jmlease1

Making a change on players who signed at 16 wouldn't impact any of the players you've listed, though. I think it would be a mixed bag for the players: it would reduce some of the freedom (fewer players getting minor-league free agency at age 22), but also might position younger players to have a better development track if teams aren't having to make a decision on a low-A ball guy as early. I'm literally only suggesting this be considered as an adjustment for players who sign before they are age 18.
Ober, Wallner, Ryan, Varland, and Julien all were college players, which is the biggest reason they got their later starts in pro ball. But none of them were super-high picks either (Wallner was the only 1st round pick in the bunch and he was a supplemental pick; none of the others went above round 7) whereas Buxton and Correa were two of the absolute best prospects in the country, being the 1st and 2nd overall picks in their draft. So the comp is a little out of whack: Buxton and Correa didn't just get more cracks at paydays because they started at 18. they got it because they were the absolute best talents.

It does seem to be more often and more impactful this year, but maybe I'm just remembering the bad calls on the strike zone more readily this season. It feels like there's more inconsistency (which is bigger problem than just having a wide or high zone), especially late in games. The Twins rough and unlucky record in 1-run games magnifies it all, of course.

they also had 14 hits? (and took 5 more walks. walks are "boring" too, though)
Difficult spot for Rocco with the pitching in the 7th. Gray was really good to that point, and then started to lose the plot. If you leave him in and he gives up the Big Fly, you get buried for it. If you pull him and the bullpen can put out the fire, you get buried for it (like he's getting slammed here). It's something of a no-win situation: if the players can't get the job done, the manager is going to get whacked (especially by the people who have been gunning for the manager all season).
Storybook return for Royce indeed. Love to see it. Everything we know about him to date says "good dude", and he deserves this. Looking forward to watching Royce Lewis more.

they also had 14 hits? (and took 5 more walks. walks are "boring" too, though)
Difficult spot for Rocco with the pitching in the 7th. Gray was really good to that point, and then started to lose the plot. If you leave him in and he gives up the Big Fly, you get buried for it. If you pull him and the bullpen can put out the fire, you get buried for it (like he's getting slammed here). It's something of a no-win situation: if the players can't get the job done, the manager is going to get whacked (especially by the people who have been gunning for the manager all season).
Storybook return for Royce indeed. Love to see it. Everything we know about him to date says "good dude", and he deserves this. Looking forward to watching Royce Lewis more.

they also had 14 hits? (and took 5 more walks. walks are "boring" too, though)
Difficult spot for Rocco with the pitching in the 7th. Gray was really good to that point, and then started to lose the plot. If you leave him in and he gives up the Big Fly, you get buried for it. If you pull him and the bullpen can put out the fire, you get buried for it (like he's getting slammed here). It's something of a no-win situation: if the players can't get the job done, the manager is going to get whacked (especially by the people who have been gunning for the manager all season).
Storybook return for Royce indeed. Love to see it. Everything we know about him to date says "good dude", and he deserves this. Looking forward to watching Royce Lewis more.

they also had 14 hits? (and took 5 more walks. walks are "boring" too, though)
Difficult spot for Rocco with the pitching in the 7th. Gray was really good to that point, and then started to lose the plot. If you leave him in and he gives up the Big Fly, you get buried for it. If you pull him and the bullpen can put out the fire, you get buried for it (like he's getting slammed here). It's something of a no-win situation: if the players can't get the job done, the manager is going to get whacked (especially by the people who have been gunning for the manager all season).
Storybook return for Royce indeed. Love to see it. Everything we know about him to date says "good dude", and he deserves this. Looking forward to watching Royce Lewis more.

Love Royce. Seems like a really great guy, love his positive energy and enthusiasm, and looking forward to seeing him show his talent and drive. He's had a really impressive rehab. It would have been totally reasonable for someone who has played as little as he has (because of injury, pandemic, and injury again) to struggle as he got back on the field, at least a little. He just refuses to accept barriers, apparently.

Murphy looked like he could be a league-average hitter and decent defender at catcher, and those are hard to find. Turns out, he had already reached his hitting peak at age 24. Trading Hicks was a reasonable move, but the return turned out to be dreadful, and maybe the old FO should have known better.
There's a pretty good argument that they should have had an idea that his 2015 performance was a fluke rather than an indicator of his future. The BABIP was unsustainable, he wasn't hitting the ball particularly hard, his xBA and xSLG suggested he was getting lucky too, and he'd never had a really great hitting season in the minors either. (excepting a 9 game cup of coffee in rookie ball in 2009, he never topped an .800 OPS for a full season at any level) It's a definite miss in player evaluation for that front office.
Moving Hicks at the time was a smart decision at the time; there was a real question if he was going to hit enough, but had solid value as a defender and still had some upside offensively. They were trading from strength and depth and moving a player that wasn't going to be in their plans as more than a 4th OF before he got expensive while his value looked pretty solid. The thought process there was good, but the failure was in player evaluation on the other end. And you have to wonder if they were trading for need rather than trying to get the best player they could. Suzuki was solid, but they had basically nothing behind him...and they appear to have over-estimated the level of talent the 2015 team had, despite their record.
Rough period of talent evaluation here for the Twins; this was also the year they signed Byungho Park too. There's a reason they cleaned house in the front office.

Murphy looked like he could be a league-average hitter and decent defender at catcher, and those are hard to find. Turns out, he had already reached his hitting peak at age 24. Trading Hicks was a reasonable move, but the return turned out to be dreadful, and maybe the old FO should have known better.
There's a pretty good argument that they should have had an idea that his 2015 performance was a fluke rather than an indicator of his future. The BABIP was unsustainable, he wasn't hitting the ball particularly hard, his xBA and xSLG suggested he was getting lucky too, and he'd never had a really great hitting season in the minors either. (excepting a 9 game cup of coffee in rookie ball in 2009, he never topped an .800 OPS for a full season at any level) It's a definite miss in player evaluation for that front office.
Moving Hicks at the time was a smart decision at the time; there was a real question if he was going to hit enough, but had solid value as a defender and still had some upside offensively. They were trading from strength and depth and moving a player that wasn't going to be in their plans as more than a 4th OF before he got expensive while his value looked pretty solid. The thought process there was good, but the failure was in player evaluation on the other end. And you have to wonder if they were trading for need rather than trying to get the best player they could. Suzuki was solid, but they had basically nothing behind him...and they appear to have over-estimated the level of talent the 2015 team had, despite their record.
Rough period of talent evaluation here for the Twins; this was also the year they signed Byungho Park too. There's a reason they cleaned house in the front office.

Severino is having himself a very nice season. He's an interesting prospect. The Ks are a little worrisome, but he's hit at every level for the Twins (excepting a brief power outage in the FSL, but considering he immediately started pounding the ball when he got promoted, it looks very much like a FSL blip not a problem). The power looks real, he gets on base...does he have a defensive position? Looks a little wobbly at 3B, unfortunately.
Brooks Lee seems to have gotten himself back on track. Wasn't too worried about him, but it's good to see a young player dig himself back out after a tough couple of weeks at the plate.
Kala'i Rosario keeps on hitting. He's going to be pushing for promotion this season at this rate. (also, anyone else find these 6 and 7 game series in the minors to be a bit weird? I guess it cuts down on travel costs for the clubs a bit, but it's got to be a bit odd to face the same team that many times in a row)

Severino is having himself a very nice season. He's an interesting prospect. The Ks are a little worrisome, but he's hit at every level for the Twins (excepting a brief power outage in the FSL, but considering he immediately started pounding the ball when he got promoted, it looks very much like a FSL blip not a problem). The power looks real, he gets on base...does he have a defensive position? Looks a little wobbly at 3B, unfortunately.
Brooks Lee seems to have gotten himself back on track. Wasn't too worried about him, but it's good to see a young player dig himself back out after a tough couple of weeks at the plate.
Kala'i Rosario keeps on hitting. He's going to be pushing for promotion this season at this rate. (also, anyone else find these 6 and 7 game series in the minors to be a bit weird? I guess it cuts down on travel costs for the clubs a bit, but it's got to be a bit odd to face the same team that many times in a row)

Wild day for Wallner, who looked excellent at the plate and a bit lost in the field. The throw to get the runner at second was fantastic, but it was also on a ball he should have caught. 
Jorge Lopez is definitely in a bit of a bad patch right now, which is too bad; this team needs him to be his shutdown self, especially with Jax scrabbling. We're definitely in a bit of a pinch with both of those guys out of sorts, and I'm not sure we want to be too reliant on Brock Stewart (who has done the job, though).
Nice to see Julien looking comfortable at the plate. His bat is a nice boon. Props to Willi Castro for doing the job wherever he's been asked to go and whatever he's been asked to do. I wasn't thrilled about his signing, but he's turning out to be a useful utility guy and the flexibility is a real asset.

I'm on record as saying that baseball managers have less overall impact on the game than a lot of other pro sports. A lot of the impact that a manager has is behind the scenes in keeping the clubhouse together and managing all the personalities...which is something we mostly don't see and can't know for sure if he's doing a great job or not at, unless something bad breaks out and someone talks to a reporter. We haven't really seen anything like that where there have been anonymous comments in the press crapping on the manager; the closest has been the Sonny Gray stuff about wanting to pitch deeper in games...and that's been pretty overblown (IMHO) in terms of how much actual criticism of the manager it really was (perhaps by people who already had an agenda against Rocco?).
The overall quality of managing in MLB is better now that it was 20 or 30 years ago, but that's also flattened out the impact of managers, I think. There's a handful in the league that are superior, showing a consistent ability to not only keep their clubhouse in order, but also manipulate their lineups to their advantage, handle the bullpens well, not make mistakes in game management, etc. There's a handful that seem to step in it often, can't get out of their own way, and aren't up to the task. Most of them fall into a muddled middle where most outsiders look at them and think they're probably fine, but will have some quirks that drive the locals batty, or become focal points for the fans when things are going perfectly, but are maybe only noticeable to people watching the team every day.
Rocco lands in the middle for me. He's doing what the front office wants in terms of general strategy and approach. He seems to handle the clubhouse well, and does a better job of managing his lineup and bullpen than some other Twins managers. He's been more conservative than I'd like in some things and overly aggressive in others...but in the final analysis he's been generally fine. When his teams have talent and health, he's won. When they don't, he's not likely to manufacture it out of nothing.
I don't think Rocco has done anything worth firing him; unless the front office gets swept out at the same time a lot of the stuff people find deeply offensive about Rocco as a manager will still be happening under the next guy. They're still not going to be playing a lot of small ball, they're unlikely to be stealing tons of bases (until the players turn over more), they won't be bunting a lot, and they're still going to have hitters that strike out a lot. They're still going to take out starters earlier than some people will like, and they're not going to have a 90's era style closer. They're still going to take an analytically-driven approach to baseball.
So who are you going to get that will be demonstrably better than Rocco? Firing him will make some fans happy in the short term, but it will take little time for those fans to turn on the next manager for the exact same reasons, so what's the point? If healthy enough, this team should contend for the division this season and if they get in the playoffs anything could happen. (I think they're better positioned to win in the playoffs with this squad than many of their others than have struggled in the playoffs)

Wild day for Wallner, who looked excellent at the plate and a bit lost in the field. The throw to get the runner at second was fantastic, but it was also on a ball he should have caught. 
Jorge Lopez is definitely in a bit of a bad patch right now, which is too bad; this team needs him to be his shutdown self, especially with Jax scrabbling. We're definitely in a bit of a pinch with both of those guys out of sorts, and I'm not sure we want to be too reliant on Brock Stewart (who has done the job, though).
Nice to see Julien looking comfortable at the plate. His bat is a nice boon. Props to Willi Castro for doing the job wherever he's been asked to go and whatever he's been asked to do. I wasn't thrilled about his signing, but he's turning out to be a useful utility guy and the flexibility is a real asset.

Wild day for Wallner, who looked excellent at the plate and a bit lost in the field. The throw to get the runner at second was fantastic, but it was also on a ball he should have caught. 
Jorge Lopez is definitely in a bit of a bad patch right now, which is too bad; this team needs him to be his shutdown self, especially with Jax scrabbling. We're definitely in a bit of a pinch with both of those guys out of sorts, and I'm not sure we want to be too reliant on Brock Stewart (who has done the job, though).
Nice to see Julien looking comfortable at the plate. His bat is a nice boon. Props to Willi Castro for doing the job wherever he's been asked to go and whatever he's been asked to do. I wasn't thrilled about his signing, but he's turning out to be a useful utility guy and the flexibility is a real asset.

Wild day for Wallner, who looked excellent at the plate and a bit lost in the field. The throw to get the runner at second was fantastic, but it was also on a ball he should have caught. 
Jorge Lopez is definitely in a bit of a bad patch right now, which is too bad; this team needs him to be his shutdown self, especially with Jax scrabbling. We're definitely in a bit of a pinch with both of those guys out of sorts, and I'm not sure we want to be too reliant on Brock Stewart (who has done the job, though).
Nice to see Julien looking comfortable at the plate. His bat is a nice boon. Props to Willi Castro for doing the job wherever he's been asked to go and whatever he's been asked to do. I wasn't thrilled about his signing, but he's turning out to be a useful utility guy and the flexibility is a real asset.

Wild day for Wallner, who looked excellent at the plate and a bit lost in the field. The throw to get the runner at second was fantastic, but it was also on a ball he should have caught. 
Jorge Lopez is definitely in a bit of a bad patch right now, which is too bad; this team needs him to be his shutdown self, especially with Jax scrabbling. We're definitely in a bit of a pinch with both of those guys out of sorts, and I'm not sure we want to be too reliant on Brock Stewart (who has done the job, though).
Nice to see Julien looking comfortable at the plate. His bat is a nice boon. Props to Willi Castro for doing the job wherever he's been asked to go and whatever he's been asked to do. I wasn't thrilled about his signing, but he's turning out to be a useful utility guy and the flexibility is a real asset.

Wild day for Wallner, who looked excellent at the plate and a bit lost in the field. The throw to get the runner at second was fantastic, but it was also on a ball he should have caught. 
Jorge Lopez is definitely in a bit of a bad patch right now, which is too bad; this team needs him to be his shutdown self, especially with Jax scrabbling. We're definitely in a bit of a pinch with both of those guys out of sorts, and I'm not sure we want to be too reliant on Brock Stewart (who has done the job, though).
Nice to see Julien looking comfortable at the plate. His bat is a nice boon. Props to Willi Castro for doing the job wherever he's been asked to go and whatever he's been asked to do. I wasn't thrilled about his signing, but he's turning out to be a useful utility guy and the flexibility is a real asset.

I'm on record as saying that baseball managers have less overall impact on the game than a lot of other pro sports. A lot of the impact that a manager has is behind the scenes in keeping the clubhouse together and managing all the personalities...which is something we mostly don't see and can't know for sure if he's doing a great job or not at, unless something bad breaks out and someone talks to a reporter. We haven't really seen anything like that where there have been anonymous comments in the press crapping on the manager; the closest has been the Sonny Gray stuff about wanting to pitch deeper in games...and that's been pretty overblown (IMHO) in terms of how much actual criticism of the manager it really was (perhaps by people who already had an agenda against Rocco?).
The overall quality of managing in MLB is better now that it was 20 or 30 years ago, but that's also flattened out the impact of managers, I think. There's a handful in the league that are superior, showing a consistent ability to not only keep their clubhouse in order, but also manipulate their lineups to their advantage, handle the bullpens well, not make mistakes in game management, etc. There's a handful that seem to step in it often, can't get out of their own way, and aren't up to the task. Most of them fall into a muddled middle where most outsiders look at them and think they're probably fine, but will have some quirks that drive the locals batty, or become focal points for the fans when things are going perfectly, but are maybe only noticeable to people watching the team every day.
Rocco lands in the middle for me. He's doing what the front office wants in terms of general strategy and approach. He seems to handle the clubhouse well, and does a better job of managing his lineup and bullpen than some other Twins managers. He's been more conservative than I'd like in some things and overly aggressive in others...but in the final analysis he's been generally fine. When his teams have talent and health, he's won. When they don't, he's not likely to manufacture it out of nothing.
I don't think Rocco has done anything worth firing him; unless the front office gets swept out at the same time a lot of the stuff people find deeply offensive about Rocco as a manager will still be happening under the next guy. They're still not going to be playing a lot of small ball, they're unlikely to be stealing tons of bases (until the players turn over more), they won't be bunting a lot, and they're still going to have hitters that strike out a lot. They're still going to take out starters earlier than some people will like, and they're not going to have a 90's era style closer. They're still going to take an analytically-driven approach to baseball.
So who are you going to get that will be demonstrably better than Rocco? Firing him will make some fans happy in the short term, but it will take little time for those fans to turn on the next manager for the exact same reasons, so what's the point? If healthy enough, this team should contend for the division this season and if they get in the playoffs anything could happen. (I think they're better positioned to win in the playoffs with this squad than many of their others than have struggled in the playoffs)

Wild day for Wallner, who looked excellent at the plate and a bit lost in the field. The throw to get the runner at second was fantastic, but it was also on a ball he should have caught. 
Jorge Lopez is definitely in a bit of a bad patch right now, which is too bad; this team needs him to be his shutdown self, especially with Jax scrabbling. We're definitely in a bit of a pinch with both of those guys out of sorts, and I'm not sure we want to be too reliant on Brock Stewart (who has done the job, though).
Nice to see Julien looking comfortable at the plate. His bat is a nice boon. Props to Willi Castro for doing the job wherever he's been asked to go and whatever he's been asked to do. I wasn't thrilled about his signing, but he's turning out to be a useful utility guy and the flexibility is a real asset.

I'm on record as saying that baseball managers have less overall impact on the game than a lot of other pro sports. A lot of the impact that a manager has is behind the scenes in keeping the clubhouse together and managing all the personalities...which is something we mostly don't see and can't know for sure if he's doing a great job or not at, unless something bad breaks out and someone talks to a reporter. We haven't really seen anything like that where there have been anonymous comments in the press crapping on the manager; the closest has been the Sonny Gray stuff about wanting to pitch deeper in games...and that's been pretty overblown (IMHO) in terms of how much actual criticism of the manager it really was (perhaps by people who already had an agenda against Rocco?).
The overall quality of managing in MLB is better now that it was 20 or 30 years ago, but that's also flattened out the impact of managers, I think. There's a handful in the league that are superior, showing a consistent ability to not only keep their clubhouse in order, but also manipulate their lineups to their advantage, handle the bullpens well, not make mistakes in game management, etc. There's a handful that seem to step in it often, can't get out of their own way, and aren't up to the task. Most of them fall into a muddled middle where most outsiders look at them and think they're probably fine, but will have some quirks that drive the locals batty, or become focal points for the fans when things are going perfectly, but are maybe only noticeable to people watching the team every day.
Rocco lands in the middle for me. He's doing what the front office wants in terms of general strategy and approach. He seems to handle the clubhouse well, and does a better job of managing his lineup and bullpen than some other Twins managers. He's been more conservative than I'd like in some things and overly aggressive in others...but in the final analysis he's been generally fine. When his teams have talent and health, he's won. When they don't, he's not likely to manufacture it out of nothing.
I don't think Rocco has done anything worth firing him; unless the front office gets swept out at the same time a lot of the stuff people find deeply offensive about Rocco as a manager will still be happening under the next guy. They're still not going to be playing a lot of small ball, they're unlikely to be stealing tons of bases (until the players turn over more), they won't be bunting a lot, and they're still going to have hitters that strike out a lot. They're still going to take out starters earlier than some people will like, and they're not going to have a 90's era style closer. They're still going to take an analytically-driven approach to baseball.
So who are you going to get that will be demonstrably better than Rocco? Firing him will make some fans happy in the short term, but it will take little time for those fans to turn on the next manager for the exact same reasons, so what's the point? If healthy enough, this team should contend for the division this season and if they get in the playoffs anything could happen. (I think they're better positioned to win in the playoffs with this squad than many of their others than have struggled in the playoffs)

Wild day for Wallner, who looked excellent at the plate and a bit lost in the field. The throw to get the runner at second was fantastic, but it was also on a ball he should have caught. 
Jorge Lopez is definitely in a bit of a bad patch right now, which is too bad; this team needs him to be his shutdown self, especially with Jax scrabbling. We're definitely in a bit of a pinch with both of those guys out of sorts, and I'm not sure we want to be too reliant on Brock Stewart (who has done the job, though).
Nice to see Julien looking comfortable at the plate. His bat is a nice boon. Props to Willi Castro for doing the job wherever he's been asked to go and whatever he's been asked to do. I wasn't thrilled about his signing, but he's turning out to be a useful utility guy and the flexibility is a real asset.

.... against the meat of the Toronto lineup.  The fact that this part of the lineup came up again in the 9th inning is the fault of the pitcher who succeeded* him by not taking care of business against the bottom of the order, not the fault of the bullpen strategy.
* I use the term "succeed" loosely

The Twins were 14th in baseball in runs scored in 2021. Almost the exact definition of average is all the team needs to go from being bad in close games to Rocco not even mattering? Feels like thats wrong.
Your argument is basically that when the team loses close games it's Rocco's fault, but when they win them it's because the players are good. Sorry, I just don't buy it.

How the F*** do you know?
I have a longer post for this discussion but the first part of it is this.  So many people, so comfortable being completely certain about something they know jack all s*** about.
So comfortable stating as fact that Rocco does what the FO tells him, has no agency to make decisions. only a patsy for the FO.  The reality is that you know nothing of the structure of the organization.  Maybe the FO jumps when Rocco says so?  Not likely but just as provable as most of the bull **** in this thread.
I have thoughts on Rocco and will come back for them but until then, link some hard reporting, put up or shut up.
You can't prove your thesis, feel free to retract.  This is for more than the quoted post, there are several of you.