Western SD Fan

At this point, I don't care when Royce comes back. It may be more advantageous to drag it out and try to reclaim an arb year like they did to Buxton years ago.

This seems like a stupid question, but do they teach fielding in the minors in this organization? It seems like no one is capable of getting a glove on the ball. I'd be curious if Ron Washington would like to manage the Twins, at least he could get something out of the infielders.

Another choke job by the offense. TC Bear needs to give them back their normal bats. The fungo bats they're currently using isn't working right now.

At least Bader and France are taking advantage of their current opportunity to parlay it to a trade with a contending team in July. 🙂

First, if you want to blame Rocco for not leaving Paddack in when he is actually pitching well, I will agree. Rocco is so concerned about wanting to start his relievers with a clean inning that he forgets that there's only so many pitches in these guys at any given time. If I remember correctly, it was stated on an earlier broadcast that Jax ASKED to be moved into lower-level situations to get his confidence back instead of Rocco making the move. I missed if Perkins had made any comments about that or what that says about Jax's mentality. Most high-leverage pitchers, from my memory, want the ball late in the game and they have to have the ball pulled from their cold, dead hands even if they are underperforming like Jax was at the time. I guess I'm suggesting I wouldn't know what to do with a good pitcher who is in his own head at the moment but to keep him in a medium-high leverage situation (7th) vs a high leverage situation (8th), but that's why I don't get paid to be the manager. I did think about Coloumbe at the time, but at the moment, I didn't think it was a bad move by Rocco.

I was hoping when we were jailing the TC Bear, it would be because he keeps switching the bats in the clubhouse with fungo bats and that explains the lack of offense this season.

To further the point with @Riverbrian, even many of the most internally developed teams (i.e. Rays) consistently bring in veterans to fill out their roster. In reviewing who has or had been their current 26-man roster as posted on Baseball-Reference, I count 20 of 33 players that have played games in 2025 for the Rays that have played games for another organization prior to being signed by the Rays. The list is: Jansen, Morel, Diaz, Caballero, Rortvedt, DeLuca, Montes, Palacios, Littel, Pepiot, Rasmussen, Fairbanks, Bigge, Clevinger, Uceta, Englert, Rodriguez, Orze, Boyle, and Sulser. If you want to argue that some of these players only played a few games for another team and then signed (or was traded) to the Rays, fine. But the point is that over half of their roster has played games for another team at some point in their career and this is supposed to be the team that specializes in developing their own players. The idea of being able to develop your own 40-man roster is insane. Let's look at the current situation at 1B. The Twins sign Ty France, which to be honest, I was not a fan of as even I had wanted them to use in-house options and save the money to spend elsewhere. As it has turned out, France has been the best option at 1B that we have had this year. Kirilloff is now retired, Julien has games at 2B and seems to not have decent defense at 1B, Castro is banged up and better served elsewhere, and in the minors, you have Severino who seems to have stalled or Sabato who has been a disaster of a draft pick ever since he was drafted. As the season has progressed, who would you suggest internally should be playing first other than Ty France Every team has developmental strengths and weaknesses. Bringing in Falvey and Levine, we were supposed to shift to pitching oriented development as quality pitching (other than catchers) is the hardest position to develop in the majors. That focus will leave holes in developing your position players, be it hitting or fielding (as we can clearly see in the current style of play). If you want to make the suggestion that small and mid-market teams need to develop their own star players, I can agree with you on that point. I would guess that small and mid-market teams' fans are more in tune with their minor league players as they need to lean on their minors much more than large-market teams.

This. Idk if it will make a difference at all, but when the Mariners fired Scott Servais the team went 21 -13 the rest of the way and although they still missed out on a playoff spot. They played competitive baseball for the rest of the year. Something more than the Twins have seen in 3 of the last 4 years.

I agree in principle that any owner shouldn't expect to run a business (even a city institution such as a sports franchise) in the red forever. But if they cannot competently run a team anymore, they should have put the team on the market 12 to 18 months ago while everyone was still excited about the trajectory of the team.

I’m going to give one additional thought to be considered. The Twins season was the first sports season to come out of COVID but the draconian COVID restrictions the state of MN put on them killed a summer where they could have been the only game in town with a lot of pent up energy after being locked down for over a year. I start here due to the excitement of the 2019 season. Then the COVID 2020 season. After two years of being locked out of going to a game, then we see the tragedy unfold. I see this team trending in a similar fashion as many of our beloved TV and movie shows. They have lost most of the casual fans and quickly losing the die hard crowd. Eventually anger turns to apathy and then it’s over. I hope here will be interest back soon as I love following this team, but I don’t think it will change until ownership changes, regardless of what a new ownership might do.

Julien studied under the Jon Lester school of fielding. Don't trust the fact that you can throw the ball to the man on first.

Now to see what's left of the team for tomorrow's rubber game.

And the meltdown begins.....

I don't see attendance improving much for tomorrow. Tomorrow may be an important game for future attendance as the game will be broadcast free over the air on Fox 9 for people who live in the Twin Cities Area. If they play like they played tonight, that may end up sealing the season's worth of attendance.

Rocco: "The hitting coaches are doing a great job." - Ummmm, are we watching the same game?

I assume they would give Tingler the job, which is a worse version of Rocco. Still can't believe we could have had Tito if they only would have pulled the trigger on Rocco.

Can Gaspar develop into the second coming of Willians Astudillo? A player that doesn't belong on the roster that becomes a fan favorite on a bad team.

It seems like they have forgotten the last step in the process and that is to parlay this pipeline into trades that bring back players or prospects that will continue to have a competitive window in the future.

I just say there has to be something in Minnesota because Lance Lynn and Martin Perez were cured of "Twinsitis" as soon as they departed.

Wait?!? What is the sorcery? A relief corps is capable of having a high leverage pitcher go multiple innings?

It has to be sad for starting pitchers to know that if they even give up a single run that they are probably going to be tagged with the loss. Then our resident Swedish Meatballer comes in to pitch in Alcala. I wonder if Rocco is going to demand PFP tomorrow morning?

You could have thrown a dart at any position player with options left and demoted them to St. Paul with maybe the exception of Wallner or Keirsey. Miranda just happened to be the most blatant and obvious of all of them. I agree that Gasper should have been DFA'd instead of sending Miranda down, but it's not a big loss either way at this point. All of this is still flushing the system of players where they spent all their development years on trying to get everyone to hit HR's instead of just trying to put the ball in play and work on fundamentals (See Austin Martin). As for firing Rocco, I don't expect it to happen as that would just create more turmoil when the Pohlads are trying to sell the team, and you would have a new interim manager basically with no hope of staying with the team after the season. My 30 seconds of research also suggests that the Twins have never fired a manager midseason. Only Gene Mauch resigned during the 1980 season, and I don't consider that a firing. We can dream, but it's only a dream.

Having Connor build up as much as possible even if his ultimate landing spot is in the bullpen would be the best. If (or when) he makes the MLB roster, he will likely be in a low leverage situation anyway and will probably need to give multiple innings. We have seen this before with Sand and Varland, as well as going back further in history with Latroy Hawkins. He'll first have to prove he can get MLB hitters out, then will likely get sent back down to AAA to tweak pitches or even cut down his pitch repertoire to his plus pitches and then get recalled and see where he will play in the bullpen. I'd like to see the Twins organization finally flex the best ability any player can have: Availability. If he is healthy, he will make it soon enough.

Nic Lentz behind the plate must be late for his KC BBQ outing tonight.

While we are waiting for Correa to GIDP, separate subject, I do like Latroy Hawkins as a change of pace commentator from Morneau. UPDATE: Correa struck out instead of GIDP.