but he's basically had one great month and one bad month this year, so I'm having trouble calling him a solid MLB player. he's been pretty awful lately. We've seen him have hot stretches before, but he's never been able to sustain it.

Hard to say. He's still got value as a player, but if he's not hitting and not an option in CF, then you basically need a team who thinks "we can fix him" and who knows if that team is out there at his price on contract. Feels like they're trying to get to the trade deadline and maybe move him then.
Wallner is overqualified for AAA, but his defense is shaky and until the Twins decide to move on from Kepler, he's going to have to fight his way up.
Good to see Miranda making good contact again. Hope he finds some power in his bat as well and gets back his plate discipline.

Hard to say. He's still got value as a player, but if he's not hitting and not an option in CF, then you basically need a team who thinks "we can fix him" and who knows if that team is out there at his price on contract. Feels like they're trying to get to the trade deadline and maybe move him then.
Wallner is overqualified for AAA, but his defense is shaky and until the Twins decide to move on from Kepler, he's going to have to fight his way up.
Good to see Miranda making good contact again. Hope he finds some power in his bat as well and gets back his plate discipline.

I think you've got this backwards. 28 games in 30 days isn't where you need an additional starter unless we end up with a double-header. It's the bullpen where we could get overstretched, especially if we get a couple of short starts. And adding a starter to the roster means one less reliever (remember, we're capped at 13 pitchers now). Maeda makes much more sense in relief right now, especially if as a former starter he could consistently take 2 innings every three days.
Really good start from Varland. I think I would have let him try the 8th; as much as giving Lopez a shot in low leverage makes sense, it was also an opportunity to see how Varland does 3rd time through the order and seeing how his stamina holds up pushing 100 pitches. But I don't have a big objection to giving him 7 shut-out and having him call it a night. (There's almost no chance of him throwing a complete game in this situation, so taking it off the table after 7 is fine)
Really good hitting last night overall too. Seems like every time I get down on Solano and start suggesting it's time to move on from him he has a good game. Castro is having an excellent stretch and is proving to be better that I thought for sure. He played nice defense at 3B too.
I love winning a series against Houston.

I just wish the shady-ass media company (Sinclair? Think was those scumbags) that bought up all the regional Fox Sports Networks and rebranded them into Bally's and spun them off into this Diamond Sports Group could be held to account for this. They vastly overpaid for the networks and everyone knew it at the time. Now, saddled with all of that debt, they're trying to get out of paying their bills.
It's pretty pathetic that they're also trying to get MLB to hand them streaming rights in exchange for fulfilling their contractual obligations. they've been broadcasting the games, collecting the ad revenues, and not paying the rights and think they're entitled to extort baseball for additional assets to add to their bankruptcy pile?
Twins may face a similar fate this season, but it's my understanding that their rights fees aren't as out of whack with the revenue generation that they had with SD. So that one might still get paid, at least until all of the other debt calls wipe out the rest of this fraudulent company's cash.