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He has to start jumping on those early fastballs. Be ready to hit young man! My concern is that this bad approach has lasted a few games. That's too long. The coaching staff had to help him adjust faster. It's not rocket science. Look fastball, if you see a dot, let it go. If it's a strike, oh well. Nice post by the OP. Those are staggering differences, and underscores what a difference approach makes.

6'4" 225 chinaman, good lord. Imagine how far he must have towered over everyone else. I know, not the acceptable, um, nomenclature.

You know he is from MN right. It would take multiple felonies I imagine.

Throwing behind a guy in the opposite batters box is pretty odd. Guess he did need to shake out the rust.

How about that Taylor White for Houston? Hitting about .700.

Obviously the offense can and will do better. The problem is we lost two very winnable games where the bullpen blew the lead. Good bullpens will blow some leads from time to time, but this is not a good bullpen and hasn't been for quite awhile. Because of that, fans like us will rightly gripe when the bullpen doesn't do it's job. The situation is not the result of injury, but rather poor planning. And THAT, is infinitely more frustrating than a few losses. How can we expect to win if we are not maximizing our chances. This was so clearly an area of need.

Nice work Jesse... very thought provoking! If the historical data exists, I think it would really interesting to make a cross-tab of scouting grades (30, 35, 40, 45, etc.) and ML WAR achievement, including prospect age. How often does the 45 prospect breakout, how often does the 60 prospect fail? I know the goal of your piece was different, but I think attaching some historical performance figures (in terms of average and distribution) to standard prospect ranking would be interesting. We all get so excited about an A or B prospect, but how much better do they end up than a guy who was given a C as a 20-year old? Food for thought.... maybe it's already been done too, but given the weight everyone puts on rankings, understanding the margin of error is very important.

Good point. I wonder if he'd have better luck not trying to pull those pitches, as it looked like he was trying to do last night. I can understand he was trying to park them, which isn't a bad thing. They were hittable pitches in a favorable count... but he can hit HRs to right and center too. Sano does an amazing job of hitting low pitches deep in the zone for power, no reason he can't do the same thing on higher pitches that are middle/out. I think he just got a little too ansy and was anticipating too much last night. Sometimes that happens when you guess right... you swing too early. It's encouraging that he is guessing right and getting into favorable counts, not it's just a matter of staying back and not jumping at pitches too early just because he guessed right.

Buxton's results were pretty good last night, but I remain very concerned. As Bert correctly pointed out last night, the problem is he is extending too early on his swing. That allows him to handle pitches that are middle/out and down (if he gets started early), but if they don't fix it he'll probably struggle with anything else. I'm still a little puzzled as to why he was so good in the minors. This is the approach/swing that generated monster numbers? Here's the only things that come to mind as an explanation: 1. Opposing pitchers/teams didn't have a strong idea about what zones he has problems with (this isn't necessarily a death knell for him... all hitters have weaknesses but it's about being able to adjust when pitchers start pounding those zones and striving to make those "weak spots" as small as possible... right now I think Buxton's weak spots look far too big). 2. Maybe minor league pitchers have less ability to hit their spots, generally with less velocity/stuff, thereby giving him more pitches he can handle. 3. Pitchers are conditioned to pitch most hitters low/away, especially pull hitters like Buxton... however, that's about the only place you don't want to pitch him. 4. His swing was shorter in the minors and has gotten longer or changed somehow now that he's in the show. Am I saying he is a sucky hitter and will not live up to the hype? Not at all. He is obviously a tremendous player and a gifted natural hitter. That he can produce anything with the mechanical flaws he has right now is incredible. It's just a matter of making adjustments and being ready to react to how pitchers are attacking him. Knowing what pitchers will try to do and being ready to pull his hands in on inside pitches and getting better at not trying to pull outside pitches. That will be critical. He seems to be picking up the "off the plate" sliders, which is a very positive step. I think he just has to shorten up his swing a bit (extend towards the pitcher, not the first baseman) and not get too ahead of himself. He's plenty quick enough to wait back and still drive the ball. Obviously, he needs to make more contact... with his speed, good things will happen. There's just some big adjustments to make, but I don't think anyone questions the raw ability. The only question in my mind is whether he'll be able to make those adjustments sooner rather than later, in Minneapolis or Rochester?

Pedro (Martinez) on the rule change during MLB Tonight: "Da new rulz is gonna turn da game soft, make deez guys look like a bunch of p*ssies." I'm paraphrasing, but that was the basic jist... best part of the segment was watching HR go "bananas." /pedro.

Are we still doing phrasing?

Here's my (over?)reaction... as much as we all want Buxton to succeed - he clearly is not ready. He especially had several very hittable pitches during that AB with a guy on second (with either one or no outs... pitches that were made to go to RF). Can't believe I'm saying this, but given his uninspiring ST and how overmatched he was last year... maybe some AAA time wouldn't have been so bad. I dunno, at some point he has to learn to hit ML pitching, but he has a long way to go and he still seems very lost at the plate. The rest of the lineup didn't fare much better though. I watched most of the game and the pitchers Baltimore trotted out there didn't look all that special for the most part, so the fact that we only managed 2 runs is very concerning. The bullpen depth definitely came into play last night, and maybe we win that game if we had one or two more pitchers who were better than Fien. Other than Fien and Jepsen, the pitchers threw very well and held a tough lineup scoreless. It's not that we don't have any good RPs, it's just do we have enough? I think in a playoff caliber bullpen, a pitcher like Jepsen would be slotted down in Fien's spot. It's only one game, but this game had it all for the critics. Poor plate discipline, Buxton flailing, an exposed bullpen, and Sano failing to make a play in RF that led to runs (admittedly, that would have been a tough ball to catch but still). I've actually come around to the idea of Sano in RF, as a placeholder until Mauer's contract is up and he can slide over to 1B or DH. This route or trading Plouffe and dealing with a downgrade in 3B defense is probably a toss up (RC/RS wise)... but the unaddressed bullpen issues have stung us already. We are going to win some and lose some this year, as will every team, but it's what they do with 10-15 games that determines whether you're in the playoffs or not. Win 10-15 "extra" close games and they're in, lose them and they're out. If we want to make the playoffs this year, last night's game is EXACTLY the type of games they need to win. Hopefully it doesn't become a common occurrence.

The reason I'm not excited to see those two in the pen is because I too believe they'd be 2 of our best 5 starters.

We're getting off point, which is we desparately needed an improvement in the bullpen (for the second straight year) and TR did virtually nothing. Also, we have plenty of starters, but not many of them are a good fit in the bullpen for a variety of reasons.

I still can't believe we are doing all this too keep Plouffe.

Been away from the forums for a long time, but I wanted to weigh in on a few things. 1. Is Trevor Plouffe really worth all this? We're moving our man-child, uber-rookie to the OF. Normally, I don't think fielding affects hitting, but any GM should be very careful about upsetting the potential of such a special hitter at a young age. Throwing him into a position he has never played and is poorly suited for falls into that category. Also, there is a very real chance that he costs us lots of defensive runs in the OF and gets flat out embarrassed, I hope not, but it's a VERY real risk. Then we sign a Korean slugger to play DH. Fine, but that takes away the other spot you could put Sano. Think about it... we could have traded Plouffe for whatever the market would bear, signed Ryan Raburn to platoon in RF/LF with Arcia and Rosario (also providing some nice insurance in case they faltered), and kept Sano at 3B. Regardless of what we got from the trade I think that's a better team in the short term and long term. Cheaper too. And I like Trevor, he's come a long way as a hitter and is a good defensive 3B, unfortunately he should have been traded. Of course we could give guys some playing time at 1B, but that's a totally separate issue. Our bed is made there, for better or worse... but it shouldn't have been with Plouffe. 2. Another year of bullpen issues? I was beside myself last year at this time, saying the bullpen construction could have been a fireable offense heading into 2015. This year isn't much better, the only thing making it better is we've taken one our better starters and made them into a RP. This is a huge need for this team, just as last year... and the only guy we added is Abad (pronounced uh-BAD, per BBREF). Lots of other teams made nice minor league signings or spent money to shore up a very important part of the equation, should their team make it to the post-season, or be in a position where 4-5 wins will make or break a season. I fear we'll be on the wrong end of those 10-15 games that come down to bullpen strength. Now, hopefully Berrios, Burdi, et al provide reinforcements, but we could have been in a much better position with minimal investment. In any case, it's sad that the message here seems to be "we'll just go with the same subpar group from last year and maybe have a few fresh arms come July." Granted, our bullpen wasn't the total disaster I thought they'd be last year, but they were still essentially in the bottom third of MLB, that won't cut it if we want to be a good team... and we have the financial flexibility and roster space to make improvements, that's the frustrating thing.

Before the season I posted that this team probably had the worst bullpen in baseball. I know it wasn't a priority, but dammit, there is no excuse for it.

The only hope for true change in the front office is a historically bad season. Maybe this is the year? It would be one thing of we had a tiny payroll like Houston, but we don't. Just too many bad investments, Hughes notwithstanding.

This teams bullpen would be appropriate grounds, even if we weren't coming off 4 years of 90 plus losses. Anybody out there looked up the other teams who have been this bad for so long? I remember looking into it awhile ago pertaining to Gardy. It was a short list and one of them owned the team (Connie Mack).

OT question, I've never been to a Sonic. Am I missing anything? If so, what?

This teams lack of power, both offensively and defensively, could be historic.

Early favorite for game thread of the year. Love the lineup haiku. Popups are routine. Twins do all the little things, these words were once true.

Joe Dillon?

On pace for 54 runs! Tough 3 games, but hopefully we'll be able to laugh about it 2 weeks from now.

Not necessarily, Ricky was paid in full for getting beat like a drum.