Western SD Fan

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.

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.