Otto von Ballpark

"Won't get fired this year" is hardly "legend" status.

Thankfully Astudillo makes his triumphant return to the lineup tonight! (Also that Buxton guy.)

Yes, that is right. It is confusing! We're at 43 listed on the 40-man right now, but Colina, Riddle, Garlick, and Kepler don't count, so it's really just 39. So we can probably activate both Garlick and Kepler when they are ready by removing only 1 more player from the 40-man -- likely Tzu-Wei Lin can be returned to the alternate site and taken off the 40-man, like Telis and Farrell before him. (And Riddle can probably be activated straight from the COVID IL to the alternate site off the 40-man roster again too.)

On Colomé specifically:

Rocco inherited a pretty good team, but he still had to beat out a pretty good Cleveland team in 2019 and good Cleveland/Chicago clubs in 2020. Not enough to anoint him manager for life of course, but something more than "nothing" I'd say. We never know how much to credit a manager for such things, but Buxton has improved every year under Rocco so far. Cruz somehow improved coming over from Seattle too, and Arraez hasn't skipped a beat. Of course, what Rocco can ultimately get out of C, 1B, 2B (Polanco), and RF in the near future will be a big determinant in his 2021 job performance.

No doubt that the Twins have been struggling offensively relative to other teams, but you might find some of these trends around the league too. Twins have 3 games where they scored 4-6 runs, but the Royals only have 4. Twins have 14 games scoring fewer than 4 runs, while the Royals have 12. Yet we have a 7 game gulf between the two teams! How to explain? A couple games on the Twins offense; a couple additional games of worse-than-average luck for the Twins; and a couple additional games better-than-average luck for the Royals?

I acknowledged that the distribution of runs has made a difference, but if you throw out outliers for the Twins, you'd have to throw out outliers from other teams too to make a proper comparison. The first-place Royals, for example -- take out the 34 runs they scored in just 3 games, and they're down to a 3.33 average. Still better than the Twins, but not as much as the overall league rate. Likewise, those first-place Royals have scored 3 or fewer runs in 57% of their games. Still a little better than the Twins, but not enough to explain their current 7 game lead in the standings either.

On the flip side: - the 2003 Twins were 10-14 on this date, 8 games behind the red-hot Royals - the 2006 Twins were 9-12, 5 games behind the White Sox Those Twins teams had the advantage of Johan, but I feel like the current 2021 roster quality is still closer to those years than to 2011 or 2016. I mean, you'd always rather win than lose, and we definitely need to start winning again soon, but I'm not too pessimistic about 2021 yet.

Not really. Generally, OPS and wRC+ track fairly closely. Garver's OPS ranks (this was yesterday when I pulled the spreadsheet data) AL primary catchers: 13th out of 15 MLB primary catchers: 26th out of 30 MLB primary plus backup catchers: 40th out of 60 (OPS closer to ~48th than median 30th) He does look a little better if you include AL backups, but exclude all NL catchers: 18th in OPS/wRC+ out of the top 30 AL catchers by PA. This is what you were focusing on, it seems (while adding a few low-PA third-stringers at the bottom, to boost Garver's relative ranking). But that's more of a function of backups being bad generally, and the AL having worse backups than the NL right now, rather than any credit to Garver's performance this year. All that said, unless Telis or Astudillo can be solid defensively, the Twins may not have any viable alternatives at the moment. So the conclusion -- keep playing Garver -- is likely the same, any way you frame his current performance level.

Always? I'm not just talking about the playoffs either, but I used them as an example to show this line of criticism seems off-base. Multiple times, in arguably the most important games, he more or less did what you wanted him to do, and had mixed results. I am sure there were other times he didn't do what you wanted, with mixed results too, but this seems more like the universal criticism of all MLB managers than anything that Baldelli can do specifically. But I agree it's past time to move Colomé to a lower-leverage spot, just to preserve everyone's sanity! Although that's made somewhat more difficult by the struggles of Duffey, Stashak, and arguably others...

Sorry if I haven't been clear. I am looking at catchers, and then sorting them by PA (and team) to identify the top 15 (AL primary catchers), top 30 (MLB primary catchers), or top 60 (MLB primaries plus backups). If you click the Fangraphs links I have been sharing, you can see the criteria and who is listed. I think that's a fair way to see how Garver compares to fellow primary catchers, as well as primary catchers plus primary backups. I don't think it's appropriate to boost Garver's relative ranking by including third- or fourth-string fill-ins like Joseph Odom and Tres Barrerra and their respective 0-for-2 lines this season (and as I'll explain below, relative ranking has its shortcomings too). With apologies to your eyeballs, only 3 primary AL catchers were below Garver's wRC+ performance, and 11 were above it. Only 2 primaries below him in the NL too. Hence like I posted before, Garver's 2021 performance ranked 25th out of 30 MLB primary catchers. And again, relative ranks only tell part of the story. If we were ranking the 50 US states by some measure, we wouldn't assume that the 37th ranked state was "middle of the pack" just because its rank was closer to 25th than to 50th. The actual measurements aren't necessarily distributed evenly across all of the ranks -- the measurements may fall off steeply after, say, #35. Then the 37th ranked state's measurement could be closer to 47th than to the median 25th. In that case, it's more appropriate to place the 37th state in a group with the bottom states than in a group with the middle one. That's the situation Garver is in -- relative rank 12th out of 15 AL primary catchers, but his wRC+ was closer to 14th than it was to the median 8th. MLB including backups, his relative rank improves to 40th out of 60, but his wRC+ was actually closer to 55th than to the median 30th. If you're calling that level of performance "middle of the pack", then "middle of the pack" is functionally meaningless -- it includes practically everyone! Reminds me of Lake Wobegon, where all the catchers are above average.

I agree that it's a bit strange that Colomé hasn't been demoted in the pen hierarchy yet. But Baldelli rolled with hot hands in the 2019 playoffs, and Littell, Duffey, and Stashak struggled. In the 2020 playoffs, yes Rogers and Romo were both charged with runs, but we also brought in "hot hands" May (twice), Duffey, and Stashak ahead of them. (Duffey and Stashak gave up runs again too.)

It's obviously subjective what how to classify degrees of adversity, but in the summer of 2019 the team lost an 11.5 game lead in the division by August, but recovered to win it by 8 games. In 2020, the Twins again lost an early lead, and were 3 games back with 6 to play, but came back to win the division. This 2021 stretch is the worst by record, but there are also more games remaining in which to come back too.

I have heard really good things about Lin defensively, suggesting he could be a defensive super-sub. And we were protecting a 1-run lead, and Arraez had already contributed to blowing a 2 run lead in LF. And Arraez’s spot in the order never even came up again, so it didn’t ultimately hurt us at all.

I’ve seen some speculation that Rocco was intending to remove him, with Berrios lobbying to stay in — then the lobbying was for naught when they were reminded of the rule. Seth suggested that Rocco bought time for a few more warmup pitches for Robles. No official story that I have seen yet.

Maybe Rocco just decided to try the George Costanza strategy anyway, and do the opposite of every impulse.

I noticed that too. With 2 out, I assumed Rosario would score easily, but it turned out close.

He may have known the rule but not remembered that it was the second visit this inning. Still not good, of course!

Going to great lengths to try to break the Twins postseason curse!

I'm curious how you arrived at that figure. Fangraphs only shows two such catchers in 2021 (more PA or G or AB than Garver, with a worse wRC+) -- d'Arnaud (ATL) and Torrens (SEA): https://www.fangraphs.com/leaders.aspx?pos=c&stats=bat&lg=all&qual=0&type=c,4,5,6,61&season=2021&month=0&season1=2021&ind=0&team=0&rost=0&age=0&filter=&players=0&startdate=2021-01-01&enddate=2021-12-31&sort=5,d

"Qualified" meaning they qualify as catchers per Fangraphs in the link I shared. Not qualified for the batting title. Since so few catchers qualify for the batting title, I used Fangraphs position criteria first, then sorted those guys by PA. I certainly didn't claim that it had to be at the exact midpoint. I said, if you rank 12th out of 15, and you are actually closer to ranking 14th than you are to the median value, I don't think it's appropriate to characterize that as "middle of the pack". Or else the phrase has no real value. (And that's just AL-only, which is probably unnecessarily limiting in this context. Garver is 25th out of 30 in MLB and even further away from the median.)

Would have been accurate, though:

I found this reference of players who made their MLB debut in the cleanup spot: https://prestonjg.wordpress.com/2013/03/23/they-batted-cleanup-in-their-first-major-league-game/ Looks like Kris Bryant went 0-for-4 in his 2015 debut (infamously just past the first week of the season ), for a .000/.000/.000 line. And he was back in the cleanup spot the next game. Obviously there could be others meeting your criteria, but this was a quick and easy way to verify that Kirilloff won't be the first.

Tonight's lineup is posted already -- no Tortuga:

In the right context, like if Astudillo was playing catcher competently and posting a 89 wRC+ / 99 OPS+, that would be fine. Or even if he's just filling in somewhere for a game or two a week. But as an everyday 1B right now, I agree with the "uninspiring" description.