Hosken Bombo Disco

(Also AA team )

I mean, that’s Rocco’s job to keep the players focused, not our job 🙂

Cleveland KC & Boston all leading (games not over) would be a gut punch to sweep this series and not really gain ground in the playoff races

White Sox uniforms next year

Right? lol

Crochet Independent of that, the Mighty Whiteys are apparently limiting Crochet’s innings for the rest of 2024. He has a 74 pitch start and a 64 pitch start since the All Star break. they are limiting his innings in their belief that they will need his arm to be stronger in 2025 because they plan to be contenders, or something

I guess I knew that. The narrative I would push back on is that the Pohlads are cheap. Which sounds weird (to borrow a phrase). Record payrolls the last two years, and then a payroll reset this year. I can make sense of that logic. Falvey had all offseason and all summer to get creative and work a deal around the payroll constraints. Sounds like moving Kepler and a good prospect to New York for Nestor Cortes was a possibility at one point. Maybe try to trade away Margot’s salary for a song.

What reporting? (honest question; as i am not following the day to day much right now)

The Pohlads just bankrolled record payrolls in 2022 and 2023. I'm not buying the narrative on this site right now.

Ober has pitched 4 of his 20 starts against Detroit, a minor league rag tag of misfits if there ever was one. There are other low-caliber opponents in his game log too. He does have great command. I would guess his third time through numbers a good, too. If he finishes the season strong, we can maybe say that he is very, very, very, very, very exceptional. I would be comfortable preparing Ober to pitch in a playoff game with a good game plan, against whoever.

They have lost their way. Granted, the Twins will probably still make the postseason, and a #2 seed is not out of the realm of possibility, However, don’t try to make sense of it. I do think there is value in platooning and positional flexibility but not the way they are doing it.

Most of their locked-up guys will get raises next year: Correa, Pablo is a big one, Paddack gets a raise, and even the Dobber — who is back — gets a bump up to 3 mil next year 🙂

Wait, what?

Rocco was critical to the headline but wasn’t even mentioned in the article

The way I see it, the Twins are currently in Year 3 of “going for it” and being all in for that championship that eluded them in 2019. This coincides with a particular free agent who arrived on the scene in 2022. there, i will leave it to you to connect the two dots. 🙂 Also, thank you for being a TwinsDaily caretaker! Link for others to join: https://twinsdaily.com/subscriptions

My thoughts on Kikuchi is I was not impressed with his performance against the Twins in Game 2 last year. He didn’t get rocked or anything, he was just kind of uneven, looked like he wasn’t up to the moment. His delivery to home plate was inconsistent. So it’s a Pass for me. However, as a lefty arm to give us starts through the rest of the regular season, he might be ok if the price is right (ie, super cheap).

Nothing to worry about, trades don’t really start to take shape until the final 24 hours before the deadline 🙂

Brooks Lee has played shortstop his entire baseball life, was drafted as a future shortstop, and has played shortstop his entire minor league career (all with the Twins). So let’s not overthink this— play Lee at short until Correa gets back!

But man, those line drive comebackers can get to you in a hurry. Right past your ear faster than a speeding bullet

I can’t believe pitchers are still not wearing helmets in this game, or even put a protective net in front of the mound. Who cares if it looks stupid. Also, I miss it when the game decided which league would host the World Series. The players brought a little more juice to the game. Why did they change that?

There was a poster a couple years ago who started posting, and counting Rocco’s wins and losses. Unfortunately the poster was already prejudiced against Rocco, which didn’t help their cause. When people started complaining, the poster doubled down, got nasty, and was banned not too long after. Just for funnsies I started keeping my own count at that time for a couple months. I made a notes file on my phone. I just pulled it back up, and looks like I had Rocco about negative -4 over that period. Mostly substitutions I did not agree with. Pagan was struggling that year. One game, Rocco pinch hit Miranda which I did not agree with, but Miranda got the game winning hit. So +1 for Rocco. Another game, was the Toronto game where I thought Rocco made all the best possible moves but the Twins were cheated on that bad call against Sanchez blocking the plate. I don’t remember who the outfielder was who made the throw (Billy Hamilton maybe?). There was a game Hamilton was brought in to pinch run and did not attempt to steal, and Hamilton did not score. I mean, it’s Billy Hamilton, no need for signs from the third base coach, just yell from the dugout. Minus -1 for Rocco. There was another game against Houston when Rocco was confused about the number of mound visits. So I know you are just joking when you say “show your work” but some people have actually done the work. 🙂

I say Rocco is below average, but I’m not sure how much it matters anymore. There are so many other factors that are influencing the results of games today— primarily, quality of the competition, or lack of quality, is just striking to me. In today’s MLB, there are several teams every year that do not even make an effort to be competitive. Depending on which division a team plays in, that could be 15-20% of your schedule, playing against teams that are not fielding a major league product. In the past, you might see a super team or two with 100-plus wins, and a bad team with 100 losses. Ten years ago, no team broke 100, winning or losing. The past few seasons, the story is different. Several teams every year win 100-plus, and several others lose 100. Sometimes well past 100. The quality of players on these teams is reflected in the win-loss records. Uncompetitive. Even in an era when 12 teams now make the postseason, we will still see multiple teams not really trying and without a play to even try next season. Why is this so? I’m not sure. I would like to see an analysis. My guess is that it has something to do with the analytics movement (the philosophy, true or not, of “strikeouts don’t matter”) and those types of players that movement brought in. Maybe we are still in the midst of it. I don’t know. I don’t have this completely fleshed out but I would say it’s something like that. In other words? There are too many bad players in the league to worry about Rocco’s bad substitutions!

I am thinking the front office made a conscious pivot away from strikeouts this past offseason. Good for them. Thus, Manuel Margot and Carlos Santana, in place of Michael A. Taylor and Joey Gallo. Not fancy or popular, and Taylor had a nice 2023, but the lineup rolls so nicely when you have guys up and down the order, putting the ball in play. Santana has done that. Santana has also played a good first base I am assuming. I have suggested Kirilloff and Miranda platoon at first, but for 2024, one player is better than two. Therefore I think my first half MVP would be Carlos Santana. (Even though I knocked him for something recently, don’t remember what 🙂)

I like Kirilloff and love the idea of a guy like Wallner, with a strong arm and good eye who can hit the ball 500 miles, but I’m pretty happy with the lineups we are running out there right now. Guys are not striking out and are putting the ball in play often with hard contact. I think bringing Wallner or Julien back right now would be potential needle scratch and break the momentum. Let them continue to “wait in the wings” I had more to say about this last night and started longer post on Nicks thread, but didn’t get back to it. I’m not ready to call the Twins offense elite like the Yankees, or on par with Houston or Baltimore, but right now, they are certainly better than average, better than better than average.

Seattle is a clown show. Never in doubt! Seattle is terrible; lucky they play in a division with Oakland and LA. Two out of three makes sense. The Twins will steamroll them if they meet in the postseason. Although the Twins were a little lucky Polanco’s swing on 3-0 was not a go ahead home run. But it felt like someone would come up late either way and Larnach did that. Duran for the save. Did not throw hardly any four seams again, but hopefully just saving his arm.