Danchat

In the past 15 years, the closest example I could find was 2019 Trevor Hildenberger, who got to pitch 16.1 innings at an alarming 10.47 ERA. Good gracious. Matt Belisle in 2018 had a similar 9.15 ERA in 23.2 innings. I remember how infuriating that was.

Excuse me, Alcala has sustained a 9.25 ERA now! Who was the last Twins reliever to get at least 24+ relief innings and had an ERA as high as that?

We're at nearly a half season of Alcala sustaining a 7.60 ERA... enough is enough. Time for him to get a reset in another organization.

I guess if Topa is going to have a bad outing, today is the day to do it.

Not game over, but oof that hurts. Jax had only given up 1 run in his last 9 outings.

Stewart

I have to wonder if that 12th gets bumped up a bit further if you remove Julien's and Miranda's blunders.

Who's Kyle Teel?

Time to give up on Raya as a starter... it's not like he was that particularly good at AA last year either. If they are insistent on developing him as a starter, send him back to AA and have him prove it - he's only 22 years old... and it's not as if he's eating many innings while starting. They're probably just better off fully moving him to the pen.

And at worst, I think his floor is a quality major league reliever. He has good stuff that can get strikeouts, and that'd be amped up if he were to transition to the bullpen. Not that he should make the move now, it's way too early to give up on him as a starter. But like Varland/Sands/Jax/others it will be worth a shot if he can't figure out how to go through the lineup a third time around.

I don't think that's an accurate conclusion as this series has been against a bottom 3 pitching staff, if they keep this up against playoff teams, then I will agree.

Going back to the GM discussion, I'm fine with extending KAM but I don't like that they also extended assistant GM Ryan Grigson. He was the architect of the ruination of Andrew Luck's career and now is part of a new regime that hasn't shown the ability to draft very well, including being part of one of the worst draft classes of all time and choosing to move picks for players, resulting in the last three draft classes having less picks than average, resulting in us likely having the oldest roster in the league or being in the top 3 (again). A couple notes on the 2023 draft class - I didn't see a mention of Jaquelin Roy's name, he was a high 5th rounder that they moved up for and wasn't good enough to crack the 2024 roster. Also, the Hock trade flipped our 2nd for Detroit's 4th, resulting in Jay Ward. Our original 4th was traded in the 2022 draft to move up for Akayleb Evans. In the first two drafts, this regime moved up for Booth Jr, Evans, and Roy - three unrosterable players. I really have to wonder about our scouting department - from what I've seen, it still has a large number of scouts from the Spielman era, but KAM has added more bodies without much subtraction. They've done a stellar job at finding value on the free agent market and making great subtle moves like snatching Theo Jackson on waivers, winning Ivan Pace Jr on the UDFA market, and balancing the position values of S/LB vs WR/T. Having the guts to move on from Kirk was commendable and they've avoided blunders that other teams might have made. But I can't give them a mulligan for the horrendous 2022 draft class and jobs need to be lost if McCarthy/Turner don't pan out... but they just got extended before that was determined. Which is why giving a 4 year deal to a new GM was too short given how much rope teams will give their new regimes.

Lopez got hurt? Details please

They may have a bullpen pipeline, given how Jax and Sands went from middle of the road starter prospects to capable relievers, several of these arms will probably have similar trajectories. But a pipeline of starting pitchers... I'll believe it when I see it.

As one who wanted to trade Paddack at the start of the season... I say keep him and ride it out. Trading players at peak value is more of an offseason thing in my opinion, unless the season is going off the rails. Keep him in the rotation so we only have to see one of Matthews/Festa/SWR starting and not two of them. At the end of the day he'd be a rental, so the price of trade wouldn't be as high as you'd like.

I'm on board with moving a pitching prospect or two for a bat, hitting is a long-term need and they can absolutely survive moving two of Prielipp/Festa/Matthews/Raya/Soto/Morris/Culpepper. If this is indeed a pitching pipeline, then they will be fine replacing the outgoing arms. Of course, it depends what bat we are talking about...

He is striking guys out at a much higher rate than he was in our organization (12.6 K/9), he hasn't gotten close to that since A+/AA in 2021 when he was in the Texas farm system. I think we'd take the walks with the peripherals looking good. Going 8 for 10 on "hold chances" is pretty good for a guy they got off the waiver wire.

He needs to fully transition to being a reliever at AAA. Even before this season it was his likely outcome, now it's probably his only path to the majors.

I think it's time to shake up the bottom of the rotation, Alcala and Funderburk aren't getting it done and it's time to admit defeat on Jorge. Hopefully Coloumbe will be back soon, and maybe they can give Travis Adams (already using an option this year) or try out Misiewicz for a bit. Watkins seems to make brutal calls regularly as the 3B coach, but it's hard to say how bad at the job he is compared to the rest of the league as I don't have any idea which teams have good ones. It doesn't seem like he is improving at the job, though.

Holy barnacles, what a two inning stretch this has been!

I'd like to see a retrospective done on this article in a couple months' time to see if the hypothesis checks out. At that point if Paddack is continuing to defy the odds, the criticism thrown at this analysis is far more valid.

Another clutch hit for France, walking off today's game with a HR. I appreciate a hitter who drives in runs even when their stats on the aggregate aren't great.

France has been surprisingly clutch and his RBI total shows that... but the rate he hits singles at reminds me of Arraez. It's not that bad, but where are the XBHs? It's also too early to be writing any conclusions, given a slump or a hot streak could completely change the narrative on him. I do wish we had some more depth at 1B, and the high minors (Ford at AAA, Sabato at AA) don't make me feel confident at all.

Their defense was bad and lost multiple starters to free agency, and then they didn't sign a single average or better starter on the open market, then spent their 1st-4th round picks on front seven players... that's a formula to have a bad defense again. Nick Bosa and Fred Warner are really good, but what else do they have? At edge all they have is the rookie Williams and then a handful of career backups, and they have the most shallow iDL room in the league. 2nd rounder Alfred Collins is a nice nose tackle but the rest of their guys wouldn't crack most teams' 53 man rosters. Their LBs are all question marks, as is their CB room outside of Lenoir. The safeties are underwhelming too. If Bosa gets hurt again, this is probably the worst defense in the league.

Can't win 'em all. Nice to see Royce starting to heat up at the plate. Coulombe's on the IL now, probably should be off the bullpen chart. I find it funny how Trevor Megill went from random DFA scrap-heap reliever to a darn good reliever and the Brewers closer.