IndianaTwin

I know there isn't supposed to be math in a Game Thread, but hear me out. SWR has a career WHIP of 1.335. That means in four innings, on average, he allows between five and six baserunners. Since you can't have a partial hit, let's call it six. Add the 12 outs and he pitches to 18 batters over four innings, meaning he starts his personal fifth inning with his "leadoff" hitter. So, if he starts the game, his fifth inning on average is starting with the leadoff hitter and his sixth inning with the No. 5 hitter. But if you give the effective Topa the first inning and let SWR start the second against 4-5-6 (hopefully) or 5-6-7, it's more likely that SWR is facing the bottom half of the lineup when he gets to the fifth. And if he's more effective than usual and is facing 1-2-3 or 2-3-4 in his fifth inning, that's a good thing, since he's been more effective. And if he gets through that unscathed, it's more reasonable to send him out for inning No. 6, because by then he'll be at the bottom of the border. Meanwhile, pushing SWR back an inning gives an additional inning to figure out whether it's best to use the high-leverage relievers or the low. I figured this all out on a speadsheet. Spreadsheets can be really handy. 😀

Went to the transaction list to see who they sent down/ILed. Not yet listed, but there was this: Thought, what's up with that, then realized that on the 15th, there was a similar list with everyone changing to 42. ----------------------------- MLB.com intern arriving to work on Tuesday: "Okay, boss, I made the copies you asked for. What do I do next?" Supervisor: "Go through every roster and change all the uniform numbers to 42." MLB.com intern arriving on Wednesday: "Okay boss, I picked up doughnuts and made the coffee. What do I do next?" Supervisor: "Remember how you changed all the uniform numbers yesterday? Now go through the rosters and change them back."

Twins just traded for Jonah Bride. Solid OPS last year in 71 games for the Marlins, but weak in 2022, 2023 and 2025. Has played 1B, 2B and 3B in the minors. I suspect he’s left-side insurance.

Radio guys said he got hurt in the top of the eighth. And speculated that Correa was able to play defense but not hit, resulting in the Gasper PH.

I was intrigued, but then I saw WARs of 1.1, 2.0 and 0.5 the last three seasons, including a 106 OPS+ last year as a 36-year-old. With only 12 innings of defense in that time, it's hard to see them using a roster spot for a full-time DH when they have so many people at less than 100 percent. With four-man benches across the majors, I can understand why he's had a hard time getting a job.

I predict Lee will be the first called up. 😀

Agreed. Add in that no position player seems to be banging down the door and it seems more likely they would go to nine in the pen before five on the bench. But either way, they can go to four I. The rotation after tomorrow.

Matthews is on the 40-man. Did you mean 26-man? I think the understanding is that they will send Festa down to create a spot for Matthews. And then, with a couple off days coming up, they could pretty easily send Matthews down after Monday and get a nine-man bullpen for a while (or an extra bench player)…. 8-Lopez 9-Ryan 10-Ober 11-Festa 12-Paddack 13-SWR 14-Matthews 15-Ryan (5 days rest) 16-Ober (5 days rest) 17-Off 18-Paddack (5 days rest) 19-SWR (5 days rest) 20-Ryan (4 days rest) 21-Off 22-Ober (5 days rest) 23-Paddack (4 days rest) 24-SWR (4 days rest) (also, first day Lopez is eligible to return) 25-Ryan (4 days rest) 26-If Lopez is not back yet, this is the first day they need someone else. If one of the starters has gone on IL, Festa can take his place. If not, he still has a couple days before he can be recalled, so it could be Dobnak or a bullpen game. 27-Ober (4 days rest) 28-Paddack (4 days rest) 29-SWR (4 days rest) 30-Ryan (4 days rest) 1-And by now, if Lopez isn’t back, either Festa or Matthews can be recalled. Or they can be recalled a couple days early to give people an extra day.

Duran going from a 6.6 BB% last year to 13.3% this year seems pretty concerning. Until you check and see that it means he has given up 3 walks this year compared to the 1.5 that last year’s rate would suggest. And two of those three walks were in the “let’s get him some work because he hasn’t thrown in five days” second game of the season when they were already down 4-1. Percentages mean very little in SSS.

Thanks. Separate from this particular discussion, I've been intrigued by WPA as a stat, but I hadn't thought about it being contextual based on a team's offense. The 1927 Yankees, for example, may well have had low WPA numbers for their pitching staff.

The Twins have to be leading the league in No. 8 guy in the bullpen performance. 😀 Dobnak, McCaughan and Blewett have combined for a 1.38 ERA and 0.846 WHIP in their 13 innings. And that doesn't even count the scoreless inning from Castro.

Actually, Gray was quoted several times as saying he would have been glad to come back. As others have noted, the Twins (wisely, as I would add to others) chose not to offer him three years at $20M+. He wisely took the offer he was able to get from the Cardinals. Other than a couple of out-of-context quotes, he seemed to have had a positive experience pitching for the Twins.

Oops. Didn't finish my comments. My response was mostly directed at people's comments, though I think there's plenty of it in the articles as well. Perhaps you were focusing on the articles themselves. Those are more certainly more balanced than the comments.

My statement was "Sometimes it seems like most articles on TD are devoted to the job Falvey has done in distributing the payroll dollars." I didn't put a value judgment on whether people think he's done a good or bad job. I was saying that it often feels like payroll distributions are overanalyzed to death. There's only so many ways one can dissect a trade/non-trade of Vazquez/Paddack/Castro in exchange for salary relief to sign XYZ. ------------- That said, I'm remembering things differently than you. I don't think that by and large Twins Daily has been "very supportive of this front office." Certainly not the resulting comments. By and large I'm remembering the signings of France, Bader, Coulombe (less so), Thielbar, Okert, Jackson, Staumont, Solano, Taylor, Santana and Gallo as being met mostly with disdain from the beginning. I'm remembering immediate panning of picking up the option on Farmer and to a lesser extent picking it up for both Kepler and Polanco and then trading Polanco for a deal that only netted Margot. And this offseason it was, "Gotta trade at least one of Vazquez, Paddack, Castro or even Lopez for salary relief." If I went back further, I'd pick up the grumbling about signing Bundy, Archer, Shoemaker. And all those don't count the angst of the front office not having done multiple signings by November or at least December and certainly by early January each year. --------------- In rereading the string, I'm wondering if we may have been talking about slightly different things.

Sometimes it seems like most articles on TD are devoted to the job Falvey has done in distributing the payroll dollars.

Crud -- I shouldn't have gone to the break room to heat my lunch. You beat me to saying essentially this statement. Based on usage to date, it would point to Gasper or Kiersey, but sending Kiersey down would be demoting someone who has a specific talent (speed and defense) and would likely require some outfield time for Castro. Thus, I think it's Gasper. What I think you're saying, and what I agree with, is that if Lee doesn't hit, it's still better to have his defense in the lineup than have Miranda or Julien not hitting and not helping the defense. And even on days when you want to start Miranda or Julien, Lee provides an opportunity for a late-inning defensive replacement that Gasper doesn't.

Yes, I think it’s much more about pitch count. I made reference to Raya’s usage above. Go back and look at his game logs and you’ll see some very clear trends. Every five or so games, they would bump up the trend line five or 10 pitches. If I’m remembering correctly, it even seemed like there were times they would make mid-inning pitching changes when they hit a certain mark. It reminded me of Little League days for my son, where there was a rule that you couldn’t start a new hitter if they were past 75 pitches. If the kid hit pitches, he would be allowed to finish that hitter. (So if the other team had a good pitcher who was at 73 pitches, the next batter had a guaranteed take sign so that the second pitch would be No. 75 and force the substitution.

I think they have general principles, though they’ll tweak them in certain contexts. Without digging in, I think your numbers are in the neighborhood. In the case of 80 pitches over four innings, that makes some sense in that by definition, at least one of the innings has been 20 pitches. And if he’s having the kind of night where he’s averaging 20 pitches per inning, another inning at that level gets him over 100, which they do tend to avoid. Another of their principles seems to be that they don’t tend to let a guy start an inning if they don’t think he can get through it. It would be interesting to know the numbers, but it seems like they have a lower than average number of mid-inning changes. And about 85 pitches through five seems about how they view that one. Again, even a more typical 15-pitch inning gets the guy to 100. But last night was a context where they did go against that. Not sure how they count the time clock violation, but it looks like SWR was at either 93 or 94 pitches through five. Similarly, I agree there are general principles for the relievers. I named the rarity of coming out a second inning, even if the previous was only a partial or very low-pitch. They’re generally averse to back-to-back days and very rarely even consider three straight. If a guy gets more than about 20 innings it’s almost a certainty he won’t go the next day. It’s not at all unusual that Rocco names a reliever as having been “unavailable” in postgame interviews. Often in game threads or postgame reviews, when someone questions why a given reliever wasn’t used or wasn’t used more, it can be explained by looking at the previous day’s pitch chart.

Perhaps the best session at last year's SABR convention in the Twin Cities talked exactly about that. I forget which exec it was (maybe Falvey?) that talked about how (as I recall), they typically let the first year (or partial year) play out in a pattern the pitcher was used to in college (or high school).* That time is about getting to know the player and being able to do better analysis than is possible in draft prep. After that, they indeed develop an individualized development plan that matches their best understanding of the pitcher's potential and his ability to handle increased workload, etc. I gathered that the kind of progression you described is very much in tune with that. Obviously you are continually evaluating and modifying along the way as you gather more information and as things play out, but the concept is this. I wish I'd taken notes and written about it, because it was pretty enlightening. One thing that came through loud and clear is that there's not a single development pattern, so what they do with Raya may or may not look like what they do with Prielipp, which may or may not look like what they do with... It definitely refuted the "The Twins always do it this way" mentality that shows up a lot on TD. There's much more nuance at play than we are ever privy to. At risk of going on a tangent, the other thing I was struck by was Falvey's describing the amount of communication that goes on between him, Rocco and others. Multiple meetings a day. To use one example, they talk about lineup construction every day. Falvey and others will give their input, but ultimately it's Rocco's call, as are in-game decisions. Similarly, Rocco and others are going to give their input into roster construction daily, but ultimately those are Falvey's calls. There were other examples as well, but the idea that often comes through on TD that there are silos, with Falvey creating a roster and then shipping it off to Rocco for implementation, is not the case. Again, much more nuance. *Sometime I plan to go for a world record in the number of parenthetical phrases in a single sentence.

Or less, really. This is all dependent on continued success, of course, but if he throws another 30 innings this year in St. Paul (so 125-130), he could easily enter 2026 as the No. 6 or 7 guy on the list, ready to step into the rotation upon injury, a la what folks are clamoring for in Matthews/Festa. If he were to throw 155-160 innings in 2026, mostly or nearly all at the big league level, that would be a huge win and awfully close to a full season.

It seemed to work well to have Raya start 25 consecutive Fridays last year in building from 62.2 innings in 2023 to 97.2 in 2024. People bellyached about how few innings he threw, but if you look at his game logs, there was a pretty clear progression in number of pitches over the course of the season. One wonders if the plan is to start Prielipp for x number of consecutive Fridays and then eventually decide whether to continue in that direction for development vs. shift to the pen for a temporary MLB need if he's showing he can handle it.

Thanks. There wasn’t an explanation on the radio.

Had it hit Perez and then rebounded to hit Buxton?

It can still be a HBP if it bounces.

I am on the radio, but I wondered the same.