IndianaTwin

Does anyone know if the Bunnies game was televised and whether reruns will appear on TV and/or the interweb?

(Any excuse to use this is good enough for me, but it does seem a bit early for the discussion.)

28th, at 4.8. The MLB average is 5.2. Over 162 games, that means that the Twins would need to cover about 65 more innings from its bullpen compared to the average team. You can look at that at least three different ways. Given that 65 innings is about average for a good reliever, the Twins need to come up with one more quality reliever than the average team. In a seven-game week, the Twins bullpen will need to cover about 2.8 innings more than their opponents. I haven't come up with a third, but I'm sure folks on TD that are smarter than me (and there are many) will come up with a couple more! That's a helpful number, but I'm not sure it's a tell-all stat. Three starters going eight innings each time and two openers going an inning also works to the league average 5.2, but puts a different type of strain on the bullpen than five guys going 5.2. And for what it's worth, the standard deviation on this would be pretty small, meaning that Rocco isn't handling things much differently than other teams. Out of 30, 26 are averaging from 4.8 to 5.5. One of the teams outside that (Tampa Bay) has used openers regularly in the past. I don't know whether that's the case this year. Archer is a factor in this. Take out his 4.1 innings per start, and the team average is 5.1, almost the mean. Among guys who've started at least 13 times across the majors, only he and Yusei Kikuchi* are averaging less than 4.5 innings per start. *With Kikuchi killing my fantasy team in the process.** **Kikuchi is not alone in doing so.

Not necessarily. A pitcher can get a blown save and have the team come back and win. There can even be two or more blown saves in a game that a team wins, if the team takes back the lead after the first blown save. I didn't go through everyone to see where all the blown saves are, but the Twins are 2-2 in Duffey's and Smith's blown saves, for example. (This isn't disputing that the bullpen has cost them -- just clarifying how blown saves work/don't work as a stat. As further note on the limitation of "blown save" as a stat, Smith's "blown saves" came in the sixth and seventh, games in which it was very unlikely he would actually get the save.)

Not mentioned in the OP or comments is that Fulmer has some experience as a closer, stepping in pretty impressively last year when the Detroit pen got hit by injury.

Norm Cash? Dave? I didn't know either was still in the majors.

Wow -- I read through all the comments and nobody's started the "But he's not an ace" chant! /s

Call me greedy, but I'd make this an "AND" rather than an "OR." I like that Robertson does have significant closing experience and should be even cheaper, given that it's two months of control.

Call me old-school, but I'm big on using the fax machine to save on postage. I hear you can also scan to e-mail these days.

The answer, obviously, is "yes."

Gabriel Moreno hit .276 when he was up for Toronto, and they won’t trade him. WIth him and Alejandro Kirk, it wouldn’t be surprising if Danny Jansen was available. He’s hitting way, way, way above his career numbers, which are slightly below average, but was pretty highly regarded when coming up. And he’s controllable.

I don’t think even a re-negotiated deal is a practical possibility. For the Twins to sign him requires them to spend $2.75 M more than another team. If the Twins come through with even a $5 M offer, Sano is likely to say, “No thanks, I’ll take the buyout money and try my luck at getting more than $2.25 M elsewhere.” And with the other options they have, I don’t see them offering even $5 M Realistically, though I like Sano and can still remember the yell I let out when he hit the slam against Cleveland a year ago, I agree that he may have a tough time getting an MLB contract. But some team could get a steal with a deal that’s heavily incentive driven.

That would be consistent with prior years. Last year, I went to the work of counting the number of July trades by the Twins and by all of MLB over the course of several years. What I found was that the Twins were considerably above average in the number of trades they made. Given where they are at in the standings, I think it’s more likely than not that they will be active traders.

A hearty "yes" to this post, Brandon. I have a feeling we may find out that catcher is the one exception, but there are a lot of teams who would love to have the "Sano problem," for example. A bunch of teams would be forced to rely on the hope of him coming back productively. In the Twins case, he's simply bonus, thanks to the production of guys you mentioned. Similarly, it hasn't been a backbreaker to have a productive, with good potential for more, rookie like Larnach go on the IL. I know I'm going to get myself in trouble for saying this, but I think you can carry some of the same observation to the rotation. I haven't gone to the work of checking, but I'm wondering how many teams have had only 21 games started by someone with an ERA+ under 95. That means more than three-fourths of our starts were by someone who is essentially league average or better. The White Sox, for example, have had 42. And much of that is because of depth. In Smeltzer/Ober/Winder, we've got 25 starts from guys who weren't in the opening day rotation and have an ERA+ of 95 or better. I'm guessing not many teams have that many. Now the bullpen...

What is your definition of "significant"? My experience has been that in statements of this nature, particularly when a "guarantee" is added, the definition of "significant" is typically "a little more than whatever they actually do." In other words, the writer often has already decided in advance whether the person will meet their expectations, and the answer is "no, they won't." Additionally, statements like this don't count the trades that were not made. Those are "significant" as well. Last winter, if a team had offered a good starting pitcher for Miranda and we said, "yes," we might have called that "significant." But if that offer had been Chris Sale for Miranda, it would have been "significant" to have said "no," but we would never have heard about it.

The bullpen has been bad, but calculating a percentage of save opportunities isn't really an accurate representation, because of how it treats "save opportunities." Take Kendall Graveman of the White Sox, for example. He shows up with 5 saves and 4 blown saves, which makes him look ineffective. It seems like only a 55.6 percent. The issue is that the four "blown saves" all came in innings prior to the ninth. Yes, they were "blown saves," because he was pitching in what would have been a save opportunity had he finished the game, but the likelihood of him actually doing so was slim, because Liam Hendricks probably would have gotten the ninth. But because he didn't get the save when he pitches well in the eighth and Hendricks finishes, those games don't help him in that 5 of 9 calculation. Said more simply, a reliever pitching the eighth can often get a "blown save" to count against him, but isn't given the opportunity to get a save to count for him. That's where the hold comes in. He has 14 of those. Those were times when he pitched in a "save situation," but someone else got the save (or someone else blew the game after him). In the case of Graveman, it's more helpful to say that he has had 19 "saves plus holds" in 23 "saves plus holds opportunities." That's 82.6 percent, which is a much better representation of how effective he has been. Make sense? Again, I agree that the record would be much better with a better bullpen. My post is more about the challenge of "save opportunities" as a way of measuring bullpen success.

I'm guessing the player would need to be on board with it as well. If not, I'm guessing the union picks up on it.

So what are the memories from your first game?

This date in baseball history. On July 13, 1974, Aurelio Rodriguez’s fourth-inning single broke a 2-2 tie, propelling the visiting Detroit Tigers to an 8-2 win over the homestanding Kansas City Royals. Woody Fryman (4-5) went the distance to pick up the win for the Tigers, scattering 12 hits and two walks while striking out five. Starter Paul Splittorff gave up four runs, all earned, over 3.1 innings, falling to 9-9. Splittorff gave up eight hits and a pair of walks before being replaced by Al Fitzmorris, who gave up the remaining four runs in 3.2 innings. The Rodriguez ground ball single to center plated Marv Lane, who had led off the fourth with a single and then stole second. Lane advanced to third when Splittorff’s errant pickoff throw ended up in center. Rodriguez would advance to third on a single to right by weak-hitting Ed Brinkman, scoring on a Mickey Stanley sacrifice fly that made the score 4-2. (Aside: Rodriguez is the answer to a great trivia question – he’s the first player in MLB history to use all five vowels in his first name. Ed Figueroa is the first to use all five vowels in his last name. I don’t know if there’s been a second in either case.) The Tigers opened the scoring in the first when Stanley led off with a double. After a pair of strikeouts, Bill Freehan crushed his fourth homer of the season on a shot to left. The Royals knotted the score in the third when Kurt Bevacqua reached on an infield single and then scored on Cookie Rojas’s inside-the-park home run to left. Detroit extended the lead in the fifth, keyed by a two-run triple from Lane that scored Freehan and Dick Sharon. Rodriguez followed with a sacrifice fly to make the score 7-2. Detroit closed the scoring in the seventh when Freehan scored on a Fitzmorris wild pitch. Freehan had reached on an error, stole second and advanced to third when catcher Fran Healy’s throw went into center. Lane finished with four hits in four trips to the plate, with two stolen bases to go with his two-run triple. Freehan had a single alongside his homer, scoring thrice and driving in two. Everyone in the Tiger lineup had at least one hit, except future Hall of Famer Al Kaline, who struck out twice in his five trips to the plate. Kaline would join the 3,000 Hit Club later in this, his final season, finishing with 3007. With 13 homers on the season, he fell one short of joining the 400 Home Run Club. (Aside: Kaline holds notoriety in our house – my baseball-loving son missed “alkaline” to be eliminated from the county spelling bee.) At the other end of his career, rookie Royal third baseman George Brett had the night off. His replacement, Bevacqua went three for five from the leadoff spot, improving his average to .167. Bevacqua would go on to fame as the 1975 Joe Garagiola/Bazooka Bubble Gum Blowing Champ, earning his way on to a 1976 baseball card celebrating the feat. For the Royals, Hal McRae had a double and two singles. Rojas had a single to go along with his homer and Amos Otis had two singles. Just another ho-hum midseason game between teams that would finish fifth (KC) and sixth in their divisions, right? Not so, my TD friends. Sitting amidst the 25,834 fans in 97 degree heat was an eight-year-old IT, taking in his first-ever major league baseball game. He, his parents and his 14-year-old brother were visiting his dad’s oldest brother in Kansas City, and the businessman uncle had procured four tickets for the family. Regretfully, I don’t have the ticket stub, but in looking at the map of Royal Stadium, as it was then called, my hunch is that we were somewhere near the back of section 115 or 116, just beyond the third-base turf cutout and painted infield arc, perhaps in the area I circled above. And why does Marty Pattin rock? After all, he didn’t even get into the game. Well, prior to the contest, IT and his brother made their way down to the rail by the dugout. Nearing the end of an impromptu autograph session, older brother found his way to the front of the herd, where Pattin used a borrowed pen to add his autograph to the thumb of the red baseball glove IT would wear with pride throughout Pee Wee and Little League baseball. Regretfully, the glove either didn’t survive our last move or is boxed up in the basement. Pattin had 224 starts in a 475-game career. Most would describe him as a journeyman, but he’ll always hold a special place in my heart. Speaking of special places in my heart, my mom turned 90 on Monday. I give her and Dad huge props. Mom grew up Amish, and both concluded school at eighth grade, but they encouraged me (especially Mom) toward college. Though Dad loved competing (he competed in the World Ploughing Contest, a worthy story in its own right), neither were sports fans beyond going to local high school events well into their 80s. They knew their youngest had an insatiable passion for baseball, however, and allowed him to live into it. After Dad died about 20 months ago and Mom moved to the retirement home, I became the recipient of the diaries that Mom kept from 1957 until late in 2019, when her Alzheimer’s made it impossible to continue. The entry for July 13, 1974 includes, “(For) the big event of the day, we went to the Major League baseball game between Kansas City Royals and Detroit. Boys thought it was great.” Yes, I did, Mom. Thank you.

To those who are part of the DFA Pagan Club, were you also part of the DFA Duffey Club? Because Duffey’s now given up 0 runs with a 1.00 WHIP in 10 innings over his last seven games. Point being, guys with past success very often right the ship.

Winder was injury insurance last night. Ober is on the way back, and now I’m wondering if Aaron Sanchez is turning into rotation insurance in St. Paul. I think the preferred way to injury insurance for the starters is a better bullpen.

I think the title of the article should have been "The Five Best Relief Pitcher Targets for the Twins After Trading for David Robertson."

I completely agree it wasn't defensible for Engel to not be tagging. And Moncada can't go more than two-thirds of the way. Which makes it's one of the rare times I agree with Ozzie! And to those trying to defend it, I say you have to know who the outfielder is.

Funny thing on the triple play. I’ve had some text conversations with friends and the tone has been, “It’s slightly defensible because of how unusual the catch was.” But for those of us who see Buxton regularly, the sense is, “Great play, but not at all unusual for Buxton, and nowhere near one of his best catches.” I guess it just goes to show how spoiled we are by having the best centerfielder on the planet. We see the fly ball and say there’s no way that Engel shouldn’t have been standing on second base. (Priceless was the stunned look on LaRussa’s face after the play.)

In his defense, the home plate ump really had a bad game. That one wasn’t close, but he blew a whole bunch.