Cris E

His defense is not great but it's also not his primary problem, his hitting has been the issue, and last winter he was not blocking anyone at 1B or 3B so a position change was not called for. But when they gave up on Lee at SS last month he did need to move, and his bat was so bad that AAA was the place to handle two changes at once. He tuned up at 1B and 2B and here we are. If you want to question something then ask why Lee was moved off SS before a replacement was ready. He wasn't so bad that a parade of below-average gloves who can't hit was demanded. Similarly the defense at 3B was just poor, not "Bobby Bonilla is a menace to the fans behind first base" bad. It could have waited until Culpepper was ready. I don't see what the benefit was of this interlude of full-time utility guys; they hit and field like the worst parts of the guys they were intended to replace. ???

I agree, and that 's what I meant. We already have too many IF right now so we don't need a second utility guy to cover Keaschall's spot while both of those guys are looking for work..

To that I would reply that Clemens or Lewis are already here looking for roles and they can take over at 2B. I totally agree with keeping Kreidler though.

I love this. The MLB roster is there to play and the manager is going to use the guys at hand to try to win. If you have people around who shouldn't be there then he's going to have trouble. When Buxton was missing half each season then the CF caddy needed to be good enough to play three days a week. But he's been healthier of late and so the quality of his backups has dropped. To put it another way, when Earl Weaver was asked where his backup SS was and he'd say "Rochester" which was his AAA team at the time. Over the past two years Outman and Margot should have been left in St Paul. And now that Shelton has been handed a handful of scarecrows instead of a full infield it's clear that the team is missing some important parts.

I don't care which side these guys hit from, none are good enough hitters to do more than bat ninth. Do you want your utility guy to get a regular role because of his platoon advantage? No, he's a defensive fill-in first, then maybe a pinch hitter or runner, and finally maybe a longer-term injury option. The notion that he's got to pull his weight in the batting order is not right; if he could hit he'd be your starting SS or 2B or whatever. Willie Castro and Kyle Farmer were special utility guys because they were average hitters who could handle the middle infield. In the past the Twins have had a series of good ones, Castro, Ehire Adrianza, Marwin Gonzalez, and even Luis Arreaz for a couple seasons, but across baseball most are not that good. These guys need to flash leather, run, bunt, maybe pinch hit a little. I would try to option Grey and bring up Kulpepper, then maybe try to trade Arcia to some team with a tire fire in their infield. Lots of 2b/3b injuries this year where a cheap, expendable hand like him could be useful. You don't need to get much, but gaining roster space and a low A lottery ticket is better than just cutting him loose.

I wonder if the Balls in Play metric is affected by the defense getting sleepy watching batters not swing. Does BABIP track with that sort of thing? Because in real life I used to not be sharp during long innings when my pitcher was not sharp.

I'd say the same about Kenley Jansen. Didn't he pitch with the 1997 Braves?

He did tear up St Paul, but there were some underlying hints that he might have been dominating the dojo more than folks may want to admit. Prospect Savant has a page for his 2026 AAA stats and it shows both the awesome success and maybe some lessons not learned. Red is great and Royce has lots. Golly look at those Exit Velocities. But then go down a bit and you start seeing some cold, hard blue. Fine, no walks, but who would when you're hitting like this. But then the Chase, the swinging strikes, the contact in the strike zone all below average among prospects. I guess I was hoping he'd focus on those things rather than whacking mistakes and feeling better about himself. If you think the latter was the goal of his hiatus well then maybe it helped. But I think he had some real work to do on pitch selection and getting his base settled and this maybe doesn't indicate that all happened. We'll see. I hope he's better (and not just better than AAA.) https://prospectsavant.com/player/668904

OK two things: 1. You're a bad person for doing that. And you skipped over them picking up Yoendrys Gómez; it's not all bad, it's somehow worse when there's a 1% chance of being Brock Stewart. 2. You seem to be confusing different metaphors that come on rolls. You typed Lottery Ticket but may have meant TP.

Was this supposed to be the other half of the "Send Down Luke" article? Why are they split up?

Agree. Also, since when is sending down a second year player hitting poorly some sort of desperate scheme just crazy enough to work? It happens all the time, more often than not to be honest. Most guys don't show up in the majors and start hitting and then retire at 37 without some setbacks and resets. This is perfectly normal, or was before the internet allowed us to get too comfortable with our roster moves and career shapes and depth charts. He's not playing well, they have a young SS to evaluate, Lewis is ready to step in and try some 2B, maybe Luke can be the next Martin and head out to left field.

This 200Ab stretch is the first time in his career he's been above average. He's been on a heater for the last week, but seven days ago his OPS was 65 points lower. Lets pump the brakes on 78th percentile hitter.

I liked your comment because I agree with it, but to answer your initial question you trade him if someone offers you something stupid and far more valuable than Yoendrys Gómez. Chances are good that won't happen, but never say never.

Rogers, Larnach, Gomez are all no-brainers (sure, sure, no) but what is with all these folks wanting to keep Clemens? This is a roster that suddenly has an extra Royce Lewis bouncing around, a pile of outfielders stacked up in AAA, more infielders on the way, and you want to keep Clemens? He's at best an average hitter, a meh fielder and a Great Guy. Sweet, happy for his wife, trade him. The role that Clemens fills doesn't exist on a team with nine decent starters. He's there because we only have a handful of hitters and he happens to be an average bat so they are wedging him in where ever he sort of fits. But he's not a CF any more than he's a good option at 1B. It's been so long since this team had a good 1B that it seems we've forgotten what one looks like, but it's not Kody Clemens (or Ty France or the resting catcher or your mom.) You want another below average CF then just ask around. There are a bunch of guys that would be willing to run around out there for you. That's where Kreidler came from, for example, and Lewis was game until he wasn't. Here's a plan: get something for Clemens and promote your youth until enough stick that you have a team. Regardless of what Tom Pohlad said this was not supposed to be a winning season, it was a season of measurement and evaluation in a weak division. Don't get distracted by the wild card, keep trying to improve this team. Clemens is just a younger, more personable* Arcia: a fill-in holding a place until more capable players arrive. * EDIT: That's unkind to Arcia. Clemens is a good interview with nice hair and a famous dad who hit 3HR in one game early in his Twins career, whereas no one knows anything about Arcia. He started in St Paul and hasn't gotten the exposure that Kody has. But they are the same: placeholders until the future arrives.

@Vanimal46 You were asking about fan impressions and they've been hearing his name forever. I bet most of them don't even remember who was traded to bring him here. I get your point but really Sim left the team no choice: he had to come out of the MLB lineup and he was out of options. The team certainly isn't giving up on him, but DFA is the only way to move around a guy with his seniority and his problems. At this point they can only hope the rest of the league thinks he's hurt, pigheaded or just below average and see if he gets through to St Paul. He's probably a decent #4 guy when he's right, but given how long it's been since he was consistently effective there's a 50-50 chance he's either hurt or just not able to sustain his performance over time. Maybe he goes to the pen for someone and gets all Griffin Jax for them. Good luck to him, hope he's throwing for us when he figures it out.

Listen to yourself. They had Ober and Rojas on hand and Sim was getting worse with each start. They were the plan that was foiled by two guys hitting the IL on the same day.

CP is so young and inexperienced that he'll get some grace from fans. SWR has 61 starts and 300+ innings across five seasons. He's a vet and should have his stuff sorted by now. It's why TAM gave up on Taj, which also illustrates that not everyone figures things out in a fixed amount of time or from their first org. SWR may just need to move on to hear the right voices.

Is Grey still leading the team in RBI? OK, ha ha, no, but... Lessee, more RBI than hits, that's unusual.

Gomez had been seeing a ton of action in longer appearances, so when the Twins shortened him up to one inning and threw away his third, fourth, etc pitches he got better. OTOH Lawrence is already a short guy not worrying about throwing a 20th pitch and focusing on his best couple offerings. There's little room for obvious changes so hopefully Shelton sees something specific. Also the SWR counter move was to give Paredes his chance, not this dumpster-diving for St Paul.

Wild send. Nice slide. Tough throw. Good run.

Be the Royce. BE the Royce.

Nice hit. I still don't feel safe.

Royce? Is that you?

There's no way Jax is still in the majors without those years in the pen. As a starter he wasn't adding velocity, he was getting clobbered by hitters, he never had good length in games, and he wasn't young while doing it. The pen was the only available job for a 27 year old with his 92.7 mph FB and 7.4/9 K rate, especially since guys like JA "6.77 ERA in 20 GS" Happ were getting more starts for a 73 win team in 2021. Take the win, Griffin. I'm glad you're getting a chance to try it again. But no one should pretend this is completely a good thing, and it's mostly happening because he was so terrible out of the pen for much of April.

That's not the point. His power is low, sure, but that's not his game. Unfortunately the rest of his game hasn't been that strong this year either. There are a lot of ways to contribute to team wins, but Luke was not doing many of them well. His defense has always been suspect, his recent hot streak only has his average nosing up towards league average, he wasn't drawing walks until May, etc, etc, etc. If we're talking about Keaschall then the discussion should be two-fold: WTH was going on in April and why was this written now after he appears to have righted things during the first half of May?