Cris E

Of course it's too late, he's spoiled now, like a brown avocado in the compost pile of expired prospects. Alas, poor Walter, I knew him, Horatio: a fellow of infinite hitting, of most excellent fielding, Writing these huge pronouncement pieces after two days is continued clickbaiting. I will henceforth try to restrain myself and stay on meaningful topics. No one will miss me, but I'll feel better.

I'm hoping it's satire because I'm having trouble squaring the notion of some clean-cut, self-respecting young athlete with a chubby Kirby Puckett rolling into the clubhouse with sacks of McDonald's for all. He was a fine ball-player and he was well loved, but not a paragon of the modern ascetic clean-living professional athlete lifestyle of this century. (Aside from a good haircut: he did have that.)

Possibly, but that predictability is why pitchers have catchers. Between the coaches writing a plan for the day and catchers watching from outside the pitcher's hat or sleeve, the system is designed to challenge a guy who only wants to throw one thing or one way. Morris seems coachable, but he's facing some tough luck right now. That cutter that went out to right yesterday was four inches off the batter's toes. That's not a bad pitch at all when you can get a guy to swing at something that far out of the zone.

These games were going to dictate a lot on the day the schedule came out. Either we were going to play spoiler or we'd be measuring our prospects against top competition or we'd be within hailing distance of a wildcard and hoping to claim some October games.

Did you forget a /S somewhere or are you serious? I could see Buxton pressing to get to Iowa or fighting to stay on the field at any time, but I can also see a simple mocking of Pohlad in any and every context on this site.

Eh, still displeased. Don't care about Go per se, since Fedko could have been moved to the 60 day, for example. But given that Buxton can;t field a position right now, there are only three real OF on the 26 man (Larnach, Keaschall and Jenkins) and only one of them has played a full season out there, and the only one that could possibly be described as even average with the leather has not played an MLB game. Buxton needs to sit his butt down and try to get well. Shelton needs to show him his hitting from the past month or more and press him on what he's adding to the team that couldn't be brought from the seat next to Lopez. I cannot even begin to address Jackson's presence around here. Is he a Pohlad? Is he someone's bookie? Man.

No, that's not a thing. For example between June 12 and Aug 15 Morris went 27 appearances where he yielded a total of 2 runs, 13 hits in 28.2 IP. There had to be some moments of adversity in there that he handled just fine. It's far more likely to be a gradual erosion of form that's finally getting noticed or maybe a small injury that's sapping his effectiveness. He's been at this for months, so neither would be much of a surprise.

Great piece. As impossible as hitting looks these days, pitching is also getting harder. The quality of advanced scouting, the incredible pitching machines and the detailed coaching are making a straight 93 MPH fastball a relic. Ober and Anderson are making a living at or below 90MPH simply because it looks like they're riding velocipedes from the silent movie era. What hitters are gleaning from video is at least as much as pitchers are getting from hitter spray charts, zone charts and pitch type breakdowns. Layer some immediate intelligence about an incoming pitch and it gets crazy hard. Major League baseball continues to improve and is more amazing each year. Love this game.

Be honest about this season: there were dozens of games between returning from the injury and the last 18 games. He played 21 in July with a .777 OPS in a league where this team currently has an .831 OPS. He's figured some stuff out and is feeling strong, but he's still quite young and still learning.

He'll be by once the fair ends. Probably.

If he's just average-ish and plays like a talented 22 year old it'll be great. The worry is that he pulls a Lombard and forgets the basics. The NYY rookie sensation started out fine, for a couple days, but is now mired in a six game error streak. Not everyone wears the mantle easily, and Culpepper's experience is not normal, so I guess my point is never be surprised when one rookie stumbles while another glides.

Yeah, finding things in a dozen little forum silos is too hard. The right hand column on the old Baseball Primer was threads last updated. On another site I frequent it's at the bottom of a short initial page so it can be found with a quick scroll or page. Anything added or commented on, top ten or twenty. Also, I'd like to see more than my last 30 acts, meaning I don't care what I liked but I would like to see more of my posting history.

Keaschall is still going to be playing. Buxton's injury is what finally gave Jenkins a spot to play and that's the only reason he's up. If you are tired of hearing "Roden isn't hitting because he only gets 10 AB a week" then you would have gone mad watching Jenkins sit behind Larnach/Buxton/Keaschall for days at a time.

No pressure kid, just replace Byron Buxton, lead the team into the second round of the playoffs, then avoid a labor shutdown in 2027 so you can win RoY. Pay no attention to the Eeyores at Twins Daily, they're going to hate on you no matter how you do. (But especially if you show any sign of struggling.)

The huge difference between these two players is the difference between having Kreidler/Grey at SS and Buxton in CF. For the whole first half it was unicorns and rainbows and rainbow colored unicorns, and later on when they finally got to promotion time they put Kaelen in because they didn't have a SS and they left Jenkins down because they still hope Byron is close. They're delusional, but everyone wants Byron back and bealthy so until his leg literally fell off and spiraled into a Sacramento suburb the other night Buxton was going to start every game. We should have seen a response by now, so you know they're struggling with this. The funny thing is that even if they'd gone 10-2 on this trip the next stretch of games against the AL Central is going to matter more. They still control their fate, as everything rides on these games.

Yeah, it's really too bad they didn't try to make a trade with someone who needed a left handed bat, and maybe had a reliever to deal. Maybe someone in southern Texas. If only they'd thought to try.

He's got options, and above all he's been healthy, so he'll continue to get looks as long as he throws hard and keeps working with the staff. OTOH he's going to be spending a lot more time in St Paul once the herd of IL arms start coming back in 2027. So as much as I'd rather be him than a bunch of the less talent guys in the system, this is the best look he's going to get.

It could have happened a bunch, but back in the day there was less focus on strikeouts and even less on pitch counts and exactly zero pitch-by-pitch recording of data. How many pitches did Chief Bender throw in the fourth inning on August 15 1932? OK, how about a year he actually pitched? The earliest pitch counts on Baseball Reference were 1988. It's actually very unlikely this was the first time it happened since the Senators and Mathewson were out there. EDIT: ninja'd by an author.

The pitching is young when compared to an assertion like "They believe in veterans." They tried leading with a lot of young guys that broke down. I know you can't count on players to just succeed when you promote them, but the number of kids that were given a shot and came up injured was amazingly high. Morris, Mathews, Preilipp and Gomez made it, Festa and Abel and Rojas and Paredes tried and got hurt. That's a lot of very young players (not including Bradley) for a team that supposedly only plays veterans. And you know that if another couple kids had stayed well that another one or two names would have been pushed down the Morris path and fewer mid-season reclamation projects would have been engaged.

Mention. You can't talk about making room on the roster without talking about other people on the roster, either the 26, the 40 or just names under contract. Who did they keep? What makes this guy different from those guys? Are those guys doing better? Are there other measures that might indicate decisions were made other than hitting against lefties? Are there 40 man considerations? Were there any injuries? Who is blocking who? Any discussion of roles and who was in them? Any examples of too much platooning or not enough (other than empty assertions like "lacking right-handed hitting complements" when Martin's whole thing is hitting righties (.808 OPS) and acting as a platoon partner.) When you talk about Roden and guys like him you have to talk about what playing time is available. To do that you must discuss who is holding the full-time spots and who is involved in platoons, and how Roden (or whoever) may be better or worse suited than any of those folks. You wantd to have a discussion about the roster without talking about the roster. How?

Culpepper is up and they've stayed with Keaschall as he worked his way around the field looking for a place to stand between at bats. The pitching is very young and would be even younger if Abel and Rojas and Festa and a herd of other guys could have stayed healthy. The plan would be to only pick up vets that won't block actual prospects, play the kids that are ready and hope that injuries don't derail the development of the future. There have been no decent 1B candidates since Kiriloff left and no excess of hitting so they hired a DH in Bell. He's been pretty good, certainly no Joey Gallo. The OF situation has been made worse by injuries to the youngsters. ERod would have been called up months ago if he were available. Gabby G was up. Jenkins was not that good until August; this team has an OPS over .800 and he hasn't been above it for very long at all. There's enough going on with this roster that you don't need to make things up. Jackson? Roden? Rogers? Jackson again?!?

The claim was pretty thin, but it was never disproven. I think it was probably along the lines of "Hey, would you take a one year deal?" "No, four or five is what we want." "Yikes, OK, good luck."

Forgot to add: where was Martin last night? How was he not part of a lineup facing a good leftie? Caratini and Kreidler were chosen over him and it's the one thing he can really do well. If you're going to play platoons and you built your roster around them then use the ones you chose.

Truth. If he were riding this hard, Ryan would be pitching tonight. The owner sets goals and talks to the press and gives $20 to fans when announcers sit in the outfield, but as far as actual baseball stuff he's only going to get involved when lots of money is at stake (Correa contracts) or they are at a whiteboard in Florida in December. Once he's communicated his goals and set the budget the baseball guys have to take over and make it work. Make no mistake, his shadow looms over Zell every day, but Zell and Shelton are the ones letting Buxton play every day. Tom may actually be asking if a sub-.600 OPS is helping much, but when Byron can roll a single past the SS and get the fanbase excited you know what direction everyone in the office is going to vote. This season has been about hope, and that can be laid at Pohlad's feet.

That's not what you wrote about. You only mention two switch hitters in passing and no right handed hitters at all. You discuss at great length roster events from months ago and only one paragraph mentions hitting outcomes at all (and it only characterizes this terrible situation as "bottom third of the league against southpaws.") That's the crisis? You didn't talk about today's roster until the comments, but let's go ahead and do that, spots 1 to 9. Keaschall is hotter than heck, his 107 ops+ against lefties is weighed down by his slow start. Bats right, hitting everything right now, not the problem. Buxton has been playing hurt, but bats right. Still above average against lefties, but not the problem you're addressing here. DH Jeffers bats right, been having a good year, And look, .891 OPS against lefties. Royce Lewis bats right, 116 OPS+ against lefties is miles above his performance against right siders. He's not the problem you're addressing. Clemons is in LF and betting left. Here you go, this is the problem: 106 OPS+ against lefties, rarely in the OF. We'll return to him below. KC? Bats right, plays SS well, hitting well against everything right now. Not the problem. Lee is another infielder, and a switch hitter, but he is well below average against lefties. Not an outfielder, but we're getting warmer. Caratini is another switch hitter who has been terrible against lefties. A legit problem, but not a left handed outfielder. In the nine spot was Kreidler, a righty who really can't hit at all and should be in for defense only, but was here to allow Larnach to sit. Here is your article. Yesterday's lineup was a result of a couple things. First, when Buxton hits everything else is better. No one disputes this and it gets its own set of articles all the time. But he's hurt again and they are going to have to make some moves to get through September. Why was he not mentioned in this entire article about outfielders? Why was this huge source of uncertainty not part of the calculus around roster construction? You keep crediting some fictitious intent when really they are being forced to work around the availability of their best player. In fact you managed to write about Jenkins ' plight without mentioning Byron at all, which takes some discipline. Second, there are some players with platoon holes that get benched to minimize their flaws. It's bad if your best player is one of these guys, but when it's just a guy then you take the good and work around the bad. If Larnach had about 15 more PA he'd qualify for awards and he'd be around 60th in MLB for AVG and 65th for OPS (right now his unadjusted .758 is the same as Alex Bregman hitting in Fenway.) But he's no good against lefties and doesn't field well so you sit him against Jump and hope Kreidler's improvement of 2B defense covers the gap between him and Larnach against LH. The other 3/4 of the time you let Trevor tear up RH pitching. (And by the way, if you want to be assigning intention in roster design then please give credit to them for having him wrapped and stamped Trevor for shipment to Houston before Jim Crane vetoed the trade. He's yet another name that should have been sorted by this point in the process.) Third, I don't think they trust Roden and he has to play or go. We may agree here. Choosing to play Kreidler's terrible bat anywhere over a guy who is 5-11 against lefties this year (Roden is a career .695 OPS against lefties) and who you are ostensibly trying to evaluate makes zero sense. Clemons is not that good in the outfield, and he's not that much worse than Kreidler at 2B, and some of Roden's value is supposed to be a decent glove. Play him or send him out. You say it's because they fear looking dumb, but I think they place enough value on Rojas that Roden's fate can be decided by his play. Regardless, he's useless on this rost4er. This piece was a nothing burger. If you want to talk rosters then talk about the whole thing and tell how you'd handle Buxton differently, talk about what they were trying to do with Larnach and where that would have put them now, and maybe try to guess what they are doing with the guys they kept. You chose to rehash and not add anything new, and now that Buxton has forced their hand it looks even more stale. This piece as a retrospective that went into the series of 2026 decisions could have been something, but it's too far after the events and too far before the story ends to be useful.