August J Gloop

Since the gap between them an the best record stems directly from losing to the teams ahead of them the answer is really not much better. And Louie had 3 bad starts against 3 of the teams ahead of them. If they had got good starts and won all three of those games and everything else had worked out exactly as it has. The Twins would be 74-53, a half game shy of the best record. So in a way you're both kind of right.

Varland can absolutely be refined, but in a short period of time it's about pitch distribution. And in LV's case it's about refining his approach to use his 98+ fastball as much as possible in a game. and that's for about 2 innings every other day.

The point with Louie in '24 specifically is he's not going to magically turn into a good starter, since it's not about the usage of pitches. It's about the contrast. His offspeed right now doesn't have the deception it needs to get guys out a second time. So when he can fling his fastball at near triple digits, it still plays, since he can have it break out of the zone pretty quickly. Batters have to commit to the 100, and by then it's too late. When it's only 94, they can wait to recognize. His job at Driveline or wherever is to improve his tunneling. That probably won't work in '24 though. so the best way to use LV the rest of the year is in the Pen for 2 innings at a time every other day

The padres gave up their #2,4,5 and 25 prospects for Tanner Scott. Their GM is taking a huge gamble on an impending free agent. I know that doesn't really translate to Twins since none of those guys are even MLB top 100, but still all that for a few innings of a good lefty? Nah.

Oops, wrong thread.

The question is to if Va So far, Varland has been a bad starter. He lacks the tools to get batters out 2, let alone 3 times in the same game. He probably can still develop these tools. It will take a few months of intense practice that he doesn't currently have. They need another good reliever. Louie has the tools to be that guy. Hopefully that will be what they do.

It's sad when these things happen. Max's departure is extra tough because it isn't just financial. Just like his former roommate, he's been passed by younger talent. Watching him go through the motions out there makes it clear he knows it, too.

There's not much reason to believe that Festa and Matthews will be any worse than they have been the rest of the year. The only teams they still have to face with above average offensive outcomes this year are Boston, Baltimore and KC. And KC really only has an above average offense when Bobby Witt Jr is up.

Winder and Varland will definitely be in the pen. Hector Neris is a homophobic clubhouse cancer who throws at batters in the middle of close games. To say nothing of the fact that he's been worse this year than Okert and Richards who you want to DFA. I'm gonna say that's why not.

I assume the players are currently planning to make this run without either of these guys. Not that they don't want them, but reality has to be setting in that Correa and Bux are unlikely to suit up again this year. Correa's other foot seems to be much worse than the first one. Bux is likely to be diagnosed with some sort of progeria. He has such bad luck with soft tissue injuries that it makes sense to me there's some sort of underlying cause. It's a bummer that the Two best CFs of this generation both just can't seem to avoid those IL blues.

I mean sure, call a human being a turd just cuz he's not who you would pick up in a trade.

Yes. Then off to driveline to see if he can get a worthwhile offspeed pitch. But right now his offspeed only works in contrast to 98+ on the fastball which Louie can only maintain for 2 innings max. As a reliever he can be dangerous right now.

Like, how does this even make sense to you as you type it? Do you think that MLB players just reach a point in their careers and just stop trying to get better? They're like nope. 7 Years in. I'm who I am. No changes here. Let's compromise though and replace the word 'develop' with 'refine'. They're trying to refine his approach so that they can get 3-4 weeks of maximal output during key post season innings. Namely the 6th innings in SWR and ZebbyFest starts. Richards has averaged 9.8 K/9 for his MLB career. At St Paul this year there are Two guys who appear to be A) Healthy, B) Younger than Richards, C) Not already appeared on the big league roster and D) with more K/9 at AAA than Richards has had in MLB. Jordy Blaze and Ryan Jensen. We know why Blaze isn't up. Jensen is walking almost 9 per 9, so nope. If you still think it can't be explained, then you are just being willfully ignorant to keep redirecting your anger with the ownership at the front office who are trying to make it work.

The Padres have maximized their interactions with hanging sliders this series. Sim is going to have to be sure to say away from those.

This is such an odd statement. Do you honestly think they're sitting around the trade table going "guys, we're gonna get ROASTED if we don't just make some sort of trade?" And then they agree that yes they'll totally get roasted if they don't make a trade, any trade and just what, take the next deal that pops up in the OOTP sim? And that these same image obsessed straw men would then look at such a minor and public impactless trade and think 'yep! That will get the monkey off our back. We can rest now.'

They like pitchers with truly unique pitches they feel they can maximize. Richards has a comedy changeup. Not even remotely hard to explain. You can quibble with the details or disagree that it's a good move, but the very idea that this is hard to understand is silly. Obviously they should have added more at the deadline, but the Richards move makes real actual sense.

I'm sure that his foot is in much worse pain than most of us can even imagine trying to walk on and he's trying to get himself ready to go. I don't doubt that Correa is considerably tougher than the average person and still he's a no go so this is probably pretty bad.

This seems very unlikely. Much in the same way that Correa still isn't straight line running or doing any sort of rehab. At this point, the field staff would be foolish to be counting on either of them to be productive at any point this year. They've had some real bad luck with the high end injuries again. Keirsey is Jake Cave 2.0. Likely good in tiny doses, but generally not an effective big leaguer.

The Twins are just short on lockdown lefties. If Caleb had blown this we'd be hearing the same thing about Okert. The biggest victim other than the fans in the absurd payroll slashing that the Pohlads are doing is the the bullpen. There's no sensible reason they didn't just buy a couple high priced bullpen arms off some downward facing teams (Tanner Scott comes to mind for some reason). Okert and Thielbar have both been pretty unreliable, but Thielbar really has been a little worse. They've pitched basically the same number of innings (34 O, 35 T) and Thielbar has surrendered 4 more runs. It's not really that big of a difference, and really they should probably both be in slightly less leverage roles. Although yesterday was the first time all season Okert gave up more than 2 runs. Bailey's incredibly poor pitch to Machado was just as bad as anything Okert did yesterday. It's just all about the context though. I might even argue that really yesterday was more on the entire approach to all the hitters than anything. a bunch of silly mistakes all over the place. Hopefully they grab the game today and go on a little run to get everything back on track but... The sad fact is that the playoffs really don't help the bottom line of the team owners, so you get a bunch of different responses to them. The Pohlads just like being rich and don't actually care about winning. The Twins are an asset they can borrow against and therefore they prioritize the organization to being cash neutral. We as fans have no power in this, since we can't just take our dollars to a different MLB team. We can't force them to do anything to compete without just taking our attention away from it. The problem with that is, they're more than happy just to slash payroll even more and wait on another natural rise in good players to get the fans back.

It's a tough year for veteran OFs on the Twins roster. Bux banged up, Margot and Kepler being two of the worst OFs to get consistent PT in the AL. It would have been nice to have another Kep bounce, but these days a late season DFA seems more likely than any sort of upswing. He just looks so detached out there.

He did all three of those yesterday.

These two statements seem to be at odds with each other.

The game turned on two 2-out 100 mph drives hit with runners on. SD's fell in 3 RBI. Min's got caught, no RBI. Shucks. Hopefully Zebby learned a couple things about how to keep the focus even after some mistakes. The changeup was a potentially good idea, just executed really bad. But worse was the walk to Xander, since he was never really in the AB.

I know you aren't looking for splits, but from me you get splits. VS RHP RF Wallner DH Lewis SS Correa LF Larnach CF Buxton 3B Miranda 2B Castro 1B Santana C Whoever's turn it is today VS LHP CF Buxton DH Lewis SS Correa 3B Miranda 1B Santana 2B Castro LF Margot RF Kepler C Turn I like Wallner at the top cuz he can go bridge any time and had decided his middle name is speed.

Heavy duty Jake Cave vibes. The similarities in AAA stats and overall player profile are quite striking.