chpettit19

Casey would fit right in with the lower part of the Twins pen! Let's do it!

Chase Petty and another prospect or 2 is a realistic package for Gray. I wouldn't be mad at that return.

What does he need to do in the minors to show he's "good enough for the majors?" How does he "earn his way up?" What does Kepler have to do in the majors to show he's not good enough for the majors? I know you love your veterans, but if one of the young guys were playing like Kepler has been for the last 3 years you'd be talking about how they aren't good enough for the majors, and should go back to the minors. Are the standards different for Kepler? Why?

I'm not a huge conspiracy theory person, but I would buy any theory on what Kepler has on the FO and Rocco. He has to have pics, or video, or financial papers of some terrible things they've done. No other explanation for this.

I don't totally disagree with that, but I also think they could really use a game where they keep adding on throughout the game instead of going dormant for a 6 inning stretch with only 1 or 2 guys reaching base. My bigger problem is who they pinch hit for. Quit taking out your hoped for future/newly current core! Take out Kepler or Castro. Quit turning 2 guys you clearly want to be key parts of your team into platoon only hitters already. You should never have to pinch hit for the top 4 or 5 guys in your lineup if you're truly a contending team. They continually hit for 2 of those guys. I hate it.

My bigger concern is that it's 100% predictable managing at this point. How easy do you want to make it for the other manager to get the top of your lineup out of the game while simultaneously taking away all your counter moves late in the game?

This is a fair point. But I still 100% disagree with this decision (for the 2nd time this year no less).

I can't comprehend any reasonable reason for these moves. Even if you think this arm is going the next 4 innings. Why purposefully handcuff yourself for later in the game? I get that big innings are often times the key to winning. It's why teams like the 3 run bomb. But depleting your entire bench in the 2nd inning is wild.

Did they indicate why?

I really hope a reporter asks Rocco for a super detailed explanation behind the reasoning for pinch hitting for your leadoff hitter in the 2nd inning. Edit to add: And your 3 hole hitter.

As far as end of June signings go, it's just fine. Sure hope we have no need for him in the rotation, assuming he's not turning the clock back 8 years. But never hurts to have another veteran voice over in St Paul.

Totally fair. But that doesn't mean he wasn't really bad for the vast majority of the 2 years immediately following the Twins non-tendering him. I like Eddie. He's a fun player. But he's one of the many guys I feel get what I'd call the "Twins mediocre boost." They're solid players that hit in the heart of mediocre lineups, on mediocre Twins teams, and they get this reputation around Twins Territory that they're better than they are. I'd take Eddie on my team, but as a 6 hole through bench player, not the top/heart of the order guy he was forced to be here. He's a 1 to 2 win type player (if you're a WAR fan), and that's incredibly replaceable. Unless you're on a team full of 0 to 1 win type players like he was here. Example given: He hits 6/7 hole for Atlanta when they're going right.

Yeah, I just wish it felt like the Twins had more of an idea on how to fix the guys like Correa and Buxton who are performing well below what we expected (this is pretty much who I think Kepler is). There have been a few articles about Popkins and players, and Correa has had great things to say about him (if I remember correctly he's quoted in an article as saying Popkins is the best hitting coach he's ever had, but I could be misremembering). Gallo said Popkins was part of the reason he signed here. I don't know. The results are not good. Whatever they're doing isn't working. My feeling is a lot of it is just lack of talent. Outside of Correa, Buxton, and Miranda, none of the bad performances surprise me that much. Castro, Jeffers, and Solano impress me. But I just think it's a poorly constructed lineup lacking true difference makers and real depth. Not sure any hitting coach should be expected to turn Kepler, MAT, or Vazquez into much more than they are. But changes need to be made. I'd just start at the FO, and work my way down instead of shooting the middle men.

Yeah, I'm certainly not looking to make any excuses for anyone employed by the MN Twins right now. It's been ugly. I just find it hard to believe that Popkins, or the Twins in general, are preaching something different this year than they did last year, or even in all the previous years under this regime. I don't know what the answers are, and I wish it felt like they did, but I'm just not sold that established players like those 3 came into this season with drastically different approaches. Although, Kepler could use a drastically different approach than what he's been doing for the last 3 years...

Petty+ I'd make, but I think it'd be disappointing to only get Petty back when they are also staring a #30-35 pick in the face by putting a QO on Gray. I don't think Petty alone is worth Gray for the stretch run, and that pick.

Do you think the approach changed from last year? Kepler, Correa, and Buxton all had the same coaching staff last year so I'd be surprised if their struggles are because of a different approach.

It's not even 10 AM (central), Brock. You can't wait until at least 10 AM to ruin our days?

FYI, he'd entered the game in the top of the 7th as the defensive replacement. Then hit in Julien's spot in the bottom of the 7th.

While I would be interested in seeing what a red hot Williams may look like in the majors, Kyle Farmer has nearly 3000 professional innings at catcher, so we're in pretty solid shape in terms of a 3rd catcher right now. Williams has 900 innings for reference.

He had entered in the top of the 7th for defense. Which lead him to hit against Whitlock in a righty-righty matchup in the bottom of the 7th, which I believe was the complaint of the poster I responded to. They appeared to think he was inserted into the game in the bottom of the 7th as a pinch hitter when he'd already been inserted in the top of the inning for his defense.

Farmer had been put in the game in the top of the inning for his defense as they were attempting to hold a lead late. Edit: should've kept reading posts and would've seen someone already said this. My bad for the repeat.

There's just no real upside in Max, and that's my biggest problem with continuing to run him out there. As @Brock Beauchamp said, when you really dig into his numbers he's not your typical "hits the ball hard, but has bad babip numbers" upside hitter. The FO has to be able to see that as well, but they seem to be refusing to accept it. I don't get what they see in him beyond his glove. This is who Max is, and if the rest of the team were rolling, and he was hitting 8th while providing gold glove type defense, you can live with it. When you have him hitting 5th, you can't. If you're relying on Max to be one of your 5 best hitters, you're doomed. And this offense has been showing it all year. I like Max, I appreciate what he's done for the Twins, and I have no idea how sustainable Wallner's performance is at the big league level, but it's time to find out. Max has been a solid major league player for a long time with this team. But he's no longer what this team needs.

Ober is where my head goes with this, too. He's a tough one to handle this year. The only times he's gone beyond 100 innings pitched in a season in his life were his freshman year of college (2014), and 2021 between AAA and MLB. Those were 106.2 innings, and 108.1 innings years. He's at 81.1 this year between St Paul and the Twins. Twins have 88 games left. That's roughly 17 more starts per pitcher. Even if he only went 5 innings per start that's still another 85 innings if he makes every start he has left. I don't see anyway they let him jump to 160+ innings pitched this year. I don't think they'll go straight 6 man rotation with continually cycling through 6 guys in order. But I wouldn't be surprised at all to see them do a 6 man rotation by skipping a few Ober starts by plugging in Maeda or Varland or whoever isn't in the normal 5 man rotation at the time. So don't throw off the other 4 starter's timelines between starts, but sit Ober for a start every couple weeks.

The .500 roller coaster has been on a down slope for quite a while. That's more of what I was talking about. They got off to a very nice start, but have been playing at a well below .500 mark for some time now. So when I say "play markedly better" I'm referring to their stretch since May 1 when they've gone 19-25. Or, as Gleeman just tweeted a couple hours ago, their last 162 games they're 73-89. But I agree that sticking around .500 gives them a shot at the division.

Yes, they were. But so were JP Crawford, Orlando Arcia, Yoan Moncada, Joey Gallo, Brendan Rogers, Lewis Brinson, Nomar Mazara, and Austin Meadows. Those guys were all in the top 20 overall global prospects on MLB.com going into the 2016 season. They've had varying degrees of success in the majors. That's why I said they weren't devoid of talent, but you can't expect to hit on all those players. It was a nice group of young players, but the expectation shouldn't have been that they all hit their peaks by any means. We can also get into how much credit this FO deserves for finishing their development. There's a lot of grey area, and semantics in here. Do we count Kepler and Polanco as "talent" in the system if they weren't actually seen as that talented? If this FO got more out of them than expected do we give them credit, or knock them for the guys already being there? I wouldn't add Rogers or May to the list of "talent" in the system outside of them already having been in it. Rogers didn't take off until the new staff taught him his slider. As you note, May didn't take off until the new regime got there either. If we're going to "blame them" for not getting Pressly to the heights Houston has (not saying you do, just in general) then we should give them credit for being the ones to help pull out better performance from these guys. Not an easy thing to really make too hard of statements on. I agree they had some clay to mold, but it certainly wasn't a sizeable group of massive talent. They didn't have nothing, but they weren't taking over a juggernaut. Do I think they've maximized the situation? Absolutely not.