IndianaTwin

So you're saying you've had somewhere around 966 posts that have not been unusual? That estimate seems a little high.

Or in other words, I mean word, “yes.”

Crowd looks horrible

Der Doubler!

Are you kidding? He’ll be 41 in November. (You did mean Punto, right?)

Good perspective, including your notes on pitch usage. A change-up is a touch pitch. I wonder if part of not using it as much is not feeling like he has that. So far, his number of days of rest has gone 5-0-4-0-6-1-6. That's essentially a starter's pattern, not a closer's. It doesn't seem too surprising to have inconsistent results with that kind of a pattern. And to anticipate the Molitor-bashing, sure, it would have been ideal to use him on Monday or Tuesday, but it's also tough to do that in a non-save situation when you don't know if you might need him the next three days in a row.

And there's the rub... Though there's been a few players I wasn't a fan of over the year (plus Ozzie), my primarily dislike of the Sox has been because of Hawk, and he has less than 20 games left. What's a person to do when the new guy is actually quite enjoyable to listen to?

You know that nachos are horrible for your health, right? I'm not talking about the cheese. I'm just saying that the next time you go back to the kitchen for more, you're going to get met by several TD moderators with crowbars. Now knock it off, and stop at Taco Bell on the way home tomorrow evening.

I'm telling ya'll -- Frosty the Sano-Man.

Don't know about Joe, but I sure did. Great classic from my childhood. Also by the same author is a biography -- Ryan LaMarre: The Kid Who BABIPed 1.000.

What? Mauer’s contract is about to run out? How come nobody told me?

To borrow from two earlier themes, as an EDT resident, I’m going to go put another blanket on my 64 degree bed and hit the sack. We had snow here in northern Indiana earlier this evening.

When I die, I hope to go peacefully in my sleep like my grandpa did, not yelling and screaming like the people in his car.

My wife is a special education teacher. She gets lots of nice compliments on her "Dyslexics are teople poo" t-shirt.

Yeah, I should edit my "68 in winter" to specify that that's daytime. We drop it at at night too, to 64.

You must be setting mine as well -- same thing.

Great article. I also don’t think it’s unreasonable to think that there may be improvement left in Castro’s bat. At other positions, guys can come up and work on improving their offense immediately. For a catcher, the focus when they come up is on defense, so they focus their energies there. Then, as they master the defensive side of the game, they can start to focus on the hitting. Wish I could think of specific examples, but it seems like catchers have a later offensive peak than other positions. Russell Martin and Robinson Chrinos are a couple who come to mind who have had some of their better offensive years after age 30.

Life is too short to drink coffee. Or as I like to say, “Mt. Dew. It’s not just for breakfast anymore.”

I agree with your point that without Ervin, they probably would have been near the bottom in 2017. My point is that the improvement from 30th to 23rd didn't primarily come from Ervin pitching better in 2017. It came from the improvement in other places, primarily from two spots in particular. Ervin was huge last year. But in 2016, the starters overall ERA was 5.39. If you take out Ervin's 2016 starts and replace them with his 2017 starts (including the 30 extra innings), the starters ERA would have only dropped by 0.10 to 5.29, and they still would have been close to last. However, going from 30th to 23rd was from the starters ERA dropping from 5.39 in 2016 to 4.73 in 2017, a net drop of 0.66. So my point was that if Ervin's improvement dropped the ERA by about 0.10, the remaining 0.56 came from improvements elsewhere. So looking elsewhere, 2016 Gibson vs. 2017 Gibson was virtually a wash, as was 2016 Nolasco vs. 2017 Colon (really, I was surprised too!). 2017 Santiago was a tiny bit better than 2016 Millone and 2017 Hughes was a smidge better than 2016 Hughes, in each case in similar numbers of starts. I didn't go to the bother of totaling the riffraff of small-volume starters, other than to note that the leash was short on Turley, et al., in 2017, both in numbers of starts individuals got and in how long they lasted in a game. By contrast 2016 gave us 9 starts of Pat Dean (6.85). If those were mostly a wash, where did the big improvement come from? Ultimately, it wasn't primarily from Ervin's slight improvement in 30 additional innings. Rather, it was from having... 25 starts from Berrios (3.89) and 21 from Mejia (4.50) in 2017 (46 starts total)vs. 26 starts from Duffey (6.43) and 14 starts from Berrios (8.02) in 2016 (40 starts total)

"From 2016 to 2017, the Twins went from 30th to 19th in starting pitcher ERA, which is a hell of a step forward. But that was reliant on a Herculean effort from Santana, who is poised to miss a significant portion of the 2018 season." I'll agree with the first sentence, but not the second. Santana improved from 3.38 to 3.28 in 30 more innings last year, but the real improvement was elsewhere. Starters not named Ervin went from a 5.91 ERA in 2016 to 5.19 in 2017. That's where the real improvement was.

Thanks for the context in giving the stat line before those last starts. That's a helpful distinction, though it may also add fuel to the notion that they don't want to rush him. It's easier to manage innings in the minors. But while Bruce Wayne might want to take the Lamborghini, he shouldn't take it if the airbags and seat belts aren't installed. And it's going to take an entire fleet to get the team from here to there on a consistent basis, so I don't want to put all the gas in the Lamborghini while not doing the oil changes on the Corollas or letting them rust. Some others have mentioned the good work that the pitching coach in AA has done with Romero, so perhaps they'd also like the next month or so to finish the paint job and install the fuzzy dice on the Lamborghini (This metaphor is going to, uh, break down somewhere, I know!) Point being, with the number of innings Jorge, Gonsalves, and Slegers have at AA (all 160+) and AAA/MLB (all have at least some experience there, with Slegers at 160+) and their ages, I suspect all will get a shot before Romero, no matter whether Romero starts at AA or AAA. Probably Enns too, given that he's pushing 160 IP in AAA and is someone they traded for. Jaye seems the definition of AAA depth. I'm not saying Romero couldn't start at AAA. I'm also not saying that a best-case scenario doesn't speed up what I suggested a couple posts ago. I just think that what I described may be the most likely scenario for him (and more importantly, the entire team) to succeed. I wouldn't want to put all the eggs in his basket while not taking into account that the other guys I mentioned have a significant chance of succeeding at some level, and some of them (most notably Gonsalves and Jorge) have a reasonably high ceiling, even if not as high as Romero. Romero's progression is important, but it has to be looked at in context. Between Mejia, Gonsalves, Jorge, Enns, and Slegers, which would you send to AA to make room for him in Rochester? (And keep in mind that May isn't on this list anywhere.)

Yeah, the way I could see him contributing in a pennant race is by helping keep the higher-leverage guys fresh. Maybe he gets the 8th inning when the team's down by three or the eighth and ninth when up by four, etc. Not quite mop-up, but those games when the win probability is 80-90 percent either way.

While we’re at it, I’m not the first to suggest Romero ending the season in the Twins bullpen, but I haven’t seen the same suggestion about Gonsalves. His innings count is 134, 140, and 110 over the past three years. That doesn’t sound like a jump much past 160 or so either. So if 25 starts gets him to around 140 innings or so by mid-August, he too could get some seasoning with a few weeks totaling 20+ in the Twins pen. And during the time in Rochester, he would be a nice candidate for bringing up as the 26th man for any doubleheaders, just to get his feet wet. That is, unless Mejia is still down, in which case he seems the obvious person to bring up instead.

I like Romero in AA to start the season. He had a good year there last year, but I don’t think of it as dominant. WHIP of 1.35 and K/BB of 2.66. Good numbers both, but not outlandish. Innings will also be a factor after 0 in 2015, 90 in 2016 and 125 in 2017. I could see a progression that shoots for about 160. Perhaps something like this: 10 starts in Chattanooga. That gets you to somewhere around 60 innings around May 17. By that time, at least two of the following will happen in Minnesota or Rochester: *Hughes proves that he doesn’t belong in the rotation. *Santana is not yet healthy. *Gibson proves that he doesn’t belong in the rotation. *Somebody in the Twins rotation gets hurt. *Somebody in the Rochester rotation gets hurt. That opens at least one spot in Rochester. If Romero has indeed proven he deserves it, and there’s every reason to think he will, he gets promoted. Then 15 starts there, averaging 5 innings, gets to 135 for the year and somewhere around Aug. 7. If he gets skipped a time or two in either location or if they use a 6-man rotation for any time, the date is a little later. And by then, if he’s earned it, he joins the Twins bullpen for the final six weeks (or after roster expansion on Sept. 1) for the final 25 innings or so of relief work.

*Asterisk: Trevor May **Double Asterisk: Michael Pineda (though more likely in the bullpen) ***Triple Asterisk: Clayton Kershaw in July rental (hey, it's March, and a guy can dream)