Matthew Trueblood

Image courtesy of Jesse Johnson-Imagn Images "I just follow the card," Luke Keaschall said last week, standing in the home dugout at Target Field. "I take the card Grady makes for me and go where he tells me." Keaschall has been an outfielder for just over a month now and racked up 246 innings there so far, with 137 of those innings coming in center field. He's doing his best to sand off the rough edges, but he's a confident athlete who wants to trust his instincts and play without fear. He's highly complimentary of Sizemore, who wants the same things. "He just tells us to be free, be relaxed and ready out there," Keaschall said. "He wants us to be comfortable and go get the ball; pretty simple." It is. It also isn't, and there seems to be a key detail Keaschall, Sizemore and the Twins have overlooked. As Cody Schoenmann wrote last month, Keaschall has been playing deeper in center field than almost anyone else in the sport, often to the detriment of his ability to catch lazy fly balls. After Keaschall noted that the positioning card with which the team furnishes him indicates in which direction and by how much to shade each batter, I asked how he and Sizemore set his initial position. Therein, as it turns out, lies the rub: It's all Keaschall. Trying to preserve his comfort, the Twins have been hands-off when it comes to setting the default starting spot for Keaschall in center. He adjusts based on information from batter to batter, but his anchor—his starting point, taking the batter's tendencies out of the equation—is his own to drop. That's a mistake, and it's become a glaring one. When a ball falls in front of Keaschall because of a poor read or a mistaken last-second adjustment—two things we've seen happen to him multiple times already—that's understandable. Even great athletes need time to learn the nuances and to get accustomed to the specific skills of playing a new position. Over the weekend, we saw the latest instance of that, when Keaschall was unable to catch a ball that had a 90% catch probability, based on his starting position, the landing point of the ball and the hang time on the ball. He took a bad route, and when he did bend his run in toward the sinking liner, he did so too hesitantly. SzRCcjJfWGw0TUFRPT1fQVFnRFhRQlhVRlFBVzFVSEJBQUhBRklEQUFCUVZGZ0FDMUZYVVFWWFVBWUhWZ2Rm.mp4 However, just as often, we're seeing Keaschall prove unable to catch balls that should have been not only catchable, but easy. They're not even counting against him in some defensive metrics, because based on his starting position, they were uncatchable—but that's an indictment of his starting position, which he and the Twins say is his own to determine right now. This ball, which Keaschall misplayed into a triple, counts against him almost only because of the extra bases he allowed by mishandling the ball, according to Statcast. It gives the liner a 5% catch probability. But if Keaschall had been playing 10 feet shallower (as he unequivocally should have been, against low-power Nico Hoerner), that expected catch rate would be much, much higher. Whether Keaschall himself would have gotten to the ball is a fair question, but by starting so deep, he gave himself no chance. SzRCWmxfWGw0TUFRPT1fRGdBSFZBWU1CVlFBWFZSVEFnQUhBUUJmQUFBRlZWRUFWMUFIQWdGV0NRb0RBZ1pV.mp4 One reason for the Twins' willingness to let Keaschall play so deep, manager Derek Shelton indicated, is so he can feel less fear and be at less risk when going back toward the wall. That benefit hasn't materialized, though. More than once, Keaschall has gotten too close to the wall and had the ball carom past him. More than once, he's short-armed possible catches as he nears the wall, bracing for impact rather than making the play. Meanwhile, he's been forced to charge in an out-of-control way on liners in front of him, often with disastrous results. The coaching staff needs to intervene, rather than passively waiting for Keaschall to get more comfortable and move in a few steps. They need to address this issue immediately, to clean up their defense at a vital spot while Byron Buxton remains on the injured list. Unless and until they do, Sizemore's capacity to influence his pupils will go to waste where Keaschall is concerned. View full article

Image courtesy of Kevin Sousa-Imagn Images Jeff Hoffman was briefly Minnesota Twins property once before. Now, he's back, as the team made a last-minute trade to acquire him from the Toronto Blue Jays Monday afternoon. Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic broke the news. Hoffman, 33, dominates righties with a vicious power slider. Against lefties, he divides his mix more evenly among that slider; a four-seamer that averages 96 MPH; and a splitter that can miss bats. For some stretches over the last four seasons, he’s been outright elite among high-leverage relievers. He’s given up some gut-punch homers since joining the Blue Jays, but broadly speaking, he remains a lethal weapon. He’s owed $11 million next season and a prorated share of the same amount the rest of this year. The Twins will take on all of the money for 2026, but Toronto will send some to help cover next year's salary. In exchange, Minnesota gives up three prospects. John Klein debuted for Minnesota earlier this year, and will be in position to contribute for the reloading Jays down the stretch. Along with him come two upside plays for Toronto, in high-upside (but, lately, messy) pitching prospect Dasan Hill and infielder Dameury Pena, each of whom are far from the big leagues. Minnesota will also send international bonus pool allotments to Toronto as part of the deal, effectively undoing a portion of the earlier trade in which Toronto sent some of those allotments to Minnesota along with Tommy Nance. Hoffman immediately becomes the Twins' relief ace. He takes pressure off Yoendrys Gómez and Andrew Morris, and gives the team newfound depth in their high-leverage options. The rest of the way, the trick will be getting to the late innings with leads; holding onto those advantages should be easier. View full article

Well, just for one thing, he didn't do this willingly, NOR without saying a word. Haha.

You're certainly right that making that play doesn't guarantee winning the game. But you saw the state of Seattle's bullpen, today. They'd have had a good shot. I WILL guess that, one way or another, this season will come down to one game. If they make the playoffs, we can say it was because of any one of several games where they seemed to have lost and then won, like Royce's own walkoff this past week. If they MISS by one game, though, I think we should remember this one. It was winnable. It was there. And the underlying lesson about who can and can't be trusted on the infield and the costs of accepting the unacceptable seems important to me, even beyond this year.

Image courtesy of Steven Bisig-Imagn Images Royce Lewis hasn't spent much time at first base. He doesn't even really think of himself as a first baseman; he still longs to get back to the left side of the infield. The reality, though, is that he's not the athlete or the thrower he would need to be to return to shortstop or third base—and, unfortunately, Saturday delivered an excruciating reminder that he's not the quick processor required even of a right-side infielder. The situation demanded a lot of him—maybe more than can fairly be asked of a guy who was still all the way across the diamond three months ago. With a runner on third base and one out in the bottom of the ninth, the Twins went to a five-man infield and issued an intentional walk, bringing Cal Raleigh to the plate with runners on the corners. Randy Arozarena, at third, carried the winning run, so the idea in issuing Julio Rodríguez an intentional walk was to set up a double play on the big-dumpered Raleigh. Everyone involved had to understand, though, that the right way to make the play would depend on the specific play that happened. Each infielder's responsibility, in the very short time they had, was to arrange the field in their minds and to visualize the variety of plays that might present themselves. There was no one correct thing to do; what was correct would depend on the batted ball. Lewis didn't have a robust enough set of plans. The ball came his way, and he made the wrong play. Raleigh hit a one-hop smash, 105.4 miles per hour off the bat. Lewis's reflexes were fine; those have never been his problem. He lunged to his left, speared the ball cleanly, and managed not to go all the way to the ground. He'd been crowding the line, with two other infielders on his side of the second-base bag, so the ball took him right to the first-base bag. Right away, though, you could see him thinking—and not in a good way. SzRCcjJfWGw0TUFRPT1fVTFVRFZsWldYd1lBRFFRRlVRQUhWUWNGQUZsV1ZnTUFCQVpXQkFGWFZBUlRBUUZW.mp4 As Lewis took the step and a half left to reach the base after fielding the ball, he turned to look over his left shoulder to find Rodríguez. That was smart, really. It was one of those plays where, if he hadn't picked up Rodríguez and the Mariners outfielder had been especially wily, he could have snuck back into first base after Lewis tagged it. Because he had been so concerned about getting down the line and minimizing the risk of a double play, though, Rodríguez never even thought about a retreat. Therefore, as Lewis stepped on first, his eyes took him toward second, where Rodríguez was charging for the base and two teammates awaited a throw. That caused all kinds of trouble. First, as soon as Lewis started moving toward first and turned away from third, Arozarena could break for the plate freely. If Lewis gets up and stomps on the pillow while staring down Arozarena, the chance for a double play is likely lost, but the result is the second out and a chance to get out of the inning by retiring the next batter. However, you can make the play the way Lewis initially did and still get the double play. Once he turned his back to third, Arozarena was going, but if Lewis merely uses that turn to check for a dive-back by Rodríguez and then pivots to the plate with his eyes and mind clear, he retires Arozarena easily. Alas, we're all wired a certain way, and the way Lewis is wired is to be captured a bit by his own gaze. He turned and saw Rodríguez far enough short of second to be beaten by a good throw, and for a fatal half-second, he planned to make that throw. His eyes committed him to it. His brain kicked in. It overrode that command and turned him to the plate, and he threw. That throw was a bit later than it should have been, but if it had been strong and accurate, Arozarena still would have been out. Instead, it was to the first-base side of the plate, and Victor Caratini was unable to position himself to receive it and make a tag in time. The game was over. Though his arm has never been great—that's a big part of why he's no longer on the left side—Lewis is capable of that throw, physically. The problem, again, was mental. He wasn't fully turned, wasn't fully targeted. Having cost himself a moment with the mistaken pump toward second, he rushed the process of lining up his throw to the plate. After the game, manager Derek Shelton said the right play would have been to throw to second when Lewis got the ball. That could have worked, but it would have been risky. Shelton might not have appreciated how much of Lewis's momentum had to move toward first base to snare the ball. Turning that momentum and making a good throw to second, then aligning oneself for the return throw to double up Raleigh, would have been tough. Lewis isn't a good enough infielder, regardless of position, to do that; throwing to second right away wouldn't have been the right play. What needed to happen, rather, is what I described above. That's an unusual play, though—a rare progression. It demands that a player be a fast and confident processor of information during a play. Lewis isn't that, either. Rocco Baldelli talked about this on a much different (but not so different, really) play last season, when Lewis was playing third with the bases loaded and had to decide between trying to turn a double play and taking the out at the plate. He saw, and articulated, that Lewis is not the kind of processor who can reliably make that difficult series of incredibly fast decisions. Shelton hasn't put it the same way, but it's clear that the organization feels that way as a group. They're right. That leaves the team in a bit of a quandary. Lewis remains endlessly self-assured, at least before and after each difficult play that comes his way. He's been better at the plate since returning from his demotion to Triple-A St. Paul. However, he looks unlikely to be a competent defender at key moments, anywhere on the diamond. The closest thing to a position he can play well might be second base. The Twins simply don't have enough instinctive, intelligent and skillful defenders to fill out a lineup; they have to make do with Lewis, Luke Keaschall and others who lack that nous. As Saturday suggests, that could be what costs them a playoff berth this season. Hopefully, they can overcome that shortcoming, but sometimes, the ball finds you. The same things are true at the trade deadline. It's not the wrong decision that costs you; it's the quick decision not made, or the balk and non-committal move right after it. The sport comes down to quick decisions and to the hard work of being decisive under pressure—even off the field. View full article

You kinda put a 'but' where an 'and' goes, no? Larnach would net the better return. Bell is the more popular and powerful clubhouse presence. I don't think they view this as an either/or, by the way. They really aren't even considering trading Bell. That could change, but they'd have to hear an offer they don't expect to hear AT ALL. Larnach can get them a reliever, or the kind of extra prospect juice that makes one less painful to acquire, and they like their replacement for him (obviously). The only place where trading Bell instead of Larnach is being entertained is here on the web.

The Twins certainly COULD trade Jeffers, the same way they could trade Larnach. But he absolutely is NOT *needed* to get the kind of deal they want to do done, and in fact, they could pay the price to get the reliever they want, keep Jeffers and lose him for nothing this winter and still be fine, depth-wise. I won't be stunned either way, but I'd put the odds of a Jeffers trade under 40%. I think he sticks around.

Image courtesy of Steven Bisig-Imagn Images There's nothing better than a three-team division race in August and September. This looks like the rare one where there might not even be a soft landing in a Wild Card spot for the losers; that makes it extra juicy. The Twins are locked in a fierce battle for the AL Central title, entering Sunday trailing the White Sox by three games and in a dead heat with the Guardians—though, in a rare bit of good news about that matchup, they hold the edge on Cleveland in the season series, so they'd need to win just one of their final three games against them to secure the tiebreaker. (They have six games left against the Sox, and need to win four of them to gain the tiebreaker edge there.) If that race wasn't already feeling heated, it gained both intensity and clarity this weekend. The Twins made trades on Thursday and Friday njights to add pitchers A.J. Minter and Dean Kremer. On Saturday morning, the Guardians took a turn, swinging a four-player swap with the Brewers that clears the runway a bit for another move to bolster their roster in the next day or so. Then, on Saturday night, the White Sox dealt for veteran Mariners starter Luis Castillo, who should reinforce their rotation nicely—a move sandwiched by trades in which the Royals (Lane Thomas and Bailey Falter to the team from just outside Atlanta) and Tigers (Tarik Skubal to the Dodgers) began their selloffs. Every team in the division has selected their direction; every team now has to make good on that direction by making more moves in the next 30 hours or so. The Twins, for their part, are still working hard to make a major addition before the deadline. They really did have a deal in place with the Astros that would have sent Trevor Larnach to Houston in exchange for right-handed reliever Bryan Abreu, a source confirmed. That was first reported on Twitter Saturday morning and more robustly documented by Bobby Nightengale of the Minnesota Star-Tribune later in the day. Their efforts to move Larnach haven't stopped with that thwarted transaction, though. Larnach has been a topic of discussion with multiple other teams, a source familiar with the conversations said, including the Padres. Ideally, the Twins would swap their current platoon left fielder for a relief arm with high-leverage potential, like Abreu or Padres righty Jeremiah Estrada. As intriguing as that kind of trade itself, however, is what sources within the organization say would happen if the club can find the right deal for Larnach: a call-up of top prospect Walker Jenkins to take on an everyday role in the outfield, That could mean playing Jenkins in left field, or having him take over center, with Austin Martin, Alan Roden, Kody Clemens and Luke Keaschall flanking him, depending on matchups. If the team can't get either a solid reliever or a strong prospect return for Larnach, however, they're content to keep him and leave their outfield mix intact. The priority is not to create space for Jenkins, though they're ready to do so if he continues to push the envelope; it's to improve the bullpen. Minnesota remains active in talks with multiple teams about hurlers who would round out their relief corps, multiple league sources said late Saturday night. That could mean ousted Blue Jays closer Jeff Hoffman, a strikeout machine with a filthy slider whom the team briefly had in camp years ago, before he broke out with the Phillies. It could mean old friend Tyler Wells, whom the Twins lost to Baltimore via the Rule 5 Draft ahead of the 2021 season. Wells, a high-slot righty with a pitch mix that fits what the Twins like to get from relievers, comes with a year of team control beyond this one, as does Hoffman (though Hoffman's comes via an expensive contractual obligation). Estrada is a controllable high-octane arm, too. The Twins have even checked in on Luke Weaver, perhaps the most accomplished and expensive reliever on the market, though they feel the asking price will rise beyond their willingness to pay. Nor has the team foreclosed on the possibility of a combo deal wherein they would add both another important relieve and more help for the starting rotation; that could be a truly transformative splash. It's a bit of a mudfight, this division battle. The leading White Sox would be at least seven games out of first place in four of the other five divisions in the majors. The thing is there to be won, though, and the Guardians, Twins and White Sox all have ample motivation to win it. For Minnesota, the upside is huge. Take home a division title, and you not only get that achievement itself, but earn the goodwill of many fans who had all but abandoned the team. As a bonus (maybe more than a bonus, if your surname is Pohlad), you also get to host a playoff series. Even if you lose it, that's a handsome revenue infusion. And don't overlook this bit: The two byes past the Wild Card Series go to the two best records among division winners. If the Twins play well enough to beat the White Sox, they have as good a chance as any team in the AL West (currently paced by those renegade Astros, at 57-55) to be that second-best division winner. A fastt pass to the Division Series is a big prize worth paying for; the Twins are ready to pay for it. View full article

Image courtesy of Eric Canha-Imagn Images The Minnesota Twins have doubled down on their stated intention to support the existing roster and make a push for the postseason. On Friday night, they made the biggest move for a starting pitcher of the trade deadline period to date, scooping up Orioles right-hander Dean Kremer for minor league outfielder Jhomnardo Reyes . Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic broke the initial trade news on Twitter. Kremer is a seven-year veteran who has been a fairly durable mid-rotation innings-eater with a career ERA of 4.37 and a 7.8 K/9 strikeout rate. He avoided arbitration with the Orioles by signing a $5.75M contract, but started the year in AAA after losing the fifth starter job to Zach Eflin. He was recalled on April 13th when Eflin underwent Tommy John surgery. In Kremer's first two starts this year, he struck out 16 before a right quadriceps strain shelved him until July. His results since returning have been uneven. He beat the White Sox with a six-inning, one-run outing on July 1, then surrendered four solo homers to the Cubs, lasted just four innings against Houston, and gave up 14 runs over his last two outings. His 6.50 ERA looks worse than the arm behind it: a 38:11 strikeout-to-walk ratio in 36 IP suggests a pitcher throwing better than the runs indicate. The thirty-year-old's biggest problem this year has been home runs; he's given up 12(!) in 36 IP. That rate is an outlier - he only had a 1.3 HR/9IP rate coming into this year - but that will need to be lowered considerably if he's to have any success. One thing that will work in his favor is no longer pitching in Camden Yards, which has become notorious for giving up home runs since they moved the fences in. He has a five-pitch mix, with a fastball and a cutter that he throws a little over one-third of the time, a splitter he throws another third, and a sinker and curveball to round out his options. His fastball averages about 93 mph, which is slightly lower but still in line with his career average. He's only been throwing his splitter - his most-used pitch now - for the last three years. In addition to his contributions to this season's postseason push, the Twins can offer arbitration to Kremer next year, too. He doesn't qualify for free agency until after the 2027 season. As of now, it is not clear who is paying the roughly $1.9M that is due Kremer through the end of this year. But that remains to be seen. He was acquired this year to help a rotation that has grown increasingly thin, starting on the first day of spring training when staff ace Pablo Gomez was sidelined with a sore elbow that required Tommy John surgery. They've also lost Mick Abel, David Festa, and Mike Paredes to injuries, and Simeon Woods Richardson was released. The three most reliable starters - Bailey Ober, Taj Bradley and Joe Ryan - have all dealt with injuries or arm fatigue. Those move have necessitated callups for Zebby Matthews, Conner Prielipp, and Kendry Rojas, who have all had some success but also have their own usage limitations. Kremer, at the very least, provides some additional and necessary depth in case there are any further injuries. He may also allow one of the recent call-ups to be moved to the bullpen, which helps the bullpen, providing a potentially high-octane arm. In return for Kremer, the Twins sent the Orioles Jhomnardo Reyes, who is not in Twins Daily's Top 20 Prospect List, but he made Limestone Pipeline's 7/20 update as the 16th overall Twins prospect. True to form for the prospects that tend to get moved at the deadline, he's got "steam." The 18-year-old Dominican outfielder excelled in the Complex League the first half of this year, posting a 950 OPS, and was recently promoted to Low A Fort Myers. He's got a very long way to go, but there is plenty of potential there. This is the Twins second trade deadline deal that involved acquiring a veteran pitcher for a lower-level Twins prospect that is not in their near-future plans. View full article

I was glad people enjoyed that booth. But yeah, man, it turns out professional PBP people add value! I wish they'd do a bit less stunt stuff, because when moments like that one come, you want to have a person like Cory at the mic.