AceBee

It is frustrating for sure. I wish they had managed to be creative and somehow keep Sonny Gray in the rotation last year even working with the financial constraints, Instead, last two years have seen FO follow same pattern in early 2010 days where nondescript pitchers the key FA additions. Wonder how much of the frustration should extend to other support staff who for some reason failed to see signs of injuries to traded players (like Sam Dyson or Mahle) and also in terms of managing injury-prone players. Royce Lewis looks like a bobblehead figurine who is trying his hand at sprinting and inevitably getting every time he runs bases when 'healthy'. What's more concerning is that this philosophy extends itself to playing philosophy on the field itself where we keep doing the same things over and over again and expecting different results.

Agreed. They should have also tried it in second game of Seattle series (probably the start of their downward spiral) in the extras with Clemens at the plate and also on Saturday in a tied game after Buxton got HBP followed by a walk with Castro at the plate (I am pretty sure there are other instances but this two come at the top of my mind). As a fan, this has been my frustration over last few years - for some reason or the other, Twins are not inclined or willing to try and manufacture runs. Its annoying when we get beat in a close game against teams (Guardians would be the prime example here which made our commentator wonder aloud how the Twins regularly lose in 8th and 9th inning in Cleveland) who walks, steals base, gets advanced to third, and come home on a sac fly. I would put 'not bunting', 'not advancing the runners via a productive at bat', and 'reluctance to steal' all in one big bucket of frustration. It is anecdotal that the Seattle game earlier this month I mentioned above was preceded by the thrilling extra innings win a day before where the Twins seemed to follow the philosophy of being aggressive and try to score runs only to be followed by same passive approach waiting for streaky lineup to piece consecutive hits together or hit a HR. 'Do not want to give the opposition a free out' seems to be the common reasoning behind unwillingness to bunt but that logic fails when most of our home runs seem to be of solo variety (need to confirm stats on this) and/or our free runners wait on the bases only to watch batters strike out, pop up, or GIDP. It is not at all surprising that Twins set record of 10+ extra inning losses a few years back and in general seem to be fish out of the water in extra innings games with ghost runners.