jimmer

A lot of people are giving the FO a high five because all this losing proves that getting help at the deadline was a lost cause. How about taking the FO to task for creating a team, with so little proven talent, that could melt down like this in the first place? Really want to pat Ryan on the back for this roster? Wanna pat him on the back for thinking re-signing Pelfrey, Suzuki and Hughes was really a good idea. Pelfrey never proved he should be re-signed and one quality year in careers as long as Hughes and Suzuki scream outliers. How about Santana? Sign a guy, gets suspended, then comes back and gets rocked. Santana, our trade deadline guy! I pat Ryan on the back for letting us see a lot of youngsters come up. I think more should come up too. Berrios and Kepler would be nice. Truth is, our great month of May didn't automatically make me believe this roster was actually a good team, and many thought the same thing. Ryan put together another clunker, as he has the last couple years. One of the few things he's done well, trading for May, gets tarnished because of the ridiculous idea to throw him in the pen, stunting his growth as a MLB starter yet another year. Way to build for the future.

Beginning of July I said I would be ecstatic for us to end up with 75 or more wins. I was called a cynic due to our record at the time.I just looked at the talent level and the schedule and said 75 wins would make me giddy. Was that really cynical?

On August 2nd, we had sole possession of the 2nd WC spot. Today, August 9th, 4 teams are ahead of us in the 2nd WC race. One week.

We are only 3.5 games up on last place Cleveland. Who just took 2 of 3 from us. And there are still more than 50 games left, we are playing horrible ball, and our remaining schedule is rough.Last place could definitely happen.

wouldn't Friday's win count as a positive note? On a different note, Pelfrey pitched well enough to keep us in the game. :-)

Well, their RECORD was worse than ours, not the team itself:-) And I'm pretty sure the one game they didn't win, Tulo didn't play. They are 2 innings from sweeping the Yankees.

Exactly, we will NEVER know as long as Ryan is GM. and few were advocating trading for 2 month rentals. Most advocated for getting guys to help this year and the future. Like Tulo, for example. How is Toronto doing with him, BTW?

Twins lead baseball in SV%

here I thought the discussion was about whether or not the pitching staff had been serving up meatballs or not. That is what you said, right? Having the least amount of Ks and the worst BAA kind of suggest that it's been the case most of the season. Whether or not we have been in contention despite that is a different discussion.

They didn't just become last in Ks and so low in BAA though, did they? Be hard to drop so far in yearly stats like those in a week (a week ago being when we still had the 2nd WC spot)? Remember, we had one month with a winning record.

As opposed to when they didn't?

remember when some were talking about how our remaining schedule actually wasn't that hard (which wasn't true) and their reasoning was that we got to play so many carpy teams in our division? Yeah, about that.

smoke and mirrors only last so long. In the end, it's about stuff, and our pitchers don't have it. And they haven't for the last 4+ seasons. Last in the AL in Ks and BAA is bound to get you.

We have a semi-permanent spot in the 'least amount of strikeouts by a pitching staff in baseball' home (Cleveland has the most in baseball, 300+ more than ours). Bright side is, we are only 28th in BAA.(but last in the AL)

I never thought that this would be an issue.

no, no one has come close to doing that.

three teams have passed us for the 2nd wild card in less than a week.

He did. It was a horrible decision to keep him in the rotation over May and equally bad to keep him in it since. He's got zero stuff (for a MLB starter) and having a little success by smoke and mirrors is never a good sign for continued success. Only on a team with a rotation as bad as ours over the last few years could a team somewhat justify his place in a rotation to start the season and there is no justification now. Nor has there been one for over a month. Bad idea to sign him, worse decision to re-sign him, inexcusable to keep him in the rotation now. Putting a guy who can't strike people out in the pen, especially as an 8 inning guy, would be devastating.

Right now, he would have to pass 2 teams to make the wild card: Toronto, Angels, Baltimore. When was the last team we had sole posses of the #2 wild card seat? August 2nd? So, in less than a week, 2 teams have passed us? And Texas is right on our heels.

There is no stat by itself that is end all be all or even close. There are just some better than others. In this case, if we're looking at how pitchers might perform going forward (i.e., who should stay in the rotation), xFIP might be best. http://www.fangraphs.com/library/pitching/xfip/ 'Why xFIP: While the value of moving from ERA to FIP is that it attempts to strip out defense, luck, and sequencing, moving from FIP to xFIP is useful because it tries to remove some of the randomness in the pitcher’s actual performance. Everything we do to calculate FIP is based on the idea that the pitcher is responsible for strikeouts, walks, hit batters, and home runs while the defense is not. This makes FIP a better indicator of pitcher performance than ERA.' 'Expected Fielding Independent Pitching (xFIP) is a regressed version of Fielding Independent Pitching (FIP), developed by Dave Studeman from The Hardball Times. It’s calculated in the same way as FIP, except it replaces a pitcher’s home run total with an estimate of how many home runs they should have allowed given the number of fly balls they surrendered while assuming a league average home run to fly ball percentage (between 9 and 10% depending on the year).' 'In a very simple sense, FIP tells you how a pitcher has performed (value) independent of their defense, while xFIP tells you about how well he has pitched (ability, talent) independent of their defense.'-- That is why xFIP is a better predictive stat (cause pitchers are usually expected to pitch to ability and talent), while FIP is a better stat to say how a pitcher has performed.

He needs to perform better with RISP, but yeah, at this point he needs to probably be in there.

Ok, our game with Cleveland sits at 9-9. The offensive juggernauts, Jays and Yankees, sit tied at 1-1 in the 9th. Baseball is gloriously weird.

I think you are right, now that I look at the box score again. Thanks for the correction. Appreciate it

you talking about the accountability/based on performance hook? If so, I agree. A far as the game stats go, he was on the hook for the loss. As a starter, you need 5 complete innings to qualify for a win . When it comes to getting the loss, you don't even have to get an out before coming out the game and you can still qualify for the loss.

Plenty of people have suggested he: A: hasn't been bad at all. B: has been somewhat good. C: At minimum, has been a pleasant surprise. Before you say, it, yeah, I know :-)