Danchat

I'll take .304 any day from a rookie who's in his first week in the majors!

Could have been a lot worse...

Oh boy, I looked away and now they've got the bases loaded and nobody out... do we have them where we want them? Or is that only with the Twins?

Reminds me of the two statues in front of Minas Morgul...

Wow, let's go!!!! HIP HIP!!!

Maybe he got COVID bad?

Maybe Smeltzer?

Stylish shoes? I think I missed a memo there...

The Twins face Cleveland for the first time with their new moniker, and the Guardians will be missing several parts of their coaching staff. Is this a good time for the Twins to beat up on a mediocre team, or will their downward spiral triggered by the Astros continue further? Lineups Aaron Civale R 1-2 9.45 ERA CF Myles Straw R LF Steven Kwan L 3B Jose Ramirez S 1B Owen Miller R SS Amed Rosario R DH F. Reyes R 2B A. Gimenez L RF O. Mercado R C A. Hedges R Sonny Gray R 0-1 3.48 ERA CF Byron Buxton R 1B Luis Arraez L 2B J. Polanco S RF Max Kepler L DH Gary Sanchez R 3B Gio Urshela R LF Nick Gordon L C Ryan Jeffers R SS Royce Lewis R First on today's agenda, let's see how the starters match up against their opponent: Civale vs Twins I Split W L W-L% ERA G GS GF CG SHO SV IP H R ER HR BB IBB SO HBP BK WP BF WHIP SO9 SO/W Minnesota Twins 1 3 .250 3.31 6 6 0 0 0 0 35.1 30 13 13 5 5 0 36 0 0 1 139 0.991 9.2 7.20 Hmmmm, not good. Yes, a 1-3 W-L record is not good, but Civale has pitched very well against us if you don't factor in their inability to score runs the past few years. Gray vs Guardians I Split W L W-L% ERA G GS GF CG SHO SV IP H R ER HR BB IBB SO HBP BK WP BF WHIP SO9 SO/W Cleveland Guardians 5 3 .625 3.22 11 11 0 1 1 0 64.1 50 26 23 6 25 1 67 0 0 5 264 1.166 9.4 2.68 Looking good, and some of those numbers are very close to Civale's. Next up - I like making Sporcle quizzes and making you guys try to remember obscure things about the Twins... and I've got one cooked up. I did some looking back through the Twins Daily archives and I've whipped up a quiz based upon a 2016 Twins Top 40 Prospects that Seth made. Outside of a few of the big names who made it through, some of these are hard. Give it a shot here and let me know how you do: https://www.sporcle.com/games/Danchat0/twins-prospects-2016-seths-midseason-update And while I'm off on this non-sequitur, here's a random quote I found while looking for quiz content. It's from Nick Nelson, in a minor league update back in 2018: Oof, this one hurts. If only Lewis could have busted out in 2019, yet here we are in the first month of Lewis' MLB career 3 full years later. And ironically, we have Correa on our roster, which I'm sure is something nobody in the past could have predicted happening. Just thought that nugget was a funny one to read. Alright, let's get this show back on the road! Win this one, Twins!

I'm not convinced intensity will help when the opposing team is far better than you in both pitching and hitting... I didn't see any difference with the squad with Tingler managing it rather than Rocco.

We won't be seeing Paddack for some time, if not 2023...

Lately, it's felt like baserunning is really only useful against a particular pitcher and/or catcher who aren't good at controlling the run game. Outside of those situations, it seems too risky, especially for the Twins who already make a lot of outs on the basepaths without trying to steal.

I loved Jeffers as a prospect, but he's on shaky ground for me - he's not hitting all that well outside of a couple games where pulverized the ball, and while he's a good framer, baserunners have been taking advantage of him. Still not sure what to think, but I don't love that Sanchez is the only other option outside of AAAA guys like Godoy.

It looks like Miranda will be heading down soon with how poorly he's looked at the plate. I would guess Lewis is sticking for now, though.

Oof, that's like 5 hits within 20 pitches from Stashak. That's impressively bad!

Good going, Stashak, thanks for making Cano's first appearance look way worse than it actually was. Maybe watching all our pitchers shine their stats up against the likes of the Royals and A's was deceiving...

I think Archer is already nearing his break point...

I dunno, Archer hasn't impressed me that much, his stuff is better than expected, but he tends to get his pitch count run up quickly and then he fatigues. He might end up a 2/3 inning guy rather than a starter.

Romero to the 60 day IL, interested to see that Sano has not been moved there yet.

Here's the latest depth chart I have for the Vikings: The defense has some guesswork with where we think players are going to play, but others have similar projections, as seen below. I kept the rookies behind anybody who's played a significant amount of snaps, so expect the likes of Cine and Booth to get bumped up in training camp. They've definitely got to get some TE depth, and probably another rotational guy for the DL.

Berroa was part of the Dyson trade, which leaves the Giants with just Kai-Wei Teng (who is a starter at AA). Jaylin Davis is with the Red Sox and is at AAA.

Unlike Kershaw earlier, Verlander's got the pitch count and innings built up to where a complete game is doable... 6 more outs until a no hitter!

He's a nice fielder at 3B, but I doubt his bat is going to go back to its 2019-20 self. If Lewis impresses, he's probably the starting 3B for the rest of the year.

I am aware of this, but my point was about comparing these two trades where the pitchers developed serious (potentially for Paddack) right after being acquired. Tons of people here were slamming the Twins for trading for a guy who immediately got hurt, which to me seemed unfair since it seemed they had no idea his shoulder was going to need surgery (this was before we learned about his horrid personality). Comparing to Paddack, we had heard that other teams had some level of concern with his UCL.