alskntwnsfn

Rogers has to be one of the worst, if not the worst, “Aces” in the league. If that’s all this lineup can do, it’s gonna be a long season. Nice job Joe! Super start!

We got too many MLB-ready corner OF's We lack bullpen depth (unless we convert SP's to the pen, which isn't a good idea for Zebby/Abel) So I think Larnach ought to go... How about: Larnach to SEA for RP Carlos Vargas and RP Robinson Ortiz Power arms with good stuff and K-rates, etc. Vargas can be electric. For Seattle, Larnach would be an excellent match with Victor Robles to split time. If anything, the player value says we come out a bit behind, but Larnach costs more too. Would like to see us do even better, but this would be tempting from the Twins point of view. Any other ideas?? Or hold him??

It’s pretty simple… Zebby has gotta more of these fastballs closer to the black (especially pre 2 strikes)

They had Bellinger perfectly set up for a high/tight slider there. I assume that was supposed to an elevated fastball. Still, bad call and bad execution.

Rocco! WTF!? It’s not rocket science… when a guy gets three hits and plays fine in the field, you write his name in the lineup the next day!

The Brewers scored 16 runs on 25 hits tonight against a Nationals team that beat us like an older brother earlier this week. Ugh

The way the Twins look at the plate, I’m guessing the pre-game speech prevented guys from getting their typical pre-game hitting practice in. They look unprepared

I liked Roden. Not for Varland, but I liked him. That said… he looks like he needs to be in better shape.

Hoo boy, this didn’t age well. Figured they would move Jax or Duran, but all of them!?

My biggest concern, which has been the same for awhile now, is if we haven't figured out why we can't seem to develop an above average ML hitter, is it wise to trade for young hitters who may get botched by our player development program? If we don't fix that or aren't willing to bring in quality FA bats, we'll never be a true championship contender. Like is it bad luck or is there some flaw in our hitter development process? What are the odds that all these highly-regarded hitting prospects have bombed in the last 10-ish years?

I don't see a thread like this so, figured I'd start one. What deadline deals would you make? 1. Ty France & Harrison Bader to SEA for 1B Tyler Locklear & 2B/OF Samad Taylor 2. Griffin Jax to LAD for OF Eduardo Quintero & INF Emil Morales 3. Danny Coulombe to LAD for RHP Edgardo Henriquez 4. Chris Paddack to TOR for RHP Landen Maroudis 5. Wili Castro to NYY for OF Spencer Jones 6. Christian Vasquez to BOS for LHP Eduardo Rivera I think 1-3 are pretty doable. 4-6 I'm less sure about. The Blue Jays might not feel the need to acquire a pitcher like Paddack, though perhaps he could be dealt to the Dodgers for something similar. Jones would be an excellent get for Castro. That might be a reach, but Castro would provide a big upgrade at 3B for them (assuming they don't make a deal for an even better 3B).

Festa pitched well outside of 3 bad pitches (1 to Ohtani, and 2 to Smith). I liked to see the arm side change ups to RH batters, now throw it inside to LH batters! We hit more balls hard than they did, just didn't drop in. A few bad ball/strike calls. Their bullpen is pretty bad!

Watching on a bit of a delay… are you f’ing kidding me!? Ugh… a foot short. Bummer.

I like that. It’s a little harder to throw out basestealers at 2b with a LH hitter. Maybe you even can get Keaschall to 3B by the time Buxton comes up where a fly ball scores him.

Good analysis there from Plouffe on Lewis, regarding what’s different in his swing. Interesting to see Royce echo basically the same thing I said in my post from yesterday in that Dan Hayes quote. Anytime you go 2-3 games without hitting at least two balls hard in each game, you and the video staff should be reviewing video about what you look like now versus what you looked when going good. Maybe nothing is different, or maybe something is. Would take 15 minutes, and maybe prevent a much worse slump.

Thank you Byron Buxton! We love having you here!

I’m gonna put some thoughts out there, mostly about what is going wrong with this club. I’m just a schmo who played some college ball and has watched about 3/4 of the games. I guess other creds are I had a Twins blog way back in the day and traded emails with Josh Kalk back then, and am kinda a nerd for hitting and pitching mechanics. I’ve played with pro players through the years and think I have some well founded insights but mostly will just let the observations speak for themselves. Correa. After watching his first spring training game on TV I texted a buddy saying he’s gonna struggle this year if he doesn’t fix his swing plane. His swing path was all messed up. Way too much chopping down. Not good. Not meeting the pitch path, meaning he has to be absolutely perfect with his timing. Remember that graphic in Ted Williams book on hitting? Zero margin for error, and even if you hit it, it’s a ground ball (usually to the left side). He’s started to come around and acknowledged how messed up his swing was several weeks ago, BUT it should have been rectified MUCH sooner! Some of this is on Correa, but this is a coaching and self scouting problem mostly. Wallner. He’s got a timing problem due to his pre-swing mechanics. He needs to get his front foot down but stay back/coiled. His leg kick does not work unless he’s guessed right on the pitch type, location, AND hit the right timing. He’s got power to spare. He doesn’t need a big leg kick. Look at Ohtani! He coils, gets the front foot DOWN and then unloads as a reaction to the pitch. That’s why he is rarely fooled! My mom even complained about this back in May. Plouffe mentioned his “pre-pitch” movement on the broadcast tonight. ****… google Richard Schenck. Launch preparedness and launch quickness. His **** works. Ask Aaron Judge or Kerry Carpenter. Why hasn’t this been fixed!? Lewis. This one is more of a head scratcher. IDK. He’s just a different player this year. There’s lot of things we could point to as excuses/reasons. With the benefit of hindsight, they obviously need to be laser focused on analyzing what he did the last couple years that was working and get back to that. Maybe part of it is conditioning? But I’m sure it’s hard not to wear down with all the injuries he’s had. So, I’m not ragging on the guy if it’s just that, just might be an is what it is situation. Pitching. This should be the biggest strength of the team, and has been in stretches. We got a lot of guys with the stuff to dominate. But too often we do not. One thing I picked up on a bit watching the second COL game is Zebby threw two front door cutters that got taken for strikes. They fooled the hitters. I don’t see many of those from Twins pitchers (as I see Jeffers strike out with bases loaded on an up/in slider). I also don’t see too much “pitching backward.” Yes, we all know it’s a high percentage play to throw sliders or cutters that break off the plate outside when you’re ahead in the count, but MLB hitters spit on most of those. Hitters expect those! Go front door more with those! Or even up in the zone if you can still get movement. Those are hard to barrel. I think the thing I’m trying to say here is while most of our guys have above average stuff, you can’t be too predictable. And then there’s the rumblings about maybe teams having some tips on pitches. The moment there is any concern about that, the coaching and scouting staff should be sleeping in the video room to figure out if pitches are being tipped. Another thing I don’t recall ever seeing a Twins pitcher do… hesitation move (where you pause a beat at the top of your leg kick). Or many slide steps. This is common from many Asian pitchers, and as a hitter it’s frustrating because it screws up your timing. Right now it seems like opposing hitters are WAY too comfortable, even if a guy throws 97-98 with a touch slider. But c’mon, altering your delivery isn’t like saying the n-word. Any body can legally do it. We need hitters to be off balance and not knowing what to expect or where. And think about it… who is the Twins most unpredictable pitcher? Joe Ryan. He’ll throw anything, anywhere, in any count. That’s why he’s our only all-star pitcher (outside of Pedro’s injury). Ultimately, it’s the players that win or lose games, but this team is clearly underachieving relative to the talent of its players. So TALENT is what I think we have going for us, BUT the coaching and self scouting need to step it up. It’s not translating to success for the reasons I outlined above. Finally, Baldelli has said several times… “we do this *bleep* everyday.” I understand the sentiment, but to me that insinuates that there’s an element of going through the motions here or playing to a script. Which brings me back to the predictablilty aspect. We need more from Correa and Wallner at the plate. We need Lewis to find his way back, and we need opposing hitters to have ZERO idea about what is coming. AND we need our pitchers to be less predictable. I don’t think we necessarily need new coaches (though IDK, Falvey… figure it out). I’m guessing the coaching and scouting staff are capable of implementing these changes, but IMO these are the biggest things that explain why the club has underperformed expectations this year. Can you bring in better players than we already have? I doubt it, unless the payroll goes way up or we gut the farm system. But TALENT isn’t our biggest problem. Deadline moves won’t move that needle enough. Our biggest problems are lack of self scouting and being too predictable. One more aspect, after watching Senzatela carve up the lineup… why do so many inferior pitchers carve us up? Do they even, do the numbers bear this out? I’m not sure what to do about this, but almost every other team lights these types of guys up. If I was Falvey or the Pohlads, I’d want an analysis about why that is. Is it poor preparation? Poor scouting? Just poor execution? Bad luck? What is the plan for crushing the next guy with a 5.00 ERA? /end rant.

Cy Senzatela. Ugh

FWIW, I really like this Marek Houston pick. He looks like he can be a true MLB SS, and I like his swing which looks capable of producing hard contact from line to line. Seems to have some "it" factor to him too. Not expecting a perennial All-Star, but I think we'll happy to have Marek in a Twins uniform in a couple years.

Nice HR by Jeffers… hot take on Jeffers, he should get a tighter helmet. It bounces around a lot when he swings. Seeing and hitting the ball is hard enough without your peripheral moving all over.

I think all us fans agree. It's way beyond a few slumping players. And honestly, a coaching shake up isn't gonna do much. Falvey & Rocco should issue an ultimatum: all position players who's OPS and WAR is more than 10% below average for their position have three weeks to show substantial improvement, otherwise they will be demoted or released. Enough is enough.

Finally got around to fixing my login in after several years... too bad not much has changed... still can't hit and routinely make their opponents 4/5 starters look like Cy Young. Cy Quintana dealing today. Ugh.

IDK... Garver has a wRC+ of 133 since 6/1. We need to keep building the pitching staff and Romero is a potential 1/2 type guy. We can’t move him. Realmuto is a premier catcher, no doubt, but I’d rather have the flexibility to keep or add arms and maybe try to fill one positional need heading into next year. Even though we are second in the standings there is a huge difference between the Twins and the top 4 teams in the AL right now. However, I do believe we can close a lot of ground by next year. Our roster already contains most of the hitters we’ll need to do it (they just have to rebound Sano/Buxton/Kepler or develop Kiriloff/Rooker/Gordon).

The Twins are in a good position with Dozier. No reason to extend him now. Make a QO this offseason and they’ll be able to beat most offfers because teams will be hesitant to give up a draft pick. I do hope we can keep him though.

Moustakas signed with the Royals today for 1 year at $5.5M. Ouch. That is a huge difference from the QO he turned down.