Rod Carews Birthday

Bravo! I think this article does a great job at expressing why some of us are optimistic about this year's Twins team. In many ways, their strengths play up a little bit more in short playoff series' than they do in the long slog that is the baseball season. Good to great pitching combined with a little bit of timely (or streaky, or even lucky) hitting could carry them a long way. All other things remaining the same, I would think that a little bit of increased offensive effectiveness would mean a great deal to their chances of post season success. They have made it this far with the offense substantially underperforming, so I would take the over on the offense for the last third of the season.

One more X-factor player has to be Byron Buxton. Obviously if he comes back and is hitting like he has in previous years, that is a huge boost and would be tremendous. However, particularly given the (SSS) evidence of the team performance since he has been injured and out of the lineup, I am actually more concerned in the other direction. While he has been out, the lineup has been much more flexible and they have gotten better production from it. If he returns and still isn't hitting consistently as a DH, he completely clogs up the lineup. We can't have that if we want to continue to win games, series, and playoff games. My even larger concern is for Buxton's future. It has been obvious for most of the year that Byron Buxton has not been performing well and that he seems to be affected by his body breaking down at pretty much every turn. Put me in the club of keeping him out until he's actually healthy, even if that's the rest of the year. If that isn't enough, hopefully an offseason of rest and treatment (and surgery?) can put him back on the right path. If it can't, his career is in trouble and so are the Twins longer-term hopes.

I think the point here is that Kuechel isn't really a good pitcher anymore and people are afraid that he will be installed as a regular (6th?) starter. I agree with that 100 percent. However, if he can smoke and mirror his way through a few decent starts (certainly less than 10, but probably more like 5), then he is a cheap way of keeping them in ballgames and giving a rest to the members of the rotation. It is definitely not pretty, but he's making it happen so I'm not going to complain about it. It could certainly be argued that some of the starters at AAA may deserve a shot at the spot start in MLB instead of running a guy out there who has no upside, but there really isn't anyone breaking down the door at the moment. I like the plan. Give him a few starts with a short leash and cut him loose when he is no longer effective.

Sorry. It was my (bad) attempt to be (a little) snarky. It was directed at a number of posters who see their baseball team as a zero sum game. I’m paraphrasing, but there definitely are people who are very frustrated that the FO has been here for seven years and we haven’t won a WS. There are also plenty here that are grading the season’s success on style points, i.e. we strike out too much so our team sucks. For too many there is no joy to be gotten from baseball and that’s a shame. I don’t look at the baseball season as either you won it all and had a good season or you didn’t and had a bad season. I do think there is some real positive in winning the division, regardless how bad we think the other teams are. If the same situation didn’t exist in 1987, we wouldn’t have a WS championship to take pride in. I also think that putting a mostly solid product on the field that can play competitive baseball most of the time is a lot better than the alternative like that 100 loss team from a few years back. I share many of the same misgivings as you and others about facets of this year’s team. I just don’t let those things get in the way of making it fun and continuing to hope for good outcomes. I’m OK if we win the division and keep losing in the playoffs (although I’ll be frustrated), but I’d be awfully happy if we could win a series or two (or three)! Let’s hope we can take at least the first step this year!

Sorry. I may not have written that very clearly. I didn’t mean all of them would likely be better. That would indeed be a little optimistic. I meant that among that group of players at least one would likely be better (and I would actually argue maybe a couple). I agree that the object is to put the best team on the field and win games, but I also think it is important to keep an eye on the future and what new players bring to the table. This enables the team to maximize the value they get out of the players under their control and possibly move on from or trade the players that can be replaced. Keeping Kepler in place next year (and Gallo this year) doesn’t let the team do that.

Also, as fans, we can’t let watching baseball be like daytrading the stock market. It goes up and down a LOT on a daily (even hourly) basis, but it’s a long year, and if your portfolio goes up by 10% or more by the end of the year you have to be pleased with that, regardless how you got there. A baseball season is 162 games, and yet, when we were swept by the Royals (who got hot and went on a 7 game winning streak) people were outraged — SELL, SELL, SEll! The three game sweep at the hands of the Royals is a blip on the radar at the end of the season, and the seven game winning streak by the Royals didn’t make them good - it was just a nice streak (and probably the highlight of their season) when they got hot. Sorry for how long this has taken, but I will be thrilled when/if the Twins win a playoff series. I will be thrilled when the Twins win the division. I will also be thrilled when they score a run in the ninth inning to win a game. I think that the front office has largely done a good job overall and I feel pretty good about it already.

I agree with much of what has been stated in that some will employ recency bias to get on the Twins bandwagon and some won’t be convinced if we win the WS in six games because we lost two games. I’m hoping that many more of us are closer to the middle. I don’t really care about the “style” of their game. I just want them to win games. I am thrilled with a 1-0 game and thrilled with a 19-17 game, as long as we win. From my perspective, the Twins are in a better position to win a playoff series than they have been in recent memory because of the quality of their pitching. Lots of things can mess that up (injuries, sudden ineffectiveness, etc.) but I would rather be the team going into the playoffs with a bunch of good starters and a pretty solid bullpen than with what we had in 2019. That was a nightmare because expectations were huge after the big HR season, but in order to win a series we needed to win 11-10, 9-8, and 13-12 because our pitching was a mess. I really like the “who would you rather be” argument about the Hawkeyes and Cornhuskers brought up by @IA Bean Counter. History says it’s the Huskers, but present value says the Hawks, and the present is where we live. Neither of those will likely ever be Alabama or Ohio State, but once in a while, they will beat them and in that we get to take a lot of joy. It’s a lot like someday when the Twins beat one of the blue bloods of baseball in a series. That will be fantastic. Bringing it back to baseball, I’m certain we are all happy to not be the Athletics or the Royals at the moment, but I think a better comparison is the Mets and Cubs. Both teams spend a ton of money to build a flawed team, have no patience, underachieve, get frustrated tear the whole thing down, and start over. Those two teams are lucky. They have ample budgets to work with. If the Twins operated that way with a mid-market budget,, they likely become the Athletics or the Royals — doomed to the bottom for the foreseeable future.

I’m one of those “trade him for a bucket of balls” guys, although in my defense, I said maybe two buckets. We need to take a collective deep breath and wait on this decision. IF he continues to hit like he has the past few weeks, then it probably makes sense to pick up the option, whether that is to realize excess value in a trade or whether to keep him to play next year. However, prior to this little uptick, he has spent the better part of three years as a pumpkin at the plate. Is it possible that he was dealing with some injury issues at the beginning of this season? Sure it is, but it seems doubtful that he was dealing with said issues for most of the past three years. Part of my reasoning for not bringing him back is that we have other corner outfield types that would likely put up as good as or better numbers for a lesser price. No, we don’t know that Larnach is going to work out. No, we don’t know that Wallner won’t have a sophomore slump next year. No, we don’t know if Lewis or Martin will switch to the outfield because of a glut of middle infielders. No, we don’t know if Emmanuel Rodriguez will live up to the hype in a year or two. HOWEVER, having Max Kepler in a starting role in the OF with mediocre (at best) production keeps us from have the space on the roster and in the lineup to find out about all of those other players — any one of which is likely to be better in the long run. For right now, Max, keep hitting the way you have been. It helps the team and gets you a better contract for next year, no matter where that is!

I was one of the biggest cheerleaders on the trade Kepler club, I believe that my wishful offer was for two bags of balls instead of just one. If only the trade deadline were a month later. . . . sigh. . . .maybe three. I’m happy for the production, but I certainly don’t trust it to stay. I’m thinking that Kepler just really wants to stay a Twin. If his hot streak had come a little earlier, he would have likely been traded as someone would be interested. This way, it becomes a question of whether next year’s option gets picked up. I’m hoping not as I think there are younger players with plenty of upside to try out. At this point Wallner gets written into the lineup in pen and Gallo is certainly gone (maybe sooner than next year????). I haven’t given up on Larnach yet, and who knows what the future is for Lewis, Martin, Rodriguez, et al. I really hope he continues this hot streak through the playoffs, but I’m not holding my breath.

Completely agree over the long and mid-term. However, sometimes smoke and mirrors can serve a pitcher like DK very well in the short term. The Twins are due for a lucky, seemingly silly, bit of good luck. Maybe this is that time and regression can be postponed.

I'm pretty sure that I agree with you, and indeed nuance is crucial to have the right perspective. Twins Daily generally does strike a pretty good balance, but frequently some of the arguments go off the rails into the land of "Fire them all! Trade all the players! Anybody would be better than this bunch of clowns! Move the franchise somewhere else because we won't put up with it!" Hyperbole on my part, but I'm sure you get the picture. I live near Chicago, so I deal with this mentality all the time unfortunately. The target is definitely not you. Sorry if it seemed that way. I'll go back to yelling at the clouds in the sky now!

What? Who is this Gallo you are speaking of? No one has brought him up before. Is he the new kid they just brought in?

I will agree that I thought that this team was capable of a better record, but being in first place, while a little lucky to reside in the ALC, is an excellent place to be. If we're in first place, I can be pleased with that fact. It provides joy to many fans, including me. It is also a fact that the pitching rotation, which is most of the reason the Twins are in first place, is also the result of decisions made by the front office, so apparently they don't suck at everything. I'm certain that I haven't agreed with everything they have done, but taken as a whole, we're in a position to be successful. So now that that has been established, what is the magic number at which fans should be pleased? Is it .500? is it .550? .600? How about .750? That's a 120 win season! Now that would be something! Reading people's comments I sometimes feel like anything short of 162-0 wouldn't be good enough and the outrage machine would still be fully engaged because we weren't winning games by enough runs. Back to the original post, relief pitchers are far too unpredictable to fret over a seemingly logical choice made before the season started. If we are going to do that, we must also fully rejoice the choices that do work out, like signing Stewart or Castro.

Some would say that’s not settling. It’s an improvement that should be embraced. The fact that we are not in one of those dry spells makes me quite happy. I don’t want to be KC or Oakland.

This year is certainly competitive. Last year was until we were putting an ad in the paper for players who weren’t injured. Do you recall the early 1980s, the late 1990s, or the early 2010s? That was uncompetitive.

This is the key to the equation. If you really think there is someone out there who is readily identifiable and readily available to come in and run the team that would be a better choice, firing Falvey makes complete sense. But if there were those people out there, don't you think that at least 15 other clubs would have hired them by now? It's just not that easy and I lived through some mighty lean years that I really don't want to go back and re-visit. I don't love Falvey and Levine nor all of their moves (and lack of moves), but I don't need to if they continue to keep the team competitive.

And yet, that 1987 team with all of that energy, passion, and fire managed to win only 85 games. I know and remember that team well. Only three guys were substantially above average bats (Hrbek, Bruno, Puckett) and four regulars in "yikes" territory. Their rotation was Blyleven, Viola, and who knows. They were a great Dome team but an atrocious road team. Hardly a juggernaut. As fans, we tend to have revisionist history about teams, when in reality, they were just pretty good and got hot at the right time. They only had to win two series to go all the way, and they did it. With all of the rounds of wildcards, it's a little harder now. The division is not good. It wasn't great in 1987 either. Their 1987 division winning record would have been fifth in the American League East. They can't do anything about that except win the division and hope for the best in the playoffs. Then you never know what will happen. I'm not saying that they are going to win the WS this year, but they are not the poor team that people describe. In 1987, a mediocre regular season got them pretty far and even though they weren't a dynasty, I can still celebrate and embrace the World Series title that went with it.

Probably my favorite short term Twins cameo of all time. He was just entertaining and fun to have on the team. I just wish that we could have had him in his prime, when he was really good!

I have to admit that I am largely indifferent to the existence of Falvey, Levine, and Baldelli. I don’t think that all of the poor play this season by the offense nor the great starting pitching is really due to them. I also don’t think that the recent resurgence of hitting and fade of the pitching is due to them either. They have made some trades that I liked at the time but now hate, as well as some trades that turned out well. Much has been made of the “over-reliance” on sabermetric data. I hate to disappoint peoples pre-conceived notions, but ALL teams are relying on sabermetrics and data more than in the past. This is not a Twins-only issue. One of the reasons that people think this is the case is that they talk about it, whereas previous iterations of the front office and manager used some of the same information but didn’t have a fancy name for it. All in all, I believe that Falvey, Levine, and Baldelli are neither geniuses nor idiots. IF we move on from the current leadership group of the team, we need to be prepared for two things. First of all, there will likely be a change in philosophy/direction of the organization. That may be a great thing or a terrible thing, we just don’t know. No matter what, the effects of that change will take time to see, likely four or five years. The change will not be instant, even though an upward blip or downward blip may happen in the meantime. The “sustainable” part of the equation doesn’t happen right away. Second of all, the results may not be what we think they will be. We are also in no-man’s land as a team. We are not world-beaters with all stars at every position and on a path to win 110 games, nor are we the Athletics or the Royals. We say that we are tired of losing playoff games (and we are!) and that we only are happy if they get to the World Series (I was born during the first one and enjoyed two victories many years later, so maybe I’m lucky). However, if things go poorly and we become the Athletics or Royals, we would be absolutely thrilled with a division title and a playoff birth. Everyone needs to understand that calling for change means that we could be losing our current version of “pretty good” for “pretty terrible” in pursuit of “almost perfect”. I’m ok with pretty good, because 1987 showed me that sometimes pretty good will get you pretty far.

Wow! This is the first time in a couple of months that we are witnessing actual good hitting by the hitters on the Twins! There are some very impressive numbers in the mix right now. Keep it up. Take the pressure off of the pitchers.

I know that I have read on this very TD board that people don't want the Twins to make a trade for the sake of making a trade, in fact, it was a fear voiced pretty loudly. Now we have hand-wringing that the Twins didn't make enough moves (they made one - Lopez for Floro). Sounds like we are definitely living up to being a typical online forum. I would also have liked a trade for another bullpen arm and/or a RH bat, but sometimes things just don't line up, plus after giving up a lot last deadline, they were probably a little cautious about doing that a second time. I am guessing that their were some attempts to make a trade but that ultimately the price to be paid was too high. . . like Larnach + for a mid-level reliever. That seems too high for me. They also probably (foolishly) are hoping that Kepler keeps hitting like he has for the last month (which has been very good). It's certainly possible, but seems a little unlikely. Correa/Buxton et al from the right side re-discovering how to hit would indeed take care of the offensive situation and despite what some think, their bullpen is a long ways from bad. I know it is hard to trust the Twins' brain trust, but they do have a great deal more information than we do. I am hoping that they can find a way to give Keuchel a shot at the MLB team. Sending someone down (or to the IL) and letting him get a few innings in the bullpen or with a spot start could be very enlightening (or disheartening) as to his potential moving forward. Keuchel definitely knew how to pitch at a high MLB level at one point, which is probably more than a lot of the other potential bullpen arms, so he seems to be worth a shot. Now, let's go Twins! There are ballgames to win!

Seems like a trade with a lot of factors involved, and many good ones. I think we get a little bit of upside for the rest of this year, while Lopez gets to be closer to home. I don't know that it's a big needle mover, but it's good for a lot of reasons, not just baseball. Good luck Jorge! Say hi to our friend Luis there!

Julien is playing very well. Let's hope it continues and he makes the ROY race interesting. That said, he got a pretty late start to get universal support. Most of the time, ROY candidates are up almost right away and getting on the voters' radar early in the season. Julien is going to have to continue to be very flashy to get people in the national media (who vote on this stuff) to notice and even make it close.

Hooray! This is what we were all hoping for with him. Let’s hope the wrist issues are firmly behind him and that he can keep building on this season. I don’t know if his mid-term future is 1B or OF, but if he keeps hitting like this there will be a place for him.

Somebody needs to go from the current LH OF bunch, and I think I could make a good case for trading any of them, but the whole thing hinges on Kepler. If you are keeping him (picking up his option for next year), then you really need to trade one of Larnach or Wallner. Neither are a CFer and Gallo being gone next year only opens up one spot. I don’t think either Larnach or Wallner will be stars, but letting them whither in the wind takes advantage of neither their playing ability nor their perceived trade value. They just flounder into nothingness. Simply put, one of them needs to go unless Kepler isn’t back. The other odd man out here is Nick Gordon. I think he is an OK player, but he has become redundant. Castro has replaced him on the roster with more flexibility (options), better defense, and similar offense. Gordon did a fine job as the emergency replacement in CF last year, but Castro does it better. I don’t think he has tremendous value, but you might be able to flip him for a reliever or use him as an added piece to trade for either a better reliever or a RH hitter.