Willihammer

Our Twins face the White Sox twice today, twice. Logan Darnell will start the first game and Trevor May will start the second. Together they've averaged a little better than 4.1 innings per start. So it stands to reason, the Twins bullpen will be asked to pitch an entire game, and easily could be more. Will 11 relievers be enough today?

Why not tell him to pitch from the stretch for the rest of the year, regardless of whether runners are on base? It was a problem for him in AAA too. He'll need to deal with it sooner or later, and what better time than now?

Night and day (positive) compared to the last time Cederstrom umpired behind Pinto.

Coupla thoughts. On a KTWIN pregame show last week, Chris Attebery reported that Gardy said he spoke to Gary Cederstrom after he umpired the previous night's game in which Pinto caught. Attebery said Gardy said Cederstrom said that "it was like night and day" - that is, Pinto's movement behind the plate and Cederstrom's ability to see by him and call balls and strikes. For whatever that's worth. Arcia might be able to improve his first step with more reps but he's just not very athletic. He will need to improve his hitting to the point where he's a well above average bat to justify keeping him out there. Hicks has looked at times, lost in CF. Santana has made a few gaffs too but hasn't looked too out of place. IMO its not clear one is better than the other, and UZR says they're both equally lousy CFers in small samples. So hoping for one or the other to improve might be a more realistic strategy for Santana, IMO, because Hicks has played OF for years and Santana hasn't. Add in the fact that Santana has been an absolute spark plug and he deserves to hold the CF job IMO. Schafer is a fun player to watch. He seems to catch everything in LF and I'm pretty confident that given a large enough sample, the statistics would back that up. He's LHB might be a good platoon or semi-platoon with Hicks or another RH OFer (Pinto?) Pinto... the Twins need to get him at-bats everyday. Has Plouffe's glove improved enough to move back to SS? Can Pinto take 3rd? Can Mauer move to 3rd? Is Sano go ing to take 3rd? I don't know for sure. But the Twins have to get creative and find a way to get some value out of this logjam of talent, and not let any of these guys rot on the bench.

I wonder why this hasn't gotten more traction since so many people just seem to want "fire." And as you say, with Ozzie there is the bonus of being (cough) "bi-lingual," or at least, 1 3/4 linqual.

The more I see of the Royals pen the more I lean towards the Twins' pen being well below average. YMMV I guess

Thielbar, Fien, and Milone have options. I don't know if Rochester will have room for all them on their roster though.

Twins starters have a better xFIP (4.15) than Twins relievers (4.17).

Bullpen xFIP 1st half: 4.08 (28th) 2nd half: 4.34 (29th)

I still watch half the games or so, but this might be the first year I don't make the effort to go to the ballpark and see a single game in person. Just not worth the time/money for me.

That last curveball to Bourne was one of them.

The Twins bullpen has been blowing games left and right for over a month now. Is it a result of overuse, or just being bad?

Its hard to peek inside the workings of the team but we've heard positive things about Molitor and Bruno from players about specific coaching eg. Dozier citing Molitor in coaching him with base stealing, Plouffe saying Molitor helped him with his footwork on defense, the turnaround of Dozier last year after working with Bruno, the overall improvement of the team in drawing walks and scoring runs, etc. I wonder how feasible it would be to replace the manager and the pitching coach (and other?) with outsiders, while retaining some of the current staff - Molitor and Bruno (others?), specifically. It would be a shame to throw out the baby with the bathwater.

You do wonder how long the Twins are going to ride the "6 division titles in 9 years" line. Cherry picking. Are we supposed to forget the 4+ years of utter futility on either end of that stretch?

Oh you mean the City Express? http://images.dealerpro.net/images/uploads/organizations/534/markup/express1.jpg Look at those rims! Bling baby!

In the Sept 3 game, Marnie talked about Arcia and Bruno hitting off a tee, trying to stay inside the pitch. He hit a double to left that game too, which was like his 9th hit to LF all year.

In the rose colored hyperbolic prospect world, if a guy throws 96 miles per hours once on a hot gun in high school, he is forever labelled a "mid 90s" fastball.

In ice cream news, Wal Mart is selling Blue Bunny's Homemade Chocolate for $3.50 and its totally worth it. edit: I'm way behind you guys

Boi, Schafer is earning all kinds of Gardy points. He has been fun to watch play

Phew, watch your heads!

Good call

Do you think the Twins will be paying big arbitration raises to Plouffe long after Sano's up? There is Gibson in 2017, that could push payroll over 100 million, assuming he stays healthy and relatively productive. Of course by 2017 the Twins are going to be good, right? Beisdes those two, who am I missing? http://twinsdaily.com/roster-payroll.html

Fair enough, there will be 17-18 guys on the 25 man who will get paid the minimum plus whatever COLA raise they get. So I'm not accounting for ~$10m of payroll. Add $10 to the projected payroll, as taken from the Payroll page here on TD, add a 8/175m contract every year for the next four years, and here's what the 25-man financial picture looks like. 2014 $87,333,898 2015 $92,675,000 2016 $109,250,000 2017 $88,750,000 2018 $98,625,000 2019 $65,625,000 2020 $65,625,000 2021 $65,625,000 2022 $65,625,000 edit: Plus, again, whatever arb raises there are (Plouffe and - gasp - Escobar, Schafer, etc)

They Twins could ink one 8 year/175m contract for the next 4 straight offseasons and never crack 100m in payroll (this is before accounting for arb raises, but besides Plouffe, who is due for a big raise?) They can do both.

I'd like to see May take a page out of the Yu Darvish playbook and pitch exclusively out of the stretch for the rest of the year (I realize Darvish isn't the first to do this). Even with no one on base. Attack the problem head-on.