Trov

I did not watch yesterday, but the highlights continue to show that Buxton may have figured it out at the plate and will put up some crazy numbers this year. I said all along what was holding him back is his lack of pitch recognition. He is staying off the breaking pitches out of the zone and crushing the ones in the zone. He also is not missing fastballs in the zone either. I do not know his chase rate but has to be very low and same with whiff rate. For most part his BABIP is not luck he is hitting the ball hard all over the field. Looks like the muscle he put on has also helped him at the plate for some reason.

I will agree that his numbers the last two years have been much better hitting RH than LH, but up until 2020, it was the other way around. To say that 2019 was outlier is not accurate, as in his prior years he hit better LH than RH. Yes, the last two years have been flipped and now he is more even. It will be great if he can fix his issues, but up until 2020 he was better from left side so to scrap it because of recent struggles is going far. I bet if he flipped now he would not do well.

I see no reason to keep him out of high leverage situation. I mean everyone else is failing in them so why not see what he does.

This year is much different from 2016. That team was not built to win in any way shape or form. This team is playing terrible, and that my be a combination of issues. They can turn it around, but will need to really start playing better. The pen is a huge issue, and their lack of producing runs lately too. They are failing to do much of the little things they need to do. I do not know if they have much of anything in minors to bring in for pen spots, but unless we can start getting guys out late in games we will not win much. Colome has been nothing short of a train wreck and might be time to cut bait on him, or at very least not be end of game guy. I sure hope they figure it out soon though.

Both teams play by same rules with runner on second. Other than the Buxton HR we have failed several times getting even 1 run in. A couple times we had runner on 3rd less than 2 outs and failed to do it. It is not just our pen in extras it is our lack of putting ball in play with a runner on third. I mean Simmons last night nearly threw his bat at the ball in the other batter box, what was that?

One thing I have noticed is most of the hits Twins are getting generally are balls being hit to the opposite field overall. I am of belief this is the best way of hitting overall. I hope the hitters start to embrace the approach more. In terms of Pineda, outside of the two HR, it was not a terrible outing. The errors did not help, and so many of the hits were weak contact that fell in front of the OF. Nothing more frustrating for a pitcher than weak contact getting hits and errors behind you. You think, what do I have to do to get someone out? I will say MLB standings, outside of a couple of teams, are no where near expected at this point. Still a long year, and hopefully this is just a terrible stretch and we will turn around soon.

Not sure what standards you use to measure who the worst team in the league is, or how much a country mile is to measure that by. However, coming into game Pirates had better record than 8 teams, Twins and Yankees being two of those teams. They had more runs scored than 6 teams, and over 20 runs scored more than the Mets who lead the NL east. Pirates have allowed less runs than 7 other teams, and have a run differential better than 2 other teams. Detroit is at the bottom of almost all of those lists. The Pirates pitcher last night, counting the game still has just over a 2 era, a sub 1 whip and putting up decent numbers. Also, his pitches have some nice movement. The Pirates may be expected to be a bad team, but right now they are far from the worst in the league by a country mile in my opinion.

I think it will just take some adjustments for him to get back on track. Will he be like last year all year, no he will not. We just need him to give 6 solid innings most starts. If the trend continues I will be more concerned. It has not helped that his last two games have been against, at the time, the hottest teams baseball. Both are Red Sox and A's are among league leaders in runs score and were on long winning streaks at the time.

In terms of the pitching move, I would more so question not letting Dobnak pitch more than 1 inning, which left you with limited options later in the game. I have little issue with using Colome in 10th, although I am not a fan so far of him this year at all. If we remove him and the new guy gives up a hit an we lose, we would question the choice to bring in someone else. Colome got the job done over all by getting to ground outs that were not completed. The move to take out Donaldson I agree is much more in question. It is not like Blackenhorn is a speedster. I know Twins do not want Donaldson to push things based on leg issues, but taking Donaldson glove out of game proved to be a huge issue. I have always been huge on having good defense. This game showed how much defense can impact a game. Not just the errors, but Buxton made amazing play to keep the lead earlier in game.

If we are asking him to be our savior, we are in real trouble this season. Can he help, I think so, but over last few games we need a whole lot more than a single hitter.

Nick has always seemed to have a long learning curve for each level but eventually made it through. He most likely will not be an all-star, at least not multiple, but he still is of age that some college guys make it up and maybe he can give a few good years of decent ball.

Just a quick comment on the Badoo situation. Yes, he tore it up his first week plus, but looking over his last week, he is striking out at an over 50% clip, with no walks(only 1 on the season) and his OPS has dropped to normal levels. My point is, to judge him on his first week, or even his follow up week is not proper. What will be the judge of him will be how he adjusts. If Detroit is sold on him for the future they can ride him all year and accept a drop off of production. I will tell you what though, if he keeps striking out at over a 50% clip his numbers will really drop a ton. His BABIP over last 7 games is 667, but his average is only .240. I do not know what his expected BABIP is based on exit velo but point is, few players can carry that high of a BABIP. So something will have to give, either he puts more balls in play or his overall average will drop below .200. Badoo in his first 8 games only struck out 4 times, in next 7 games struck out 14 times. League may be adjusting to him, now he needs to adjust to them.

I was not surprised we lost that game. I am ready to move Colome out of end of game situations. Yes, he did induce two ground balls that should have ended the game, but he blew the save in the 9th and should never needed to get to 10th. This is some of the worst baseball I have seen in awhile. They really need to figure it out. Pitching generally has been bad, fielding overall has been terrible, and outside of yesterday, hitting has been terrible as well. It does suck facing teams on great rolls like the Red Sox's were and now the A's, but we gave that game away.

Exactly, every team has bad misses and pass on amazing players. I am sure every team in Mike Trout draft that picked before him wish they could go back. Mark Appel was picked 8th, but was projected 1st did not sign, then picked 1st and he is 29 yet to make majors. The MLB draft is a major crap shoot. There are some players that people say are can't miss, but even them end up being a miss. I believe MLB draft is the hardest to project. Some drafts are filled with future MVP's/HOF and some are filled with busts. The fans will remember the home team bad choices, but rarely remember the hits compared to others drafted before them. I doubt you will find a single team that has a run of no busts in their drafts. Where I get more upset is when bad trades are made. I bet White Sox fans are real upset of the Tatis Jr. trade for Shields years ago. Shields did nothing to help Sox and Tatis Jr. is expected to be one of best players for next decade. The reason I have bigger issue with bad trades are that you had a chance to really get to know the player you are sending away. If you did not see the potential then your system may be broken. With the draft you only get to scout, watch tape, and make educated guesses. So often if a player is out of HS in a northern state they get little attention because they do not play as much and are not considered as good of competition. That leads to some misses of good players.

I am glad it is still early in the season. We really need to stabilize things. First we lost our 3b for a few games, then our CF, both are back thankfully. But now our SS and many others are out due to COVID. I hope they can get settled in and come out of this funk they find themselves in.

I recall at the time of the draft he was highly touted. Really the top of that draft has been a lot of busts. Of the top 10 only 5 has made majors, and of them only 2 have double digit career WAR. It just goes to show that scouts are far from perfect. Guys like Dobnak go undrafted and make majors, where number 1 overall picks do not make majors.

Nick Gordon has become a huge disappointment. He was expected to be a high floor guy at minimum. He may never make the majors as a Twin. There are a few guys right after him that would have been better, Aaron Nola, for one. The next SS take was Trea Turner, who is not the best around, but has been decent in his career and been in majors for 7 years now. I remember people were down on Turner in the draft because his lack of power. In the 7 years he has had between a 3 to 4 war each full year. This is not world changing but much better than what Gordon has done and will do.

It is WAYYYYYYY too early to comment on the signings. The starters have made 2 starts each, and the pen arms have made like 5 innings each. Simmons has played 10 games. Yes, I know it is early impressions, and with team not playing something needs to be written, but this is still too early to say any was good or bad.

I hate articles about run differential or current runs allowed/scored predicating the future. First, we are barely into the season, to say anything that happens in the first few weeks will predict the full season is crazy. Yankees are in last place behind Baltimore, do we expect that all season? There is a reason we play 162 games. In terms of run differential predicating future outcomes is just dumb. All run differential shows is what has happened, and if future games are played under similar situations the expected standings, but it does not predict how the team will play. You can point to run differential as to how many wins or losses a team would typically have at that point, but you cannot say that means it will equal out over the season, or that the team will continue to have similar percentage of run differences. Look at a few years ago, at break everyone was saying no way will Twins keep winning because run differential says they will start to lose, but what changed? The run differential caught up to record not record catching up to run differential. You can point out that the odds are they will not have same disparity, but you cannot say one will stay constant and the other will change. What you can draw is that if team continues to have same run differential percentage the record will be expected to change, but that is only if team does not change their output. Run differential is not a predictive stat, as with each win the runs go to positive and with each loss they go to negative, so when a winning team has negative or close to even it can be concluded they won close games and got blown out in losses. The reverse is also true. Neither will predict how the team will perform going forward.

In terms of Sano it is not that he is chasing pitches, that is a good thing, it is he is not hitting strikes and missing them, which is bad. If you cannot put a strike in play it does not matter if you are not chasing. Hopefully he turns that around.

This is the second game in early season we gave away. Yes, we will lose some games that should have won, but two this early in season does not put good taste in mouth. Colome was rocked today. I knew after the second batter it was not going to go well because both first two hits were solid liners. Overall, I am not too concerned for the team long term. If Colome continues to not do well others will pitch 9th and he will be earlier in game or just released.

One comment I have is I am sick of Dick saying in the three losses all the Twins have done wrong is a few singles and walk. No, they have failed to score runs under the same situation. They had runners 1st and 3rd no outs and failed to score in second game. Sure on defense they have only given up some singles, but on offense they have done nothing. I hope he quits talking like the rules are against the Twins, they just need to execute when they are hitting.

Bring in Colome has given Rocco the ability to really match up through games and series. There may have been much deep reason for the two innings, or as Justin brought up it may have been that Seattle had more lefties and Rodgers would be more likely to be used against them. It has been talked about how Rodgers will be used again to face lefties more. Yes he can get out righties, but always throwing him out for 9th no matter the match ups was not the best use. It also allows for Rodgers to not be used back to back days either. Rocco has said he will never just have a set closer and will let the game play it out. I think that is best way to go. I will say having proven 9th inning guys is important because not everyone can do it mentally. Look at Latroy Hawkins career. He was one of best bullpen pitchers of his era, but every time a team put him in to be closer he was so much worse. It could have been mental for him, or matchups, because teams will pull out all the moves in the 9th.

I think the broadcast brought up important point that Buck seems to be swinging earlier in the count and at first pitches a lot more. Now, if the league adjusts and starts throwing more out of the zone and he chases that will be the factor on how he will do. He is hitting well, and has come through a couple of big important hits, and his ability to beat out routine double play ball made big difference early in game. However, I worry that as season goes on teams will start throwing a ton of early out of the zone sliders that he swings at. He has never been able to stay off of them. I also worry that he will start to get too pull happy, which makes that off plate slider even harder to foul off. He may have a huge break out year for himself and if he does will help carry the offense. I would like to see him not hit behind Cruz though. I know Cruz is beating out infield hits, but why have a road block on the bases when you have the speed you do. I know there is some merit to having Buck hit 4th as possible second lead off they go down in order in first, but how many triples will be turned into doubles because Cruz gets held at third?

Defense was the difference in this game. Twins got 2 outs at the plate to keep the lead. The first out was a great relay. The second out the runner should never have been sent, but still took a good throw that was made. Also old man Cruz showing off his legs helped get the win too.