Western SD Fan

Good thing you willed that walk into existence.

I'll definitely have a helping of crow with France. All three are basically on prove-it deals as Bader has a mutual option for next year. I think this says more about the rest of the team, especially the position players, needing to get back to expectations. Let's hope this winning streak finally starts warming up the offense before the pitching eventually cools off from being elite.

Good win for us. Almost depressing with a six-game winning streak that we can't move any closer in the standings. The entire AL Central won tonight, even the White Sox!

Actually, I was surprised that there wasn't a story about how hot Baldelli's seat should be with the recent firing of Shelton by the Pirates since Shelton was his bench coach in 2019.

They haven't announced anyone warming in the bullpen so I'm assuming that Paddack will at least start the 8th.

I could see Paddack going batter by batter with Coulombe warmed up to finish the game or maybe having Duran come in the middle of the ninth to limit his pitch count.

I think he finally realized that this is the last year of his contract and needs to perform to get another contract next year.

Unless the Twins are in very serious playoff contention, I expect them to move Castro and France by the trade deadline provided someone will trade for them. That may give Julien a small window of time prior to when Keaschall returns provided he can make any improvements in St. Paul. Miranda may have the same window. If McCusker is still punishing AAA pitching, he may be given the call-up over Miranda even though that would require a 40-man roster move.

Just another traditional Twins draft pick. Strong power, weak defense. Only thing we are missing is when he's getting injured, then he would be the prototypical Twins draft pick.

I'm glad we didn't have to find out about whether the contact play was on.

Julien is an example of a complete systems organizational failure. Julien was an 18th round draft pick, which in of itself hard enough task to make the majors. Julien basically had one tool, OBS with an incredible eye at the plate. They didn't prepare him for non-ABS umps where strikes can be called 2-3 inches outside the zone, especially for a rookie or young player. As we are starting to see with our other "stars" (Lewis, Miranda for example), that development didn't spend hardly any time in the minors on fielding. Part of the reason that Correa or Buxton continue to get a pass is their impressive defense. Bader keeps getting opportunities due to his defense. Even Wallner or Larnach (when not injured) have decent enough defense to stay in the lineup even when their bat is scuffling, which happens to all hitters at some point during the year. I agree with @amjgt that Julien still has some developmental hope vs Clemens or Bride. Julien just needs to get reps, either for a future trade or to come back to the club. The other part, whether the numbers prove it out or not, is that on appearance, both Clemens and Bride provide better defense than Julien. If all hitting at the moment is similarly bad, you take the players with the better defense.

It's amazing how actually playing the games can change perspective. I went into the week figuring a 3-4 week would have been a success considering the way the team has been playing this season thus far and the teams they were facing this past week. After the week, it's almost disappointing as we could have had 5 or 6 wins this week. Sometimes in the end, you have to remember what your expectations were and be happy with the results no matter how it happened. With that being said, we have 6 of the next 9 games against the scuffling Orioles and may well define how either team's season will go. Here's hoping this weekend builds some fight in this team going forward!

And Cleveland has had their secret weapon for years in developing pitching: pitching coach Carl Willis vs our litany of pitching coaches over the years.

That could very well be as I don't remember that, but that doesn't mean it's not true. What is true is that he took the job with the understanding that he would be on Twins.TV (like this year) and was pumped about the lack of blackouts and hopefully more eyeballs. Then the rug was pulled out for one more TV deal and an extra few dollars.

I almost feel sorry for Cory Provus. He could have been working for the Big Ten Network and maybe actually watching meaningful games.

Good thing the games are in Boston. Still have time to hit the bars tonight.

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.