mikelink45

Too bad all our rejects can't rejoin each other in one good pen just to rub our nose in it.

Oh how I wish your dreams would come true. I am afraid my fears are on my blog, but I can appreciate what you wrote - I hope the FO reads it. https://twinsdaily.com/blogs/entry/11281-%7B%3F%7D/

This is not rebuilding - it is prolonged agony. A rebuild from what - an accidental year that got us blown out of the play offs, Since 2010 we have lost 90 or more 5 times. We have been above 500 twice. We have averaged being 22 games behind for the last 8 years. We have seen attendance go down 7 out of 8 years. We have been 4 or 5th place 5 times and second 3 times - does second in the Central count? We have been in limbo or purgatory. Some teams get better when they get worse because of their draft place, but we always have to wait two years - now it is for Lewis and Kiriloff. We rank number 16 in OBP, 19th in Slugging, 18 in OPS - we are 94 in OPS+ and 23rd in HRs, but only 16 in Ks! If you have lots of Ks I thought that the theory was you would have lots of HRs. What did I miss? Of course if you do not hit the long ball - there is always speed - we ranked 28 in SB. So pitching! Here the BP gives us position number 23 in saves. But good news we are up to 16 in Ks! And we rank #20 in ERA+. But maybe we can just keep them off base with ground balls and great fielding - nope. We are #24 in WHIP. Our starters gave us a +2 WAR ranking us 15 - middle of the pack - at least it is better than the rank of #25 in RP WAR (-4.5) In wins above average by position we rank #20 overall at - 6.3 WAR. #18 in total pitching WAR (-2.8) which is brought down by our Bullpem ranking #25 at (-4.7). NOTE THAT ALL THESE RANKINGS ARE FOR MLB, NOT JUST THE AL. In non-pitching we rank number 19. So go around the diamond: Catcher 16 (-0.6) 1st Base 24 (-1.6) who wanted to bring Mauer back? 2nd Base 21 (-0.7) SS 24 (0.0) Despite the fact that Eduardo Escobar played there half the year and had 2.2 WAR while he did. What does that say about Polanco? 3B 23 (-0.7) LF 7 (1.3) There is no minus! Way to go Rosario. CF 17 (-0.3) RF 10 (0.3) Not great, but no minus. DH 27 (-0.8) My god, we can't even get a plus from DH? All of those from Baseball Reference - https://www.baseball-reference.com/leagues/MLB/2018.shtml So what are we rebuilding? We have 40% of a rotation, one decent reliever, two OFs who hold their own and a catcher that is improving. Yes I am a skeptic. All our deals, our drafts, our promise has amounted to an 8 year purgatory. Tell the FO to call me when we have at least half of a really good team. In all of MLB we were in 19th place last year, 30 games behind the Red Sox, In AL only we were number 9 and five of the six teams behind us were tanking. Even in just our division we were 13 GB! And Cleveland ranked number 5 in the AL and you know how well they did in the playoffs.

We are not going to win next year so an extended contract is a must, otherwise I love the idea. Who do we give up? Kiriloff and Lewis would be a big price, but it might require one of them. Can Lewis play 3B - trade Sano and Rooker with Kepler a possible add on or replacement for one of them. Do not mortgage the future. In baseball one player does not make that much difference. All the money that Harper is going to get and he could not take the Nationals to the promised land anymore than the player of the century - Trout - can make winners out of the Angels. We need 1B, SS, 3B, starting pitching and bullpen. Goldschmidt can cure one need, but if it is only for one year, we lose.

I keep reading that the FO was handcuffed by keeping Molitor. My BS meter rings everytime I read it. No they were not. They hired all the coaches around him and now have left many of them go. They signed Belisle and Giminez and Wilson. They struck out on the free agents. They made some good minor league trades, but we lost Escobar. Nothing prevented them from making many moves and they made some, but not enough. Molitor was one piece. Tell me where the greatness was in the bullpen, tell me where the runs were when we needed them. A few bunts did not eliminate them, in fact with all the shifts I say bunt like crazy. Molitor tried the opener and other strategies, but when your best is Moya or Mejia that is not going to do it. When you have already burned out Hildenberger do you want him to do the same to Rogers? Who else do you trust. Molitor was not deserving of MOY nor is he deserving of the constant grumbles and blame.

This is depressing. I guess my Thanksgiving paper on what I am most thankful for will not be Pohlad, Levine, Falvey, the Twins...Way to be a Grinch. I want to hear that we are going to be smart and we are going to compete.. In fact, if we take the goofy money that Machado and Harper will get and invest it in a lot of secondary FAs we will compete and we will be better. The Yankees moved on Paxton - I would have offered Sano and hope that they read all his early press clippings. This is a terrible situation - not tanking, not winning, what are we doing? Oh ya - we are hiring new coaches. Big deal. Is there any evidence that coaches really make that difference in MLB? Thank you Judy, at least one person is refreshing and honest in this winter of our discontent.

Here is one stat that everyone in baseball needs to understand - Rosenthal writes in the Athletic - "coming off its lowest season attendance since 2003, the league cannot dismiss the need to improve the competition between clubs." And I would add that perhaps we had better go back to what did work. Tanking is not adding to the enjoyment, strike outs and home runs are not elevating the excitement. Time to see what works and emphasize the best of baseball.

Good questions and good observations. Maybe we can speed up the game with a headset on both catcher and pitcher and the pitching coach can call for the pitches and locations. Football figured out the microphone and speaker in their violent game. Imagine how fast the game would be if we did not have Kimbrel with his ostrich stance or any other pitcher standing there and staring at the catchers crotch.

I am not worried about any of those not added. I do not see that they team has much faith of expectations with them so for their sake it would be better if they could move on. Right now the minor leagues do not seem to be part of the FO picture for 2019.

Time to respond to my own blog - remember all the stat heads that came down on Suzuki as Minnesota catcher. Now he has signed with the Nationals - two year contract after being the starting catcher for Atlanta. So what is the stathead evaluation for this and why does everyone else want him?

We all hope it works! Even when we are skeptical.

So the computer guys told us this would be smart, we see the trend and we jump on it. Use relievers every day! Let's look at a couple simple stats that are within my grasp. 162 games - average reliever use per game now 3 - put in an opener and it might be 4, but lets not worry about those games where Giminez came in or other extended innings. Just 162 games times three - 486 relief appearances. So we carry 13 pitchers, 5 are starters. 8 relief pitchers divided into 486 means 60 relief appearances per pitcher - forget those who are so valuable that they are out more often. Check out historical use on Baseball Reference - https://www.baseball-reference.com/bullpen/Pitcher#Historical_Usage and you can see the various trends in pitching from the every other game starters of the 1800s to the four man rotation and lots of complete games to five man rotation and a growing requirement for relief pitchers. The more pitchers the less they are used and the more relief we need. Tommy John surgery increases, pitchers are using pitch counts but no one knows whether it is the pitch count or the frequency of pitching that matters. How did Warren Spahn and Juan Marichal and all those great pitchers survive? Must be some stat there that can answer. Trends have always made us smarter. Remember when Coca Cola came out with New Coke and soon the non-stat drinkers rejected it as well as Crystal Pepsi and its clear cola. Or maybe your family had an Edsel - talk about a car of the future! Or more recently we had Netflix divide into Netflix and Quikster - don't remember - understandable. The streaming only branch was flushed down the stream. There was the Apple Newton that was an instant success followed by an instant failure, it just did not deliver, kind of like the sixth man in your bullpen rotation. Then there is that weight reducing fat - Olestra - that Lays used to produce Wow chips! In one year the FDA called a halt, of course the customers did too when they learned that the way that they lost weight was because it induced diarrhea. Kind of like changing pitchers 3 times in an inning induces a coma. Two giants sat down with their marketing stat heads and combined to produce a soda bottle product called Mazagran - coffee tasting soda - within the year the stats called sales numbers forced this Starbuck/Pepsi product off the market. And it would have been an excellent opener to start your day. I will not even comment on the attempt by Colgate - the toothpaste company - to put out a line of frozen foods. Did they clean your teeth when you were done? We will never know. But more recent and perhaps more important to this audience - Playboy decided to drop nudity - where are those geniuses. Did they really believe people bought it for the articles? Well they don't now - those geniuses are back in the minor leagues and nudity is on the rise again. So now we have a trend that created a trend - fifth starters were not much better - if at all - than the bullpen guys so suddenly we evolved to bullpenning. The term does not mean anything, but it is a trend, just like launch angle and increased strikeouts. Does that mean anything to the game? Well strikeout require more pitches which means the pitch count is reached earlier so we must pull the starter and bring in the reliever. More pitches, more game delays, more time before the game ends, longer games and the commissioner wants to figure out how to change this. Good luck. Check out various trends with this excellent set of graphs - https://michaelbein.com/baseball.html then look at the graph on this site for length of games and runs scored - https://www.beyondtheboxscore.com/2015/1/29/7921283/baseball-game-length-visual-analysis and then we ask the question - do people want longer games with less runs scored? Do people want to see more pitchers and less runners on base? As an old guy I love Mike Trout - “The two biggest stats to me are runs scored and RBI,’’ says two-time MVP Mike Trout of the Los Angeles Angels, the game’s greatest player in the midst of his finest season. “I mean, that’s how you win games right, scoring the most runs?’’ Bob Nightengale has an interesting article - https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/mlb/columnist/bob-nightengale/2018/06/20/mlb-bad-baseball-attendance-strikeouts/718162002/ - that looks at trends and solutions. So, if the trends are hurting baseball, baseball might want to buck the trends, limit relief pitcher use, reduce the innings, move back the fences, reduce the innings. I do not know the answer, but as a former tax accountant I can tell you that numbers can prove many things, but they cannot make the game more enjoyable, unless you are just into APBA, Rotisserie, Fantasy, X-box, etc; nor can they change the human body. Use stats, but don't go too far I really want to see a baseball game - not relays from the bullpen.

As a college instructor I can applaud taking men from the collegiate ranks. They are teachers and this young group of players needs some teaching. Those skills might work because the players are young. I would not try this with a veteran group. But, while I find this interesting, I am not sure that I expect our current roster to become significantly better. Of course, that means, I am not sure that Buxton can get his concentration on the ball and get basehits, that Sano can rein in that big swing and miss, or that Polanco can get his concentration on every ball hit to him. I do not know if Kepler has gotten comfortable with the plateau he is on - he shouldn't be. I am not an advocate of openers - I loved seeing those starting pitchers go deep in the playoffs, and I am especially cynical if we are using mediocre pitchers from a lousy bull pen to be the openers. Openers did not shine in the playoffs. Having a big bullpen of failed starters and not quite sterling relievers does not want me to throw out the bench and fill the rosters with questionable arms. Nor does it make me excited to see these relief pitchers come in every 2 - 3 games. Ten years from now I expect to read how this generation of stat geeks blew out the arms of the bullpen throwers and that the league is desperately seeking the new wave of relievers. You can take stats and make them tell you what you want, but you cannot take the human body and plug it in to a computer.

I believe it is time for the FO to start thinking about the players these men will coach.

I cannot approve or disapprove. I have no idea how good any of these picks are and will not know for at least a year. I would really like to see the job description and expectations for each of them.

So far this has not been inspiring. As one of the old guys I am not thrilled by what I have seen, but more than these pitching geniuses I am confused with the rehire of the batting gurus. Our pitching staff started to round out except in the bullpen, but our stud prospects continue to flail at the dust left behind by the fastballs they miss, yet we throw out the pitching coaches and keep the batting coaches. This FO has bewildered me since they first came on.

Great posting - do not get your tongue stuck in your cheek!

Coaches are always a mystery - who they are, how good they are at teaching and counseling - so I do not have much to add on most individuals. As a purely result angle the coach I thought most likely to go would have been Rowson, but I must have missed some key result. The World Series strategy I hope that can translate to the Twins was the Red Sox approach - two strike hitting, speed and aggressiveness on the bases, reduced strike outs. Forget the "new" pitching ideas - getting on base and scoring is still the name of the game.

With our new manager comes a lot of new stories and expectations, but his arrival actually got me thinking about Italian heritage and the game of baseball. Like the earlier essay regarding the American Indian and another essay looking at the black pioneers who crossed that large barrier of prejudice I know that other ethnic groups also had a lot of challenges. To discover more I found a superb book – Beyond Dimaggio by Lawrence Baldassaro to guide my search. In our age where we see so much racism raising its very ugly head again and so much angst about immigration, it might be hard to remember that these stories are not new and that the Italians were the focus of such issues and sentiments at one time. From 1881 – 1890 307,000 Italians (approximately) came to America, in the next two decades the numbers went to 625,000 and then 2,136,000. To the many of the already existing Americans they posed a threat that was both economic and moral – threats to their jobs and their families. They had darker skin, were Catholic, spoke a different language and brought their customs and beliefs with them. They were judged guilty of being poor, uneducated, and certainly brought crime with them. The press said they were criminals and radicals and hatred exploded into incidents like New Orleans – 1891- lynching of 11 Italians after they had been acquitted. Is it any secret why Italians lived, worked, and socialized in their own neighborhoods? Or is it any secret why one of the first three Italians to become Professional baseball players would choose to go by the name – Ping Bodie – instead of Francesco Pezzolo? It took time for the Italian to be established in MLB – the first was – Ed Abbatichhio who played with Honus Wagner, and made it through 9 seasons as an average ball player. The fact that he was first was significant. The fact that Ping Bodie would follow, then Babe Pinelli would complete the triumvirate as the only Italians in MLB until Tony Lazzeri in 1926. Pinelli was essential for taking on one of the biggest generalizations – Italians are hot heads! Actually he was, but he learned to control his emotion and went on to two decades as an umpire after leaving the bat and glove behind. It was Tony Lazzeri who led the way in the 1920’s filling a role that the Yankees were searching for – an Italian who could bring in the fans from the large Italian boroughs. He did that and more as a member of the murderer’s row and eventually was elected a hall of fame 2B. But even his effectiveness in drawing fans did not stop the press from calling him a WOP – in the headlines. He was soon joined by Frank Crosetti – SS, who went on to hold the position until he groomed his replacement – Phil Rizzuto. In fact, he was so good at grooming he became a coach and his last stint was with the Minnesota Twins in 1970 – 71! And all of this without talking about DiMaggio – all three brothers, Lombardi, Berra, Rizzuto, and all the other great Hall of Fame contributors to our favorite game. The first Italian Manager would be Oscar “Spinach” Melillo in a short stint with the Browns, but that would change. Phil Cavarretta in 1951 was the first Italian to manage a full season. The Twins would have Sabath Anthony “Sam” Mele, Billy Martin, Frank Quilici, and Cookie Lavagetto who came with the Senators to the Twin Cities. Now we move into the new age of analytics, player/manager relations, and hopes and I welcome Rocco from our long list of Italian baseball legends.

I'm always glad when we start looking at the support coaches and what they are all supposed to be doing. A manager puts two people in position to do what needs to be done but it's up to them to fulfill their own role

Nice job. You save me from having to look up the same statistics.

Like all managers he has one problem he cannot control - the roster that the FO gives him. If he gets better than Molitor had he will do better. He can call on all the relievers he wants - if they cannot pitch he cannot win. He can platoon all he wants, but if they cannot hit or field he cannot win. Good lucky Rocco - but the ball is still in the FO court.

This is probably too late since we have now hired our new manager, but the reality is - I want a manager who can take the crap the FO gives him and make it look like a championship team.

The Dodgers may win. The Red Sox could see their magic disappear - this is baseball after all, but there are some story lines that I have really liked and wanted to point out. One of which is that talent - not analytics wins games. Sorry Aaron Gleeman, but when we retire APBA and other games and get to the teams and games that count there is much more than probability. So what are my take-aways so far? Relief pitchers can't match great starters. Milwaukee was a fun experiment in defying the tradition of starters and relievers, but in fact their relievers wore out. This over emphasis on Bullpen arms has a draw back because no one can pitch 162 games - sorry Mike Marshall I know you tried. And by the end of the year the accumulated games wear the pitchers down. Did anyone see the same Jeffress in the play-offs that succeeded in the regular season? The key games for the Brewers were when Chacin and Miley started and took care of some innings to take pressure off the pen. The Red Sox Bullpen has been lights out - but Price and Sales took some innings off the board first. The Dodgers got too smart with all its match ups and not only called on Madsen one too many times but shut down Baez when he had the momentum to stop the Sox. Strikeouts do matter. Look at the Red Sox. Down two strikes they do not give in, they do not go for the big whiff, they put the ball in play and then something happens. Of course it does not work every time, but a strike out is an out - every time. Red Sox players are not without power, but they are also not without speed and excitement. This is a team exuding what the great Rickey Henderson once had. They upset the other team, the pitchers, the catchers, the managers. The Dodgers have shown in the first two games that you should throw out the book sometimes. They put their good hitters on the bench for match ups that have lesser results. Their formula looks old, although home cooking could fix that. I really do think that the best teams from each league are playing each other and that is great. While I rooted for the A's and the Brewers, their styles were fun and unconventional, I am still pleased to see the teams with the best stars and the best organizations playing for the championship. My last note for the Twins - forget the Kershaw sweepstakes. He is aging and will still want a long term contract that in the end will look like the Pujols deal.

I have no opinion on this - like most, I lack any real information beyond this article to make a judgment. The thing I am happy about is that Shelton did not get the job or any of the others already on this team. I see collective guilt for the team and if Molitor had to take the fall his right hand man, bench coach, should be seen as part of the same problem or why was he there? I do not like Shelton and he might be great somewhere, but it would not have been the right hire here.