Western SD Fan

The question trying to get answered here is what to do when a team does not have enough capable pitching for a five-man rotation, or in Prielipp's case, a need to shut him down or limit his innings. People criticizing the idea of load managing Prielipp seem to forget that even Stephen Strasburg was shut down for the playoffs in 2012 when coming back from Tommy John surgery. A more serious problem is what to do with a group of pitchers that aren't good enough to get through a ML lineup more than once AND don't have a good enough repertoire to get ML batters out in a high leverage bullpen role. The days of players like Oliver Perez or Terry Mulholland, which were capable of giving you 1-2 innings or 5-6 innings depending on what your team needed, are gone. Bullpen specialization has cut the swingman out of the bullpen with the closest currently in the majors being Sean Manaea. The final issue is from a team standpoint. If one of these bulk pitchers gets shelled in a game, do you leave him out there to die or do you ruin your bullpen for a week to try to get through the game. If you are going to have a member of your bullpen down for three days, the rest of your bullpen better be good in order to cover that shortcoming. The Twins do not have that bullpen. The bullpen, by ERA, is the worst in baseball. The Twins have to do something now because they don't have the capable pitchers left to fill out a rotation. I certainly wouldn't want to call an emergency a lifestyle choice and that is what this idea is ultimately suggesting.

I think you could copy and paste this for many of the current inexperienced pitchers on the staff. Morris, Adams, Paredes, and even Prielipp would fit this definition. Some, or all of them, should likely be sent back down to St Paul when Abel, Sands, and Ober are ready to come off of the IL. These pitchers eventually being sent back down doesn't necessarily mean that they didn't do a good job. It is more of a just a learning curve that will need to be addressed before coming back up and hopefully be the pitcher that they had expected. I am in the optimist camp with these pitchers although it doesn't look good now. I would rather have these guys up and in the bullpen than when the next Luis Garia pops up on the waiver wire.

We will likely have to wait for the pregame show to hear anything on Buxton. I fear the worst where he will need an IL stint and are just waiting to make that move when they go on the road. Cameron did shut them down early in the season. I also think since we have not been facing LHP every other day, like we did earlier in the season, we are back to the old Twins facing a LHP. The ghost of Jamie Moyer could still get 4 innings and twice through the batting order.

It became clear that Outman had lost all confidence in Shelton. That was made clear by having Clemens attempt to play CF in recent games. The open 40-man spot could be for a pitcher that needs to be signed. As mentioned in other threads, it is not likely that a decision on Buxton will be made until the travel day on Monday and won't be made official until Tuesday. This extra 40-man roster spot allows them to put Buxton on the IL and promote someone such as Fedko to take the 40-man spot without having to send anyone down or DFA anybody. Culpepper likely stays down until either 1) Kreidler, Arcia, or Gray are so bad that they need to be off the roster, or 2) they get Keaschall and Lewis back up to scratch before introducing another player into the mix. As for Lewis, I had hoped for another few games under his belt at the new positions prior to getting the call back up the majors. If you factor in the reports that Lewis worked with Morneau yesterday at first base, it may have come down to his assessment of Lewis's play at 1st that made the final decision to bring him back up. Lewis's assessment at second base today was ok but will still need work. He made one nice play and botched a throw on a double play ball allowing the runner to go to second. Not all that uncommon from a second basemen. It does show that he is unsure about his footwork and that additional reps will be needed. As someone else has suggested, it may give them the clearance to move Keaschall back down to St Paul for a mini reset if Lewis can prove he can hold the position at the major league level.

I would agree that it is hard and that they are trying. This is more of a baseball philosophy issue on why no one does situational hitting anymore, except Kyle Isbel it seems. Two strike situational hitting used to be practiced and preached. There's a reason that players like Salvador Perez, Miguel Cabrera, or most of the Guardian batters (at least against the Twins) seem to be able to get the ball to the bat and put it in play. They took what the pitcher was giving them. They still may have been out, but you could see that they were attempting to put the ball in play instead of trying to hit the walk off home run.

Lewis striking out is lower on the list of things I'm upset about on why the Twins lost. 1. Orze should have thrown to first for the easy out of Rojas. Witt doesn't come up to bat if Orze does his job. 2. Shelton should have walked Witt if it he had to come to plate. I understand Pasquantino was having a decent day, but he is not their best player, take the bat out of their best player and make someone else beat you. 3. Bell and Martin strike out and not even attempt to move the runner over. If they take a different approach at the plate, they could have been able to get Clemens in from 2nd. 4. Only here I may give Royce some blame for his strikeout. The pitcher did a good job making Royce lean out over the plate with his pitch sequencing. Balls on the outside part of the plate has been a Royce problem for a long time so getting him cognizant of that and then throwing a front door cutter is just good pitching. The best hitters will foul it off. Royce is not one of the best hitters.

My mistake. Laweryson currently warming up.

Adams is the freshest arm left in the pen. Next up would likely be Gomez. Hopefully it doesn't get that far.

Dangerous challenge. Never know if you will need it in the bottom of the 9th.

On a related note, the Saints go on the road next week to Toledo so they shouldn't have to take anyone on their taxi squad to Detroit.

Hard to say, especially with the 1:10 start tomorrow. Pretty safe to say he likely isn't playing tomorrow regardless. I hope they act quickly, whatever they decide to do. I could also see them try to wait out Buxton through the weekend and see if he improves before their day off and travel to Detroit.

Radio guys made the obvious comment that the bullpen is in flux as they comment that the phone should be ringing in the bullpen and that Hawkins needs to answer it. What if Hawkins doesn't want to answer it, huh?

I would say that the length of the inning may take out Zebby from pitching the 7th. If that's the case, we need more runs to survive the bullpen tonight.

Royals had to give us back the errors we loaned to them last night.

A quality start! Now with 81 pitches thrown, do they dare let him go out for the 7th? I was going to say yes, but with two lefties coming up and now a tie game from LEE!! Maybe they try to bring in the lefty Banda or Rogers for the 7th.

75 pitches. Getting closer to that elusive quality start. Far cry from what was proclaimed earlier in this game.

Mendez and Gonzalez are on the 40 man. Fedko is not. Wallner certainly has not deserved a chance to come back up yet.

And the rest of them are relievers. My ultimate point is that the big-league club has drained the AAA club of anyone that could get the ball over the plate for any sort of length. There is nobody left in St Paul to replace Zebby in the rotation. We traded the last one that could have to the Blue Jays this week.

Here is the in-game box score from St. Paul. Please explain to me who is currently better than Zebby. Castro? Couldn't get out of the 3rd inning. CJ Culpepper? Funderburk?

Still haven't heard a reasonable proposal on who you would have pitch instead of Zebby. Your suggestion of a HS pitcher is ridiculous at best and sabotage at worst. We have lamented all season about Bailey Ober not even having a 90-mph fastball. Your suggestion is to have a HS pitcher that barely throws what Ober does without the off-speed pitches to keep MLB batters off balance?

Let's play state the obvious: 1. Zebby has options so they can send him back to St Paul. 2. More importantly, who do you propose will start in his place? We witnessed the bullpen game last night and that was a dumpster fire and there is no way on earth that any sane team would do two bullpen games back-to-back. Even the Twins aren't that crazy.

This inning in St Paul has been a test of Royce's defensive chops at 1st. Tested with a bunt single to him that he fielded properly, but Funderburk didn't get over to 1st to cover the bag. Next play was a hot smash to him. He fielded it, fed it to 2nd for the double play. Culpepper bounced the relay throw back to Lewis and he couldn't corral it allowing the run to score. Some tough plays and there is some more footwork to do.

Ink blots

Nice pick by both Culpepper at short and Lewis at 1st.

I don't know about Topa. The sister site to this, Jays Centre, seemed excited to get SWR back and hoped that they could fix him and turn him back into a serviceable starter.