nicksaviking

Argh. Twins bullpen + runners in scoring position = soon to be riots on Twins Daily.

With only two starts left, there should be no cause to limit Santan's pitch count.

Still no.

I wonder if Jeff Manship has ever struck out the side before?

Aren't we still waiting for the team to replace Wayne Hatteway? Seems like Hunter would be a perfect candidate.

While that's good that Ryan realized the rotation needed upgrades, it wasn't something everyone else didn't know when it was filled with Diamond, De Vries and Deduno. He made upgrades, and I give him tons of credit because previously I didn't think he would ever be able to bring himself to give out a free agent contract of any decent size. I didn't like the kind of guys he brought in for the most part, but I said at the time that I was impressed that he was able to pull the trigger. The problem is, the game took a pretty severe 180 in the last couple of years. Those vet arms that Ryan thought he needed look pretty cringe-worthy now. It's the young arms that rule the game today, they are fresher and throw harder. There have really only been 8 guys who have started this year.** Is there really any question if you were to rank them in effectiveness, it would follow pretty closely to their age: Duffey 24, May 26, Gibson 27, Milone 28, Hughes 29, Pelfrey 31, Santana 32, Nolasco 32. Sure, it's a bit flukey that it matches up so closely, but it's not abnormal, only 4 of the top 20 pitchers in WAR this year started the year older than 30. I don't think a spring competition is good, the vets will have the advantage due to seniority and contract and the young guns need time to adjust, but they aren't going to be able to adjust to MLB hitters sitting in AAA. **Only 9 guys have started this year and one of those was Graham in the early season bullpen game. Big congrats to the players, training staff, managers, front office or whomever else had a hand in that.

While I'm certainly not advocating Hunter as a coach, I'm not sure we would have thought much of Brunansky based off of his playing days either. He was a swing first slugger with significant contact issues and a rather poor OBP for a middle of the order bat. Funny thing is , Bruno could actually draw a walk, but for some reason very few of his current pupils can. There actually don't seem to be many hitting coaches who were considered good hitters back when they played. Wally Joyner was a good contact guy. Don Baylor, Chili Davis?

I've wanted to see Pelfrey in the pen all year, and actually had optimistic thoughts on it. Pelfrey did not want to see Pelfrey in the pen and clearly had negative thoughts on it. I can't see him re-signing here if there's a decent chance he'd end up in the pen. His flukey season was just good enough for him to get a handful of suitors who will give him a rotation spot, heck, he might even be pretty good if he goes back to the NL. I'll be pretty bummed if the rotation doesn't include four guys under the age of 30 by next June, but I'm not getting my hopes up. I'd also be willing to shop Gibson to open up a spot for the younger guys. Gibson should probably go somewhere that insists he use his more superior slider as opposed to his sinker for his out pitch anyway. He'll be grateful in the long run when his strikeouts increase and he gets paid accordingly.

Facing Salazar and Kluber the next two games ain't going to hurt that avg fastball velocity either. Ugh, I just realized the Twins are facing Salazar and Kluber the next two games.

And at 2.0 WAR, he's only the 14th highest offensive rookie. This is shaping up like it could be one of the best rookie classes of all time. http://www.fangraphs.com/leaders.aspx?pos=all&stats=bat&lg=all&qual=130&type=8&season=2015&month=0&season1=2015&ind=2&team=0&rost=0&age=0&filter=&players=0&page=1_50 I don't remember seeing this many rookies perform like this before. Sorting by WAR, you can find guys who would have been in consideration for ROY in the 20's and 30's in WAR in other years (I'm looking at you Pat Listach, Jerome Walton and Bobby Crosby). And that list is only the offensive players. And Buxton doesn't even qualify as a rookie in 2015 yet, he's 5 PA short (well and his WAR is negative). Clean out the vets and bring in the youngsters. This is a new version of baseball.

Just throwing it out there, but the Astros currently have a .527 winning percentage. Assuming they stick to their current winning percentage, they should go either 6-6 or 7-5, meaning the Twins would have to go 9-4 or 10-3 to tie. I'm of the mind that the Astros continue to slide. I don't think the Angels do though. I sure wish today wasn't the last off day of the season for the team though.

With Hormel's local ties, I think the correct answer is that the Twins are as nonsensical and annoying as the Spam sketch:

Gut tells me no, but I'm also guessing after their recent slide, most Astros fans aren't feeling too comfortable either. I'm inclined to say 10% chance, though that doesn't feel right because if the Twins sweep Cleveland and LA takes 2 of 3 from Houston, it would seem more like 50/50 and neither of those outcomes seems that far fetched.

Let's not jump to any conclusions. The report didn't say which team's official believes the Twins want him back. Maybe it was like a Mets official. Then I wouldn't put much weight on it.

I hope you agree with that take because I now see you said the same thing in post number two! My bad, should have read the tread more thoroughly.

To me, the biggest red flag with Hughes was his sharp velocity decline this year. I wondered if it was due to aging, injury or some kind of tinkering as Hughes has been known to be a tinkerer. I'm wondering how the velocity will be out of the pen. If he can't bump it up to past levels, I'm really concerned about the rest of his contract.

Maybe he's auditioning for Danny Santana's full-time LH pinch hitting gig?

I think the 'facts' being presented are as about as tenuous as the 'facts' given during a political debate. Are they true? Some of them, if you look at it from a particular perspective. Using Mauer's 2013-14 off season to judge his workout regimen probably isn't too fair seeing as he was recovering from his concussion issues, and just about every 'fact' is about the 2013-14 off season. I also fail to see how Joe stretching this past off season is some kind of indictment on his workout habits. Is stretching bad? If the intended implication is that Joe was only stretching, there was nothing in that link that suggested so and this post goes from borderline objective to intentionally skewing.

But at only 3M, 6M and 9M in the final three years, that's a relatively minor investment, particularly since there is still upside. Silver lining regarding Dozier's fall: Previuosly the front office would have never considered moving him, even if prospects behind him were tearing it up. Now, I'd have to think not only would moving him not be out of the question should better options arise, but the team almost certainly wouldn't look to extend him unless he shows much more consistancy.

Luckily he isn't then. The deal he signed didn't buy out any free agent years.

I think Dozier's approach was specificly engineered by the club to take advangatge of Target Field's weak point. Dozier didn't have this approach or swing when he was initially called up and struggled. His current tendancies only happened after the Twins saw extreme pull hitter Josh Willingham beat what had previously been thought of as an unbeatable park.

I understand why they thought they needed a pinch hitter, but Santana has actually been a lot worse against RHP this year, meanwhile Buxton actually has a reverse split, so much so that we probably would have much more mild consternation about his development if his overall OPS matched his OPS against RHP (.638). Still I agree, Arcia in that at bat would look better if a pinch hitter was absolutely going to happen. I wonder if that specific at bat alone will be the tipping point in convincing the front office to add Kepler once the AA season is done. I would also have taken Polanco and his track record of getting on base ahead of Santana in that situation.

Let's just cut to the chase and get him that new Aaron Hicks leg kick this off season. That toe tap doesn't look good on him. Dozier, Plouffe and Sano do the toe tap but they seem to use their lower half when they swing. Do something to get him to use his legs, he's going to be a slap hitter if he's only using his arms and clearly he has the talent to be more than that.

I think Morris has no contemporary comparable as the Twins only had him for one year. At the time it was infuriating when he left but we weren't as wise about pitching declines back then. He was almost exactly league average in 1992 and then completely collapsed in 1993. Start the young guys. All of them.

As far as I can tell, the Twins have only had one > .750 OPS full season from a SS since Roy Smalley was traded, and only Zoilo's 1965 season prior to that. Escobar is becoming one of my favorite players, probably because he's getting overlooked in favor of bigger name prospects who haven't come close to putting it together yet. Also, he's doing this with a rather modest .308 BABIP and his hot steak has only seen it go to .343 for the past month. This isn't Danny Santana.