Otto von Ballpark

Gibson had a complete game shutout in his last start, vs a decent team in the Astros, no less. But yes, it appears that any Lance Lynn style transformation for him is a work in progress, at best.

Worth watching the Yankees at Toronto (by way of Buffalo ) series beginning tonight. If the Yankees win 2 of those 4, they will also secure the divisional record tiebreaker over the Twins, regardless of how the Twins do vs Detroit. (Although if they really lose 2 to Toronto, we could ensure that we finish above them with a 4-1 finish ourselves, rendering the tiebreaker moot.)

Yes, they can reset their roster after each round. BUT, with a 28-man roster (and a special 29th spot for a 3rd catcher in case of concussion), there's probably ample room for a 4th starter, even if they're just used out of the pen or in case of emergency. You can replaced an injured player within the series -- but then they're ineligible for the next series too. So only having 3 starters for 3 games in 3 days could come back to bite you, if one of those starters came down with a temporary illness on game day or something.

Sounds like you'll also be Brewers fan -- they play the Reds for a 3 game series starting tonight. The Reds and Brewers are in a virtual tie (with San Francisco) for the 8th and final playoff spot in the NL, but the Reds have an advantage in that they've already played 2 more games than their competitors -- Milwaukee and San Fran don't get any off days this week AND they each have to play a doubleheader on Friday (against some decent teams in St. Louis and San Diego, respectively). Looks like the Twins might miss Bauer -- he's scheduled to start Wednesday vs Milwaukee. We could possibly get Mahle, Castillo, and Gray all on regular rest, though, and they've all been solid this year.

Why? Only difference from a team standpoint is service time is prorated. Can't see much difference for the players whether they are working out with a group in St. Paul or traveling with the group in Minneapolis.

B-Ref gives us a 23.5% chance at the division; Fangraphs, 10.7%. (Does make me wonder if B-Ref is correctly handling the tiebreaker?) If we win out (5-0), we'd need the White Sox to finish 3-4 or worse. If we lose just one game (4-1), we'd need the White Sox to finish 2-5 or worse. It's not easy, but it's definitely easier the more games we win! (As are most things, except high draft picks. )

I have to admit, I haven't watch much ESPN in my adult life. I'm guessing it could have also been dumb when I watched it as a kid because I didn't know any better.

It is my understanding that, during the trials in the Atlantic League and Arizona Fall League, the home plate ump provided backup for the automated system. So if some pitch didn't communicate a signal to him right away, whether it's a measurement or delivery error, the ump could call it himself. I don't know how frequently that happened or what the official criteria would be, but it seems like a reasonable framework. I don't know to what degree umpire strikezone skills would erode under that setup, but as long as they're not Frank Drebin and such instances are infrequent, I can't imagine it being a big deal. Maybe they'd have some kind of overrule/challenge system for pitches too, although like I said, you'd want to do that carefully so players and teams aren't constantly trying to appeal to that process. I read that same article about umpire accuracy/bias too. It was interesting, but I was disappointed that they completely ignored the margin of error. Some number of those "mistakes" were probably imperceptible to the human eye -- maybe millimeters from the box on TV -- and while that doesn't mean the ump is necessary right and the machine is wrong (unless it's within the machine's measurement margin of error), that would be more interesting to me than a flat error rate. Could explain some of the bias too.

That's probably true of most national TV sports coverage these days, and it's probably due more to the quality and depth of local / online sources of coverage than anything else.

While the Twins were in the wild card race late those two seasons, so were a bunch of other teams. And those Twins teams weren't particularly distinguished -- the 2015 club was propped up by a flukey May and mediocre otherwise, and the 2017 club was middling (and a seller at the deadline) and really only separated itself from the pack at the very end of the season. They never looked like a particularly safe bet to stay relevant through some future date. And to be fair, ESPN Sunday Night Baseball serves *both* leagues, and the schedule is usually set reasonably far in advance. There are also other considerations like travel -- maybe the Twins were under strong consideration at some point those seasons but other factors won out. I won't deny that ESPN prefers to air games involving bigger media markets, which counts against the Twins twice because we're mid-market ourselves and with the unbalanced schedule, the Twins play the bulk of their games vs small/mid-markets CHW, CLE, DET, and KCR. But even so, it's not surprising we didn't play on Sunday night from 2011-2019.

So I had thought that postseason rosters would work the same this year as in past seasons, just with an eligibility cutoff date of Sep. 15 instead of Aug. 31. Any player in the org on those dates was eligible to be included on a postseason roster (although players added to the 40-man after those dates would technically need to take the place of a corresponding player who served a full IL stint). But reading news around the league, apparently teams are starting to submit something called a "40-man postseason player pool." This is NOT simply the 40-man roster, but any non-40-man players included in the pool would need to be added to the 40-man before they could play in the postseason (probably at the expense of 40-man players who are not included in this pool). Here's an example of this 40-man postseason player pool from the Phillies: https://thatballsouttahere.com/2020/09/21/phillies-postseason-player-pool/ Also notably, top prospect Wander Franco is going to be included in the Rays 40-man postseason player pool, although he's not yet being placed on the 40-man roster and the Rays beat writer says he is unlikely to play for the Rays this year. With this in mind, I wonder what the Twins 40-man postseason player pool might look like? Kirilloff and Balazovic are popular non-40-man roster name to include -- both have to be added to the 40-man roster in November anyway. Lewis and Larnach would be longer shots, it seems. Could any 40-man roster guys be left off? Smeltzer, Thorpe, Astudillo? FWIW, the postseason roster will be 28 players, plus a 29th player (catcher who can play in case another catcher goes on the 7-day concussion IL). The roster is reset just before each series -- so we could add an extra reliever after the first "wild card" round, for example.

White Sox have the tiebreaker advantage, so we are effectively 3 games back of them. If we win out, White Sox would only need to go 4-3 this week to win the division. Also, the Tigers are more or less eliminated, but the Reds are very much still in the NL race. They might be pretty motivated next weekend.

Am I wrong, or is the rotation already set up? off day today (Monday) Maeda on regular rest tomorrow (Tuesday), to set him up to start game 1 of the playoffs next Tuesday Hill on regular rest Wednesday, so he is fully rested for bullpen or substitute starter duty beginning with game 1 next Tuesday day off Thursday Pineda on Friday, to set him up to start game 2 next Wednesday Berrios on Saturday, to set him up to start game 3 next Thursday Odorizzi/Dobnak/Bailey can take care of the final regular season game next Sunday, vying for a pen assignment in round 1 and potential starting assignment in rounds 2+. Also any relievers who need a tune-up can pitch on Sunday too (day off the next day before the playoffs begin).

Bat... man?

I just posted this in another thread too, but there are 3 days off between the first round and the division series (or 4 if you sweep the first round). So Maeda could go game 1 of both series. With no off days in the division series, that could be important — your game 1 DS starter is the only one with a chance at 2 starts in the series if necessary (game 5 would be on short rest though).

No off days within each round (until the World Series) but if we can make it through the first round, there are 3 days off before the division series starts in the bubble. Best of 3 should make for some interesting roster decisions too — Berrios or Hill in the bullpen?

Related thought: I wonder if we don’t plan to use, say, Berrios on the season’s last weekend, if we could option him to open a spot for, say, Dobnak, but still put Berrios on the playoff roster and disregard the 10 day option rule. I suspect we can, but it is different than a normal season (you can’t option a player to a minor league team whose season is over, so normally you can’t option a player after mid-September — but obvious 2020 is anything but normal!).

They have 2 off days next week, so they can actually skip Odorizzi’s spot. Maybe he comes back for a few innings on the season’s final day, if they don’t want to pitch any of their top 4 postseason SP that day. We could also see Bailey activated for a few inning audition too, although we would need to clear a 40-man spot for him to return, in addition to a 28-man spot.

I believe that if the Yankees win 2 of their next 5 games (1 vs BOS, 4 vs TOR), the Yankees will secure the tiebreaker over the Twins for playoff seeding.

Cruz news you can use:

Cruz is out. New lineup: MIN Lineup L Wade (L) LF B Buxton (R) CF E Rosario (L) DH M Sanó (R) 1B M Kepler (L) RF J Polanco (S) SS M Gonzalez (S) 2B E Adrianza (S) 3B A Avila (L) C

I think "implosion" is an oversell here. Ottavino has an ugly ERA, true, but the rest of the regular NY pen has been pretty solid. Team regular season bullpen ERA is misleading when evaluating a playoff matchup, because there are usually a few poor performers at the bottom of the pen who won't even sniff the playoff roster. The top 6 Yankee bullpen performers have a cumulative 3.09 ERA; the top 6 Twins, 2.70. And even that might overstate the difference -- one of the Yankees top 6, Chapman, missed the first month of the season with COVID-19 and gave up 4 runs in his first 4 IP. Since then, he's been extremely dominant: 5.2 IP, 1 H, 0 R, 2 BB, 13 K. Ottavino is a bit of an odd case too -- I know you can't just throw out a player's worst game, but his worst game is an extreme outlier: he was charged with 6 runs without retiring a batter! Suffice to say, if he's utilized in the postseason, I assume he won't be allowed to let 6 batters reach without retiring any of them.

Restaurant staff have to clean the floor of the restaurant all the time too, but you'll probably be asked to leave if you deliberately dump your food on the floor in front of them. Again, you can like what Donaldson did, totally endorse it -- that's absolutely fine. It's sports! It's entertainment. But I doubt that even Donaldson himself would claim that he didn't expect to be ejected -- in fact, that was probably his goal.

You know who has to clean home plate, right? It was a deliberate and obvious act, and judging by Donaldson's reaction afterward, he did it to provoke the ump and fully expected to be tossed. You are welcome to enjoy and endorse what he did, but let's not pretend that the consequences of the act were somehow unexpected or unjust.

Odorizzi to the IL, and Sean Poppen recalled too. Odorizzi will be eligible to return on the season's final day, Sep. 27.