Western SD Fan

Just realized that Topa went 1 1/3 innings. How could you Rocco!

Looks like we may get to see one of our old friends tonight in Emilo Pagan. I say he owes us a blown save or three.

I thought I remember them discussing early in this game that the Reds are the best team in the league in only swinging at pitches in the zone. Problem with most Twins pitchers is that they don't have swing and miss stuff in the zone. So if you make the Twins pitch in the zone, they are going to get killed or allow a lot of walks. Kinda like what we are seeing now.

Love those diving misses when they had no chance to catch the ball. Keep the damn ball in front of you! Likely cost the second run across.

Very few things would surprise me with this team this year. But thank you for the correction. 🙂

Duran likely down. Two straight days of 20+ pitches.

Fraley did his best Jose Canseco impression. Just didn't hit his head on the way out!

Lee may have just kept Abbot from having his second complete game in a row.

I'm the real glutton for punishment. Nothing is official yet but been planning on the Twins-Rockies series in Denver. Have a line in on possibly getting free tickets. At least there's more things to do in Denver than watch the baseball game.

To answer @Patzky, the last time Jeffers was involved in a Twins win was when he came in as a DH in the 5th inning for the only win they got against the Rangers. A full game win for Jeffers was the last win we got in West Sacremento.

I've said it since Sunday for those who want to get rid of Vazquez. I think that, as bad as Vazquez is hitting, he is hitting better than Jeffers is at the moment and can command the pitching staff. I'm not sure Festa has this meltdown with Vazquez as catcher.

For all those who don't like the Company man broadcasting, Plouffe is coming back to the booth for both the Milwaukee and Seattle series.

Did you get a booster on the strikeout parlay if he does it before the end of the 5th inning? 5 K's on Twins batters already. Looks good to make the parlay so far. Now it will depend on how itchy Rocco's trigger finger is to replace Festa.

Got your wish. New umpire in to call strikes. At least it wasn't Phil Cuzzi, he's not much better than who was currently behind the plate.

The idea of having Gasper catch instead of Vazquez is laughable at best. There's no guarantee Gasper's hitting will be any better than either Jeffers or Vazquez. Additionally, with the pitching staff suddenly getting a lot younger and precarious, it seems to have been very important to have Vazquez's leadership in helping control the pitching staff than ever before. Many of us on the daily game blogs have been screaming into the TV that Jeffers needs to be more proactive in going out and talking to the starters when they start to go off the rails, much like Vazquez will do. I don't see Gasper being able to control the pitching staff any better than Jeffers. In terms of recent offensive production, there hasn't been much of a difference between Jeffers and Vazquez. Gasper is only getting playing time at catcher if Jeffers or Vazquez goes down to injury or Vazquez is able to get traded to a team looking for his type of skills.

If you were going to tell me that the reinforcements coming off of injury were a week or two away, I would be much more optimistic. The fact that the quickest we can expect anyone coming back is at least a month away is much more problematic. The next 25 games up to the All-Star Break has a SOS of .519. Seems doable to try to tread water. The last 24 games we have just played (Cleveland rainout series to now), we are 10-14 and that has been against a SOS of .501. That gives me some pause as we are hoping to tread water against better competition than we have just finished playing and not performing very well with injuries piling up. Considering we are also depending on Keashall, who, in my memory, has yet to come back from an injury of this kind in his young career, and Lewis, who has just seemed lost this year, to jump right back in and produce at a pace that will be beneficial to the team. I can see this team finally coming back into form closer to Labor Day and being that hot and hungry team that nobody wants to play down the stretch. I fear that we will be too far out by that time to make any kind of playoff push and the FO will likely stand pat or do a soft sell by the trade deadline.

Reminder of Abbot's last performance against the Guardians: 9IP/3H/0ER/5K/1BB and held a 1-0 lead. One hope is that he threw 110 pitches in that outing.

I wouldn't argue one way or the other with Gasper vs Bride. Bride may provide better defense, but you're not having him out there because of his defense. Bride is just a RH bat to put into the lineup against lefties. Gasper can hit from both sides of the plate so that would negate that. As long as you're not suggesting he should start and should have the same number of appearances (pitching or hitting) as Bride, you've convinced me that we could replace Bride with Gasper.

Let's play this out like a bad Choose Your Own Adventure Book from some of our youths. If the Twins are/stay in contention: Who on the team is Gaspar better than in which he would deserve playing time over? Maybe Bride or Clemens? Although Keirsey Jr doesn't provide much offense, he is an improvement in speed and defense over any other possible call ups from St. Paul. Holland was just activated from the IL. Eeles is still finding his footing in AAA. Schobel and E-Rod is on the IL. McCusker is the OF version of Gaspar. If the Twins are out of contention: You are likely trying to trade players with expiring contracts or just outright releasing them to give them a chance to sign on with a playoff team. Those would be Paddack, Coulombe, Topa ($2M club option), Vazquez, Castro, France, Bader ($10M mutual). Others which would likely be released provided prospects in St. Paul are ready to play would be Bride and Clemens. Gaspar might be a placeholder in this situation if the prospects aren't ready yet. A dream would be someone who thinks that Correa will wake up his bat if he thinks he's playing for a WS contender and find a way to get that albatross off of our backs. Unfortunately, that fantasy would be like a leprechaun riding a unicorn carrying a pot of gold over the rainbow. In either case, it doesn't make sense to bring up Gaspar now.

Funny you would ask? If you assume 100% as the total PA and subtract out the walk rate and strikeout rate to get your balls put in play. Here are the results of the three batters that came up in the 10th in the order of BB%/SO%/BIP% (Balls in Play): Vazquez: 9.0/16.4/74.6 Jeffers: 11.3/20.7/68.0 Correa: 5.2/19.7/75.1 So, our theoretical best hitter in the inning (Correa) is only 0.5% better at putting balls in play than Vazquez and is better at not taking strikeouts than either Jeffers or Correa. So yes, while it's unlikely that Vazquez is going to hit that big home run, he was still a reasonable option to put the ball in play compared to the other batters that inning. Now if you wanted to PH for Vazquez, that's a different argument altogether.

A correction to the author of the article. Bride started the game yesterday at 3B and would have been unable to bunt in the 9th. Yesterday's bench consisted of Larnach, Ckemens, Keirsey Jr (who came in defensively for Wallner), and Buxton, who must not have been available to even pinch hit or field as I would have liked to see him PH in the 8th instead of letting Wallner flail into a double play OR PH for Vasquez in the 10th if you're not worried about the DH as stated in the article. This is about 4 or 5th on the list of calls that Rocco made yesterday that I would have an issue with, even if at all. First, SWR with 5 innings and only 53 pitches? Let's make sure the bullpen is burned out by the end of the month. A counter argument can be made they have the day off today, but I still say there's only so many bullets in these relievers arms no matter how many days off they get during the season. Again, Buxton must have been straight up unavailable yesterday, although I don't remember anyone saying that on the broadcast, just that he had been scratched, so I can be wrong here. If I remember correctly, the ball Altuve hit was way out of the zone so that's just bad luck unless you're saying that you just walk him. Finally, the 10th inning Vasquez AB. The only player other than Vasquez that may adjust his situational hitting at the plate is Ty France. I haven't seen Jeffers do it as often and certainly not double play Correa. As it turned out, Jeffers struck out and Correa feebly popped out.

You would have to have someone other than Castro as the Dodgers already have three players who have similar flexibility and are better than Castro in Mookie Betts, Kike Hernandez, and Tommy Edman. I'm also thinking the Twins are kind of in limbo. They have a high unmovable contract that limits what they can do financially (Correa) and too many players close to the end of their arbitration years, withing two years of FA (Jax, Duran, Ryan, Ober, Jeffers, and Larnach). Maybe they could use Rushing as part of a reload for next year. Another trick that the Dodgers like to do is to trade big contracts of underperforming players out and pay the other team to take them and reload. Paxton to the Red Sox last year comes to mind.

I'll be the one to defend the Vasquez at bat. It seems like the running strategy is for the away team to score more than one run in Manfred ball in an effort to try to end the game in that inning and so the home team doesn't get to tie it so easily and we continue with the game. Also, I've never seen Jeffers or Correa (the next two batters) ever change their batting approach to try to drive in the run even if the runner was on third base. In fact, I believe the only player that actually takes a separate approach at the plate is our friendly punching bag Ty France. Jeffers struck out and Correa hit a weak pop up. I have A LOT of decisions that I don't agree with Rocco within this game, but the Vasquez at bat was not one of them.

You're absolutely right as it's not Rocco's fault that they only score 6 runs in one of the most hitter friendly ballparks in MLB. I do start to wonder if the team has tuned him out and just collecting paychecks, specifically Correa and Buxton, who are supposed to be leading this team.

I've been consistent that I don't believe that Rocco can lead a younger team (Twins are the 8th youngest in MLB). His most successful was 2019 when it was mainly veterans playing. His attitude of just letting the players do what is comfortable to them doesn't always work out.