IndianaTwin

Though they got a few starts, their primary role on the roster was still "backup infield depth," which McClusker can't provide. They had a total of five combined starts in a window of time when the return of Lewis and Castro was seen as imminent. Every one of Gasper's starts at DH, for example, was with the hope that no one would be getting hurt before Lewis arrived to give Gasper a demotion. Keep in mind that I'm not arguing for Kiersey over McCusker. I'm just saying that's the comparison the Twins are making. McCusker isn't fighting Bride/Clemens for a job -- he's fighting Kiersey. Right or wrong, it seems they don't (yet) see the upgrade from Kiersey to McCusker offensively to be worth the downgrade on defense/baserunning. I think the perceived improvement from Kiersey to Wallner is large enough that they would send Kiersey down in his place if he magically became healthy tomorrow. That's ignoring the health elsewhere. For example, having Castro available now also makes it easier to send Kiersey down.

Not trying to be flippant, but I think they see Fitzgerald's job as filling a defensive spot while the pitchers develop. In other words, any team is going to realistically have only so many prospects, so you need other players to fill out the roster so the prospects have enough guys around them to field a full team. Theoretically they could have brought up Fitzgerald rather than Clemens, but then you have to sign a Clemens to play in St. Paul. UNLESS, and here's where we turn to your development point. On one level, I can agree with you about a lack of development, BUT I also have to recognize that there are very few franchises that have a development system to the point where they have legitimate prospects in all positions in AAA. So, or example, I don't follow the minors closely enough, so forgive me if Anthony Prato is an actual prospect. But I'm guessing he's mostly on the St. Paul roster to cover injuries and to fill a spot because Walker Jenkins is perceived as not developmentally ready for AAA (and right now, of course, also injured). IF, for example, later in the season, Wallner and other major league OFs are healthy and Kiersey gets sent down AND Emma was healthy and productive AND Jenkins has earned himself a spot in AAA, Prato wouldn't get much outfield time. But those aren't the case, so you need Prato on the roster. Similarly, on the pitcher side, Dobnak's contract is a factor, but his primary purpose on the St. Paul roster is that true prospects like Festa, Matthews, Morris and Raya can't cover all the starts and no true prospects in Wichita have been deemed ready for AAA.

I'm not sure that signing Bride/Clemens is a fair comparison to not bringing up McCusker. The infielders on the roster when they signed those two were France, Julien, Correa and Gasper. They didn't need "a body" when they traded for/signed Bride and Clemens. They needed "a body who can passably play several infield spots." That's not McCusker. With a three-man non-catcher bench, you can't have a player short of Nelson Cruz who is a full-time DH (and we'll see, but it seems likely that Lewis may well be doing a lot of DHing). So a position is needed. The question then needs to be why Kiersey is up rather than McCusker. I don't know whether McCusker's defensive chops or his speed are anywhere close to Kiersey's, but it seems likely Kiersey's what's keeping McCusker in St. Paul.

It will also be interesting in that their next nine games are against Baltimore and San Francisco, one spot below and one spot above the Twins in steals, near the bottom of the list. Then they have three with Milwaukee, near the top of the list. Check back with me later, but my prediction is Jeffers Tuesday and Thursday against Baltimore this week and then since Thursday is an afternoon game, Jeffers on Friday and Sunday against the Giants. Then the next week, Jeffers on Tuesday and Thursday against Baltimore, but Vazquez Friday and Sunday against Milwaukee to get two of three in that series, since the Brewers run a lot. Book it. As a general rule with wanting to do "load management," but with also seeing Jeffers as the better bat, I've thought that a starting point is to have see Jeffers play every other day, rather than every other game. That would mean that in an even number of consecutive days, they would be equal, but in odd game stretches, Jeffers would always get the extra.

No problem -- the start of this season has had us trying to put a lot out of our memories.

I don't remember when the statement was made, but from April 15-May 2, Jeffers started 11 of 16 games behind the plate, including 9 of 12 from the 15th to the 28th. It's just been the last several days that they went back to alternating, with Vazquez getting both Saturday and Sunday. (It's also been in that last stretch, and a couple more, that they had lost another bat in Keaschal.) Enough has gone wrong that it's hard to see Lewis and Castro as the saviors to the season, but they do change the roster pretty dramatically. The last week, they had five guys they couldn't/didn't trust offensively -- Vazquez, Julien, Bride, Clemens, Gasper, Kiersey. You can't have a lineup without at least one of them in it. Now, with no Julien and Gasper, you have a bench of Catcher, Bride, Clemens and Kiersey. Keirsey hardly starts but he's even more the PR and defensive replacement for Larnach. Bride and Clemens can slide into being true spot starters, rather than either Bride or Clemens starting seven of the last nine days (plus four starts for Gasper and five for Julien in that window.

My take on Jeffers/Vazquez is that on Saturday and Sunday they prioritized Vazquez's defense over Gasper's, Julien's or Kiersey's bat. Given Cleveland's and Boston's seemingly running at will on Jeffers Wednesday and Friday, I took it as using Vazquez for defense and letting Jeffers DH. If you're going to have a black hole in the lineup with Julien, for example, you might as well have a black hole with Vazquez and improve the defense. That scenario, with catching Vazquez and using Jeffers as the DH, might be Gasper's saving grace on the roster, since his ability to be an emergency catcher does allow them to DH Jeffers without risking losing the DH by Vazquez getting hurt. EDIT: Based on what Vanimal just posted, apparently you can scratch my third paragraph going forward. I think the first two paragraphs still stand, however. And now that they have two more bats they can use as DH (or to shuffle someone else to DH), rather than using Jeffers there as much, it will be interesting to see how the Vazquez/Jeffers balance plays out.

Unfortunately, it wouldn't be much of a surprise for Julien to get demoted. It wouldn't be much of a surprise for Clemens, Bride, Gasper or Kiersey either, but that's a different discussion. Specifically, yikes -- five guys out of 13 who are viable demotion/DFA candidates!

I'm not sure I've seen the names Eddie Bane and Harmon Killebrew used in the same sentence before.

There's a lot of baseball movies that I thought were great from the start and stayed there in my mind. This one is one that I thought was so-so at first, but have come to love. There's movies like Bull Durham and Major League that tell you up front that you're supposed to laugh (and you do, often uproariously). This one just invites you to sit down and enjoy yourself after a long (and too serious) day at work and you find yourself laughing and smiling all along the way, There's a lot of great lines, but what stands out to me are great facial expressions at different scenes. (And actually, James Earl James didn't particularly care for baseball, but thank God he acted like he did.)

Rivera's two highest-save seasons, 2001 and 2004: He was 50 of 57 in save situations in 2001, so 14 appearances in non-save situation (20 percent. He was 53 of 57 in save situations in 2004, so 17 appearances (23 percent) in non-save situations. Those were two of the best seasons of the best closer in history and more than 20 percent of the time, he was used in non-save situations. Continuing on, in 2005, it was about a third of the time in non-save situations and 41 percent of the time in 2006.

(If you found my immediately previous post of any value, read on. If not, jump ahead.) I responded, @Woof Bronzer, because I think it is a great question. I find that asking ourselves these questions from time to time on the internet is helpful, because it's so easy for all of us to dig our heels in on something. My response largely centered around the notion of scapegoating, though I didn't use that term. I don't want to take this thread off track, but I've wanted to ask a similar question of people related to Paddack. Each year, particularly in years when we struggle, we come up with a whipping boy or two. Colome, Pagan, Gallo, Bundy and more recently Paddack come to mind. I have no idea what you think of Paddack, so this isn't pointed at you, but, serious question -- how many good performances would it take for Paddack to be removed from this year's designated whipping boy status? A couple years ago, it was Pagan, for example. He had some epic meltdowns, but by the time they figured out how to use him, he actually was pretty effective, but very few people were willing to acknowledge that. In Paddack's case, there's a lot of history. And then he gets shellacked in his first game. But over his last five starts, he has a 3.00 ERA with a 1.21 WHIP. Last four starts and it's even better -- 2.25 and 1.10. I'd like to see him go longer than five innings. On Tuesday, I'm told that while he ended up with a decent line, he also had some hard outs. But still, hard outs are better than hard hits. He only went five innings and was at 76 pitches, but I wondered in another post whether the decision to pull him was also affected by having thrown 99 pitches in his previous outing (one short of his post-TJS high and on normal rest) and having a tremendously rested bullpen. With fewer pitches the previous game, an extra day of rest, a less-rested bullpen or some combination thereof, would have he gone out for the sixth? We'll never know. And that's from a No. 4/5 starter. So how many more games at the level of his last five starts does he have to provide for him to be removed from whipping boy status? Or how much better does each game have to be? Would he be given more grace if he'd gone a sixth inning on Tuesday, even if it meant giving up a second run and relinquishing the lead? He's had a career of throwing some clunkers amidst some solid starts, so how many is he allowed -- 1 out of 4, 1 out of 6, only 1 out of 15? Serious question -- does he even have a chance for redemption in TD readers' eyes, or is there too much water over the bridge? (And then we can move on to Buxton, currently on pace for 147 games. How many games does he have to play this season, or this season and next, to be seen as an asset in your minds?)

Fair, and great, question. I'm not the poster, but I'll take a shot, if you'll let me shift the question a little bit. For context, I'm less of a "Fire Rocco" guy than many (most?) on TD, though that's admittedly a low bar. Based on my posts, including some above, I suspect people would think I'm a bigger Rocco fan than I actually am. I try to offer posts that suggest some nuance and that remind ourselves that we don't have all the information we need to make pronouncements on some of the things we pronounce about, myself probably included. I don't know if you have reason to follow Iowa men's basketball, but my name really should be "Iowa Twin." I just live in Indiana. For different reasons, there are parallels between how fans (at least on TD) see Rocco and how Iowa fans saw Fran McCaffery over the end of his tenure. This year in particular, there were legions of "Fire Fran" posts. I wasn't necessarily one of those, but when I started to read that they were only selling about 60 percent of seats and only actually having about 30-40 percent of fans actually showing up (in the context of a post-Caitlin Clark women's basketball team still selling out the arena*, so it's not that Iowa folks have something against basketball), it got to the point where I started to ask myself, "Is Fran going to be allowed to succeed?" Things had gotten to the point where they could have gone on a run and won the national championship, and I think the most fans would have given him was one more year. There was too much water over the bridge, and I think things had reached the point where the AD really didn't have a choice. So the question I've been asking myself is, "How much more losing - bad results - would cause me to consider that maybe, just maybe, it's actually time for a change?" At what point are they at a place where Rocco isn't going to be given a chance to redeem himself, where even a magic turnaround to a World Series championship only gets him one more year? It's complicated by the ownership situation and Falvey's own status, but I think if they get to a point where they end up, say, a 70-win team, I'm not sure the team has a choice. I'm not sure whether 70 is the right number in my mind, but it's certainly climbed up since the beginning of the season, but my primary outlet is TD, which may or may not be reflective of the fanbase as a whole. I don't know. I'm not generally one for midseason changes, but I think if they'd won only maybe one or two in the White Sox/Angels homestand they may have reached the point of no return in my mind. *And to be honest, I've always been a huge men's basketball fan, but I found a way to get to six women's road games and didn't make an effort to get to any men's games. In our household, we started to refer to the women's games as the Varsity and the men's team the JV as a way to keep them separate.

🤣 I was wondering about that too. I don't completely know how these charts work. Are those where the ball was actually picked up? As in, a ball down the line that goes foul after passing the base? That's all I could come up with as an explanation. But it sure would be helpful for Buxton to have that extra space. Are you familiar with Vintage Base Ball, which plays by rules from the 1800s? In the version I played, fair/foul was determined by where the ball first hit the ground, ignoring whether it was past first or third base. There's also no batter's box and you can request location on pitches. Batting right-handed, I would ask for a short pitch on the outside corner, slide forward and smack down on the ball. If I did it right, the first bounce would be just inside the third-base line and then go way into foul territory from there. Even with my (lack of) speed, it was a guaranteed hit if I could pull it off.

Actually, isn't using Duran in the eighth an adjustment to the regimented "plan" that has him only used in the ninth when you are up by one, two or three runs?

@Matthew Lenz, I appreciate the attempt to try deciphering a logic behind those decisions. I haven't always agreed with you when you've done that, but I think it's a better approach than saying, "There is no logic." In this case, I follow along with the Jax and Duran decisions. I wonder if there is an additional component to the Varland/Coulombe/Sands decision. I don't know how Rocco sees them, but if he viewed them as more or less equal for the ninth, the next thing is, "We're playing to get to the 10th. All three of these have similar chances of getting me there. If they do, which one do I want available for the 10th, when I have to deal with Manfred Man rules? Which one will be best with a runner on base?" For me, out of those three, my first choice is Coulombe and my second choice (if needed in the 11th) is Sands. I also preface all of these discussions with "There's stuff we don't know." For all we know, Coulombe or Sands was nicked up a bit and weren't actually available. And to anticipate a question, I don't think Rocco owes it to us to announce that in the postgame presser. There are strategic reasons to keep that stuff under your hat.

I agree with that saying. A corollary would be "Don't get beat without using your best guy." If you throw Varland in the seventh and he fails, you've deprived yourself of the opportunity to use Jax and Duran in the roles they have often played, maintaining a lead in the 8th and 9th. A critique of Rocco is that he doesn't go for the jugular. In effect, that's what he was doing to the Cleveland offense, saying, "You can't score in six? Well, let me stuff your offense in a deeper hole by giving you Jax and Duran next." Said another way, offensively, if there's an opportunity to score in the seventh or eighth and a manager doesn't pinch hit his stud for Kody Clemens because he wants to the save his stud for a possibility in the ninth, the manager gets chastised with, "You gotta use him now -- there may not BE an opportunity in the ninth." This is essentially what he did on the pitching side, saying, "I gotta use Duran in the eighth, because otherwise there might not BE a ninth." The Jax/Duran part of the strategy worked. The part that didn't work was the offense getting any runs to make it an easier job for Varland in the ninth.

He got to do it against the Twins pitcher and catcher, however. 😄

I have a meatball problem too. I notice it each time I step on to the scale.

I’ve also argued that Buxton spends comparatively little time on first. He has enough power that people have to play him deep. When they do, there’s an even greater likelihood of him turning singles into doubles. For comparison, here’s Correa’s spray chart of career doubles. He has many more doubles than Buxton because of having 60 percent more plate appearances, but for him to get a double it has to be down line or deep in the gap. By comparison, here’s Buxton’s: Look at how less concentrated on certain areas it is. I especially notice the number of “singles” to short left center that Buxton turned into doubles.

And so when you aren’t scoring, you end up taking more risks, like France going on that play because Clemens and Vazquez are coming up… I’m still too much of an optimist to think they are out of it. I mean, flip even two of the meltdown games from the guy many were seeing as their most dependable reliever and who seems to be getting back on track and they are 15-17 and 4.5 games out. That’s a disappointing start, but has a much different feel (at least to me) than 13-19 and 6.5 out. As someone pointed out, their run differential is actually positive on an offense that has been missing arguably its best hitter (Wallner) and is getting one of their (potentially) best hitters back (hopefully) soon in Lewis, along with a cog that changes the team significantly in going from Clemens to Castro. Check that, going from either Gasper or Bride to Castro because hopefully we’ve already gone from Clemens to Lewis. And you can’t convince me that Correa is a .223 hitter with a .588 OPS. Conversely, Cleveland is five games over with a run differential that’s negative. I think it’s virtually impossible to play .581 ball with a significant negative run differential, no matter how good your fundamentals are. With the look of their offense and starting staff, I think it’s much more likely the negative run differential is closer to reality than the current record. I’m not saying they are going to finish under .500, but I don’t see how they can be a 95-win team, which is where they are playing. I haven’t seen Detroit, but they at least seem more legit. And Kansas City’s in the midst of a hot streak that teams have all the time, but has needed that to get back to .500. The Twins are 6-4 in the last 10 games and have lost three games in the standings to KC. But all that said, they clearly are in a spot where mistakes, bad luck and injuries are compounding. It’s starting to feel a little like the 2016 team, where they went into the season with a reasonable amount of optimism after having finished above .500 with guys like Buxton, Sano, Kepler and Polanco on the horizon and somehow turned it into a 103-loss season. Sometimes you get in a spiral that’s impossible to get out of.

I was thinking the same while listening, though radio guys also talked about the basepaths being greatly slowed down because of all the diamond dust getting dumped on the field. Sounded like it wasn’t a great throw and Bader still got thrown out.

Witness it working recently in a key situation with Buxton on third.

I’ll buy this as potential thinking on Lee’s part, particularly as a coach’s kid, though I’d hope that Lee would get off the bag at least far enough to a) draw a throw and get the run or b) be able to break for third as soon as the throw goes home. Again, I didn’t see it to have a sense of whether that happened. Or whether reactions from players or staff gave any indication toward one of these.

Oops. Typo. Your first one is what my a) was intended to be, which makes me wonder which run expectancy number I quoted. Maybe my brain cramp was because what I typed is what actually DID happen thanks to Lee’s not running. I hadn’t thought of your second one — that makes sense as well. Probably a little less likely, but very plausible. Thinking of that one, another would be 3B gives up the run, runner realizes he’s going to run into an out and retreats, 3B goes to second to try getting the lead runner, but runner gets back in time. Starting to head towards the esoteric, but it’s at least a little plausible (particularly if the Twins are on defense 🤣).