IndianaTwin

I remain pretty intrigued with Mejia. Once a top-100 prospect. Good minor league numbers, while always significantly younger than the league average. Good, but short, starts in Minnesota this year. Left-handed. Though they shut him down, the injury was described as minor, and there was really no point to rushing him back, other than for tryout purposes. I'd rather he be fully healthy for 2019. (Also, that I was the last one on the Phil Hughes and Mike Pelfrey bandwagons should not be held against Mr. Mejia.)

David Robertson. He's been about as consistently excellent as they come for about about eight years.

Thanks for these links. Good reading. Here’s an interesting one as well: https://www.cooperstowncred.com/will-ted-simmons-ever-make-hall-fame/ It makes a pretty convincing case for Ted Simmons being deserving, yet the Jaws link you cite clearly show Mauer above Simmons. Simmons fell off the writer’s ballot after one year in what the author claims was the most-stacked ballot in 30-some years. He’s been within one vote of making it from the Veterans Committee. Which points to a significant part — guys are affected by the quality of the rest of the ballot. Fortunately, as I look at the upcoming list, my sense is that the ballot will be not be particularly loaded. Lots of Hall of Very Good guys, but after you take out the first-ballot guys like Jeter and Rivera, I think he stacks up pretty well. https://baseballhall.org/hall-of-famers/future-eligibles#2019-eligibles

It feels like most of these threads have been going in circles, so I don't know whether to post this in the Buxton thread, the grading Molitor thread, or the grading the front office thread. So I'll do it here. I was concerned too with the "no people skills" comment, particularly after reading the response from Seth, who seems to be basing it on real conversations rather than on what we read and speculate on. In grading Molitor, however, I do wonder if "people skills" is one of the positive things he brings to the table, and that's something that is going to be really tough for us as fans to judge. I don't get to see games, only listen on the radio and read the esteemed words of TD posters. But my sense is that Molitor does seem to relate to the players. His excellent pedigree is going to get him off to a good start, but that will wear off soon. As I posted elsewhere, however, he doesn't seem to throw his players under the bus, and in his interviews, he always seem to have their backs as a person, even when he acknowledges their misplays or poor choices. As Exhibit A, I'll use this example from Sunday's game talking about DeJong: “He asked about going back out for the fifth,” Molitor said. “Rightfully so. I had no problem with that. He was in the right frame of mind in terms of him saying he felt great and wanted to keep going. But no, we decided to set it up the way we did and went with it. And [Zack] Littell did a nice job coming in.”As Exhibit B, I'll note that it would have been easy to let the wheels spin off when they were 22-30 and on pace for 69 wins, but he was able to right the ship enough to go 39-36 in the next stretch and get within sniffing distance of .500. Unfortunately, they've gone 4-12 with a trade-depleted September roster playing against a lot of playoff teams since then, so low-to-mid 70s seems like the most-likely ending point. But still, after the lousy start, there were a few of us at least thinking that there was a chance of closing on the Indians. We also complain that Molitor doesn't change, but as Exhibit C, I'll note the change in bunting patterns. Anecdotally, it's seemed like he's bunted less this year, and the stats bear it out. At present, the Twins are on pace for about 19 non-pitcher sacrifice bunts after averaging 27 the last three years. To me, that at least hints at him being told to knock it off by the Analytics Folks and generally following instructions. Those sound like "grading Molitor" comments, but I'm posting them here because so many of the "getting it wrong" comments have focused on Molitor's still being here. Others have focused on a perception of their mishandling the Buxton callup situation. In another thread, I said: I think Levine was a straight shooter with his comments. I paraphrase his message as, "We made a tough decision, and Byron and his agent have their right to be disappointed. We would be disappointed if he didn't want to come up to the majors. We still believe Byron can help us, so we are going to do our part to make it a good relationship going forward." And I applaud them for not trying to force such a conversation right now -- those chats rarely go well when they happen in the heat of the moment.I haven't seen anyone reference this article -- if they have, I apologize for the repetition. But this article seems to suggest that they have been doing due diligence in reaching out to Buxton. http://www.startribune.com/twins-try-to-clear-the-air-with-byron-buxton/492822311/. We haven't heard Buxton's side, but that may be okay. If I'm the Twins in this situation, if the conversation has indeed gone well, my suggestion to Byron would be to say, "Look, we've made good progress in this conversation. Let's agree to keep working at it, and let's agree to keep our conversations to ourselves -- we don't want either of us to get burned by being misinterpreted by the media. When can we talk next?" That's a mature response on the Twins side, and if Byron is on board with that, his "not able to be reached for comment" response is a good one. All that to say that I'm in the "glass five-eighths full" category. After this season, I'm not quite as far as the person above who said it was three-fourths full, but I still think the trajectory is heading in the right direction. This doesn't seem like a front office that's going to make the big splash. Rather, they seem like a group that is going to make lots of moves with the hopes of improving themselves incrementally and winning more than they lose. As Exhibits D and E, how many other teams signed six free agents last winter or traded seven guys since mid-August?

Something seemed weird as I typed his name! (And I guess we don’t control him, do we? :-) ) Go with Moya there instead.

I know it’s bad form to comment on your own posts, but this just came to me. As an additional perk besides the x number of trips on the Pohlad’s private jet, can we also promise to put “Mannysota” on the FRONT of our jerseys during next year’s Players Weekend as a negotiating tactic?

GIven that he started the third, I’d assume they were trying to use Gonsalves as a typical starter. But say they’d followed him with a five-inning, not-quite-quality, 3 runs in 5 innings “start” from Odorizzi (I know, the rotation didn’t line up, but I’m just using this as an example), it might have made for something like a 9-3 lead after seven. If it works like that, I’m all on board for the opener approach. And since I’ve gone off on a tangent now, I’ll continue. It seems to me that if a team lined up their rotation 1-4-2-3-5, they could get by with using one Opener to lead off the games for both the 4 and 5 guy. If he goes two innings in 40 percent of the games, that’s only about 130 innings for the season. WIthout any off days, his pattern would be to alternate one and two days off, but with off days scattered, some of the one-day-offs would become two and some of the twos would become threes. If he has too many one-day-offs in close proximity, they could shorten an occasional outing to one inning rather than two. If Berrios and Gibson go 6 or 7 most days as the Nos. 1 and 2, and Gonsalves-Odo and Gonsalves-Mejia/Romero combine for 7 most days as the Nos. 4 and 5, and Pineda comes back as the No. 3, that seems like a pretty solid rotation that would protect a bullpen of May, Busenitz, Hildy, Rogers, Reed, Duke (do we control him?) and Magill and allow a four-man bench. As depth/injury coverage, that still leaves Thorpe, Stewart, Moya, Curtiss, DeJong, Drake, Duffey, Littell, and Vazquez. Shuffle the parts if you will, but I’m generally comfortable with that mix as a pitching, particularly if there’s willingness to go after a rental mid-year (starter, reliever, or both) if they are indeed in the race. Think of how much money that would leave for the Mannysota Twins to use on the hitting side!

Are the strawberries fresh with the shortcake? With whipped cream? ’Cause, yeah!

Tom, is the bullpen usage chart a single Excel file? I'd be interested in seeing it in it's entirety for the season, just to get a sense of what things look like in a long-term sort of way.

1. I think the Profar comparison is interesting, and helpful. I hope Buxton has a similar response. There's no reason Profar needs to do this, but I think it would a classy move for him to reach out to Buxton and say, "I've been there -- go prove them wrong." https://www.twincities.com/2018/09/02/byron-buxton-decision-becomes-sensitive-topic-for-twins-players/ 2. I think Molitor's quotes make sense: “I’m going to have a nice conversation with him and share my perspective,” Molitor said Sunday in Arlington, Texas. “We’ll try to get to where the understanding and the respect remains. I don’t think it’s going to be a problem between Byron and (me).” and “Sometimes I think time is a really good ally for everybody involved. Ultimately it’s still going to be about him and his career and his performance and his health, all those things moving forward.” We can bellyache about Molitor decisions, but one thing I think he does pretty well is remain under control, not throwing guys under the bus, and dealing with people one-on-one. I suspect there will be a hear-to-heart conversation between the two of them that we won't even hear about, and that's probably a good thing. 3. I think Levine was a straight shooter with his comments. I paraphrase his message as, "We made a tough decision, and Byron and his agent have their right to be disappointed. We would be disappointed if he didn't want to come up to the majors. We still believe Byron can help us, so we are going to do our part to make it a good relationship going forward." And I applaud them for not trying to force such a conversation right now -- those chats rarely go well when they happen in the heat of the moment.

Actually, my wife is one person who is not aware of this, though I've said it often enough myself that she may be starting to get the picture. My mother-in-law doesn't even know who Odorizzi is, however. :-) But you point to one of the inherent challenges. As I read on TwinsDaily, two of the most common complaints about Molitor's in-game managing are that 1) he stays with the starter too long; and 2) that he overworks his bullpen. Short of a 15-man pitching staff with Chris Gimenez as your bench player, what's a guy to do? I'm guessing the response is, "Don't use the same bullpen guys over and over." But as I look at long-term usage patterns and try to balance them with in-game situations, I actually think he walks that tightrope pretty well. For example, we worry about overuse with Rogers because of him being on pace for 74 games. But look at his game logs and you'll see that he's only gone back-to-back on 15 occasions. On all but one of them, he threw 12 pitches or fewer in one game or other other (or both, on several occasions). The one exception was a time when his first game was 14 pitches, but came on the heels of four days off, so he was still rested. On the two occasions when he went back-to-back-to-back, in the middle games he threw 8 and 3 pitches. The first series was 15-8-17 pitches, but it came on the heels of two days off and was followed by three days off. The second stretch had a total of 20 pitches in three days. I don't know how to compare that to other managers, but to me, his long-term usage pattern for one of his most effective pitchers has been pretty good. I didn't take the time to look at others as closely, but a cursory eyeballing of Hildy, for example, show's a similar long-term pattern. I think it would be interesting to see Tom's game summary pitch count chart as an entire season to see what it looks like.

I wasn't responding to the "should Joe go or should he stay," but to the question of whether Austin is likely to be a strong defender.

Difference being that Austin also has significant minor league innings at 1B, and Mauer was a good enough athlete to be a Gold Glove catcher. That's not to say that Austin won't improve with experience, but I'm skeptical he'll improve to the level of Mauer.

The rest of the team has had RISP on 24.25 percent of its at bats. Mauer has had RISP in 20.10. Also, I don't know how to easily figure out who was on base for Mauer, but with where he has been in the batting order, the vast majority of his games have come with guys like Garver, Wilson, Grossman, Lomo, and even the pitcher batting up to three batters in front of him. Specifically, in his 63 games as a lead off hitter, 47 times the No. 9 hitter has been Wilson (27), Garver (7), Adrianza (7), or a pitcher (6). When your guy on 2B is Wilson, you're not going to get as many RBIs as when your guy is Rosario. Also, take into account that Mauer doesn't hit homers. The batter, by definition, isn't in scoring position. Mauer has driven in 34 base runners. For context, in more at bats for each, Dozier drove in only 36 and Kepler 29 base runners. All factors in why a guy with great success with RISP may not have gobs of RBIs.

Greenwood Memorial Park, Lower Burrell, Pa., according to this excellent bio: https://sabr.org/bioproj/person/cdec8871

Dear Brian, You can get mad now. Sincerely, IT

Spycake, if you found this easily, I'd be interested in knowing what percentage of starts throughout the league were in this range the past few years. The curiosity has nothing to do with Blackburn -- just wondering if the number has dropped as precipitously as it seems, or if it just seems that way because short starts are getting more attention.

Sorry, but I couldn’t resist — how tall is he when he’s not healthy?

I agree. And I think what magnifies the effect from a fan perspective is that last year’s team seemed unusually lucky in terms of injuries. There were nowhere close to as many major, long-term injuries last year, which is what helped us over-perform and have the surprising 85 wins. If they’d had a few more injuries and ended up a still much-improved 75-78 win team, we’d have felt good and would have been targeting being somewhat above .500 this year. That would have made this year feel like a minor disappointment rather than a major bummer. Going into this year, I was saying that they could be improved and still only end up around 85 wins based on a more normal number of injuries. But all the stuff you name got us into the big hole. But even with the long losing streak, they are 15-14 over the last month. Go .500 the rest of the way and they end up at 78-84. Win 78 last year, and I think 78 this year would have seemed like a good-sized bummer, but not necessarily a full-fled disaster. But realistically, I think the team IS better at this point than it was at many points in the first half. Even decent second-half health, plus Santana, and I think it’s still easily possible to get to at least .500, maybe a few games above. 90 wins? No. But even 83 or 84? Possible.

I can buy that argument too. And maybe the shuttle has begun -- it looks like they just sent Romero back down.

Similarly, it looked like Escobar's verbal response after the strikeout was in response to one of their defenders mouthing off.

Thanks -- I missed that Magill is out of options. But if I look at his game logs, it doesn't seem like his usage is that out of line. His days off pattern the last few weeks has been 4-1-5-1-6-1. The long rests have come on the heels of long outings -- 34, 60, and 45 pitches. He's also in a tough spot. In those six appearances, he's come in in the 2nd three times and 4th or 5th twice. That's a hard role to predict, because the manager is in a constant state of "I'd rather not use him today in case I'm going to need him early tomorrow." Somebody's got to be that guy, and it looks like it's Magill right now. Somebody will probably say, "As long as Belisle is around, why isn't he that guy?" Frankly, over the last few weeks, Belisle has been more effective than Magill. Though Belisle sucked yesterday, he was actually unscored on in the previous five outings. He's either been horrible or pretty good since coming over, but even his three horrible outings all came in the 8th or 9th when they were already down at least three. If the game had been closer, he probably wouldn't have lasted long enough to give up five runs like yesterday. Don't interpret my comments as being down on Magill -- he clearly had some top-notch outings that kept us in games. Perhaps, based on his lack of effectiveness recently, rather than trying to send him to Rochester, they should have considered a DL stint. (Similarly, don't read me as high on Belisle, but maybe not as down on him as a lot of folks.) And here's a wondering on Magill. They didn't name Romero as today's starter until after yesterday's game. That sounds like it could have been Plan B. I could easily see Plan A as having been seeing today as a bullpen game, with a good likelihood of a Magill sighting. But they shot that possibility with so much bullpen usage Friday and Saturday, so it was Romero's start and then play the rest of the game with the guy Molitor thought gave them the best chance of winning. He wasn't ready to go to Magill first, but at one point he appeared to be the next up.

On Magill, I get the love based on the way he started, but he's also given up 11 runs in his last 11.2 innings going back to June 21, with at least a run in all six games. The way today was going, I didn't mind not seeing him in such a tight game. (I also wouldn't mind him going down to Rochester to get a couple innings in the next few days, though a lot of guys are going to be on really long rest the next while.)

That would have been a viable option. But doing so would have also put two guys into situations they aren't used to -- Rodney starting, and Romero coming into a game when he doesn't know exactly when he'll be used. Starters are creatures of habit, and I'm not sure it's fair to a rookie with less than 10 MLB starts to have to guess at the +/-10 minutes of when the second inning will roll around. In addition, with a rookie, there's a reasonable likelihood that he's going to need to be replaced mid-inning. Though that's not the primary way Rodney's been used, he's certainly been there before. And if Romero doesn't need to be replaced mid-inning, there's a good likelihood that he pitched a nice spiffy 5 or 6 quick innings. So yeah, using Rodney as the "opener" would have also made sense, but I think this was a good approach.

Per Molitor's interview, Rodney has an immigration interview in Miami tomorrow morning and needed to catch a flight. They've rescheduled the appointment several times, but were unable to get something better than this. Life happens, and I applaud them for finding a way to still use him for a couple key outs.