nicksaviking

When he was on early in the year, he seemed to have an ornery but confident demeanor on the mound. Lately he's been ornery but has seemed more frustrated than confident. That kind of tells me he doesn't yet trust himself. I'll trust him again once he starts trusting himself. I'm guessing that will come once he shakes off the rust, locates his fastball better and resumes his previous steady usage of his slider which had always been 25-30% of the time. It'll happen, just not quite yet.

Gibson had 31 starts and 179 innings last year which was an increase of 27 innings from 2013. He's also had 31 starts in 2015, and while his innings have only increase by 9, he has thrown 3131 pitches this year compared to only 2800 last year. That's like adding 3-4 extra starts for him. I'm not into babying pitchers, but I would expect Gibson's season long consistency to even out once his year-to-year workload evens out. On a slight side note, people have been crediting Gibson for being an effective sinkerballer since he was drafted, but his slider and change up are actually rated much better. I think if he used those pitches more he'd get more swings and misses and cut down on his number of pitches. I know some argue that putting the ball in play is the most efficient way to cut down on pitches, but it seems to me too many batters are able to consistently foul off borderline sinkers that the contact route is actually more detrimental to pitch counts. Any year you search, there is an undeniably high correlation between pitchers with high inning totals and high strikeout totals.

Gibson has never seemed like a big game pitcher to me, however for me that has always basically boiled down to being able to pile up strikeouts. But last night just made me think he's gassed. He had the complete game loss a few starts back and then pitched into the 8th the next time out, but he looks like he hit the wall, I thought that last month and he might have gotten his 2nd wind, but he even looks worn out.

Well one of them was a world class athlete (even if he was a pitcher) while the other guy looks like an athlete the way a league bowler looks like an athlete. All of my concerns with Perkins boil down to his age, as it does with nearly every pitcher. However, his velocity is higher than when he went on the shelf, which if anything, is encouraging to me. He's not using his slider enough, and he's not locating. Unlike velocity, those typically aren't uncorrectable issues that occur with age; he probably just needs repetition. Of course, this is not the ideal time for remedial fastball location and slider control work. He should be good to go next year though, barring another injury.

The one game WC game shouldn't have more than two starters, and the non-starting starter should only be there in case of a long extra innings game.

It looked like he was hitting 94 and at least once 95. I think his velocity is there, just a rusty slider. Perk definitely had an attitude tonight though, I was really hoping the camera would have shown Perkins and Rosario meeting at the end of the game. I don't like him showing up the young fielders, but maybe a little stink eye is OK. Clearly he was showing up the ump. That's not good, but perhaps there's more that we didn't see, after all, the ump did turn out to be the type to toss a guy after the game was over. That stinks of arrogance and making sure he has the last word.

Son of a gun. I'll take it.

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.