August J Gloop

So let's examine the odds. The average for all balls in play is right around .300. So that means just putting the ball in play is 3/10 to get on base. The whole choke up / make contact approach has a best case of a double, but overwhelmingly favors singles. Is being on first better than striking out? Yes. Is getting to first worth surrendering most extra base opportunities? Seems less clear. There's a lot of run expectancy to study. They struck out in 26% of their at bats. That's rough in isolation. They were 6th in WRC+ and 10th in overall runs. That means their league leading K percentage didn't hurt them THAT much. We know that there were stretches where it was very difficult for them to score. It definitely means that if the K% could come down a little, the runs would definitely go up. I doubt we'll see a complete overhaul of the approach. But that there will bean emphasis on not getting to two strikes and having two approaches with 2 strikes. I'm certain that with nobody on, they will not favor the put it in play approach outside multiple run deficits and bottom of 9th on situations. Then, there probably will be a little more focus on reaching base. Overall, I'm sure their number crunching had concluded that the strikeout is a worthy risk in exchange for the HR/ double.

It's probably OK. People need a chance to grow.

Rocco does a good job with what actually matters. Making the team believe they can win together. Baseball players are inherently self centered and self motivated. The hard work is getting them to give that up and think of the team as a team. To that end, Rocco is great. He is a person who believes in the whole platoon advantage and how to best put players in spots to succeed. The trouble is that requires players to be comfortable with their weaknesses. That's why he's a good manager. He's not the only good manager the twins could have, but he's a good one.

Why not? What is wrong with telling someone who hasn't thrown a single inning in two weeks, nor a successful start in over a month that he's out there to face that brutal lineup once. Let him know he can air it out for a max of 3 innings hopefully 9 batters and get out of there with a 0? How is that a bad plan in that situation? If Sunny hadn't laid the egg the day before it wouldn't have been the plan. They would have been running ahead and said Joe give us a good start, 5-6 please. And then if he'd looked shaky they'd adjust. But they knew it would be a tall order in the tough sitch and set him up to succeed. And in the end the plan basically worked.

But did you look at the data? In two innings Joe gave up 4 hard hit balls, including one that hit him on his body. It's very likely that they wanted him to get through 3 innings vs two, but 3 was definitely the plan, and when that third was going to feature Altuve and Bregman, it was time for Joe to go out. I would argue that was a direct result not of some front office machinations or Rocco being under the sway of spreadsheets, but of Joe Ryan hiding an injury and being reasonably ineffective the back half of the year. That lead to him not being fully prepped for a longer start. Even in the start he wobbled through the lineup once. I'm certain the hope was to win the game and ultimately the series and have a shot at building Joe up in later starts. An elimination game is not the time to be like 'go gettim Joe'.

Wallner and Larnach are not in the minors because they are inferior fielders to Gallo and Kepler. They are there because ownership is not ready to move on from their contracts / pay them to play for the opposition. There is little chance that right now Larnach would be worse that Kep on either side of the ball. He's faster, younger and actually seems to care. And while I agree that Wallner is behind Gallo and Kep, his arm will make up for a fair bit of his range limitations. And Wallner actually is pretty fast, so eventually his D could be a plus. There really isn't any reason now to have those two continue at AAA while two vets with limited upside struggle with a .500 club. Another possibility would be to DFA Kep and bring up Miranda or Williams and have a platoon at first with Kirilloff. Let Gallo be everyday RF for another month and if he doesn't get it going, replace him with Wallner or Larnach, whoever is still raking at AAA.

Kepler is better right now than he was at the end of last year. Would you trade for him now? Of course not. It's just fantasy land stuff to think they really had any offer that wasn't garbage. Gotta stop telling yourself any different. It can and should be argued they should just eat his contract and let him go. Larnach is as good, if not better and is would only add 400K to the total or whatever the prorated rest of the season looks like. Gallo out for Wallner. Might as well see what you got there.

The question really remains though, that was Bux's offense impacted by the fact that his knees are still problematic? I think that is very likely the case. Bux really can be one of the greatest hitters of all time with his amazing bat speed and ability to fly to second at a moment's notice. Is this rib contusion going to serve as a way to get him off his knees for a while and see what happens?

What watching MAT every day has taught me is that fans can be seduced by the flashiness of Buxton's defense. Taylor makes plays standing up, or jogging where Bux would have had to dash with his super speed and fly through the air to complete. Bux's defense was probably overrated. His reads have never been great, and he's prone to losing track of the wall. Outfield defense always is kinda overestimated. A great defender can only guarantee you 15-20 extra outs a season. And that's if you're lucky enough to have them hit exactly to the grey area where the good defender can impact that which a bad one can not. Of course if you can put 3 of those outfielders out there, then you might be on to something that can make a real impact. Bux DHing really isn't any worse than Paul Molitor or Edgar Martinez. But maybe there is some value in moving him to a corner to protect the knees a bit?

He's not been great, I've never said he has. I'm just saying he's not always that bad, and since they have to pay him anyway, he'll be around for a while longer. And if you need something to hang on to, it's there. Or you can chase yourself down a hole of getting mad at things you can't control.

It's absolute silliness to ever quote stats if you only want to use them to back up your emotional feelings about someone who has had some bad timing with his bad innings. Emilo has blown some major games. Nobody is disputing that. But acting like he blows every game he's in is nuts. Gleeman loves this stat: Of course that that means that since his overall WPA with the Twins is -1.8, All of his other appearances must be a WPA of +.7 Again, not that cool (since it's at best .35 per season offset with fantastic blowups). Only two pitchers not named Duran have that much at all with the team the past couple years: Thielbar and Fulmer. I'm not trying to say that you can't have bad feelings about Pagan, but it's not like he never gets the job done. Most of his appearances have resulted in zero runs for the opponents. Runs have scored in 25 of 73 of his appearances. Duran: 13/80. I'm not arguing that he's the best pickup in Twins history, but he's a lightning rod for fans because he's the one holding the bag for many painful losses. I doubt I'd have even offered him a contract in the off season, and instead pursued Fulmer. So that goes to show how good at this I'd be.

If Max scores, Duran is protecting a lead. The Rays need two good outcomes in one inning to beat him. Teams rarely get one against him. Arozarena wouldn't close his eyes and swing guess, he'd be trying to make sure he got on base. That's how Duran beats players so easily usually. It seems very likely that they do win if Max scores. It also seems likely that if Max scores, they score more runs as well.

Bux at DH for 15MM is a good deal. Assuming he can be healthy and hit like he did. If he's still broke down, playing only 80 games a year, probably not. But The risk of letting him walk and then star for the Yankees was too great.

I don't want to cut him. I'm saying the argument for cutting Pagan is based on him providing better numbers than a struggling rookie. This whole goofball nonsense about how Varland should have been out of the inning is so silly. He went to pieces because they only got one out on a 97+ mph oppo hit by Vlad Jr? The ball to Chapman was every bit as terrible as the ball to Biggio. He did that because 'his defense let him down'? Then yeah, time to go back to AAA for a while. I just think the Pagan thing is kinda dumb. He's not that great and gets used inappropriately sometimes, but he's not close to the actual reason the Twins are at .500 right now. And certainly, Varland was every bit as responsible as Pagan, probably moreso. If anyone should really feel bad about themselves for Sunday it's Jorge Lopez, who should have been out there in the 8th putting down any thought of scoring. But no, he's gone round the bend.

What will firing the manager or coaches do? How will it help the team right now? Do you think there is some other hitting guru just sitting around watching paint dry hoping to get a call? Do the Twins even have their number? Like I get it, you want to blame someone for the 7 or 8 losses this year that don't make a lot of sense.

Varland lost the game as much as Pagan did, probably more by not being able to get out of the 5th inning with a 5 run lead. Look, It's not the order the runs score in, it's the quantity. Pagan has pitched 90 innings and given up 45 runs in a Twins uniform. Not that inspiring. Varland has thrown 77 innings and given up 39. That's definitely worse. Pagan's Fip with Twins: 3.96. Varland: 4.92. Pagan has been on the mound for a few of the worst losses in recent memory, but he's not usually the sole reason for many of the losses the team has endured.

Would just wait for the DFA.

Don't they also have to DFA Varland, then? He also gave up 3 runs in an inning in yesterday's bum-out. Plus he gave up another run earlier. I'm not saying I don't agree that ultimately Pagan is a black hole in these leverage innings, but there will be a lot of low leverage innings ahead and since they have to pay him anyway, leave him in the mop up role he's actually been doing good at. Just no more ahead close and late innings for Mr Pagan, and then a ticket to watch the post season from elsewhere.

The Twins ceiling is World Series. Reaching that ceiling will require some luck, some general health and fewer mistakes.

The Twins have hit and pitched better than CLE. No reason to change that this weekend.

This is the problem with baseball in the age of football. The twins have lost 4 games more than they should have. out of 50. That's 8 percent of their games that have gone wrong. It's not hard to find 4 games where things got weird. The second Conforto homer is the Giants series is a great example. It's a low and away pitch that Conforto hit out by a foot. Of course it can be said that they shouldn't be turning over so many slim leads, but that was the first game they lost all year where they'd had a 3+run lead in it. So of course it's easy and understandable to be frustrated. But it's not any more reasonable to say they won't play well than it is to see the makings of wins. And if anything the team should be more frustrated with how they've played against bad teams. They are 8-12 vs BOS, HOU, LAD, NYY, LAA (Teams that seem like they might actually be good). Not that bad considering all but 6 of those games were on the road. Not bad when you consider bad umpiring cost them at least two wins in LA. Where the real problem lies is that vs KC, CHC&W, CLE, MIA, SDP, SFG & WSH they're only 18-12. This assortment of teams has mustered a 173-229 -- .430 record. Now, technically the Twins 18-12 mark is higher than the losing percentage of the bad teams group. That LP doesn't account for the fact that many of these teams have played each other. We'd have to remove those games to get a real idea of how they're doing outside their sad subdivision. But it's BAD. For examples: CLE has a winning record against 5 teams. The Twins, Angels, As, Mariners and Nationals. CHW? Royals, Reds and Guardians. The Twins are 3-3 vs them. The other area to look at luck is 1 run ball games. Twins are 4-10 in 1 run games. Thats 3 wins less than you generally expect. I know I've talked about this before, but you don't win 1 run games by being good. Any specific 1 run game can be won by a feat of skill, but by and large the record is driven by flukes of sequencing. The twins have played 14 1 run games. and given up 52 runs in those games. Tampa has played 16 of them and surrendered 64 runs. Tampa is 9-7 in their 1 run games. Look what happens to the Twins record if they just had Tampa's results. I also hear the retort, but if they were good, they would just score more, since the obvious average in 1run losses is -1 per game. To that I say what about all the 1 run games with flukes in them? You don't think there are 4 that could easily have gone the Twins way with just a bit of luck? Strikes that were thrown but called balls? Balls in play at 75 MPH going for RBIs? I can call out 6 without looking. But like I said, this is the trouble with baseball. There is skill, but so much of it is actually chance. Thanks for reading if you did. I understand if you didn't.

I will not root for a team that rosters this man.

Yea! Who cares about shooting a gun 8 times at his GF and choking her? He can get low pressure strikeouts for teams going nowhere!

The Twins don't swing for the fences and try to pull everything as a systemic decree. The Rays have seen some career best spans for several marginal players all at once to compliment the existing good players and patented pitching. But if you look at the splits, you'll see that pulling the ball results in consistently better OPS than up the middle or the other way.

But the likelihood that ACL tear Lewis is a plus defender in CF now is low. Maybe in a year.