chpettit19

Explain reliever injuries then. Why do they get hurt when they throw far fewer innings? It's not common sense, it's just you wanting to think you (not you personally, the collective "you" meaning people in general) can explain everything. Sometimes there's not an explanation. It just happens, and nobody did anything wrong. What were their numbers? You claim they were pitching at a rate that far exceeded their previous numbers. I'll pull their numbers for you. Joe Ryan Innings/Start 2023: 5.6 Innings/Start 2024: 5.9- So averaged 1 more out per start Starts on 5 days rest (instead of normal 4) 2023: 15 of 29 Starts on 5 days rest 2024: 12 of 19- So 52% last year and 63% this year Pitches/start 2023: 92.5 Pitches/start 2024: 91- so 1 pitch less this year Common sense says you're wrong that he was throwing "at a rate that far exceeded his previous numbers." Because he wasn't. He was throwing about the same number of innings and pitches per start while getting more rest in between starts. They were taking better care of his arm this year than last year. You are provably wrong about their usage of Joe Ryan. If he can't do what they were asking of him this year they simply can't use him as a starting pitcher. Chris Paddack Innings/Start 2019: 5.4 Innings/Start 2021: 4.9 Innings/Start 2024: 5.2- So below his career best year, 1 out higher than his last season of starting more than 5 games Starts on 5 days rest 2019: 16 of 26 Starts on 5 days rest 2021: 7 of 22 Starts on 5 days rest 2024: 8 of 17 So 61.5% his rookie year then 31.8% and 47% this year. Again, below his career best year but much better than his last year starting for the Pads. Pitches/start 2019: 74.4 Pitches/start 2021: 72.6 Pitches/start 2024: 85.8- Clearly a career high. Paddack was getting way more rest than his last fulltime starting season but throwing many more pitches per start. But nothing crazy. He went 6 innings in 4 of 17 starts. If the Twins need to baby guys more than they already do they're going to need the league to expand the 26-man roster to a 30-man roster. And get rid of the required stay in AAA for demotions. And get rid of the rule on sending guys down only 5 times a year. You just can't manage a roster the way you want them to. Carrying 6+ pitchers who you can't use for 3+ days at a time just isn't feasible. Normal rest for a starting pitcher is 4 days. The Twins have started a guy on 4 days rest in just 34 games. They've started a guy with 5 days (so 1 extra day) rest 78 times. And 6+ days (kind of a funny stat cuz it includes DH starts or spot starts from Varland, etc.) 24 times. The Twins are playing their 138th game tonight. So 57% of the time they're giving their starting pitcher an extra day of rest. If their starters can't hold up in this conditions they simply can't be used as starting pitchers in the majors.

They can use him in the majors while building him up to start. It doesn't have to be done all in the minors. They don't need to make a career long decision on him next year. And he has a million in the bank already. Let's not act like he's struggling for cash. Will be interesting to see how they use him. I'd start him in AA throwing once threw the order and let his performance dictate things from there.

It meant he had more days in between throwing not very many pitches. This is along the same line of your statements that the Twins could still have Paddack and Ryan if they'd just have had Varland in long relief and making spot starts. That isn't based on anything real. Injuries happen. All the time. The most likely answer with Canterino and Prielipp is there's very little the Twins could have done to prevent their injuries.

I don't think you can blame Canterino's situation on them using him as a starter. He averaged just over 3 innings a start in the minors. Maxed out at 72 pitches his first year. Went 63, 83, 79, 60, 26, and 40 in pitches thrown in 2021. And only cracked 60 pitches 3 times in 13 appearances in 2022. As others have mentioned, he's had numerous different injuries. In Spring Training this year he threw 14 pitches on 2/29 and 21 pitches on 3/6 before hurting his rotator cuff and then hurting it again without throwing a single in-game pitch this season. He's an outlier that you can't compare to much of anything. Not everything bad that happens is because somebody did something wrong. Sometimes a guy's body just can't hold up. See Buxton, Byron as another example. As for Prielipp, I'd hope they have him on a plan to build up his innings over the next few years to see if he can be a starter. The Garrett Crochet route would be a great result for Connor. They have a lot of smart people looking at his medicals and they should make the best decisions to maximize his career. Whether that be in the pen or the rotation or a combination over the years.

This year he's been better in the 9th. But only has 9.1 total innings in the 7th (1) and 8th (8.1) so it's not exactly a large sample size. For his career his best OPS against is actually in the 7th inning (.556), but that's still just 12.1 career innings. His 8th inning career OPS against is .734 in 44.2 innings. His 9th inning OPS against is .566 in 95.2 innings. The difference largely coming in the fact he's given up 7 HRs in the 8th and 7 HRs in the 9th. In save situations his OPS against is .578 in 360 PAs. In non-save situations his OPS against is .645 in 351 PAs. So, he has in fact been better in the 9th and save situations. Not a massive difference in save vs non-save, but a difference for sure. I'd hope that's something Rocco has discussed with him and they're on the same page for his usage and have an idea of what may cause that difference. Is it just the adrenaline or does he do a different warm-up routine, or what?

Angels and Marlins are the only series I see that should be sweeps, and definitely can't/shouldn't lose more than 2 games to them combined. But the rest of those teams are pretty feisty. I don't see the September schedule as all that soft at all. At Tampa, KC, Cleveland, and Boston is 4 really tough series against teams that are by no means push overs. Baltimore is clearly a tough series, especially if they still have something to play for. And Cinci is a young team with some fight that could run wild on the base paths against the Twins. I don't agree that this is a soft schedule. The Twins need to figure things out and start playing much better if they want to win any of these series.

I agree that they're keeping him in the name of depth, even if I think it's ridiculous. He's simply not good enough this year. Maybe rostering Severino or Kiersey or whoever instead of him for a month costs the Twins a playoff birth, but I find that hard to imagine. He simply isn't good enough to be on a team that's fighting for their playoff lives. But we all know the Twins don't cut veterans if they can at all help it.

Fair.

What should their record be? How many wins did you expect them to get this season? If I told you Correa and Royce would play 75 games each, Buxton would play 90, and Joe Ryan would miss 2 months how many wins would you have predicted?

You can't prove it doesn't work!

He said he doesn't do the slump mindset.

Didn't Correa play through the same injury last year? On his land foot instead of drive foot, too. And didn't he have his worse season of his career. Do you think they're faking their injuries? There's a couple of you who keep posting this stuff everywhere. What do you think the situation is? They could play like their usual selves but are just choosing not to? What does it mean to be "too comfortable sitting on the IL for long periods of time?" Do you want a Correa who's going to put up a .675 OPS and play bad defense just to prove he's dedicated to his team and not "comfortable sitting on the IL?" What does it mean that they "can't be bothered to play these very important games?" Honest question. Do you honestly believe they could be playing at a decent enough level and are just happy collecting checks instead? You think they faked their MRIs? Correa actually could sprint at 100% but is pretending he can't? The Royals just announced Vinnie Pasquantino is out 6-8 weeks. Is he also "too comfortable sitting on the IL for long periods of time?" He "can't be bothered to play these very important games?"

Knowing there's likely a 0% chance they DFA Farmer, who would you be looking for them to call up Sunday when rosters expand if Lee is here and Julien or Martin are in AAA for 10 days? Camargo and Severino are the guys currently on the 40-man in AAA. Do you think they'd add someone like Kiersey and risk losing someone like Severino to get him on the 40-man? I couldn't agree more that dropping Farmer is the beyond obvious move, but does anyone actually think they'll do it? I sure don't. And, if you take that option off the table, not losing Martin or Julien for 10 days just to get 2 days of Lee makes some sense. Especially because it is far from a sure thing that Lee is going to help all that much.

I was going to mention Texas as well. And Houston. And Atlanta. And the Dodgers did win one. And the Nats won when they spent. And Boston. And Houston again. And Chicago. KC went above their normal spending to win, but certainly don't qualify as a big spending team that year. But then we're back to San Fran, Boston, San Fran, and so on and so forth with the list of top 5-10 payrolls that spend big and win.

Can we make a note of this bullpen situation so when the Twins bring in a bunch of veteran journeyman, 1-year-wonder relievers this offseason people don't start claiming they have the best bullpen in baseball again?

It's pretty simple. They don't spend on bullpen arms because they believe they can survive until September with cast offs and minimum salary guys as they find their 14 best arms that they'll fit into roles down the stretch. They've actually been rather successful with it the last couple years as their 2nd half bullpen numbers have been good. We'll see if they can add Winder and Varland (best guess) over the next handful of days and save the crumbling pen. But that's been pretty clearly their strategy for a number of years now. Survive until the end when they put in their "real" pen.

Strider is better than any Twins starter so his absence in their rotation is bigger than any in the Twins. Acuna is better than Buxton or Correa. Riley is equal. So is Albies who's also out. The Braves have more injury issues than the Twins right now. And they just put it on them for 3 straight games. And, while I'm a Buxton fan and like the contract they signed him to, I think it's well past time where we should be pointing at him being hurt and saying it's hurting the team. If they haven't figured out they need a legitimate CFer besides him by now it's on them and they can't blame his injuries anymore. Is it a bummer he's hurt? Of course. But not being prepared for the inevitable isn't something I think should be complained about. He's 2 games short of his 2nd most in any season ever. They've gotten everything they should've expected from him.

I agree with others that it's really hard to judge who does what. My feel for it is that Falvey, Levine, and Rocco are the triangle of power. They're all involved in every roster decision more or less. Each guy has the primary responsibility in certain areas, but they all collaborate to make the final decisions. They aren't bringing anyone in until they've talked with Rocco about how they'd be used, or with Falvey about how they fit into the budget (I don't actually know if he runs the budget), etc. It's hard for me to know if I should want them replaced or not. I'm happy with the state of the system, as they seem to have figured out the development side nicely which is huge. But I think their platooning, pinch hitting, rostering corner, short-side platoon bats strategies are awful. I think they're too slow to move on from under performing vets in the name of depth. I don't think negative WAR players are depth, they're just bad players you don't want to move. They show a real lack of in-season adjustment ability. They have their 162-game strategy and they are very reluctant to move off any part of it. I want championships so I tend to lean towards moving on from one or all of them to take a shot at getting somebody who may be better suited to bring a title to the Twin Cities. But I'm not blind to the fact that this current regime is actually pretty good and there's a lot of room below them on the possible results chart. If there's an individual in charge of the system and what they've been doing the last few years in development I'd like that person to stay and continue running that. If it's a separate person in charge of roster construction and strategy I'd like that person replaced. It's just hard to know which heads to call for because I don't know that there's truly any distinction between the 3. I think they're likely all in pretty close lock-step on most things.

They'll start Vazquez game 1, Jeffers game 2, and then repeat until they're out of games to play.

I assume the plan there was Festa was getting 1 guy in the 7th no matter what. Didn't trust Thielbar against the power righty and was hoping Festa could get him and then turn it over to the pen. Certainly didn't work. Not sure if it was a good or bad plan, or if it's refreshing to see Rocco break from his norms or not. But I'd guess that was the plan. And it definitely didn't work.

Yeah, I have to remind myself to go check how they're doing on certain things compared to the league as a whole because watching everyday can make it feel like they're terrible with baseball being such a game of failures offensively.

Twins score a runner from 3rd with less than 2 outs 53.5% of the time. Tied with Atlanta for 7th best in baseball. Advance a runner from 2nd with 0 outs 49.2% of the time. 9th worst in baseball.

Martin's current OPS+ is 87. Margot's is 81. Straw was at 65/66. I don't think you're grasping how bad Straw is offensively. He was the 3rd worst hitter in all of baseball the last 2 years. There isn't a qualified hitter under a 74 OPS+ this year. He was nearly 10 points below that! Tim Anderson and Javier Baez were the only 2 hitters worse than him last year. Tim Anderson is out of baseball right now because the 48 win Marlins didn't want him anymore, and Javier is only still around because the Tigers don't want to eat 25 mil next year, and 24 mil the 2 years after that so they're hoping he can figure it out a little. The year before it was Geraldo Perdomo and Jonathan Schoop below him. Schoop was out of baseball halfway through last year. He's been playing in Curacao and Mexico since. Perdomo was a 22 year old rookie. And Straw has been hitting even worse in AAA this year than he did in the majors the last 2 years. And, again, he's getting paid 6.4 and 7.4 million the next 2 years. That's more than Margot and Martin combined. By multiple millions. I'm by no means a Margot fan. Hate that they roster 1 tool, short-side platoon bats. But I'll take him over Straw 100 out of 100 times. If the Guardians, who spend less than the Twins, prefer to have a $6 million player in AAA instead of on their roster while they fight for the division why would the Twins want that player?

He has a .660 OPS in 108 games in AAA this year. That's more than "limited offensively." His 2 full seasons in Cleveland were 65 and 66 OPS+ seasons. He was the 3rd worst qualified hitter in baseball in each of those seasons. He makes 6.4 million next year and 7.4 million the year after that. Cleveland would have to eat his whole contract and kick in a prospect to even get me to think about bringing him in to play for the Twins. If the Twins can't do better than Myles Straw they need to just pack it up and call it quits as an organization.

Well the reason he's there today is that he was optioned on the 15th and has to stay down for 15 days. He's not eligible to return until Saturday if my math is correct. Sent Winder down on the 14th so he could come back Friday. Will be interesting to see what they do with those 2 the next few days.