Jack Griffin

I'd tend to agree, but those are 2 separate points that get crunched into 1 too often. A lot of fans seem to think this bullpen would be perfectly fine if they didn't make the trade, which frankly, is not true

Also for some reason his statcast page populated twice. I guess I just really wanted it to stand out lol

If I showed you this statcast page without context, what Twins pitcher would you think it is? As well as: -0.1 War or a 95 ERA+ (100 is league average) Well first off it looks average or slightly below, so you could pick a name out of a hat from the Twins bullpen. Okay, maybe you're an "old school" guy and you like more conventional metrics of success. How about a 5.59 ERA in June or a 13.50 ERA in July? Maybe 17 earned runs in his past 15 innings pitched? That's Taylor Rogers. I was told that Rodgers was an elite reliever that the stupid front office traded away! So I'm being a little negative, that's fair to say, but I have grown so annoyed with fans trying to spin this trade like the Twins just traded away Mike Trout for a bucket of baseballs. There were many clear reasons why the Twins moved on from Rogers. Yes to be fair a lot of those numbers aren't extremely bad, but for someone being paid 7.3 million those are underperforming numbers. Taylor Rogers would've been traded in 2021 had it not been for his finger injury, that has been widely reported by multiple sources. I would imagine the Twins felt similar with Rogers as they did with Jose Berrios (whose trade is looking better every day) That is the thought that "We've seen the best out of this guy, and he's about to get paid by someone. That's not gonna be us." Rogers is due to be a FA after this season and he is going to get a large contract, I'm fine with that not being the Twins because he has regressed slowly every season and there is no indication that will stop now. So after all, looks like you can take the man out of the Twins bullpen, But you can't take the Twins bullpen out of the man. (Also, slight thanks to MN Sportswriter of the Year Aaron Gleeman's tweet on Rogers for inspiring this)

Yep. Pretty massive difference.

Are you serious? Carlos Correa is the best shortstop the Twins have had in a very long time. You're gonna say he's no better or worse than most of the roster? He is top 5 in the entire league for his position, something that's not easy to say for most of the other players on this roster. Every stat (Which I'm gonna assume you despise because only nerds and geeks use them, based on your previous commenting history) says that he's one of the best, even the conventional "old school stats" that have been around forever, say so.

If the cost of acquisition is low enough, I don't see an issue with trading for him. If it works you get a solid bullpen arm, if not you DFA or non tender him this off season. As well as this better be in addition to other moves.

This is exactly what I am thinking. Getting him would be fine, and could work out. But he better not be our ONLY acquisition.

ZIPs gets mentioned like 3 times the entire article? What is it about stats that bothers people so much?

You think Rays manager Kevin Cash, who has won 4 playoffs series since 2019 and was in the World Series in 2020, gets scrutinized for not winning in the playoffs?

This is the main point that influenced my article. Searching through discussions, 90 percent of the complaints on Baldelli are: -He's a nerd, geek, etc... -He's a "puppet" for the front office -He doesn't watch the game, he just looks at spreadsheets (Analytics) -He treats all the players like babies by giving them off-days -He is incompetent with his in game decisions, with no argument provided All things with extreme negativity and no actual legit criticism

Thinking of this, anyone else get super panicked when Buxton hurt his knee against BOS and Jake Cave was pulled from his AAA game coincidentally the same day? I thought for sure we were gonna see anther 300 ABs of the Cave man lol

Every day I get more and more confused how the White Sox front office thought hiring a 77 year-old manager that hadn't been a manger since 2011 was the best option for the very young team

I was basically just emphasizing what you said with a little more context if anyone was curious

Intentionally walking a batter with 2 strikes to face a batter that has hit lefties better than righties in his career is about as un-analytic as you can get. He was making a very old school decision, to get a lefty vs lefty matchup, so exactly the opposite of what the original reply states.

The playoffs is basically the huge glaring issue with him. I've been known to heir on the side of defending him in most scenarios but I completely agree the Twins have looked completely outmatched in the playoffs under him. Players do really seem to enjoy playing under him though so I've always wondered what the issue is come playoffs.

The title alone is enough to make smoke blow out of the ears of some Twins fans. Go to any twins post or forum after a loss (or win somehow) and you can find a stream of Twins fans complaining about Twins manager Rocco Baldelli. Is this distain reasonable? No. No It's not. Now before I get into it, I'm not the biggest Rocco fan myself, but some of the things I see fans saying really confuse me. I've seen people calling for Paul Molitor back (who was fired for not winning) or people somehow wanting Joe Girardi (who also just got fired for not winning) to be hired. Seems to me wanting to hire managers who have been sent away by their own or other franchises isn't the best option. But hey what do I know? I'm just some fan typing on a computer, so lets just look at some objective facts. Like it or not Rocco has been winning more than most Twins mangers Here is the top managers historically for the Twins, sorted by winning percentage, I stopped at Paul Molitor just so you can see how much better he has been then the manger he replaced. As you can see, Rocco is near the top, and based off how this year is going that will only improve after the current season. Now you might refute by saying "But he hasn't won a thing in the playoffs!" Which to be fair is true, but let me show you this: This is the entire list of mangers that have just made the playoffs, and 5 of them only made it once! That's 9 out of the total 31 managers in Twins history. Only 4 Twins mangers have made the post season more than once, and only 2 have either a .500 or above record in it, so forgive me if I don't believe fans should be made a Rocco for this. Twins 2010s failures The Twins were swept by (Who else) the Yankees in back-to-back post seasons in 2009 and 2010 respectively, The years that followed were not pretty. From 2011-2016 the Twins finished the season over .500 once, and had a combined record of 407-565 for a winning percentage of .418 over those 6 seasons. In 2017, miraculously the Twins made the playoffs* *Made the Wildcard, which is technically to get into the playoffs, but you get my point. with a 85-77 record. The Twins advanced to the play-in game to face (Who else) the Yankees. To absolutely no ones surprise, they lost 8-4. The following year they fell slightly back to the recent mean and finished the year 78-84, missing the post season, and deciding to part ways with then manager Paul Molitor. The Twins spent the off season searching and decided on a fresh-faced manager from the upstart Tapa Bay Rays, Rocco Baldelli. He rewarded their hiring with the 2nd most wins ever in a Twins season, with 101 (trailing only 102 set in the 1965 season) Following that the Twins moved to the post season and.... Wait... No.... They got matched up with the Yankees again. So once again the Twins get swept in the playoffs by the Yankees in the ALDS 3-0. The Twins once again won the Central Division in the shortened 2020 season, followed with another sweep (2-0) in the new Wildcard series against the Houston Astros. Following that they had their worst season in the Baldelli era so far finishing 73-89 and obviously missing the playoffs. 2022 has been another successful season so far with a 36-27 record. Suffering from success The Twins have historically not been a great team for the last decade, the success they are seeing under current manager Rocco Baldelli has been unheard of for a good amount of time. I truly believe that's why he gets so much flak. See its easier to ignore minute managerial decisions when the team is bad, there are just so many more things to complain about. With the Twins winning games and (generally speaking) having a decent roster, it gets much more difficult to find fault in the Twins season, which we all love to do clearly. So the easiest thing to find is, the manager. Managers are constantly under microscopes on winning teams, with ever major and minor decision being criticized heavily. Fans want to see success and the manager is at the forefront of the team. I beg of angry Twins fans to take a step back, take away the emotions, and just truly appreciate that these smaller managerial decisions are our biggest worries. This Twins team is good and I truly believe we are contenders, that's not been a possible feeling with this franchise for a while.

This is such an uniformed lazy take. I don't even like how Rocco has managed but he constantly makes decisions that aren't "from a spreadsheet"

As I read Ted Schwerzler's article from earlier today, this quote from Twins manager Rocco Baldelli stuck with me: "...We want them to be available and ready to finish ballgames when the time comes" What if the time never comes, because you throw in the proverbial towel if the team doesn't have the lead? Last night the Twins got down early, and when the starter Cole Sands got pulled from the game the Twins went to a combination of Juan Minaya-Yennier Cano-Tyler Duffey-Trevor Megill to finish the game. Correct me if I'm wrong but that doesn't sound like a winning formula. That sounds to me like what a team in last place does when they are down big in the last few innings. Lets just throw a position player out there to finish the game. Why not? its a "low leverage" situation. Okay, maybe that's a bit of a reach, but I'm frustrated. How I interpret this is no matter if the team is down 10 runs in the ninth, or 1 run in the fifth, both have the same leverage in the eyes of the team. Now I understand wanting to have some decent relievers available for protecting the lead, that's fine, but being only down 1 run against a very good team and then putting in your 4 worst pitchers, is asking for disaster. Last nights game was just another example of extremely confusing bullpen management from Rocco. The game was winnable, the offense was scoring runs, but the Twins were not committed to stopping the other team from scoring. This team has been playing well, they are leading their (Very weak) division, but this team does not "feel" like a first place team.

There's definitely a good chance that's the case, and yeah his fastball velocity has slowly been dropping, that surely plays at least a little part in it.

That's pretty much the simplest way to put things. With his CB it seems hitters are either laying off it, or hammering it. Opposed to before when they would swing and miss a lot.

Long time listener, first time caller!

Looking at his spin rate is interesting too. Because there is no noticeable difference between this year and last, his CB is actually spinning more this season. It has to be an unfortunate combo of hitters figuring him out in a sense and not locating well.

Its not a secret that Tyler Duffey's 2022 season has been frustrating, Duffey said it himself after giving up 3 runs against the Yankees last night: (Link to article you can find this quote Tyler Duffey's struggles continue against Yankees (mlb.com)) Duffey is going through the worst stretch of his career by far, Although it wasn't long ago that the Doof (self-appointed nickname) was one of the more trusted back end options on a Twins playoff team, so what's changed? lets take a deeper look at some of his numbers to see if we can find some answers. The first and most obvious metric to look at when trying to examine why a pitcher has seemingly fallen off a proverbial cliff, is velocity. Okay so that hasn't changed much. In 2020 and 2021 Duffey was still an effective option with around the same pitch velocities. So although as his career has progressed his velocity has slowly decreased, its not extreme enough to cause this massive of a change. So his pitches are the same speed as they were before, maybe they are moving less? Wow, his pitches are actually moving slightly more than before. So his first two obvious points of reference look okay, at least comparable to his pervious effective years, but when trying to figure out a player those numbers are only the tip of the iceberg. Lets look into some of the frustrating not ideal numbers. Now some things are staring to make sense. All his "expected" (x) numbers are by far the worst of his career, and some of the worst in the league. How do you calculate these numbers? you may ask, well nerds take the average exit velocity and launch angle he allows and apply that to what is "expected" of a ball hit at those numbers, and Duffey has been expected to give up a lot this season. So looking those numbers, we can start to see what has gone wrong for Duffey. His velocity hasn't changed, but what seems to have is his mindset. The mind games while pitching is one of the most important aspects, by getting in their own heads pitchers can almost seemingly forget how to pitch, see Rick Ankiel. Duffey is still throwing the same pitches as he normally has, but his ability to locate them has diminished, more specifically his curveball. For most of his career thus far his curveball was his best pitch, and it was very effective, this year it is has not been. Without his most effective pitch he has been forced to rely on the others in his arsenal, leading to batters seemingly teeing off on him: These are his conventional hitting stats he has allowed over the last 3 seasons. The average batter he has faced this season has turned into 2021 Jose Ramirez, which any twins fans should know is extremely annoying to face. So why is Duffey struggling? The simple answer is: he can't locate his pitches. He has been hanging his pitches over the heart of the plate (much like he did to Rizzo in the 7th last night) Time will tell if he can figure things out, Baldelli and pitching coach Wes Johnson seem intent on giving him the opportunity to do so. All I know is it has been very frustrating to watch.