mikelink45

This group does not inspire me for the future. But in some ways it is really good to know that we have 25 players better than Curtiss, Cave, and Granite.

I would rather see Gonsalves and learn what are starters are and then demote the present BP and start using the young guys.

Sorry to see Curtiss' bad outing. We need the RP to shine. I understand that the Twins are using the rules to extend the roster, but when I look at Mejia, it reminds me of how Busenitz and others have been treated and the constant up and down has to work on their minds and affect their performance.

Thanks - maybe we have to invent an injury so he can go down and rehab! I had great hopes for him, but like Buxton and Sano he has definitely taken a step back. How can all three of these players regressed unter the eyes of our expert coaches?

If anyone wants to defend with FO - please start with Belisle. Tell me why Moya went down, tell me why Romero went down. I am even puzzled with the way they handled LaMarre instead of Grossman. Tell me why we have old age relievers who will not be around when and if the Twins turn things around, but Busenitz and others are handed round trip tickets before they get to the bullpen. What are the trade talks and why does anyone want these players? Is Kepler the next player to single A? Why does Garver seem to get fewer starts now? What are the time lines for Buxton and Sano? Do I have to wait a year to believe in the Twins again?

You pose a wonderful question. I too wonder if a team of speed and contact might just turn the league upside down. It would be so great to see a team buck the trend.

It is easier to give credit when the Twins aren't making every reliever on every team look like an all-star.

When the new baseball strategies developed making a K unimportant the Twins did not get the message that if the K is unimportant it is because the batter will potentially hit a HR the next AB. HAHAHA............. This team strikes out because it can't hit the baseball. The opposing pitcher looks like Cy Young or Sandy Koufax, but believe me - he is not.

It is not that he failed again that bothers me, it is the Twins way of bringing up young players, throw them in for one or two games and then send them out. No adjustment, no easing them in. How do they build confidence. Oh great I am called up and I have 2 at bats or one performance and I am gone! In those good old days they would bring up pitchers, let them have a few non-pressure relief appearances and a start against a lower rung team. Now Mejia gets the Cubs and Littell gets the Brewers in an extra innings game. No they did not do well, but what did we do to let them have success? The FO continues to frustrate me. And I will admit that Molitor is not Casey Stengel, but he works with what he is given.

Our big additions to the team are WIllians who is a fun story, but not an OF, a short bench because we carry all those pitchers, then not enough pitchers after the heat wave series so we have to use Littell a rookie starting pitcher because the others are not available. Where are the players Molitor is supposed to use? Happily Willians gave us some energy, but the roster management is FO I believe and the BP has been a mess.

After the heat of Chicago it would have been a good time to bring up good arms from the minors - not starting pitchers, but relief pitchers. And enough with Belisle. The only value he brings is to be old enough to give Rodney someone to talk to.

So needed in this year of Twins stumbling. Please have them continue to develop right into the majors.

Your profile actually dropped my assessment of Moya. I had been wowed by his stats and we have seen plenty of pitchers who could not replicate their minor league success when they hit the majors. I am also puzzled by Watson's ranking. If I am reading your notes correctly his big asset is that he is large.

I like the potential, but I liked Buxton and Sano. What can this club do to get the prospects to take the MLB step?

Fascinating. The players we know best are in the additional names and not the top six except for Mejia who has already peaked as far as I am concerned. He is a filler and therefore he will always look good in the minor leagues.

Nicely done and very accurate. This really good post looks at the average lifespan of a pitcher. The first chart is quite hilarious, but as he gets control over his information it lays out a very informative chart. https://www.beyondtheboxscore.com/2014/2/25/5437902/pitching-aging-curves Kyle is 30 - check out the chart for 30 and older. He is not a knuckleballer who will be improving as he ages. Trade him, trade him now, and just enjoy the reward.

Happily. The stat heads - call it money ball if you want - came in and said that a K is ok. They said it was just another out and did not cause a DP, but they did not say it would not move a runner or cause an error or get a base hit.. They discounted the K as a negative and the K rate has soared. Thus a pitcher is more likely to get a K than at any time in the past when batters protected the zone or choked up on their bat. The old time slugger was embarrassed to strike out 100 times a season. Sano has 536 strike outs in 1288 at bats. Certainly a pitcher can be embarrassed when Sano connects, but if I think about 40 HRs, 40 solo HRs I have to ask if that really offsets all those strikeouts. We have 162 games, that means a HR every 4 games if he hits 40. What else happens? This led to more high strikeout pitching rates, but nothing to compare with Ryan, Koufax, Johnson, Feller, etc who had high rates of strikeouts when batters really worked to make contact. So I do not know how to rank Kershaw, Sale, etc. I can say they are better than their contemporaries, but not better than the historical pitchers. Where is the shame in striking out? Babe Ruth once said, "“Never let the fear of striking out get in your way.” Check out this article - Babe Ruth would be considered a contact hitter now - https://howtheyplay.com/team-sports/strikeouts-have-skyrocketed-since-Babe-Ruth "In 2012, Adam Dunn struck out 222 times. Babe Ruth struck out 234 times in a four-year period. Some have justified Dunn’s total with the fact that he hit 41 homers and walked 105 times. In Ruth’s four years when he had a combined total of just 12 more than Dunn had, he hit 182 home runs and walked 466 times (he also had 713 hits for a .355 batting average, compared to Dunn’s .204.) Five players this year had more than 176 strikeouts, which was Ruth’s worst two-year total (1927-28 when he hit 114 home runs.) Several weeks ago, Sports Illustrated raved that Buster Posey is a player who rarely strikes out. Don Mattingly praised Posey as someone who doesn’t have a high strike out rate. So how many times did Posey fan in 2012? 96 times, three more than the highest total of Ruth, the strikeout king." Look at this list of more home runs that strikeouts - https://www.baseball-reference.com/blog/archives/10091.html I will give you one more reference - from the Denver Post - https://www.denverpost.com/2018/04/29/mlb-strikeout-era/ And finally, here is an article that normalizes strikeout rates for the top 200 pitchers. http://www.highheatstats.com/2012/02/normalized-strikeout-rates-for-the-top-200-pitchers-of-all-time/ I hope this gives you a lot to think about as we recognize that high heat meeting wild swings guarantees lots of Ks, but not good baseball.

Slegers is the name that sticks out. The 21 - 40 rankings are usually interesting to me because I know nothing about them. But Slegers has been prominent in the TD minor league reports for 2 years. Ranking this low on the prospect list says a lot about why he does not get the call up. What do you think his future really is?

https://www.apnews.com/084ccc602de94182817778ef905228dc/MLB-strikeouts-top-hits-for-2nd-time-in-3-months "Strikeouts exceeded hits in the major leagues for the second time in three months, a deviation that had never occurred before this year. There were 6,776 strikeouts and 6,640 hits in June, the Elias Sports Bureau said Sunday. That leaves the season totals at 21,090 strikeouts and 20,671 hits about halfway through the season." What ails MLB? Here is a pretty good symptom. Major league teams are averaging 711 K to 273 BB at this point in the season. That is a team average not a league average. Our Minnesota Twins are 668 - 279. We are a little better than average (of course we have been without Buxton and Sano! The MLB average batting pct is 246 - which includes pitchers in the NL, and the Twins are 238. In 1927, a season known for a guy named Ruth and his 60 home runs, there was another forgotten record. The Philadelphia Athletics struck out only 327 times - that is the entire team - for the season! The Cincinnati Reds set the record for the fewest team strikeouts - 308 - in 1921. The Astros in 2013 struck out 1535 times. http://www.baseball-almanac.com/recbooks/rb_strike2.shtml Milwaukee Brewers batters struck out 1,571 times during the 2017 season, surpassing the previous mark of 1,543 by the Brewers in 2016. http://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/most-strikeouts-in-a-season-team The Minnesota Twins record for fewest strikeouts in a season is 684 in 1978! We are within 16 of surpassing that record. Our most is 1121 in 1997. We are way more than half way to that record. When Nolan Ryan struck out 383 batters in 1973 the American League there 3.37 Ks per game, and in 2018 it is 8.53. "In 1973, when Ryan struck out 383 batters, only 10 American Leaguers struck out 100 times that season, none of them more than Bobby Darwin's 137. Last year in the AL, 73 hitters struck out 100 times, 24 of them more than Darwin's total." https://www.mlb.com/news/two-unbreakable-records-of-nolan-ryan/c-265897848 The rise of 5 strikeouts per game average is not because the pitchers are better, it is the new game, and it makes Ks meaningless and boring. Thanks to a question by Sconnie I am adding this additional information. I think it is enlightening and important: Happily.The stat heads - call it money ball if you want - came in and said that a K is ok.They said it was just another out and did not cause a DP, but they did not say it would not move a runner or cause an error or get a base hit..They discounted the K as a negative and the K rate has soared.Thus a pitcher is more likely to get a K than at any time in the past when batters protected the zone or choked up on their bat. The old time slugger was embarrassed to strike out 100 times a season. Sano has 536 strike outs in 1288 at bats.Certainly a pitcher can be embarrassed when Sano connects, but if I think about 40 HRs, 40 solo HRs I have to ask if that really offsets all those strikeouts.We have 162 games, that means a HR every 4 games if he hits 40.What else happens? This led to more high strikeout pitching rates, butnothing to compare with Ryan, Koufax, Johnson, Feller, etc who had high rates of strikeouts when batters really worked to make contact.So I do not know how to rank Kershaw, Sale, etc.I can say they are better than their contemporaries, but not better than the historical pitchers. Where is the shame in striking out?Babe Ruth once said, "“Never let the fear of striking out get in your way.” Check out this article - Babe Ruth would be considered a contact hitter now -https://howtheyplay.com/team-sports/strikeouts-have-skyrocketed-since-Babe-Ruth "In 2012, Adam Dunn struck out 222 times. Babe Ruth struck out 234 times in a four-year period. Some have justified Dunn’s total with the fact that he hit 41 homers and walked 105 times. In Ruth’s four years when he had a combined total of just 12 more than Dunn had, he hit 182 home runs and walked 466 times (he also had 713 hits for a .355 batting average, compared to Dunn’s .204.) Five players this year had more than 176 strikeouts, which was Ruth’s worst two-year total (1927-28 when he hit 114 home runs.) Several weeks ago, Sports Illustrated raved that Buster Posey is a player who rarely strikes out. Don Mattingly praised Posey as someone who doesn’t have a high strike out rate. So how many times did Posey fan in 2012? 96 times, three more than the highest total of Ruth, the strikeout king." Look at this list of more home runs that strikeouts - https://www.baseball-reference.com/blog/archives/10091.html. I will give you one more reference - from the Denver Post - https://www.denverpost.com/2018/04/29/mlb-strikeout-era/ And finally, here is an article that normalizes strikeout rates for the top 200 pitchers. htp://twww.highheats...rs-of-all-time/ I hope this gives you a lot to think about as we recognize that high heat meeting wild swings guarantees lots of Ks, but not good baseball.

I believe there are a lot of bandwagons in town now for those departing the Twins depot. This week was crushing. Because it was two Chicago teams this was also personal - Chicago versus Minneapolis (I think St Paul has successfully moved to Saints and United territory). Luckily I live much closer to Duluth. If it looked like we had some fight in us it would not be so bad. But we blew the low scoring games and then to even things out we blew the high scoring games. Where do I look for my Twins solace? When I hear that we are only half way through the season and a lot can happen yet, it almost sounds like a threat. Does anyone else get that personality switch when listening to the games. That point where you start to root for the other team because your team is looking so bad and you almost wish they would just collapse so that you could move on? Thanks to the Central division standings we have a flimsy false hope. The Minnesota Twins are 35 - 45 in the AL Central which puts them 9 games behind Cleveland and 1/2 game ahead of Detroit in a division with only one team playing winning baseball. In the American League East we would be 18 1/2 games out and in fifth place vying with the Orioles - who we get to play this week - for the worst. In the National League Central where the Cubs play (and they are in second place) we would be 11.5 out and almost tied with the Cincinnati Reds. In the NL West we would only be 10 games out and almost tied with San Diego for last place. The AL West has a nice race and based on the previous posts the bandwagons are headed to Seattle. In that race we would be 17.5 out and behind the Texas Rangers for last place. The NL East has those throw in the towel Marlins so maybe we have a chance. The Marlins are 15.5 games out in last place with a 34 - 51 record! One less win, six more losses. I guess we could play in this division - even though we would be 13.5 out and in fourth place. In AL overall standings we are in 11th place with the only teams behind us being the rest of our division (except Cleveland) and those, bring'em on Orioles! Of course those Orioles are wringing their hands in anticipation too since their division includes the Red Sox and Yankees, the Rays and the Jays. Minnesota plays in a division with teams that rank 5,12,13,14 and Orioles division ranks 1,2,7, and 9. In the combined league standings we rank #22! with the Tigers, Padres, and Reds within one game of us. I offer this uplifting holiday special because I still hear questions about buy or sell. I do not want to get rid of everyone, but do sell for the future. Do not pretend we still have a real chance in 2018.

For all the satisfaction that getting close in a game like this can give, we lost 5 of 6 to Chicago, the first place and the nearly last place Chicago teams. We stunk against the bad team and had exciting games against the good team. What does it mean? It means we are further from any meaningful season ending position. Sorry to be so negative, but the Twins are only giving us - we were close - as a positive and in the end it does not matter the scores, only the wins and losses.

Is Kiriloff such a natural that we could bring him up for a couple weeks and see if he could replace a lot of mediocrity in MLB?

Okay - then bring them up. I do not think that relief pitchers need to go through as much minor league seasoning. If they have a live arm they are more likely to get worse than get better with excessive use. This article from ESPN on aging in baseball is really insightful - http://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/23916211/major-league-baseball-aging-cycle-how-mike-trout-becomes-albert-pujols

If anyone saw the Twins and Cubs wilt in the heat of a monster scoring game and saw the ending outfield, it says all that needs to be said about the new baseball strategy. No bench, we should have filled the outfield with pitchers.

Reporting on these games reaches a point where the verbs and nouns are mixed with the adverbs and adjectives and if anything comes out coherent it is a great job. Great job Tom. Beyond that I am speechless.