Otto von Ballpark

The corresponding move for Ober is Shaun Anderson to the IL:

I saw that tweet too, but I don’t know that Cruz makes that much sense for Tampa and Toronto right now. Once Springer comes back, both clubs will have 4 outfielders they like that they rotate through the DH spot. Especially with Cruz’s lack of results at the plate the past month, I worry that we’d have to eat enough salary and/or take back a marginal enough prospect to make this topic title substantially true.

How do you like Stathead? I think it might be fun sometimes but the price seems kind of steep to me.

In fairness to Gladden, they are still broadcasting road games remotely, and given the limitations of their monitor feeds, there is understandably some doubt involved when they try to call "no doubters"

Bailey Ober has been announced as the starter for Sunday. A corresponding roster move will be made tomorrow. Edit to add:

Jules Winnfield was a “hit” man too — I wonder if that includes with runners in scoring position?

At 43 mph, though, batters will have time to not only recognize the offspeed pitch, but also to consult their hitting coach about it before returning to the plate to swing. It may still be effective in situations where it’s considered unsportsmanlike for the batting team to be successful.

And I just realized the team has had artificially constrained revenue the past year-plus, so they may not be so keen on a self-inflicted revenue reduction for the rest of 2021. Then again, the team is playing so poorly right now, that punitive fan revenue drop may happen whether they start selling players or not?

Arguably, the revenue stream impacts would be lessened in 2021? Fans should come out in decent numbers as allowed capacities increase, even with an "indecent" team? Obviously, some moves would affect 2022 as well (Donaldson, Buxton, Berrios), but rental deals could be on the table right now.

Thanks. No additional roster moves yet, but it's been announced that Pineda won't start Sunday so that assignment could go to Jax:

There's a blast from the past! Shoemaker is very close to Bergman territory, in more ways than one. Their ERA+ figures are exactly the same now (54), and Bergman's last start was on June 14, 2000, in team game #66. Shoemaker's start last night was team game #57. Of course, the 2000 Twins were never remotely expected to contend, much less get back in the race. Despite his disastrous overall Twins tenure, Bergman will always hold a special place in my heart, for beating the Yankees in New York, pre-curse.

Baseball Reference has inherited runners/scored, on the detailed pitching stats page (reliever pitching table). https://www.baseball-reference.com/teams/MIN/2021-pitching.shtml#players_reliever_pitching::16 Name GR IR IS IS% ▼ Runr Empt Derek Law 5 6 6 100% 3 2 Shaun Anderson 4 2 2 100% 1 3 Alex Colome 22 1 1 100% 3 19 Tyler Duffey 22 11 9 82% 7 15 Caleb Thielbar (10-day IL)* 20 13 10 77% 7 13 Cody Stashak (40-man) 15 9 6 67% 6 9 Taylor Rogers* 20 9 5 56% 5 15 League Average 36% Jorge Alcala 22 10 3 30% 7 15 Hansel Robles 25 4 1 25% 5 20 Devin Smeltzer (10-day IL)* 1 2 0 0% 1 0 Willians Astudillo 3 0 0 0 3 Randy Dobnak 7 0 0 1 6 Luke Farrell 7 0 0 0 7 Juan Minaya 4 0 0 0 4 Lewis Thorpe (40-man)* 1 0 0 0 1 Brandon Waddell* 4 0 0 1 3 TOTAL 67 43 64% "GR" is just games in relief, while "Runr" is the number of games entered with runners on, and "Empt" is entered with bases empty. 38 of these inherited runners were put on base by the starting pitcher, and 24 of those have scored. The other 29 inherited runners, and 19 scores, were originally put on by other relievers.

Quoting myself, I missed the part about the Twins including $15 mil cash. That would satisfy Baseball Trade Values but obviously makes the deal even worse for the Twins.

Works for me!

I'm sure just seeing their names is surprising to a fair number of casual Twins fans.

It's alternating lefty and righty bats, and I'm guessing Astudillo is 4th to try to break up the bigger strikeout hitters a bit. Sano, Larnach, and Kirilloff are the top 3 by K% in this lineup, among guys with a decent number of PAs.

According to Baseball Trade Values, the Brewers would reject this trade. Hard to believe Donaldson's salary would drag him down that much, given that ZiPS still forecasts 2.4 WAR over the rest of the season (for a 2021 total of 3.7 fWAR). Another 3 WAR in 2022 would make it 5.4 WAR for the Brewers at $42.7 mil, or $7.9 mil per win. Compared to Bradley's rest of season forecast of 0.8 WAR, for a 2021 total of 0.4 fWAR, that doesn't seem too shabby.

I thought Mark DeRosa trade proposals were banned at Twins Daily.

Occam's Razor says the Twins are just worse in 2021. You may believe their 2019-2020 record exceeded their talent, but there wasn't any obvious flaw in their performances those years that could have predicted how the 2021 season has unfolded so far.

It was a weak schedule in 2020, but we played the same schedule as the White Sox and Cleveland, who are currently 1st and 2nd place in the division and have 2021 winning percentages within .027 of their 2020 marks. (The 2021 Twins are .207 behind their 2020 winning percentage.) Not sure how any of this fits together. The 2019 Twins had a 119 OPS+, and the 2021 Twins have a 111 OPS+. That's lower, but not dramatically so. Meanwhile, our 2019 ERA+ was 108, and our 2021 ERA+ is 85. Twins pitchers are actually giving up more HR in 2021 than they did in 2019, while enjoying a lower BABIP.

Preface: Astute observers may note the year 2023 in this thread title. I am aware of this, but I'm not correcting it, because the 2021 Twins currently have a 1-0 record when the game thread title contains that typo (coincidentally, the only other game thread started by me). In fact, this may be the very last remaining superstition associated with the Twins winning, after the first two months of the 2021 season have laid waste to so many others. So the typo remains, for now. Baseball is practically founded upon superstition, of course. Pitchers never step on the baseline on their way to and from the mound, a practice so ingrained in American culture that Stevie Wonder has also never stepped on the bass line while performing his song "Superstition": The number 13 is very superstitious too. Did you know that Hansel Robles and Gilberto Celestino are the only current Twins players born on the 13th day of a month -- and those were the two players chiefly responsible for Royals scoring the go-ahead run last night? And only two players have ever worn the number 13 for the entirety of their tenure as Twins: Bill Tuttle, who is now dead, and Mike Pagliarulo, who will also die some day. Let that sink in for a moment! Today's Transactions: The Twins may be trying a new superstition themselves, as this is the first day in seemingly forever without an official transaction by the club. But, this section of my game thread intro remains, due to further superstition. And with no transactions, today's lineups have been posted astonishingly early (pending any Twins injuries between now and 7:10 PM, of course). Twins (22-34, 5th place, 12 GB) Starting pitcher: Matt Shoemaker, RHP, 2-6, 5.90 ERA Lineup: 1. SS J. Polanco S 2. DH J. Donaldson R 3. RF A. Kirilloff L 4. 3B W. Astudillo R 5. LF T. Larnach L 6. 1B Miguel Sano R 7. 2B Nick Gordon L 8. CF G. Celestino R 9. C Ben Rortvedt L Royals (28-26, 3rd place, 5 GB) Starting pitcher: Brad Keller, RHP, 5-4, 5.68 ERA Lineup: 1. 2B W. Merrifield R 2. 1B C. Santana S 3. LF A. Benintendi L 4. C S. Perez R 5. RF H. Dozier R 6. 3B K. Gutierrez R 7. DH Jorge Soler R 8. CF M. Taylor R 9. SS Nicky Lopez L

You missed Dobnak giving up 3 hits but failing to retire a batter in the 7th last week. So 6 times total including Berrios: https://www.fangraphs.com/leaders/splits-leaderboards?splitArr=42,50,171&splitArrPitch=&position=P&autoPt=false&splitTeams=false&statType=player&statgroup=1&startDate=2021-03-01&endDate=2021-11-01&players=&filter=&groupBy=season&sort=-1,1 That is the 3rd fewest among MLB teams: https://www.fangraphs.com/leaders/splits-leaderboards?splitArr=42,50&splitArrPitch=&position=P&autoPt=false&splitTeams=false&statType=team&statgroup=1&startDate=2021-03-01&endDate=2021-11-01&players=&filter=&groupBy=season&sort=2,1 But maybe the hook isn't the problem, as much as the poor SP and RP performance? It's not like we want to see more innings out of most of these starters right now. The front office would bear responsibility for that too, although they did appear to assemble effective rotations and pens in 2019-2020.

I can only imagine what a Twins forum would have looked like during the second half of Dick Such's tenure as pitching coach (1993-2000).

From FanGraphs: The Twins Are Running Out of Time

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