OP: "One of the lone bright spots on the day was Harrison Bader’s defense in left field"
Wow. The run Off Varland was directly due to ****** defense by Bader. He got a terrible jump on a shallow fky ball that should have been caught, then made an ill advised dive that missed by several feet and turned rhat bloop single into a bloop double. That runner then scored on a single.
While Im at it, the 3rd and 4th runs dont score without the balk.
As noted in the game thread, these fundamental mistakes are all too commonplace, and prove too much for a weak offense to overcome. Way too often.
Offense is certainly important, and an issue for the Twins. But that's a lot tougher to fix than defense, and a run saved counts as much as a run scored.
Today's game is just an example.
Twins are down 5-2 in the 8th as I type. With just standard, to-be-expected MLB defense, it's 2-2. Mistakes and misplays are all too common, and in the context of MLB, they add up.
Gotta believe the Twins have metrics that leads them to believe it's a better risk to try to cut off ANY runs with the infield in, than play the infield back and try to prevent multiple runs.
But in this particular case, it cost two runs.
Of course, another option is for Ryan not to balk.