The Great Hambino

That's not good, historically he doesn't mix well with ice

A little disappointing not to get multiple innings out of any reliever, but I guess this decreases the chance we see Alcala tomorrow, so shrug

Buxton: if you're gonna keep trying to pull pitches on the outer edge ... you might as well hit em over the fence

There’s an element of luck with injuries, but you can’t chalk them all up to luck. Every team should expect some injuries to occur and plan accordingly. Where I think the Twins have been unlucky to a degree is the fact that the area where they were arguably deepest on paper coming into spring training (starting pitching) is also the area where they’ve needed to lean in their depth the least.

Pitchers throw harder and for fewer innings for the same reason that even the world record holder in the 400m dash can't beat a good high school team's 4x100m time Maxing out on velocity, followed by waves of relief pitchers doing the same, coupled with everyone throwing breaking pitches designed in a lab, has proven to be more effective than relying on one workhorse to go the full nine. And this isn't a new phenomenon. While the rate has increased a little more quickly recently, the average number of pitchers used in a game has grown fairly steadily over time (as shown here). In 1901 the average was barely over 1 per game. It crossed 2 per game in 1946, 3 per game in 1990, 4 per game in 2015. It peaked in 2020/2021 at over 4.4, but they put the reigns on that with the 3 batter rule and it has settled back to 4.28 per game this year. So yeah, pitchers don't go as long as they used to. They also used to have a dead ball, face lineups where half the hitters struggled to hit the ball out of the infield, and play in parks with dimensions so deep they'd have things like bullpens and monuments in fair territory. Pitcher usage has evolved as the game has evolved. This isn't new. And it's not like heavier reliance on more relievers had handicapped run prevention. Removing the steroid era and the parts of the 19th century where they were playing pseudo-fastpitch softball with no fielders' gloves, the era with the highest runs per game was the 1930s, when the average pitchers per game was still less than 2 and teams hadn't yet caught on that fresh relief pitchers are more effective than tired starters. Historically, we are in a below-average run-scoring environment. Having said that, I intentionally used the term "more effective" instead of "better". Some of the romance of baseball gets lost with this more efficient but less aesthetically pleasing approach. It's part of the dichotomy of analytics. Its use has increased effectiveness in all sports. But while in other sports it has made games more exciting (more passing, more going for it on 4th down, more going for two in football), it has arguably made the game more boring (three true outcomes, less small ball, the parade of interchangeable relievers). But the genie is out of the bottle. You can't make a rule telling pitchers "don't throw so hard." It would take extreme measures like limiting pitching staffs to 10 pitchers or requiring a starter to throw x pitches/innings/batters before a reliever can come in (must be replaced by a position player or lose your DH or something equally insane until the benchmark is reached). The chances of any of those things happening are nil. I don't know how to fix it, and I'm pretty sure baseball doesn't know how to fix it either.

The Ghost of Lopez Past vs the Ghost of Lopez Present

Your assignment: watch the Yankees and Guardians religiously for the rest of the season. We can pass the hat for MLB.tv if necessary

CLE WPA (batters and pitchers combined): 3.0 (0.4 batting, 2.6 pitching) MIN WPA: -2.4 (-2.8 batting, 0.4 pitching) That certainly checks out. I see team WAR as a sum-of-the-parts measure. I don't love fWAR for pitching (FIP leaves too much meat on the bone for my taste) but bWAR projects the Twins to be .500 while Cleveland is a 66 win team. Run differential tells a similar story. But one is much more than the sum of the parts, while the other is much less. We can all draw our own conclusions as to why

not sure why, but I'm Hungry Like the Wolf right now

After watching Correa full out sprint there, I'm not as convinced as before that he dogs it on the basepaths. He's just that slow

"Rocco and the staff keep showing up ... That's what I'm focused on" Without context (I'm not scaling that paywall), this doesn't exactly sound like a ringing endorsement. It also invites troubling parallels between the manager and the great Brick Tamland: "People seem to like me because I'm polite and I'm rarely late." The standard is the standard!

Correa used to have them, but they somehow ended up in the trash can

Twins new strategy to limit stolen bases: permanent defensive indifference

How's Hank Conger's glove at 2nd?

At least Varland had a clean throw to first. That qualifies as a highlight

That really sucks for him. On the bright side, he's now rocketed to the top of the list of Twins' offseason acquisition targets

Walk Nolan Jones so you can strike out Kwan. Just how you draw it up All 3 Ks with the curve

Oppo Eddy! This rain delay brought out the bizarro Twins

Hmmm. I don't know, sounds made up

Congratulations on being the first person to ever utter this phrase

Is there a reason he wasn't available yesterday?

Gasper, DUH

Fun fact I learned while trying to figure out if Clemens is currently slugging his weight: Every player with the first name Kody in MLB history is currently on the Twins' 40 man. All both of them

Oooh, I think France might've gotten away with admiring his handiwork there