Platoon

As long as this team seems to expend its energies and assets on hitting vs pitching, this will continue to be the trend. This HR happy team just won a game with IIRC all runs scored via the long ball. This seems their identity since 2019. But someone took some of the bounce outa the ball and it’s not as easy to do this year. Throw in the fact that in any sport offense is the least predictable portion of the game and you have the win big, lose small Twins. Yes you may be able to bully enough mediocre pitchers during a season to be competitive, but once you get into the playoffs, those guys are watching on ESPN with the rest of us. The ones you could run all over are in the other dugout! The Twins have been unlucky health wise no doubt. They maybe aren’t really as bad as their record, but the difference is not enough to make them a contender. But there just doesn’t seem to be anything in the works to turn this around soon. If there were magic Uber talented players down in milb waiting to come up, they are well hidden from us. Especially on the pitching front. The Twins window was based on Sano, Buxton, Kepler, Berrios, Garver, Polanco, Duffy, etc. So far the only one of this group that has been close to that level of play has been Buxton, and his contributions continue to be muted by his injuries. Right now what you see is a big, slow bumbling baseball team which will win if it runs into some helpful pitching.

All this talk about, "if you want to win the WS you won’t be using a position player", or "if you don’t want to get a HR hit off your position player, play better" have absolutely nothing to do with the UR. The adherence to the UR has for years controlled the parts of the game that aren’t covered in the book. ALL sports have acceptable standards for behavior towards other players or teams that are on the short end of a blowout. And that’s what the UR are about. Treating your opponent with some respect, and I imagine sympathy when it’s not his day. Because in the future, some day won’t be yours. Piling on in any sport is frowned on by any respectable coach, manager, or player. The operative word in that sentence is "respectable". To those who say, "well if you don’t want to be embarrassed play better", I counter with: If you don’t want to get called out by your own coach, or hit in the ass the next day with a message FB, then don’t swing at a 3-0 bunny, don’t steal a base, or for that matter if you do square up a 3-2 floater and it goes out, don’t act like you just hit the winner in game 7! Kudos to the Sox LaRussa for trying to yell "take" before the pitch, and later calling out his hitter and letting the Twins know he wasn’t on board with that behavior. And the same for Duffy taking a stance properly, below the belt. As for those who think that it’s fine to kick a dog when it’s down, there really isn’t anything I can say that wouldn’t get me warning points! ?

OP heading. "No end in sight" Ahhhh, actually I think it should have read, "the end is near"?

He still has not learned to square up his body on a low pitch. Nor has he learned to "smother" a pitch. Finally, while I know that one legged catching is the rage, there are just some guys not athletic enough to pull it off. He is one of them. You simply cannot block balls that low if you are tied up like a pretzel. That leaves you relying on your glove, definitely not Garvers forte!

When the opposition pitcher is standing on the mound, cap over mouth, chanting, "PH Sano, PH Sano, you know the manager made the wrong call. Rocco will tell you that Sano was his chance for a 3 run bomb. The pitcher will tell you Sano was his chance to get out of a big inning! It sort of sums up the teams approach. Bombas score runs, making contact and situational hitting is for weenies!

I know Budweiser is a huge operation. But there is absolutely no way they can make enough beer to quench a Twins fans search for simple competence.

"Limited Edition"..... we could only hope!

MN Twins Rally Edition? Can they be sued for misrepresenting a MLB team?

Satire fits this team perfectly..... Watching the last three innings of. Twins game is frankly baseball satire at its best. I do think there is a possibility that Baffert could help in one aspect of the game. Almost all of Bafferts horses make it all the way around the track. (We won’t go into detail about those that don’t). Few Twins hitters accomplish this feat. Maybe some training in the Blue Grass state would be helpful. That said, Baffert should be watched carefully. I don’t want to see them pulling a curtain around Buxton next time he pulls up lame! ??

Some of this is a lack of talent. But some of this is a failure of the players to meet our expectations. And the fluke 2019 season didn’t help. The Keplers, Garvers, Sanos, and Rogers maybe aren’t what we thought they were. I for one thought Polanco would be a true pure hitter. He’s gotten better, but he isn’t what I envisioned. And while Cruz has 9? HR’s, he is beginning to appear a mere mortal. As for mental approach, well one of the "team leaders" lollygagged his butt home on that DP and cost a run. Also, I was a huge fan of signing Simmons, the team needed a SS badly. But he is playing with about as much interest as my grandchildren do when we pick up sticks in the yard! The Twins pitching staff needs no further verbal abuse, it’s mostly all been said. But, if I was a pitcher and had to pitch to Garver I would seriously have to consider going to my grandmothers funeral that day. The fact I no longer have a grandmother would not deter me a bit. Seriously, if there is a worse MLB catcher I can’t name him. His two singles were easily displaced by the two unblocked low balls, scoring runs. How can you pitch with confidence down in the zone looking at him behind the plate. Pitch framing? I have seen high school catchers who don’t jerk a pitch that clumsily. I don’t think the Calvary is coming this year. This may just be what it is. The FO is going to have to do some pretty miraculous work to turn this around, even by next year. The only player untouchable should be Buxton, and I think he only has a year left under control. Sadly, with his inability to stay on the field, that translates into about 100 more games.

Hopefully with the changeover to the new format, the predictions made this spring by some foolish, optimistic, and naive Twins fans have gotten misplaced in the netherworld? Z??

The Turtle gives you a lot of coverage for being 25-26 on the roster. Is he an elite defensive replacement anywhere? Probably not. But he can go out and make standard and at times above standard defensive plays. I saw Polanco and Sano in the OF, enough said. Also, contemplate Cave at 1B? He has trouble with ground balls in the OF. Donaldson in RF? Garver in LF? Point is while the Turtle may not outplay a MLB starter in a defensive position, he will outplay most of them if they are off their normal spot on the field. Nice flexibility for a manager to have.

On the other hand, the board game by the same name has some correlation to Rocco’s attempts to explain some of his bizarre in game moves. In both instances, it’s really a stretch!

The similarities between watching Twister and the Twins, besides the only slight differences in spelling and the fact that both are disasters, is that they both include a cow. In Twister the tornado ends up having the cow. Watching the Twins, you end up having a cow!

>>>>>>" Besides Burnes, both Gerrit Cole and Jacob deGrom posted strikeout rates of 44% or higher. Unfortunately, the Twins don’t have one of these pitchers." They do have several of those hitters though! The stat on total runs scored is really not relevant for the Twins. This is a Jeckel and Hyde team. It’s either 12 runs, or 2 runs. Some of that is Bomba Ball, and some may be a group of front running hitters. Which would explain a seemingly low success rate in high leverage situations.

I am not sure that Buxton wasn’t always that good. Maybe he did listen to too many helpful voices. And maybe he wasn’t as strong then as he is now. But maybe what really held him back was his inability to stay on the field for extended periods of time. While he has already missed a few games this year due to minor maladies, none of them have been extended. He’s always been good, and right now he is more than good. It’s just possible we never had a chance to see it until this year. Hopefully he can stay on the field, and we can finally enjoy his enormous talents in all phases of the game. For an entire season.

IF you have a team that had a year offensively like the Twins did in 2019, and that team really thinks that’s what they really are, you will get exactly what you are getting now. Big games, big droughts, tons of strike outs, lots of attempts at 5 run HR’s. Basically an all or nothing offense. While I know some of that is the "new" baseball, and it’s endemic around the game, the Twins seem to have taken the term situational hitting completely out of their vocabulary!

Buxton always has been the key to the Twins success on a daily basis. Yes, a stud SP would take over that role in a playoff series, but for the first 162 it would still have to be Buxton. He is just simply a game changer day in and day out. And the day in and day out is the problem. He hasn’t proven his ability to stay on the field for extended periods. Some seem to be chronic such as his migraines. Others self inflicted by running into a fence at full speed, at a 90 degree angle. Others tend be be simply bad luck. But the sum of these parts is that until he can stay healthy, he won’t have the impact or be worth the money that could have been. That would make for a pretty tough decision for management if he cannot change his current injury history. Even now as you watch his talent displayed, I imagine everyone has in the back of their mind, "how long before he is on the DL?"

Your comment is absolutely correct. But one also has to consider that sabermetrics has driven the ability to bunt, and the desire to bunt into submission. If you can hit a major league pitch, you can bunt. The fact a player doesn’t want to is more likely the problem. Sabermetrics cuts both ways. If you have a hitter up who statistically is likely to hit into a DP or strike out, bunting someone into scoring position makes sense. Relying on extra base hits is wonderful if you have the talents to do it. It’s like the 3 in basketball has become. Everyone knows you can score more points that way. But few seem to acknowledge that first the ball has to go into that little metal ring. For a,local example see Pitino, Richard!

Lots of talk about lack of offense here about a team who’s lineup is supposedly an offense I’ve juggernaught. That seems misplaced, until you take the Toddlers comment above into consideration. Hitting mistake pitches. It’s true that hitters rely on them for success, and to pad stats. But those pitches are fewer and farther between in the playoffs as the mistake prone pitchers disappear into an early off season. Then your own pitching staff and defense come into prominence. There is no way around the fact that the Twins middle IF defense and catching defense has been subpar, and this flaws make their average pitching even more so. It’s not easy to seriously upgrade starting pitching, regardless of how much you spend. It’s by far the hardest position fill.

You maybe could not have, but the majority of the wits on here, self included, wouldn’t have batted an eyelash. Btw, is it Vampires or Werewolves that are repelled by Garlick? I assume it’s vampires, since werewolves don’t seem subtle enough for that to work?

With the long pitching rosters and the short benches you need someone to FILL in for a short term emergency. Not someone who needs to be in the playing rotation. There really aren’t many guys who can catch and play both corners in the IF, and apparently have some OF experience in winter ball. Will he perform to the starters standards? Not a chance, or else he would be one. Btw, as a defensive catcher, this is a team that played Mitch Garver behind the plate? While The Turtle is not Joe Mauer, we lowered that standard quite a few years ago. If you don’t have excess roster spots for specialized subs, and you don’t want to let your future starters mold on the bench, then you end up with a "26th man" type. Ala La Tortuga. What I really found interesting is that Nick yelled "our beautiful baby" at the tv over a roly poly catcher, and his GF still married him?

See the ball hit the ball...... ⚾️⚾️⚾️

Someone, or several, lamented a lack of offense in the playoffs? I think loss of offense in playoff games is fairly normal. You are facing league best pitching and teams. Many of them are in the playoffs because they allowed less runs than the teams that are home. In theory you can Bomba your way through the playoffs, but in the time frame of several long series it ain’t likely to happen. Good pitching needs good defense, ask any pitcher. In the term of a season, it’s hard to have a solid pitching staff with a weak middle. Buxton gave us a strong OF middle, when he could stay on the field. Going from there to the backstop, hmmmmmmm. Last years first playoff game lacked offense on both sides, until the left side of the Twins IF kicked two ground balls. Yes, 5 bombas would have made this irrelevant, but playoff games just normally do not go in that direction. Winning in baseball with offense is sort of like winning in basketball with the three pointer. It’s effective and entertaining when you are hitting and shooting well. But when you run into a good defensive team, giddy numbers generally disappear.

I like this.. pitching in this game comes first, but if you haven’t been able to improve that then adding an elite SS takes away some of that slack. And he is elite. I had virtually forgotten that SS’s could cover that much ground, have that much arm velocity, and throw over the top. For someone like me who enjoys a great defensive play as much or more than a Bomba, this is a good day.