Rod Carews Birthday

There's really no blame here. When Rooker was a Twin (and a Padre, and a Royal) he couldn't put it together to be successful. That wasn't anyone's fault per se. He may or may not have done so now (SSS). He's not going to win the triple crown, but he certainly has the power to hit 30 home runs. Since he was once a Twin, I wish him the best and will root for him against the rest of the league!

I was watching today's game from some of the best seats I have ever had at Guaranteed Rate Field, right behind the Twin's dugout. The beginning of the game wasn't a thrill a minute, but the extra innings had enough excitement for at least two games with plenty of twists and turns. I agree with much of what was said in the recap, but I have a few details to add. I don't think that Pablo Lopez was really on top of his game today, which was frustrating. He just didn't seem to have the consistent stuff to slam the door on the hitters, even though he got several strikeouts and did have a string where he retired a bunch in a row. What was encouraging is that he got the job done while only allowing two runs in seven innings without his dominant stuff. It makes me very excited to see how effective he could be when he is really in control. It was a really good performance by a veteran pitcher who knows what he is doing. I'm extremely glad we extended him. He's going to be a cornerstone for a long time. It's hard to know what to think of the Twins' offensive effort. On one hand, there were a lot of hapless at bats and a lot of very aggressive swinging strikes and strikeouts, which speaks poorly of them. However, Giolito was dominant and looked a lot more like the pitcher he has been in the past rather than this year's version. Correa got ahold of one and Buxton (off a different pitcher) as well, but that was all there was until the last inning. The relief pitching was mostly pretty impressive. Say what you want about how many guys were on base, those were mostly intentional walks, the Twins had five (FIVE!!!!) pitchers give up one actual hit and one (fake, Manfred) run. They were all under serious pressure and responded by getting guys out and stranding the runners. A runner like Billy Hamilton can really impact a game (unless he has to bat). I was impressed all the way around, but especially by Stewart and Pagan(!) working their way around the runner on second. We need a deceptive relief pitcher like Aaron Bummer. When he came in and struck out the side the Twins' hitters were helpless. His delivery was such a shock to the system that no one knew what to do. I know his ERA is currently high, but that different look was really effective. Also, finding a way to have Colome and Peralta be traded from team to team just ahead of when we play them would be a nice gift as well. The White Sox just can't defend. Aside from the two errors, there were many plays that just should have been made more cleanly than they were. Thank you. Keep up the fine work. The Twins weren't flawless, but they really have some guys who can pick it. Sorry for the book report. Others may see it differently. Just one guy's observations. Go Twins!

It's hard to deny that from just about any point of view, this trade became a mess for all parties involved. Rogers and Rooker have moved on to different teams due to ineffectiveness. Pagan is . . . well. . . Pagan but we are still holding onto him. Paddack MIGHT wind up being a good pickup assuming that things go well with the TJ rehab. The only one of the group making a substantial contribution right now is Brent Rooker, so at the moment you are certainly correct. I kept hoping that he would be a Twins slugger for a long time, but it just never seemed to work out. Sometimes it takes a few extra tries to make things happen and in this case it took stints with the Twins, Padres, Royals, and now Athletics for Rooker to find himself. I'm not really optimistic that he has suddenly transformed into Big Papi, but I'm excited for him now and hope that he continues to find success. I also hope that next year Paddack is pitching well in the rotation and makes us all very glad that the trade happened!

If the hitting and pitching and fielding lined up and your average runs scored was higher than your average runs given up, the team would be 162 and 0. It doesn’t work that way. As for coaches in players faces, the world doesn’t work the way it did when Casey Stengel managed, or even Billy Martin. You can’t yell a team to success no matter how loud you are.

I usually sit on the third base side on the lower level so I can see into the Twins dugout, but there are better (and cheaper) tix on the first base side this time so I think that’s the option this time. It’s a funny stadium. Ugly in general but mostly good sight lines from all over the park. The upper levels are VERY steep though so I don’t like those much.

Nice take on the season so far. I think we sometimes don't think as much in terms of home field advantage as we should. It's tough to go to someone else's ballpark and win a bunch of games. By the way, you said you are from Mitchell. Hello from a guy who grew up in Tripp and moved to the Chicago suburbs (eventually). Looking forward to seeing the Twins in town this week, although I may wait until Thursday's day game in order to prevent frostbite!

Too early to do much adding, and I'm not thinking that any of these guys bring something more to the table than we already have at those positions -- and we have/are about to have a bit of a roster crunch as is. Guys who are as good as Arraez with power mostly don't exist and where they do exist are certainly not available, nor would we be willing to pony up the asking price if they were. Picking up a good bullpen arm would be terrific, but identifying those this early in the season isn't so easy, plus you have to figure out who you are willing to ship out. News flash: Nobody is going to give you a good relief pitcher in trade for a bad one (Pagan). I think this means that we play the people we've got right now, wait for the injured bats to come back, and experiment a little with the guys in St. Paul for the bullpen. The team is winning games and winning series so now is certainly not the time to panic. If we continue to win at this rate for the rest of the season, we will win the division and that's a really good start.

I really like Nick Gordon. I think he's a fun player to watch and has been valuable to the team. That being said, I think his clock has about run out with the Twins. His immediate competition is Castro, who is a better defender than he is but who also has an option remaining, so Castro goes to St. Paul. Then it gets much more difficult. Gordon is one of those utility players who doesn't play particularly outstanding defense anywhere, but can be passable in a lot of positions, plus he hits from the wrong side (for the Twins) of the plate. I don't think that Farmer or Solano are going anywhere before Gordon based on fielding and handedness, plus they are both hitting much better than he is. Barring injury elsewhere on the team, Gordon probably needs to go when a second player of the Kirilloff/Farmer group comes back to the team. Supposing that they manage to hold onto Gordon until mid-summer, the Twins will once again face a roster crunch when Lewis is back, with the potential of Julien/Lee getting a shot as well. Lewis is certainly a better player than Gordon, with much more offensive and defensive potential. The reality is that keeping him now is just delaying the inevitable. For the moment, he's an OK guy to have around since we don't really have anyone who is better, healthier, and in less need of development than him. Hang onto him as long as you can, but don't shed too many tears when he needs to move on, especially if he is moving on because there are better players pushing him onward. A DFA'd Nick Gordon will undoubtedly be claimed by someone pretty quickly. He will likely find his hitting stroke again and will likely have an OK rest of the season with more consistent playing time. He's never going to be a star, but he could carve out a solid MLB career in the right situation. Good for him! He deserves that chance, but it seems unlikely that it can come with the Twins. Smile for him and wish him well.

I hope Kirilloff comes up and absolutely crushes the ball. However, I think he is best served spending a little more time in St. Paul and crushing the ball there. He has been injured for the better part of two years and injuries are scary to come back from. Much of it just involves healing and rebuilding muscles and stamina. But an important part of the recovery is also mental. It is vital that he can become totally trusting of his wrist holding up and also able to play without even thinking about it. That will be better achieved with the reduced pressure of AAA baseball. Keeping him down for a month or so will help him avoid another setback and help him completely become the player we all think he can be.

I'm hoping that they activate him and put him back in St. Paul for a few weeks. This has been quite the long ordeal for him (for the fans too, but even more so for him) and it would be great if he can really get raking for a bit to get his confidence back and to get rid of any hesitations that he might have coming off of this process. I'm actually very pro-Kiriloff, but I want him uber-healthy and ready before they throw him into the fire. I think that's the best way to insure a successful situation in July or August, by sacrificing May to the minors. Let him go down and hit .400 with a quadruple digit OPS for a while!

Polanco is an excellent baseball player but is often overlooked when one considers the Twins' lineup. When he's been healthy he adds a ton on both offense and defense that makes his presence felt in many tangible and intangible ways on the field. He's not a hall of famer, but he's a hall of really good and really consistent for quite a long time member. I'm hoping that they don't trade him anytime soon. Those prospects need to develop in the minors before we crown them stars and starters on a good baseball team.

I'm not sure whether the magic number is 4 or 6 or 12 or 26, but I'm quite certain that the Twins have taken steps to go in the right direction with the overall talent level of the club -- particularly on the pitching side of things. Lopez, Ryan, and Duran are locked up for several years, which should guarantee the floor being a little bit higher. On the bat side, certainly Correa and Buxton are important cogs, but as we have seen lately, it is often unsung players, like Jorge Polanco or even Kyle Farmer that are the missing ingredient sometimes. On the hitting side of things, there are lots of options, but one or two more need to step forward and produce at a high and consistent level to be a part of any core. The key is not necessarily to have the top two players in the league, or the Angels would have World Series wins on their resume. It's more important to have players that are very good in all or at least most positions to really make consistency happen.

I’m actually a little on the fence about the subject of stealing bases. It actually is a bit of a dilemma. On one hand, the chart shows that we are average plodders, but many of the teams below the Twins, like the White Sox, steal bases. The younger players in particular know how to do it, because they were much more likely to have done it recently in the minors. So, why not? On the other hand, protecting Buxton, et al from injury means we should be afraid to run, but does it actually do anything to prevent injury? Players do get injured and Buxton seems to pick up more than his share, but I’m not convinced that being careful necessarily prevents injury. Sometimes playing “not to lose” means you also can’t win. I think the more Byron Buxton is involved in the game, the better he will play, whether that is through playing CF, running the bases, or anything else. Right now he’s not playing CF, not stealing bases, and also not really hitting. It’s time to change it up and get him moving.

I think it's very sad that they are (apparently) making the move. There is a pretty substantial history with the Oakland franchise, but the last several years have been abysmal, with mostly a bad product on the field and a terrible old stadium to boot. I would rather they find a way to build a new stadium in Oakland, but remember, the Oakland Athletics were the Kansas City Athletics before they were in Oakland. I guess we'll get used to the Las Vegas Athletics (Gamblers? Cash? Craps?) and it may give them a better chance to put a good product on the field, if the owners actually choose to do that.

Argh. Yes!

Seemed like an OK time for Headrick (or even an early Pagan for 2 innings) to come in and get his feet wet, although none of it matters if you don't have some bad defense and lousy offense tonight.

Ha! Ha! Maybe! Especially if you keep writing articles that I agree with! I was mostly reacting to the people who have already decided that Gallo will strike out more often than they like so that makes him a bum. He's a professional ballplayer who has had some pretty strong success and I think that he deserves the benefit of the doubt. I live in the Chicago suburbs and deal with way too many Cubs and Bears fans. They have a very similar knee jerk reaction that sometimes changes every day and their team/player is either the greatest the world has ever seen or a complete idiot that should be run out of town. I lived through a friend of mine (Cubs fan) hoping that Kerry Wood and Mark Pryor would retire the same year so that they could go into the Hall of Fame (yes. . . the Baseball one. . . I know. . . ) together as Cubs teammates. I'm pretty sure that their combined careers don't merit even one entrance ticket. I just don't want the Twins' fan base to go down that same road.

Happy to take two. Just keep winning series and the standings will turn out just fine.

Gallo doesn't need to be in MVP contention to win the comeback player of the year award. He just needs to go from terrible (which by all accounts he was last year) to pretty good. That would involve playing good defense and hitting decent amount of homeruns while not batting a buck eighty. He is certainly capable of that, particularly getting out of NY and back to the land of normal baseball. He's done it before. I don't really care if he wins it or not, but I would really love to see him put up a good year and be in the conversation. It will mean the Twins got good value out of their free agent pickup. Will he strike out a lot? Probably, but he'll also walk a lot, and if tendencies play out he will also hit some balls very very hard. Strikeouts are really no worse than weak ground balls and there are plenty of players on the team who hit plenty of those. After all strikeouts lead to less double plays than weak ground balls.

This is an outstanding signing that is easy to get excited about. He appears so far to be as good as (maybe better than) advertised and this deal locks him in through the next four years, which should really be his prime. I think it is fantastic that the deal could work out nicely for both sides -- for the Twins for obvious reasons, and for Lopez, who will get to test free agency at 31 years old and likely get another good contract. Hey! Who knows? Maybe that's with the Twins too. The fun part so far about this trade is that we are delighted in having Pedro Lopez and the Marlins are equally thrilled about having Arraez on their team. Got to give up something to get something!

I think so too, absolutely. That being said, aside from an excellent short season from Maeda and a couple of pivotal appearances for Graterol, the overall numbers from both sides are pretty underwhelming. I guess that makes the trade a wash between the two clubs, but I think both teams had much higher hopes than that at the time the trade was made. Nobody got fleeced here.

This is a terrific move by the Twins. He had an excellent year last year and so far this year seems to be even better. Undoubtedly his ERA is going to come back down to Earth and he's going to have a few rough outings also, but Lopez appears to be the best pitcher we've had on the team since J. Santana. Also, unquestionably, when he has a bad game here or there, he will become the latest target for those fans who believe that a bigger contract must carry with it perfection in all things. Welcome Pablo Lopez! Glad you can stay awhile!

True, but it's what comes up first on the MLB website so the illusion of the official line is still there. I recognize that NY is where the money is and the coasts are where the eyeballs/eardrums/$$$ are, but the blindness to the rest of the teams in the middle part of the country gets out of hand sometimes. OK, I'm done shouting at the clouds. Thanks for letting me vent!

Nothing to see here. . . . https://www.mlb.com/news/domingo-german-stymies-twins-on-jackie-robinson-day Seems a little whitewashed to me. Check the first two paragraphs. Yikes. At least it's better than the first draft of the story, which had Anthony Rizzo hitting the wrong number of home runs. The coverage truly does infuriate me sometimes. Twins won last night, article talked about how the Yankees couldn't hold a lead. Sheesh!

Well that was fun! Nice start from Varland. Good bullpen work all around. It was nice to have Taylor and Buxton be the guys on base when Correa got the double. No doubt those guys were going to fly all the way home! Twins Win!