BK432

We're not this bad. We're really not. That's not even the problem though. The problem is, if you're good, you just don't have a 32 game stretch like this. Just using last year's data as an example, the worst 32 game performance by a playoff team was the Rangers, going 11-21 from June 20 to July 29. It's just a 3 game difference, but it seems like a chasm. If you believe in the power of a hot start, Texas began last season 14-18, a far cry from our current 8-24. If you love baseball, you can just take it one day at a time. You can enjoy a Wednesday getaway game on a dreary day....if you try really, really hard. Pitching Matchup Tyler Wilson takes the hill for the O's. This is a starter we should be able to square up against and limit strikeouts.His K/9 sits at 4.9 this season and is even worse when you take into account appearances from last year. He's a relative soft tosser, sitting at about 90 MPH for his four-seamer. The fastball reportedly has good movement but he lacks a great second pitch; his slider and changeup are average or worse. Speaking of not striking anyone out, Phil Hughes is on the mound for the Twins. He's struck out 5 batters in last 3 starts combined. He's already walked 8 men, which is half of his 2014 total and his 2015 total. Put simply, Hughes has looked somewhat lost on the mound. The velocity and command isn't what it used to be, and he may struggle to keep Baltimore off the scoreboard today. Mauer At Leadoff I don't post a lot on Twins Daily, but when I do, it's clear that I am unabashedly a supporter of Mauer batting 1st. I'm so happy to see Molitor giving it a try. I think over the long haul Mauer will score more runs when he gets on (which has been a lot this season). Yes, I also believe batting order makes very little difference in most games, but the Twins need some hot starts. They are most likely to get them when Mauer gets on base ahead of guys who can knock him in. Trevor May to close? After Kevin Jepsen gave up another lead last night, the calls began anew (I guess they never really stopped) to remove him from the role and replace with him with May. I know this may be unpopular, but in my opinion, May was used near-perfectly last night. In fact, he may have been better used in the 7th. But in the 8th, had to burn through some tough hitters before handing the bottom of the order over to Jepsen in the 9th. If I'm Molitor, I want May facing the highest-leverage situation near the end of every game. No matter the inning. Trevor May to close? In the right situation, sure. But at the end of the day, keep using him to get good hitters out late. He has been an absolute bright spot in a .250 season thus far. Go Twins - let's end this losing streak and start a winning one! ---- LINEUPS Orioles LF Joey Rickard SS Manny Machado CF Adam Jones 1B Chris Davis DH Mark Trumbo RF Nolan Reimold 2B Jonathan Schoop 3B Ryan Flaherty C Caleb Joseph SP Tyler Wilson Twins DH Joe Mauer SS Eduardo Nunez 2B Brian Dozier 3B Trevor Plouffe RF Miguel Sano 1B Byung-Ho Park LF Eddie Rosario C Juan Centeno CF Danny Santana SP Phil Hughes

HRs will for sure skew that... And, I would argue batting first should help your scoring % go up as well. In the first inning, if you get on, it's with zero outs instead of possibly more. And, hitters 2-5 should be better than each quartet you get as you move down. Just a theory, but it would seem to me all things being equal, Mauer should score in a higher % of the occurrences he's on base in the 1 spot than anywhere else.

Yeah, I like this. More shifts and more inventive approaches to playing the game. If they made a rule to prevent shifts (or make it more difficult) it would be such an awful step in the wrong direction, IMO.

So yesterday, I said this: "Oh Tanner Roark, who are you? You're not a strikeout guy....." 15Ks later and Tanner Roark is suddenly Clayton Kershaw's long-lost son or nephew or something like that. In fact, the Twins struck out 18 times total yesterday which, in case you're new to baseball, is not good. But it's time to feel good because there's nowhere to go but up from yesterday. Wait, who's this Stephen Strasburg guy? Crap. It's the Sunday getaway game at 12:35 today, and the Twins bring Tyler Duffey to the hill in a spot start due to stiffness in Ervin Santana's back. We all know Duffey and how well he pitched last year after his promotion from Rochester. He came into the spring virtually guaranteed a rotation spot and asked to simply work on his changeup during the spring. The Twins then thanked him for his work with a demotion to AAA. Can't fault the Twins for asking Duffey to develop a 3rd pitch - to survive as a starter in this league, you need to keep batters on their heels. But how Duffey throws his fastball and his curveball can feel like four pitches; he's shockingly interesting as Jeff Sullivan noted at Fangraphs. He is going against an increasingly dominant-again guy in Strasburg. He flashed a near-11K/9IP last year and is off to a 3-0 start this year with a 1.25 ERA. He hasn't been quite that good - K rate so far is actually south of 9K/9 and he's benefitting from a .255 BABIP against - but clearly this is a guy who is a low-end ace wrapping up the series against our squad. Yesterday, we saw Miguel Sano play the hot corner and Max Kepler in CF. While it's fun to see the youngsters get playing time and see some defensive flexibility, there are some early concerns from what we're seeing in the defense overall. With a hat tip to Brandon Warne, give his fantastic article a read here. All analysis aside, this is the last Sunday game of April. Next week will mark the arrival of May and a near-entrance to summer. If it weren't raining today, you might be grabbing an icy lager, your headphones and your lawnmower and be giving your lawn its first haircut since last fall while listening to the game. Instead, grab a blanket and cozy up inside as the Twins try to avoid a sweep in the District. -- LINEUPS: Minnesota 3B Eduardo Nunez 2B Brian Dozier RF Miguel Sano 1B Byung-Ho Park LF Eddie Rosario SS Eduardo Escobar C John Ryan Murphy CF Byron Buxton P Tyler Duffey Washington RF Matt den Dekker CF Michael Taylor 2B Daniel Murphy 1B Ryan Zimmerman 3B Anthony Rendon LF Jayson Werth C Wilson Ramos SS Stephen Drew P Stephen Strasburg

What's up Twins Daily! This is coming at you from a Madison, WI hotel room. Unfortunately, I have a funeral to attend for a 35-year-old mother of 2 this morning which will be quite the sad event. Along with that, I won't be able to post the lineups when they come in, so I hope someone else can put that down in the comments. Thanks in advance. This all being said, we need some rays of light today. I hardly would suggest that a baseball result would make us all feel better, but maybe it's a small piece of a lot of other positivity. Right? Right. So we need a win today. Let's talk about how we're going to get that done. 1. Tanner Roark Oh Tanner Roark, who are you? You're not a strikeout guy, but you had some tasty stuff in your first 1.5 seasons in a Nats uniform. WHIP close to 1, good peripherals....the Nats had their next solid top-to-mid rotation guy. Then, inexplicably, they jerked you around in 2015 between the rotation and the 'pen, rendering you virtually useless in all rotisserie formats (I'm just guessing....). It seems to have had an effect. You're much more hittable now, and (SSS alert) you've started 2016 letting everyone on base. Wouldn't be shocking at all to see new special assistant to the GM Ron Gardenhire earn a base on balls today. Don't let the relatively low ERA fool you - this is a hittable guy. Lest we forget, even our own lovable Twins tagged Roark for 7 hits and 3 runs in 4 innings during the first of two exhibition games in the District earlier this month. 2. Phil Hughes We've had some encouraging signs with Hughes thus far. Sure, he's given up the two moonshots, but he's been missing bats and getting plenty of Ks. So while he hasn't been the greatest run preventer so far (ERA 4.42) the peripherals are telling us that this is closer to the 2014 version of Hughes than the 2015. And it's not like the Nats have anyone who can put the ball in the seats seemingly on a whim.....uh-oh. Well, let's take it one batter at a time. If Hughes can avoid trouble and pitch carefully to Harper, we could be looking at a solid start today. 3. Joe Mauer's Cool New Glasses Did you read Berardino's article from yesterday? Go ahead, give it a read, I'll wait.... ....Isn't that cool? Mauer looks like Mauer - maybe an older, post-peak Mauer....but nothing like the version we saw last year. And Buxton's using them too! It's only a matter of time before we have an army of Joe Mauers.....better buy more milk, Twins. Anyway, that's all I got today. I'll be able to listen to roughly the second half of the game, so hopefully by then we're coasting on a 5-zip lead. Cheer 'em on, Twins fans. The Lineups TWINS 2B DOZIER LF ROSARIO 1B MAUER 3B SANO RF ARCIA SS ESCOBAR CF KEPLER C SUZUKI SP HUGHES NATIONALS CF HEISEY 3B RENDON RF HARPER 1B ZIMMERMAN 2B DREW LF WERTH C RAMOS SS ESPINOSA SP ROARK

Any info on how many Stewart K'd?

For someone who has watched disappointingly few spring innings, this is very nice to hear. Let's hope this carries over to the real thing.

Joe Mauer played in 158 games last year. That is unlikely to happen again; first because that's a lot of games for any player. But second, it's quite likely that the Twins aren't a worse team when Joe isn't in the lineup, or at the very least, they aren't significantly worse. So yeah, I think there will be several games this season that Park will man 1B, and Joe will either DH or take the day off.

This (and related ideas) are worth a whole other thread, but I do believe that teams will start to look at how the build pitching staffs in the next 3-5 years and there will be some changes. I don't think your idea is crazy - it's not the way I would do it, but it's an option. Especially if in the next CBA they get an extra roster spot or two (or taxi squads) I think you may start to see smaller rotations, more frequent starts for SPs but less pitches and bigger bullpens. We shall see.

Surprised with the lack of comments on Lamonte Wade. He barely cracks most people's top 30 but at age 21 he excelled immediately. He was a little old for E-Town but OBPd .418 with some power. That doesn't happen by accident. It will be very interesting to see what happens this year, hopefully advancing to Fort Myers. I love this bullish ranking on him. I fell in love with him reading his profile in the prospect handbook.

Fangraphs is always very, very good - I highly recommend to all doing some daily reading there. As for this article, it's well done and it's fun. There hasn't been much analysis about Tyler Duffey and his modest success - it's mostly been ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ So - good read. Thanks for linking, Seth. Hard to argue with anything. I hope the curve continues to be elite-ish and he develops enough of a pitch mix. Encouraging signs are there...

Probably was the Braves' strategy come to think of it....

Yeah - Stewart gets piled on, somewhat fairly I suppose but I have to believe there's a lot of good there that the fans just don't see. But this statement....man. It's like how an 11 year old would evaluate their team. I really hope he doesn't actually believe what he's saying.

This isn't really true, as Nicksaviking said. The economics of a future deal change the closer you get to arbitration/FA. And, teams delay the start of service clock all the time. I hate it, personally. Anything that takes money out of the players' pockets and keeps it in the owners' is disappointing. But it is the current rule and I seriously doubt it would "put a damper on future negotiations."

I've said it before here, but provided Mauer doesn't go even further into the tank, he's my #1 hitter until Buxton is ready. Mauer Dozier Sano Park Plouffe Rosario Escobar Murphy/Suzuki Buxton When Buxton is ready: Buxton Mauer Sano Park Dozier Plouffe Rosario Escobar Murphy/Suzuki You could also entertain leaving Dozier at #2 and letting Mauer slide to spot 5 or 6. I'm not going to personally recommend that until I see some at-bats this year. But we may be close to that point.

100% unequivocally yes. But it is fun to debate

I guess my response would be that we have nowhere near the information needed to make that sort of jump (that it's a bad deal). If it is truly that bad I sure hope we have someone with journalistic skills do an investigation. I read pretty much every thread on here, and I have never seen anyone make the argument that we can't spend one dime more on payroll than we currently are because of our TV deal. The Twins certainly can spend more money on payroll than they are right now. And I think they probably will as the potential contending core advance to their collective prime. However, I think it's safe to say that our budget likely will never have the top-end limit that some larger markets will due to TV deals that are more lucrative. That's just reality, I suppose. And, I don't think that makes me a Pohlad Pocket Protector (whatever the heck that is) to say that.

Thanks for sharing this - interesting read. There seems to be a lot of information missing from this though. I don't know what a Pohlad Pocket Protector is so I can't really comment on that. I mean, I know it's a Common Man thing, but I've never really encountered anyone who really fits his bit.

God this is so sensical -- I'm crying from joy. Thank you, Riverbrian.

I have not heard it is under market value; I have heard that the Twins got less because cable penetration in this market is so low.

I'm buying the Indians finally this year. We'll see if they score enough runs to prove me right. I will admit, I have a huge bias to pitching....

Why? I mean, it's possible it didn't, but it's possible it did. None of us know, I suppose. I'm just curious for your reasons in thinking there was no affect whatsoever lingering from his concussion.

Ha! This is probably true.

I actually didn't have a question, but I think we're both saying the same thing.

http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/how-corey-dickerson-fits-the-rays-and-the-league/ Not a Twins article, per se, but check out the stat in the middle of the article - the Twins and the Rays last year had two of the three seasons in the last 14 seasons with a swing rate increase of 3% or greater. I've been thinking about this is a bit lately, and I wonder if the Twins (and the Rays) are on to something here. With K rates rising meteorically in this league (and the strike zone expanding) it may pay to be a bit more aggressive on hittable pitches rather than wait around and have the count build against you. Just some food for thought, I guess.