chpettit19

Yeah, not concerned at all that it wasn't Ober. But there's a human element to it all as well, and I'd think they'd have called up the more established arm if it were a thing they were expecting a week ago, or 3 days ago. They know full well Ober can pitch in the majors, and probably deserves to be in the majors. They wouldn't have passed him up for Varland if it were something they were expecting before yesterday. But this is why they have Varland and SWR on top of Ober, so when late notice callups need to happen they have multiple acceptable options. They'll all get starts this year. Hopefully not too many, but they'll get them.

Not ideal, but doesn't seem overly concerning. Couple extra days for Maeda isn't a terrible idea, and we know Varland won't be overwhelmed by the stage in NY. Do find it a little interesting that they seem to have made this decision just yesterday as I'd have thought they'd use Ober if it was a more planned thing. Guessing yesterday was Maeda's pen day and he just wasn't quite feeling 100% so they adjusted and held Varland out to go today and give Maeda some extra time. The Twins position player depth has been tested some early, and now they're dipping a toe into the pitching depth. This is why they built so much depth, though. It was always going to be needed, and isn't the end of the world. It won't be Varland's last start this year for the Twins. And Ober and SWR will get plenty as well.

Agree to disagree that major league umps can see, and accurately call (that's the real key here), check swings let alone a hitter's intent on actually getting out of the way when significant movement takes place. There's at least 1 missed check swing call every day across major league baseball. There's simply a limit to how well the human eye can judge that, and there's a limit to how much input the human brain can take at once and accurately interpret. It's not a shot at umps, there's simply a limit to the human brain. I mean missed check swing calls isn't about norms at all. The umps are all trying to call it the same. They simply miss sometimes because there's a limit to the human brain.

Diamond is attempting to cut their fees and pay the Twins, Guardians, and Diamondbacks what they say is a more accurate amount based on the current market value. The teams are obviously telling them to pay what they're owed.

Of course they can process 100 MPH. What they can't process is a hitter's intent to move out of the way if they turn/spin away from 100 MPH and take it in the elbow. Some judgements are easy right now and umps should just call them dead balls when a guy clearly leans into it. But once they start doing that more frequently hitters will just be more dramatic in their movements and then you're asking them to judge too much all at once. We can't judge if a guy checked his swing or not so I'm not sure how we can judge a guy's legitimate attempt to avoid a pitch if they spin, etc. They paint the plate side of the box. The first thing many leadoff hitters do is go to the back, plate side corner of the box and dig it out, though. The line is painted. It just doesn't last long with guys digging out and kicking dirt around and they don't repaint it.

Of course it's rare, but it happens. You said nobody leans that far and I'm just saying they do. It does happen. HBP is a relatively rare event itself so of course strikes being HBP is very rare. But it happens. And he shouldn't get first base, but he does. And if you ask the umps to just enforce those kinds of rules you just get guys sticking their elbow out as they spin and it's unrealistic to ask an ump to be able to decipher that in real time while he's trying to track the crazy pitches that are being thrown these days. Eventually it's just too much to expect humans to be able to do all this in real time, and I want nothing to do with replays of whether or not a guy tried to get out of the way. That's why I want cut and dry rules with no interpretation that needs to be done while a ball coming in 100 MPH and moving 8 inches is trying to be deciphered as a ball or strike by a human being in real time. I'm unclear what you mean by "enforce the plate side of the box." Is there a rule about your body being over the batter's box line, or is it just your feet? They dig out the back line and blur things a little, but their feet are still in the box from what I can tell. I'm just not sure what you mean you're enforcing.

Making it so you simply don't get the base if it hits a pad takes all questions out. Did it hit the pad? Yes? No base. No? Head on down to first. Take judgement out of it. Cut and dry. And I know that's the rule, but guys absolutely do get hit by strikes and get first base. Rizzo being example A. His elbow is in the strike zone a lot.

I'm not a fan of moving the box back, and think guys should wear hand, elbow, and shin guards because it's terrible when they miss time over a HBP or foul ball off the shin. But I think a HBP on padding shouldn't count as anything more than a ball (or strike if it's in the strike zone and the guy leans in). Throwing a pad on your elbow and just leaning into every inside pitch is trash. If it hits your pad it shouldn't get you a base. That'd be my rule change.

Feels like a lot of assumptions being made off 4 games, and 14 4-seamers. Even if you add the sinker in he's thrown 33 total fastballs. Why are we worried about 33 pitches that he's given up 1 hit on? Way too early to draw any conclusions from anything. The Twins came into the season with Duran, Lopez, and Jax set to be their 3 go-to high leverage arms. Their starters are going deeper into games so they've been able to use those 3 in the vast majority of high leverage spots. Not sure how else you expected Alcala to be used. Things are looking great so far. Him being a multi-inning weapon would be a good thing so I'm confused by reading that as the Twins not trusting him.

He sounds like a hard worker, and is still relatively young so I'm hoping he gets better. But his footwork and hands are far from natural in the infield. I wonder what he looked like in the OF that they gave up on that experiment so quick. Not a great sign there I'd think. He looks like a 1B/DH to me. Even the routine plays look uncomfortable, and unnatural. I get the move to keep him at 2B as long as possible, but he's got a long ways to go to get to where he needs to be to be an everyday 2B in the majors. No reason to give up on him yet, though.

Totally agree that they have some guys in the minors who can steal some bags. And those guys are stealing bags. But their MLB guys do not have the speed to steal a bunch of bags. It'd be an awful strategy to try. So complaining about the current MLB team not stealing bases doesn't make sense to me in the least. Current sprint speed percentiles for the guys you listed: Kepler: Would be about 70th if he were playing, but doesn't have enough to qualify Buxton: 99th (unfortunately he's just not going to run much anymore as part of their strategy to keep him healthy) Gordon: 75th (but he can't get on base, he's stolen bases in the past so not sure why we'd think he wouldn't try this year) Polanco: 0 (he's not even playing, but will be in the 70-75th range and may try to steal) Correa: 37th Gallo: 29th Farmer: 19th Larnach: 43rd This current team doesn't have the guys to steal. Correa, Gallo, Farmer, and Larnach do not have "speed enough to steal." They're flat out slow. The team had Molitor in spring training working on base running and stealing. They did base running drills everyday. The fast guys in the majors and minors steal bases. Why do you think they won't steal bases when the guys they have throughout the org have literally been stealing bases for years? I don't understand the complaint. Their fast guys are either Buxton, or can't get on base right now so they aren't even able to steal bases. The guys they have coming up are stealing bases, and have been stealing bases but people seem to be getting in pre-complaints that they won't steal bases when they get here for some reason I don't understand. It looks an awful lot like the "quick hook" narrative where people are just throwing a blanket statement out as a team philosophy instead of looking at the actual situation. Gray, Ryan, and Paddack were going 6 and 7 innings to start the year last year. Paddack blew out his elbow, Gray kept getting hurt, and Ryan got covid that wiped him out for quite a while. The rest of the guys they were starting were bad pitchers who didn't deserve to go deep, or Ober who can't stay healthy and needs limits. But people ignored that and just said the team won't let guys go 3 times through the order which was false then and is showing to be really false now. So people have moved on to steals. The Twins have had a super slow team for years so haven't stolen many bases and now people are claiming it's some sort of org philosophy despite there being guys stealing bases all over the org. Trying to steal with guys who can't steal just to say you tried to steal is a terrible strategy. 19th percentile sprint speed Kyle Farmer should not be stealing bases, sorry. Correa has seen his sprint speed steadily decline through the years and hasn't stolen more than 3 bases since his 2nd season. He stole 6 combined in his last 5 seasons in Houston. Why weren't the Astros stealing him if it were such a great idea? Carlos Correa shouldn't be stealing bases. The Twins simply don't have the guys to steal bases right now. It'll start changing as Julien gets more time, Lewis comes back, Polanco comes back, Gordon stops being really bad, Martin gets called up, etc. It's not an overarching philosophy it's a lack of players capable of doing it.

Then what was "Ultimately this is on Buxton, and let’s hope he comes to camp next season committed to playing 150 games like other star players do" implying?

Well he's not worse than the other two, so there's that! Him staying probably depends on the role available. They won't want Wallner and Julien sitting on the bench while they wouldn't care about it with Garlick. Julien and Wallner will be sent back to AAA to play everyday so they can be better than me in the field.

Outfielders don't tend to pile up errors because of things like the ground ball Julien should've gotten. If Wallner simply can't get to the ball it's not an error (as shown by the sox having 0 errors today despite Gavin Sheets looking like me in RF). So, in that sense, it probably happens almost daily somewhere in baseball. So far this year the Twins 2B have recorded 36 outs and RF have recorded 22. That's basically 1 extra out a game. But that includes double plays. If Julien can't turn a double play we're really in trouble.

I feel like Cole Sands may not mind getting sent down and actually getting to play some baseball at this point.

Ah, that's not bad. I'd wondered about that before the season since he can still be on a rehab assignment in the minors and not really have to miss 60 days.

Who's getting DFA'd in this situation? I believe they're at 40 on the 40-man, are they not?

A guy on 3rd with 2 outs isn't nothing, but if that's what we're considering any sort of real win we're in trouble. My point is simply that there's 2 sides of the ball, and taking Julien out for Wallner has other effects than simply putting Gordon at 2B. If the ball was hit to Wallner and he butchers it for a double instead of being hit to Gordon for that out was it still a good move? Because if they use that strategy over an entire season that's going to happen a number of times. And you very well may be someone who still thinks it was the right move even if it goes wrong. Playing "guess where I need my good defender this game even if it hurts the offense" is not a real strategy. It worked well today. I'm glad. I can understand wanting to strengthen the defense up the middle. But that was still a 1 run game and having to have Wallner hit against a lefty also matters in a close game. Trying to break that decision down to simply "Gordon for Julien at 2B" is missing a lot. But this is why TD exists. To debate the intricacies of baseball strategy! I appreciate the back and forth.

Yes. And maybe they'd have lost the game because of that one play. Or maybe he gets a hit instead of Wallner's flyout and they score another run or 2 in the 8th 🤷‍♂️

From everything they've said about wanting Polanco to get a full spring training workload before they bring him back I'd be shocked if they bring him up now, but I don't know what their other move is (assuming an IL trip for Farmer). Are they going to DFA someone tomorrow to call someone up for 3 days before Kepler is back (I think I'm doing the math right on his IL time)? Do they just play short handed until Kepler is back? Will be interesting to see what they do.

I don't want Julien or Wallner in the game at all defensively. There's a whole bunch of plays that Wallner doesn't make either. Rocco didn't know the tough play was going to be in the IF and not the OF. I can totally understand the idea that he wanted to strengthen the middle IF defense at the detriment to the corner OF defense. Totally get that. Makes sense. But he took out the better hitter to replace him with an equally bad defender just in a different spot defensively. And in doing so he took away his last non-catcher bench bat to do it. Vazquez was set to hit against a righty for Buxton in the 8th if they'd gotten there while Wallner hit against a lefty for Julien. That's not an ideal situation. And they were in that spot because Rocco took out a brutal defender in Julien to put in a brutal defender in Wallner. Over an entire season I don't think you win that overall team performance battle frequently enough to want that strategy deployed regularly. There's more to these decisions than simply "well Gordon is better than Julien so it's a win."

Well you cut off the rest of my thought there. With the current makeup of the roster they will always have to play someone who should be a DH (Wallner and Julien being the obvious guys right now) in the field because Buxton is taking the DH spot. Agree that there's also a hole in the lineup with MAT in there against righties. Buxton DHing is bad for both sides of the ball, but I was just speaking to the defense driven decision late in the game.

I hope we'd leave it open for the outside chance he's successful and then the thread just goes silent on it's own. Have we ever had a thread lock itself?

Totally fair that mIF is more important than cOF. But Wallner is terrible. There's not a scouting report out there that has him above a 45 defensive grade. Fangraphs page for him has a 20 current, 30 future field grade for him. There's not a defensive metric out there that grades him well. He's a terrible defender and the team has openly spoken about his need to remain in AAA to work on his defense.

Wallner is every bit the liability Julien is. He's an absolutely awful defender.