chpettit19

The Twins have 6 games left this month. If they go just 3-3 in those games they end April with 16 wins. 16 wins/month gets them to 90 wins. They've had some ups and downs throughout the early going, but a 16-13 record wouldn't feel like they drastically overachieved based on how things have gone so far. If they win 90 games I'm pretty sure they're winning the division. 90 games is also my cutoff for a team that has a chance to make some noise in the playoffs. Not be favorites or anything, but I'm not shocked by 90 win teams winning series in the playoffs. An ERA in the 3.50 range feels reasonable assuming solid health for the top of the rotation, and back of the pen. Buxton and Correa will heat up with the weather, even if Buxton will continue to be streaky. Kirilloff will come back (hopefully soon). Solid health from the lineup makes me think they will be good enough, but not spectacular. The playoffs, like always, will just come down to being the team that gets hot for a month. If you're there there's a chance. Not putting money on a WS ring, but it feels like they should certainly be the favorites to be central division champs at this point.

Ober optioned back to St Paul. Not sure who they'll call up tomorrow.

It's been a while since this was something they could even think about having a problem with! I'm not too worried about the pen short term. Headrick is around for any sort of 3+ inning needs, and if they're running 4+ 1 inning guys out there today they can change plans and call someone back up tomorrow. Hopefully they have a nice little stretch of only needing 3 one inning guys and can maybe think about going with a 12 man staff in the future. I'd consider calling Kirilloff up for Ober right now if sending Ober down is the plan.

That's good news overall. I don't know what the right thing to do with Ober is, but I don't think moving either of them to the pen in April is the correct answer. Wouldn't be surprised if they give a few guys an extra days rest during this stretch and throw Ober 1 more start before sending him back down. Will definitely be interesting to see how they manage these 2.

I don't disagree with this premise, I just don't know how you manage the rotation overall with them both in it since I don't think you want to mess with Lopez, Gray, or Ryan and their routines. Mahle, too, but he's a step below those other 3 right now so not as worried about him. You don't want to go changing between 5 man and 6 man rotations a bunch. Starters have pretty strict routines between starts on how they workout and prepare for their next start. A 6 man rotation is hard to maintain all season, and even harder if 2 of those pieces are guys you worry about holding up for the season. But I also don't think sending Ober back to St Paul is a great option. There isn't a great answer, and that's why I stick with Maeda until he gives me a reason not to and worry about the rest from there.

I don't see them ever piggy backing starters. So Maeda to the pen for regular 3-4 inning appearances doesn't sound like a real possibility. He's way too good to be used in that Sands/Headricks/SWR role of sitting around until a starter takes a liner off the leg, or has a terrible start. If you put him the pen it's more likely in the Moran/Pagan/Alcala role of 2 inning, low-leverage appearances a couple times a week. If he's in that role for a month you've taken him out as a possible rotation arm later in the year if/when injuries or performance demand a new rotation arm. Bailey Ober has topped 100 innings 1 time since he was 18. Inserting him into the rotation and expecting him to go 5+ innings every 5th day seems like it'd be an awfully bold gamble since he's literally never been able to do that. Having him in the St Paul rotation for half the year is wasting his talent. To me the question is whether or not Ober has a future in the rotation at all. I think that's what you need to find out this year. And for the answer to be "yes" he needs to throw at least 120 innings this year. I think some kind of modified 6 man rotation where Lopez, Gray, Ryan, and Mahle throw on regular, or close to it, rest every time through and Maeda and Ober sort of trade off on the 5th spot in the rotation is probably how you maximize them both best. I'd keep Maeda as the primary #5 starter for at least 4 or 5 more turns to see what he looks like. Maybe do the 6 man rotation for the rest of this 13 day stretch of games, and then send Ober back to St Paul for a couple more weeks and let the other 5 role with the normal 5 man rotation for a few times through. If Maeda looks to be tiring too much through May then it's time to discuss moving him to the pen. I get that people are concerned about his stamina because he's 35 and didn't pitch last year, but if stamina is your main concern your first option to replace him can't be a 27 year old (will be 28 in July) who's never held up to an MLB starter's workload. If having a guy who can take the ball every 5th day and hold up is your concern, Varland is the guy you should be asking for, and you should be suggesting Maeda and Ober take Pagan and Moran's jobs in the pen.

I don't see many difficult decisions. When your offense is struggling to score 3 runs a game there's a whole lot of easy decisions to make if you have someone coming off the IL who's showing they could be an upgrade. Gordon was on the verge of being DFA'd last year before playing a really nice 15 games in June, 14 even better games in July, and going on a tear for 24 games in August. He came back to earth in September, and outside those 53 games in the middle of last year he's never even been an average major leaguer. He's been absolutely brutal to start this year, and there's not much to look at and say he's likely to ever be a .750+OPS guy again. If you DFA him and he does become that guy somewhere else you tip your cap, and say "good for you, Nick." In his 113 starts last year he had a .722 OPS, and that was supposed to be his big "breakout" year. 2B and LF aren't exactly defensive spots where the Twins don't have options, either. He's simply not that valuable of a player. And if moving on from Kepler ruins your season you weren't set to have a great season anyways. I've defended Kepler in the past as a guy who's a decent player who's just been expected to perform above his talents because the team keeps putting him at the top of the order. He isn't that guy. They continue to do it this year, and it's still not who he is. If he's hitting 7-9 in the order it's not such a tragedy, but if you can't replace your 7-9 hitter without your season falling apart you didn't have a very good lineup anyways. The "kids" (Lewis, Kirilloff, Larnach, Miranda, Julien, Martin, and Lee) were always going to be the key to the season. Gordon and Kepler were always fighting for a roster spot as long as they could hold on. Neither is doing much to hold onto a spot now, and it's time to sink or swim with the kids. Kirilloff should be up today, and I really don't understand why he's not unless his wrist has been giving him problems we don't know about. It hasn't shown in his performance. If he's playing everyday in St Paul anyways why can't he do it in Minneapolis? Is playing in a Twins jersey instead somehow worse for his wrist? His situation is different than Buxton's. Either that wrist is going to give out or it isn't. It isn't right now so let's quit wasting his swings for the Saints and give this brutal Twins lineup a boost. Buxton-Polanco-Correa-Kirilloff-Miranda-Gallo should be the top 6 guys in the lineup for 10 straight days to see if they can get this thing going. There's no tough decisions here. Start playing the guys who actually have the chance to be above average major leaguers in the top 5-6 spots in the order. Everyday (with Buxton getting his 1 in 10 days off). Quit worrying about borderline big league players. If you can't replace Gordon or Kepler you're doomed anyways.

It's simple...they need to have a feel for when to have a feel, but a plan in place that shouldn't be deviated from unless the feel for when to have a feel is a strong enough feel, and then they need to use their gut to determine whether to follow the feel or the plan. It's very basic, baseball 101 stuff.

Legitimate question: How many "can't miss" players are there in MLB in your view? This team is not fun to watch when they're making mistakes and 'K'ing 15 times. Totally agree. Wish they had some more athleticism on the base paths. Wish Buxton didn't give me a heart attack every time he slid (seriously don't understand how an athlete of his caliber can be so bad at sliding). Wish Correa could hit for more than 1 out of 5 games. All that said, I don't find them boring because I simply don't find any baseball boring. But I understand I'm an outlier. The idea of "can't miss" just got me curious what players (on the Twins or other teams) fans find to be "must watch" players. I have quite a few I make sure to tune into on mlb.tv when I can, but curious who other fans like.

From everything I've read about Miranda's development, swing decisions has always been what holds him back. That 9th inning swing decision was terrible. Guy is struggling to find the plate and you swing at a first pitch fastball off the plate on your hands? I also don't remember him swinging so hard as often last year. He's swung himself to his knee multiple times already this year. I don't know that he has to go to AAA, but he does need a reset of some sort. He's had a few games where he's driving the ball to right center like last year, but then you get games like last night where he's flying open, swinging out of his shoes, and either missing or just topping it to 3rd. They've dropped him down to 7th in the lineup today so maybe that gives him the chance to settle down and get back to his old self where he's using the whole field.

Contract the team.

Again, he had hits in 9 of his first 10 starts. That's not getting lucky against KC pitching for 3 days. His line as a DH and in CF were almost identical. Don't let facts get in the way of your opinion, though. Have a wonderful day.

Now comparing Buck to other players is a moot point? So first he didn't get enough playing time to be ready for the season, and now it's simply moot to even compare him to other players? We weren't discussing his overall stat line to this point of the season. You said his lack of spring training game reps meant he wasn't ready for the season. I proved you wrong so now you're trying to move the goal posts to the fact that he's struggled in the 3rd week of the season so his SSS line looks bad. It's ok to say "you're right, now that you've provided me with actual data to disprove my opinion I'll change my opinion." Yes, we're all entitled to our opinions. Your opinion goes counter to the facts. Byron Buxton was absolutely ready to hit at the start of the season and he showed it. They're now deep enough into the season that any missed spring ABs have been made up with regular season ABs. Any struggles at this point have nothing at all to do with spring training. You didn't like how they handled spring playing time, and that's totally fine. Tying spring training playing time to ABs 44 through 62 (PAs #45-70) of the season is simply confirmation bias. It sucks the twins are struggling offensively right now. But today is game #20 for the Twins. Spring training doesn't matter anymore. They've made up for all those ABs you think they missed whether you liked how they handled spring or not.

Fair. He had 17 ABs there. So he had 48 ABs in the spring. 8 more than Miranda.

That's kind of my guess is that SWR is long man insurance until Sands can come back (I've lost track of what day that is) or Headrick is ready to go again.

I don't think they'd swap out Alcala for SWR today if they're expecting SWR to start Sunday. Would be wasting a roster spot for 2 days for no reason. I'd think they'd bring up a "real" reliever and not a guy who they won't use for 2 days.

Your argument was that Buxton (or the "regulars" on the team) didn't play enough in spring training to be ready for the start of the season. Do the first 3 games not count as the beginning of the season? Byron Buxton went 2/5, 2/4, 2/4, 0/3, 1/4, 2/5, 1/5, 1/4, 0/1, 1/4, 1/4 for the first 11 games of the season. That's a hit in all but 2 games. I'm sorry if you didn't like how they used him in the spring, but it's absurd to suggest his spring usage meant he wasn't ready to hit. Hits in 9 of his first 10 starts, and 2 hits in 4 of his first 10 starts prove you're wrong. Miranda didn't play in the field because of a sore shoulder. He played 14 games, and had 40 ABs, in the spring. If 40 ABs wasn't enough they have bigger problems. He played half the days they had spring training games. He got plenty of action. Willi Castro played 16, was that not enough either? Is that why he's struggling? The Twins had 29 game days for spring training. Their regulars need to play on 29 days? 25? 20? 15? What's the magic number? How many at bats? 80? 70? 60? 50? 40? The league leader in wRC+ right now is Matt Chapman. He had 46 ABs in 18 games. Were those extra 6 ABs the difference? Miranda just hasn't been able to make up that massive hole? 2nd highest wRC+ is Brandon Marsh. He had 50 ABs. Is that the secret number? Had Miranda gotten 50 ABs he'd be on fire? Luis Arraez is currently hitting .438. You know how many ABs he had in the spring? 31. He played 11 games. I'm going to go ahead and say your point doesn't stand at all. Edited: I forgot about Arraez being in the WBC. He played 5 games, and had 17 ABs there. So 16 games and 48 ABs. Maybe it was the extra 2 games that really made the difference between him being ready for the season, and Miranda not being.

Player A games played since 2018 by season: 131, 119, 2020 ignored, 127, 125 Player B games played since 2018 by season: 28, 87, 2020 ignored, 61, 92 1 of those is Miranda, 1 of them is Buxton. Think you can guess which one is which? I can't imagine why they'd treat them differently...

There is absolutely something to certain guys struggling as a DH as it's a very different mental approach to the game. I'm not sure Buxton's numbers suggest he's one of those guys, though. His numbers from last year sure don't look like playing CF made much of a difference: Struck out 31% of the time as a CFer, 27 as a DH. Almost identical BA. Much better OBP as DH. Much better slugging as CF. Much better walk rate as DH. I think Buxton's in a week long slump. He was hitting over .300 a week ago. Think people are getting way too caught up in a small sample size. He has 1 hit in his last 6 games. No good at all. He had 9 in his first 6 games. Not sustainable at all. Buxton is just a streaky hitter.

Byron Buxton went 6 for 13 to start the season. That's a .462 average. He was hitting .302 after 11 games. Jose Miranda played a ton all spring, and he started 2 for 11 and was hitting .182 after 11 games. So which one was "ready when the regular season starts?" The guy who didn't play as much as people wanted, or the guy who played a lot?

I haven't been paying attention to Winder's rehab, so that's interesting to hear. Moran, Pagan, and Alcala have all been used for multiple innings this year. Winder may be the natural upgrade for one of them. That'd be great news.

Yeah, I'm sure those are the options, but none of them are all that exciting to me. I'm all for getting rid of Pagan as I believe his early season success this year is less indicative of his future performance than yesterday was. But nobody in AAA has me thinking they're significantly better than him. And if Moran and Alcala don't get more consistent (makes me sad, cuz I like them both a lot) then you need 3 guys from AAA and I'm way more nervous. This is the nature of pens, though. You cycle through until you find the guys that are working that year. Luckily their big arms have looked nice to start so hopefully they're only filling the 5-7 spots in the pen, and interchanging the long guy, and that's far less of a problem than having to cycle guys trying to find your top 4 arms.

That'd be my guess for how things play out as well. I don't see a lot of options for them to do much in the bullpen at this point. Beyond switching the AAA guys in and out as needed. I'm not sure what they do if/when it's time to move on from Pagan, or give Moran/Alcala a AAA reset. They don't have anyone I see as a good possibility to take that 1-2 inning reliever role. Unless they're moving Winder to that kind of role, and I'd be on board with that. But I have a relatively quick trigger on moving starters to relievers if they can't hold up to the starter workload so I know some people would disagree with me on this.

Don't disagree that there's a need for a shakeup in the Pagan-Moran-Alcala section of the pen, but who do they have to replace them? Are they ready to move Sands, Winder, or Headrick to a fulltime relief spot? Would they run with 2 long relievers and have 2 of those guys in the pen to be used for multiple inning stints? If that's the plan, I'd think only 1 of them can fill the role in the fashion they're currently deploying it as you can't have 2 roster spots dedicated to guys who sit around and wait for blowup games, or injured pitchers. Would they be willing to use 1 of those guys in close games for multiple innings? I'm not sure that's much of an upgrade on Pagan-Moran-Alcala. They built depth everywhere on the roster but the pen. I don't know who you can replace those 3 with since they lost their depth in ST when they DFA'd guys and they got snatched up. Put themselves in a tough spot here.

Their problem isn't so much chasing pitches as missing pitches in the zone. Sano's chase percent for his career was 25.5. League average is 28.4. Buxton is at 27.5 this year which is only slightly up from his 26.8 last year. Neither is/was crazy good at laying off pitches outside the zone, but they are/were above average at it. But their zone contact rates are both below average. Leave average is 82. Sano had a career 73.4 rate, and Buxton is at 80.6. Buxton's whiff rate of 29.3 is way over the league average of 24.7. He's aggressive in the zone, and good enough at not chasing, but he's simply swinging and missing, or fouling off, at too high of a rate. Same as Sano's problems. Buxton isn't a high walk guy because he's really aggressive at swinging at pitches in the zone (78.3% compared to league average of 69). Chasing isn't the problem, missing on his swings is.