The Great Hambino

The ChiSox got mercy-ruled by the Marlins today. The race to the bottom might be, I don't know if competitive is the right word, but it certainly could be a race

MLB Network/Alex Avila had a nice breakdown of how Salvador's historically crappy pitch framing has actually put him in a really good position to see and make challenge calls on balls at the bottom of the zone. That overturn on Keaschall couldn't have been a better illustration of that

They need to hit CTRL+ALT+DEL on this game, this season, this franchise

Forecast for now looks like the thunderstorms might hold off until after the game and clear out of town by gametime tomorrow. Considering that the ChiSox have already postponed tomorrow's game, I think they're going to be pretty fortunate to have gotten this whole series in as scheduled. Hopefully this weather luck follows them back to MN and the home opener is merely dry and cold instead of wet and cold. Either way, I'll be giving the $2 pregame Twins Pils deal a test drive

Looks like Wallner and Jeffers swap spots, but everything else is the same compared to the other games vs lefties. Early on, it seems like Shelton uses a more static lineup than we've been used to. The following batters have occupied the same slot in the batting order for all their own starts: Martin(1), Clemens(1), Buxton(2), Keaschall(3), Larnach(7), Lewis(8), Lee(9), and Gray(9-only once, but technically still correct!) Since that has resulted in Clemens leading off to avoid making anyone else move around in the lineup (or God forbid, allow Martin to face a righty), I'm not convinced that's a good thing

I just saw something launch from Cape Canaveral a couple weeks ago My sister-in-law is a rocket scientist at NASA. My wife got leveled by food poisoning hours after we landed there and was down for two days. Fun trip!

The problems with roster imbalance certainly run deeper than any one player. I think a lot of the focus right now is on Larnach because they had the easiest off-ramp from him in the offseason, which makes his mere presence seem disappointing. So it's easy to see him as the cause of the logjam at DH/the corners in that sense.

Are you sure they don't desire horrible QB play???

The Rockies also recently addressed their biggest problem by breaking the chain of internal nepo-hires and bringing in someone in Paul DePodesta that can pull their baseball ops out of the stone age. The Hope-o-Meter is determined by direction as well as current standing. And after the Charlie Brown-esque pulling of the football that was the potential team sale last summer, the hopes of Twins fans are pointing in the opposite direction. Doesn't surprise me at all to see the Rockies above the Twins and a few other teams in that regard

I'm not surprised to see something like this go down as everyone figures out the process. I wonder if in the confusion, Helsley signaled it twice and Shelton only saw the second, later signal. To me, the only surprising aspect of all this is that the first manager ejected in such a fashion wasn't Aaron Boone

The Brewers have signed SS prospect Cooper Pratt to an 8-year, $51MM contract that includes a couple of club options. Pratt's the #62 prospect on MLB Pipeline (for reference, Jenkins is 12, K Culpepper is 50, and Emma is 71), isn't on the 40-man roster, and wasn't Rule 5 eligible until after the 2027 season. We've seen these kinds of deals before (like the Brewers recently did with Jackson Chourio): the player gets guaranteed financial security without having to slog through the pre-arbitration years, while the club gains a couple extra years of control during what would've otherwise been the player's free agency years. In the case of Pratt, it also eliminates any incentive for service-time manipulation. The Brewers are often cited as a budget-conscious club the Twins should emulate, and there's a good chance the Twins' front office is going to be desperately searching for any way to establish some goodwill with fans as the year moves on. The Twins have several potential candidates for this kind of extension. Should the Twins be offering this sort of deal to any of them? How much would a deal like this move the needle for fans looking for any sort of positive sign of ownership investment? Personally, I'd be pushing for a deal like this with Jenkins and/or Culpepper if I were Zoll. Maybe even in conjunction with their eventual call-up. Get the bobblehead factory on the phone and see if they can fill an order by September

Wow It's hard to be surprised by the futility of a franchise that had Trout and Ohtani together for six seasons without making the playoffs, but damn

Now I'm not exactly Professor Optimism when it comes to this team, but being below the Angels is pretty wild

I feel like we've watched this exact same game a zillion times the past few years. They've been trying to make a cake with a bad recipe and crappy ingredients, and they thought they could fix the problem by getting new measuring cups

Well, at least they got it over with quickly - was that even 2:15 of game time?

It's a shame rules exist that disincentivize teams from carrying the 26 best players in the organization on the major league club

Was just about to say it was nice to see a reliever go for more than an inning ... that'll show me

Wallner attacked that dying quail that dropped in with all the grace and agility of Happy Gilmore's boss

Exact same lineup they used in their other game against a lefty starter, if you're into that sort of thing

I know it's early, but Bell has yet to touch his 1B mitt this season, and he's the DH again today with Caratini at first

If your plan is to sacrifice defense in the name of a bat, and that lefthanded bat is batting seventh in a mediocre lineup against righthanded starters ... I think there might be a flaw in your plan.

I think it was as much - if not more - about lack of faith in the bullpen and taking an opportunity to limit its exposure where they can. If they wanted to avoid skipping Abel completely, they could've either stuck to the five-man order even with the extra days off (only four games in the first seven days after the end of spring training) or given Abel one start in St Paul while carrying an extra reliever for the first week. It's another way to steal innings away from the bullpen, and all else equal, I don't think anyone here thinks that's a terrible idea. They didn't get the result today, but they were closer to success than it might appear in the boxscore. All of Ober's runs allowed came on one pitch, and Abel's day looks very different if he can find a way to be more efficient with two strikes. Not a bad plan, but bad execution. It happens. You could certainly argue that they could've/should've pivoted when Abel was in trouble in the 7th. But Shelton's trying to make chicken salad out of ... suboptimal ingredients. I don't mind him trying to be creative, at least not until it becomes a bad pattern

I meant the mathematical repeating decimal I can't believe my deep-cut reference to a 20 year old viral video (Leeerooooy Jenkins FWIW) went unnoticed by everyone

I guess X = 3.33 Repeating, of course

I think they got away with one there