chpettit19

I wouldn't call Winder a better option at all. He hasn't been good in AAA this year so why would we expect him to be good in a 2 run game in the 8th/9th when he hasn't even pitched up here in a while? Lopez is who I'd have gone with for the 8th (although leaving Jax in would've been an option, too), but I don't feel significantly better about that either. The pen was short today, and Varland didn't go deep enough because of the missed double play on the Vlad grounder. Sometimes a loss is just a loss. They don't all have to be Rocco's fault. Sometimes you just lose.

Come on. Guys get 4 days rest for 90 pitches, but you wanted him to have 1 day rest for 40? It's ok to be upset about the loss, but let's be realistic here. Duran wasn't going to pitch, and he shouldn't have been available. The pen isn't deep enough. We know that. It got them today. It won't be the last time. Stewart and Lopez were the 2 non-Pagan relievers I'd have gone with for the 8th and 9th, but Lopez doesn't make me feel any better than Pagan these days. But Duran wasn't an option. Blowing his arm out for 1 win isn't a good strategy.

He threw 38 pitches 2 days ago. There was 0% chance Duran was throwing today. They knew when they sent him out for the 10th on Friday they were finishing this series without Duran.

Lopez for 2 innings? Who was going to pitch the 9th?

Who were the other options for the 8th and 9th? I don't like using Pagan in high leverage spots. I want him off the team because of it, but I don't see "several other options" to cover the last 2 innings of a 2 run game that were very encouraging.

Pagan being forced into a high leverage spot is never good. Have to score the insurance run from 3rd with no outs late in the game. Can't throw it a mile over the 1B head on a routine grounder to 3rd. Have to turn the inning ending double play with 1st and 3rd. Tough loss. But they should've loss the 2 previous games so let's keep some perspective here. They stole 2, and gave 1 away. They won the series. The sky isn't falling.

If the money is right (meaning low) it's worth talking to him about, but I wouldn't count on him at all for next year so we're looking at 2025 as the year he'd be back in the rotation. Ryan, Lopez, Ober, Varland, and Paddack are all still under contract then. I'm not writing them in stone as our 2025 rotation, but if they can't produce any more pitching by then there's a massive problem. I just don't see the need. If I'm the owner I'm telling the FO they can sign Mahle for peanuts, otherwise it's time for them to produce their own pitching because that's what I pay them for. It's pipeline time. They need to be able to back up those 5 starters the next 2 years with internal development. There should be no more trades, or signings, needed. They have 5, and it's time to turn SWR, Festa, Enlow, etc. into the next wave to provide the depth for the 5 big leaguers they have.

While I'm on board with moving on from the management team, I just don't get this obsession with firing coaches like it's going to suddenly make players better. As @Rod Carews Birthday pointed out, people were calling Maki incompetent, and spent much of the offseason calling for his head, when he was in charge of a rotation with Archer, Bundy, Sanchez, and a whole bunch of other AAA/AAAA players in it and they were doing poorly. Now he has a rotation full of legitimate MLB pitchers and they're doing well so he's clearly a genius. Rowson is brought up at least weekly around here because he was the hitting coach in 2019. He obviously would be able to fix this less talented lineup despite the fact that his offenses in Miami were less talented, and terrible at scoring runs, and his current team (Detroit) is less talented, and last place in MLB in runs scored this year. The great James Rowson has his offense being outscored by an Oakland team attempting to set the all time loss record. I don't get how people think coaching turns bad players into good ones. It doesn't. This offense struggling shouldn't be a shock. Many, many, many of us spent all offseason saying they didn't have enough hitting. Correa being terrible is surprising. Buxton being streaky isn't. Polo being hurt hasn't helped, but that's not coaching. Jeffers has been better than expected. Kirilloff is doing his thing. Lewis is hit and miss as he gets rolling again. But are we really surprised Gallo is striking out a bunch with a low BA, and high HRs? Are we surprised Kepler is a bad hitter? MAT, Vazquez, Larnach, Solano, Garlick, or Castro doing things that nobody was expecting? This is a severely flawed offense missing true impact bats. What do we think firing coaches is going to do to fix that? Now I'm not defending anybody, or suggesting this is some top shelf coaching staff. I don't really know. Just saying that this idea that coaches are some sort of magicians who turn bad players into good ones is nonsense. This isn't a talented lineup, and new coaches won't make it one. I don't love the extreme platoon decisions (in fact, I hate them), or the "get your A swing off every time" approach they appear to have at the plate (that doesn't mean they're all trying to hit homeruns every pitch, though), and I'm not going to shed a tear for anyone who's fired, but, if you came into this year expecting (note: I said expecting, not hoping for) some sort of offensive juggernaut, it's your expectations that are the problem, not the coaching. This is a team lacking offensive skill, and it was easy to see in the offseason. These struggles aren't coaching, they're talent.

Well that's what I get for going from memory. Thanks for the correction.

Depth is the name of the game this year, and the Twins aren't going to put Maeda in the pen until they've given him every last dying breath of a chance to start. They've already said they're working him back up as a starter. May be good for fans to start preparing themselves for the very strong chance we see Maeda start more games for the Twins. I understand there's space for Moran because of Thielbar's injury, but I was questioning why you were suggesting there wasn't space for him without Thielbar's injury. He's been really good for a while now. Not sure why you were suggesting sending him down just to test out Balazovic, who's not significantly younger, when Moran is pitching well. I'd like Balazovic to have more sustained success with a WHIP lower than 1.4, and fewer than 4.5 walks per 9 before I get too excited about calling him up. He's striking guys out, and not giving up HRs, which is very nice, but he's not laying waste to AAA hitters by any means. He's been decent, but a 4.26 ERA with nearly a hit per inning, and walk every 2 innings, isn't screaming "call me up!" This isn't a Wallner for Kepler obvious situation to me. I have no idea who will be the best 8 by the end of June. Jax has shown how quickly you can get good relievers back on track, while Lopez has shown how quickly they can come off them. I'm not sold on Maeda automatically being a weapon out of the pen if he can't start. It's certainly an option they should explore, but I'm not at all willing to put him in the top 8 at any point right now. The bullpen doesn't worry me that much right now. I think they're solid enough that they aren't going to tank the season. When you score 3 runs or fewer every night there's no room for error in the pen. That's not a realistic expectation for any pen. They're going to blow some leads when they have literally no margin for error. None of them are going to have 0 ERAs. If this team can start scoring 5 runs a game more regularly I believe this pitching staff can win the vast majority of those games without rushing Balazovic when he's not really dominating AAA. I have no need to "see what they have" in any pitchers right now. Hitters on the other hand...

The argument you typically hear is the challenge with maintaining authority in the clubhouse, or locker room in other sports. Managers, coaches, etc. are tasked with handling 26 egos of professional athletes, and sometimes convincing them to do things they don't want to do. Most professional athletes have not been told "no" very often. They've been the best player on almost every team they've ever played for, and gotten to do just about anything they want because of it. Many of the players are making more than the manager, and some are established stars. Earning the respect of those guys is vital to being successful. There's a great article on The Athletic about Correa testing Popkins when he first got here to see if he was worth listening to, and could actually help. If the team isn't willing to lock the manager in beyond the current season it doesn't look like they have faith in him. If the team doesn't have faith in him, why should the players? If the players don't have faith in the manager how is the manager supposed to be successful in his job? If they don't respect him, and he asks them to do something they don't want to do, they likely do it, but not with 100% effort, and if you're not going 100% in pro sports, you're not winning.

Weird place for sure. I don't know how to salvage this season outside of the players simply figuring it out and playing better. I mean you start with getting the young guys up, and the Keplers of the world out of here. But there's only so many moves they can make from within the org itself. If they're in sell mode in July it's because the FO screwed up so they shouldn't be allowed to be the sellers, but if you're bad enough to be in sell mode in July you need to sell. I don't see any way the Pohlads fire people midseason. Just not their style. But I also don't feel like they're going to fire them after the season either (that's mostly based on today's Gleeman and the Geek). This is all becoming very depressing.

We may have to take away your posting privileges for not making the required "were they facing the Twins lineup?" joke here. We have standards!

I like this part of the Falvine team building strategy. They like good command, college pitchers in the draft who they believe they can add a little oomph to. It's the same strategy Cleveland uses. I think it's easier to teach a mechanical tweak that gets you a couple extra ticks on your FB, or a little extra spin on your breaking stuff, than it is to teach someone to truly have a feel for commanding their pitches.

Colome blew a save on May 2nd, and took an L on May 4th against the offensive juggernaut known as the MN Twins! He then pitched an inning each on May 6th and 7th against the Reds before being demoted back to the minors for the White Sox.

Why are we sending Moran down? He has allowed 2 earned runs in 13.1 innings with 14 Ks to 5 BBs since the start of May. You're expecting Balazovic to be better than that? Basically a WHIP of 1 with a K per inning, and an ERA of 1.35 for a month plus is awfully solid. And Kenta is going to use the entirety of his rehab assignment to see what he's got left in the tank. He won't be here next week.

I don't have any idea why the news took so long to come out. I'm not one to read into those kinds of things too much. Way too many things I don't know about to feel confident with any stance on that. But, while they didn't NEED to give him an extension, it's what every team does. Not just in baseball. Go look at college football, or the NFL, or NHL, or NBA, or any league. How many coaches do you see that just have their contracts run out? I'm sure there have been some, but I'd guess over 90% of them get extensions before the last year of their deal, and are then fired. It's pretty standard stuff. It's hard to run a clubhouse (or locker room) when everyone knows you're a lame duck manager (coach) and may be gone the next year. So, no, they didn't have to extend him, but if they weren't going to fire him it's standard operating procedure to extend him. Teams spend a lot of money on ex coaches because they all get fired.

Rocco didn't "just" get an extension. That happened after the 2021 season. It was just reported on recently. But the FO has been awfully clear that they aren't firing Rocco. It sure seems like it's the 3 amigos til the end. Just want people to know that extension wasn't a recent event.

And he'd won over 60% of his games before that. His contract was set to runout after 2022 which would've made him a "lame duck" manager, and it's awfully standard for teams to extend their managers at that point. Managers don't have their contracts run out, they get fired. I'm not even defending Rocco, or the extension, or anything. Just giving the facts of the situation. People seem to believe that Rocco was recently extended during this miserable stretch, when it isn't true.

Just to clear something up, Rocco had his options picked up after the 2021 season. The "extension" wasn't something they just gave him recently, it was just reported recently. So all the things you're claiming he was rewarded for came after his options were picked up. They didn't even "reward him" for the 2022 struggles as they'd already picked up his options. He's been under contract through 2025 since 2021. This isn't a new development.

@Blyleven2011 Is correct, Kyle Farmer is the emergency catcher. And he's an awfully good option considering he was drafted as a catcher, and came up through the Dodgers system as a catcher. He has only caught 19 games in the majors, but I'd guess that's about 19 more than anybody else's emergency catcher. He has 363 professional games behind the plate.

I wouldn't ask Kepler about CF at all. I don't think he brings any value there either. He's a worse fielder, and no better hitter, than Taylor. I think they should DFA Kepler no matter what. The mindless platooning drives me nuts. It's to the point where I seriously think other managers/FOs sit in pre-series meetings and actively laugh at how easy it's going to be to manipulate the Twins lineup however they want. I can't imagine there's ever been a team in MLB history that pinch hits for the top 4 players in their lineup as frequently as the Twins. Makes me want to cry. As for Jeffers, I just think he's turned an actual corner, and he's a solid hitter. He was drafted for his bat, and made some legit changes to his swing, and approach, this offseason. His OPS vs lefties this year is .690 (35 PAs) while his OPS vs righties is .917 (72 PAs). I don't think he'll maintain a .917 OPS against righties, but I think he's significantly better in the box than Vazquez.

Where do you spend the Correa money then? What's the realistic situation that leads to this being an overall better team without Correa?

My biggest complaint with this FO is that they're just "slow" with everything in season (I don't mind the slow playing in the offseason so much). They built all this depth to better handle injuries, but then they never want to use it unless they absolutely have to. Of course ILing a guy for 10 days when he only needs 5 isn't ideal, but playing with a 1 man bench for 5 days is less ideal. If they had no options for callups it'd be one thing, but they do. I'm a believer in the idea that you take the first 3rd of the season to figure out what you have that year. The middle 3rd working to fix holes. And the last 3rd going all out to win you division, and get optimal playoff positioning. So I'm good with mixing and matching lineups early. Good with giving the Keplers of the world a little rope to get right. But after the 1/3rd mark of the season it's got to be about performance. The players have let you know who they are. Kepler isn't good enough. Correa needs to go down in the lineup. IL decisions need to be made quicker to get your team a full roster for every game. Real changes in team management need to be made to optimize your team for this season. We're into the 2nd 3rd of the season, and nothing seems to be changing. As for just the IL stuff, I can't help but wonder if the FO really isn't just truly listening to the medical staff. They have their all-world trainer now, but they're managing things the same way as they were under the guy they fired. Does Paparesta really work nearly the exact same way as the last guy, or is the FO just doing what they want?

As well they should!