Matthew Trueblood

Versatility never hurts but Royce needs such an offensive overhaul. Why complicate it by asking him to learn a new position that also puts more pressure on the bat? I already thought demoting him was a head start on sending him somewhere (anywhere?) else this summer, but moving Lee to third so soon after they did it only increases my conviction about that.

It's a bit interesting that they waited until Tristan Gray left for paternity leave to do it, though. I wonder if Lee will slide back to short (for a bit) once Gray returns, or whether it'll now be Gray and Kreidler alternating at short with Lee at third.

And, since he's not really good defensively at any spot and has no speed, not even that. He has to hit to be a big-leaguer at all.

Image courtesy of © Jordan Johnson-Imagn Images By no means have the 2026 Twins gotten lucky. In fact, they can't catch a break. Their run differential (230 runs scored, 231 allowed) implies a 25-25 record, but they're 23-27. They lost their ace to season-ending elbow surgery on the first day of full-squad workouts in the spring, and their in loco Pablosis ace, Joe Ryan, has had multiple disruptions to his preparation and performance. Their star center fielder went off to international duty and found himself benched, slowing his start to the season. They had two strong breakout candidates in their rotation for the first month, but both are currently on the injured list. Now, their primary catcher is shelved for weeks by a broken bone in his hand. Their top two prospects got hurt in Triple-A. Given all that (and especially given the aforementioned 23-27 record), though, things feel oddly hopeful. The Twins are 5.5 games behind the Guardians for first place in the AL Central, but they've already proved they can hang with that team, beating them twice in three games at Progressive Field earlier this month. They're only 1.5 games out of playoff position. According to FanGraphs, they have a 23.8% chance to make the playoffs—down from their highest point during their early-season hot streak, but right in the same range they've been in for the last four weeks or so. While neither Matt Wallner nor Royce Lewis left the team much choice but to demote them to Triple-A, this situation made that decision both easier and more urgent. Ditto for their replacement of Simeon Woods Richardson in the starting rotation. Because of what now seem to be real problems—and not just slow starts—for the Royals, Tigers, Red Sox, Orioles, Mariners, Astros and Blue Jays, the door to the playoffs remains open to this team. To give themselves a chance to push through it, the team needed to make changes. Here's a position-by-position breakdown of all 30 teams' wins above average, courtesy of Baseball Reference. The Twins' totals are highlighted. Rk Total All P SP RP Non-P C 1B 2B 3B SS LF CF RF OF (All) DH PH 1 Atlanta Braves9.5 ATL4.8 ATL3.9 SDP1.4 LAD6.3 BAL0.9 ATL1.9 STL1.7 LAD1.8 KCR2.6 SEA1.5 LAD2.2 STL2.1 BOS3.2 PHI1.0 ATL0.2 2 Los Angeles Dodgers9.3 NYY4.3 MIL3.8 PHI1.2 CHC5.8 CHC0.7 ATH1.3 MIL1.7 CHW1.2 MIA1.7 NYY1.3 CHC1.5 BOS1.8 CHC2.7 LAD1.0 LAD0.2 3 New York Yankees7.3 PHI3.4 NYY3.6 ATL0.9 ATL4.7 ATH0.7 BOS1.1 PIT1.4 CLE1.2 CIN1.4 DET0.9 LAA1.1 ARI1.8 NYY2.7 HOU0.9 CHC0.1 4 Milwaukee Brewers3.5 MIL3.4 TBR2.5 COL0.8 BOS3.6 MIN 0.6 NYY1.1 MIA1.3 ARI1.0 NYY1.3 CHC0.6 BOS1.1 NYY1.4 LAD2.6 TBR0.9 BOS0.0 5 Cleveland Guardians3.4 LAD3.0 CLE2.5 NYY0.7 NYY3.0 DET0.5 CHW1.0 CHC1.3 TEX0.7 WSN1.0 BAL0.5 MIN 0.9 WSN0.8 SEA1.9 ATL0.9 WSN0.0 6 Chicago Cubs3.0 CLE2.7 CHW2.4 LAD0.6 STL2.5 MIL0.3 HOU0.9 SEA1.3 KCR0.5 CLE0.9 TBR0.3 ATL0.8 TEX0.7 TEX1.5 CLE0.3 NYY0.0 7 Tampa Bay Rays1.7 ATH2.6 ATH2.4 ATH0.2 TEX2.2 SDP0.3 STL0.6 SFG1.1 HOU0.4 DET0.7 MIN 0.3 TOR0.7 CHC0.6 WSN1.3 CHC0.3 TBR0.0 8 Texas Rangers1.7 DET1.8 MIN 2.4 MIA0.2 ARI1.7 ATL0.3 PIT0.5 ATL1.1 SFG0.4 PIT0.7 BOS0.3 TEX0.6 LAD0.3 ARI1.1 MIL0.2 MIN -0.1 9 Athletics1.7 CHW1.6 PHI2.2 DET0.2 TBR1.1 LAD0.1 MIL0.4 CHW0.5 TBR0.3 TBR0.7 WSN0.3 SEA0.4 ATL0.2 ATL0.9 STL0.2 PIT-0.1 10 Chicago White Sox1.6 TOR1.6 LAD2.2 SEA0.2 HOU0.9 BOS0.1 SDP0.3 CLE0.3 CHC0.1 LAA0.5 TEX0.2 WSN0.2 CLE0.1 STL0.8 BOS0.1 ARI-0.1 11 Boston Red Sox1.1 SDP1.6 TOR1.8 CLE0.1 WSN0.7 TEX-0.1 TEX0.3 LAD0.3 TOR0.1 ARI0.5 LAD0.1 BAL0.1 KCR0.1 CLE-0.3 BAL0.1 HOU-0.1 12 Seattle Mariners0.7 MIN 0.8 DET1.6 SFG0.0 SEA0.7 KCR-0.1 CHC0.3 LAA0.2 DET0.0 HOU0.5 CIN0.1 PIT0.0 SEA0.0 TOR-0.3 NYY0.0 TEX-0.1 13 Philadelphia Phillies0.5 TBR0.6 PIT1.3 TEX-0.1 CLE0.7 HOU-0.2 BAL0.2 TBR0.2 SEA-0.1 CHW0.3 PHI-0.1 NYY0.0 TBR-0.1 BAL-0.4 WSN-0.1 KCR-0.2 14 Arizona Diamondbacks0.3 COL0.1 KCR0.7 TOR-0.1 PIT0.5 STL-0.2 CIN0.2 ARI0.2 PIT-0.1 CHC0.3 ATL-0.1 ARI-0.1 PIT-0.2 MIN -0.4 CIN-0.1 CIN-0.3 15 Kansas City Royals0.1 SEA0.0 CIN0.7 ARI-0.3 KCR0.4 COL-0.3 LAD0.2 TEX0.0 BOS-0.2 TEX0.2 COL-0.2 CHW-0.1 HOU-0.3 PIT-0.4 NYM-0.1 SDP-0.3 16 Pittsburgh Pirates0.1 KCR-0.3 SDP0.2 CHC-0.4 MIL0.1 PIT-0.3 PHI0.2 BAL0.0 ATL-0.2 SDP0.2 MIL-0.2 NYM-0.1 NYM-0.4 TBR-0.5 COL-0.1 MIA-0.3 17 St. Louis Cardinals-0.3 MIA-0.3 SEA-0.2 MIL-0.4 CHW0.0 MIA-0.4 MIN 0.1 ATH-0.1 LAA-0.3 STL0.2 PIT-0.2 CLE-0.1 CHW-0.4 KCR-0.6 ATH-0.2 CHW-0.3 18 Minnesota Twins -1.1 PIT-0.4 LAA-0.2 NYM-0.4 BAL-0.8 ARI-0.4 TBR0.0 WSN-0.1 COL-0.3 LAD0.1 CHW-0.2 KCR-0.1 ATH-0.4 CHW-0.7 TEX-0.3 ATH-0.3 19 Detroit Tigers-1.4 TEX-0.5 TEX-0.4 BOS-0.5 ATH-0.9 NYM-0.4 WSN-0.2 BOS-0.2 ATH-0.4 MIL0.0 NYM-0.3 HOU-0.2 TOR-0.5 NYM-0.8 DET-0.3 SEA-0.3 20 Toronto Blue Jays-1.6 NYM-0.9 STL-0.4 CHW-0.7 CIN-1.6 SFG-0.4 ARI-0.2 DET-0.2 STL-0.4 SFG-0.1 CLE-0.3 SDP-0.3 LAA-0.6 LAA-0.8 SEA-0.4 BAL-0.3 21 San Diego Padres-2.1 ARI-1.4 MIA-0.5 KCR-1.0 MIN -1.9 TOR-0.5 TOR-0.2 NYY-0.3 WSN-0.5 ATH-0.1 SDP-0.4 MIL-0.3 COL-0.7 HOU-0.9 LAA-0.4 LAA-0.3 22 Miami Marlins-2.4 CIN-1.4 NYM-0.6 WSN-1.0 LAA-1.9 SEA-0.5 COL-0.2 CIN-0.4 CIN-0.6 TOR-0.2 HOU-0.4 PHI-0.3 SFG-0.8 CIN-1.3 ARI-0.4 SFG-0.4 23 Cincinnati Reds-3.0 SFG-2.4 COL-0.7 MIN -1.6 MIA-2.1 CIN-0.5 LAA-0.3 KCR-0.4 PHI-0.6 NYM-0.3 STL-0.4 MIA-0.3 MIL-0.9 PHI-1.3 SDP-0.4 NYM-0.4 24 Washington Nationals-3.2 BOS-2.5 ARI-1.0 PIT-1.7 SFG-2.4 TBR-0.5 MIA-0.4 MIN -0.5 NYM-0.7 BAL-0.3 SFG-0.5 CIN-0.5 CIN-0.9 MIL-1.4 SFG-0.4 MIL-0.4 25 Houston Astros-3.8 CHC-2.8 HOU-1.7 TBR-1.9 PHI-2.9 LAA-0.5 NYM-0.5 TOR-0.5 MIL-0.7 PHI-0.3 ATH-0.5 COL-0.6 PHI-0.9 COL-1.5 MIN -0.5 CLE-0.4 26 New York Mets-4.8 STL-2.8 BOS-2.0 BAL-2.0 DET-3.2 WSN-0.7 SFG-0.6 HOU-0.6 MIN -0.7 ATL-0.4 TOR-0.5 SFG-0.7 BAL-1.0 DET-1.7 KCR-0.5 PHI-0.4 27 San Francisco Giants-4.8 LAA-3.3 CHC-2.4 CIN-2.0 TOR-3.2 CLE-0.7 CLE-0.6 PHI-0.7 SDP-0.8 SEA-0.4 ARI-0.6 TBR-0.7 SDP-1.2 ATH-1.8 MIA-0.6 STL-0.4 28 Colorado Rockies-5.0 WSN-3.9 SFG-2.4 STL-2.4 SDP-3.7 PHI-0.8 SEA-0.8 NYM-0.7 NYY-0.9 MIN -0.4 KCR-0.6 STL-0.9 MIA-1.2 SDP-1.9 CHW-0.9 TOR-0.6 29 Los Angeles Angels-5.2 HOU-4.7 BAL-2.8 HOU-3.0 NYM-3.9 NYY-0.9 KCR-0.9 COL-1.0 BAL-1.0 BOS-0.5 MIA-0.9 ATH-0.9 DET-1.5 SFG-2.0 TOR-1.0 COL-0.7 30 Baltimore Orioles-5.7 BAL-4.9 WSN-2.9 LAA-3.2 COL-5.1 CHW-1.1 DET-1.4 SDP-1.1 MIA-1.0 COL-1.0 LAA-1.3 DET-1.1 MIN -1.6 MIA-2.4 PIT-1.2 DET-0.8 Coming into this season, any hopes for this club to contend were anchored to their starting rotation being good. That hasn't happened in the way fans or the front office hoped and expected, in that Pablo López is out for the year and both Mick Abel and Taj Bradley have been sidelined, but lo, the unit has been a strength, after all. Bailey Ober is settling in as an obviously usable (though, just as obviously, vulnerable) keep-you-in-the-game guy. Woods Richardson was a disaster, but Zebby Matthews has looked just as good as Woods Richardson did bad. Bradley is on the cusp of returning to a rotation that now includes Connor Prielipp as a full and semi-permanent member, with fellow hard-throwing lefty Kendry Rojas as a more provisional piece. With Woods Richardson out of that picture, the team has come round to enjoying both ample upside and enviable depth in their starting corps, by however circuitous a route. Ryan, Ober, Bradley, Prielipp, Matthews, and whichever of Abel and Rojas is the right mix of available and effective can be the starting pitching depth chart of a playoff team. The (relatively) proactive fix of swapping Woods Richardson out for Matthews is echoed throughout the roster, where the team is (as expected) playing an even harder game of Whack-a-Mole. They entered the season with an utterly underpowered bullpen, and that unit still hasn't been good, so far. However, they're starting to cobble together a group that can be good, in the medium term. Already, they've churned through several external additions (Garrett Acton, Luis García, and Yoendrys Gómez), but more telling is what they've done with their internal options. Gone is Justin Topa, a roster casualty whom the team also couldn't trust anymore. Into the mix are Woods Richardson (who has a real chance to be useful in a long relief role, if deployed correctly) and Andrew Morris, who has unceremoniously claimed the mantle of relief ace. Rojas might yet spend some time in the pen, too, as the rotation gets healthier and stabilizes. No team has gotten worse performances from its right fielders than the Twins, thanks to Wallner's all-around atrociousness, but he's now out of the frame. Minnesota is 26th in wins above average from third basemen, but now, Lewis is out of the way, too. The replacements for those players won't put the team in the top echelon at either spot, but they have a real chance to be better than Lewis and Wallner. The outline of a decent team is coming into focus. That invites the question: What's next? What does the team need to do to keep improving, so they can take advantage of this unexpected opportunity to stay relevant all summer? Firstly, as the chart shows, things still aren't good at shortstop. Brooks Lee has responded better to the influence of new hitting coach Keith Beauregard than his fellow last-wave top prospects, Wallner and Lewis, but he's still only batting .248/.299/.388. He's doing a slightly better job of making contact against breaking and offspeed stuff, but that's the only notable change in his profile. Nor has he become a viable defensive shortstop. Lee almost certainly could play a solid third base, and his bat is playable. In the medium term, then, the move is obvious: call up Kaelen Culpepper, test him at short, and slide Lee over. That will be risky at any point this year, though, and Culpepper isn't quite ready for it yet. Right now, the team will stick with Lee at that position, and the first change we're likely to see will be a slow shift toward more matchup play. Tristan Gray, Orlando Arcia and Ryan Kreidler form an underwhelming but extremely intriguing collection of role players on the infield. Gray brings a left-handed bat, with enough bat speed to be dangerous. Kreidler looked like he would never hit in the big leagues, but in a tiny sample this year, he's hitting in the big leagues. Arcia brings the most experience defensively, and while he'd be no more than a minor upgrade on Lee's glove at short, he would be a big step up from Luke Keaschall's glove work at second. That brings us to Keaschall, who has belatedly pulled his OPS to the right side of .600. He's just not going to work as a defensive second baseman, though any real move to another position has to wait, right now. He can hit enough to outpace his defensive woes, though, and the team now has several guys on the roster whom Derek Shelton can use to mitigate the damage Keaschall can do in the field. It won't be easy for the team to sustain the momentum they've built by winning three of their last four series. Ryan Jeffers's absence looms large. There are guys on this roster overperforming, and guys already coming back to Earth after hot starts. (Witness Trevor Larnach's .217/.280/.326 batting line in May.) They have a 10-game road trip to survive, beginning Friday, in which they'll play the Red Sox, White Sox and Pirates. Don't forget, either, that this team is just 23-27. They haven't exactly surged. They've just maintained a decent pace longer than expected. However, the chance before them is real. By staying afloat into (at least) the final third of May, they've checked the box Tom Pohlad put on their to-do list over the winter, when he made the then-improbable claim that the team would contend this year. Pohlad said last month that he would supplement the roster via trade this summer, if new top executive Jeremy Zoll came to him with a chance to do so. Now, that feels less like a pipe dream and more like a possibility. By winning just enough to stay alive, Zoll, Shelton and the team have bought themselves enough time to fix some of their most glaring flaws. View full article

What else are you hoping for??

Feels like one of those names that shows up a lot in the Boston phonebook, so sure! I mean if you mean AROLDIS, then no.

Image courtesy of © Matt Krohn-Imagn Images Farming out outfielder Matt Wallner was never going to be the last of the Twins' major moves, as the team shakes up its roster and tries to accelerate its move toward a new core and away from the bitter failures of the last season and a half. Monday night saw Kendry Rojas take (at least for now) Simeon Woods Richardson's place in the starting rotation. On Tuesday, the club optioned Royce Lewis to the minors and designated reliever Justin Topa for assignment. Dan Hayes of The Athletic broke the news on Twitter. Topa, 35, fell off the ledge after clinging to it all season, never quite able to clamber to a safer perch. He made 23 appearances and gutted out a pair of saves, but he only made it through 19 innings and finishes his Twins tenure with an 8.05 ERA. He struck out 12 and walked 11, and a wobbly showing in which he let the Astros back into the game Monday night was the final straw. With Lewis, the story is much longer and more interesting, but much more of it has already been told. He can't get on time right now. His winter work with a private hitting coach has borne no fruit, making him less unorthodox but no more effective than he was in his lost 2025 campaign. When his at-bats remained uncompetitive after a two-day benching to reset and refocus, the writing was on the wall, just as it was for Wallner earlier this month. Replacing Lewis on the roster will be veteran utility infielder Orlando Arcia, who signed a minor-league deal with the team in the spring and stayed with the club despite not making the 26-man roster in March. Arcia, 31, offers steady (though no longer rangy) defense for an infield that needed help on that front. He's also hit very well for Triple-A St. Paul this season, with a .318/.376/.556 line in over 160 plate appearances. Arcia and Tristan Gray are expected to serve as a modified platoon at third base for the short term, according to a source briefed on the team's thinking, though Derek Shelton will have some discretion in which way to tip the greater share of playing time and whether to include Ryan Kreidler in that rotation. For the Twins, it's still worth hoping for and trying to engender a Lewis rebound, but that can no longer be Plan A. Like Wallner, Lewis heads to the minors without a guarantee of a return trip, and with the team's plans rapidly shifting in another direction. For now, top infield prospect Kaelen Culpepper will remain with the Saints, but he's knocking on the door to the majors. An infield that includes (in whichever alignment) Brooks Lee and Culpepper is now more likely to be the team's medium-term plan than is anything that involves Lewis. Cutting Topa creates a spot for Arcia on the 40-man roster, but there might be more shuffling ahead, as the team awaits more information on the injured wrist of catcher Ryan Jeffers. With Jeffers in limbo, Gray set to welcome a new child to his family and two veteran relievers (Matt Bowman and John Brebbia) eligible to become free agents Tuesday if not added to the roster. there are still moving pieces here. If the team wants to call up either Bowman or Brebbia, they'd need to create a second opening on the 40-man. A third spot could be needed for catcher Alex Jackson, should Jeffers land on the IL. It's even possible Lewis will go to Ft. Myers for a more complete reset, rather than to St. Paul. For now, though, it's clear that another phase of a longer-running shakeup is underway. This piece will be updated as the details of the roster moves are announced. UPDATE: Lewis will go to Triple-A, sources confirmed to Twins Daily. Hayes reported the same. As we reported above, the spot needed for Arcia will be the one taken from Topa. What other shifting takes place, however, remains to be seen. Unless the team places Jeffers on the IL, they can't recall Kody Funderburk, who hasn't been on optional assignment long enough yet to be reinstated for any reason other than injury. UPDATE 2: The full picture is now in view. Travis Adams will take Topa's spot in the bullpen, while once-promising pickup Garrett Acton will move to the 60-day injured list to make more room on the 40-man roster. Jeffers, indeed, hits the shelf, and Jackson will come up to serve as the secondary catcher. The last is a blow to the team's dwindling hopes for 2026, because Jeffers's injury turns out not to be a sprained wrist, but rather, a dreaded hamate bone fracture. It's likely that he'll be out until at least the latter part of June, during which time the Twins will have to make do with Victor Caratini and Jackson behind the plate. View full article

The big difference there is, Jeffers is a free agent this fall. If he's out for any length, it probably dings his market value, but I don't think it makes it much more likely that the Twins are the team willing to stomach the risks that come with signing a catcher to a multi-year deal when they've never proved they can bear up under a full-time workload, y'know?

Image courtesy of © Jesse Johnson-Imagn Images Box Score: Starting Pitcher: Kendry Rojas: 4 IP, 2 H, 0 R, 1 BB, 3 SO - 46 Pitches, 31 Strikes, 10 Whiffs = Average 4-Seam Velo: 96.0 MPH Home Runs: Josh Bell 2 (5) Top 3 WPA: Bell (0.30), Rojas (0.22), Eric Orze (0.09) Win Probability Chart (Via BaseballSavant): You Win Some... The Twins got some really encouraging performances Monday night. Josh Bell hadn't homered in over a month and was doing a frighteningly good impression of a player who's completely cooked. He entered the game batting .176/.176/.235 for the month of May, with 20 strikeouts and zero walks in 51 plate appearances. Bell has always been a streaky hitter, but that level of lostness is uncharted territory. Were it not for the concurrent death spirals of the careers of Matt Wallner and Royce Lewis, Bell might have been a focus of more conversation in recent days as someone who could lose their roster spot, or at least be placed on the IL with some semi-phantom injury. Almost any time such a thing is happening, though, there is at least some reason for it behind the scenes—and, therefore, more hope than you might guess, at a glance. In Bell's case, the mitigating circumstance is that he's been sick for much of this month, dealing with fluid loss and sapped strength. Players play through illness all the time, and it can't be used as an excuse for poor performance, so they'll rarely even admit to the issue. It does affect performance, though, just as it affects anyone else when they try to slog through a workday with a head cold or a stomach virus. Beginning to feel like himself again, perhaps, Bell broke out of his funk in a huge way Monday night. He hit two homers that were relatively low liners, but on which there was still no doubt of the outcome off the bat, and he lashed what turned out to be an important RBI single in the bottom of the sixth. A better Bell would go a long way to getting this Twins offense into the consistent groove they've sought all year. Meanwhile, Kendry Rojas put on an equally impressive show. His command was better than it's been in any of his other big-league outings, as he hammered away on the glove side of the plate with his four-seamer and showed the ability to drop in his changeup for strikes. He pitched just four innings, but only needed 46 pitches to do it and induced 10 whiffs by the visiting Astros. Though he'll have to find more consistency with his slider to replicate this in the future, Monday was a big step in his development as a potential starter. ... You Lose Some... It was inevitable, and is inarguably what's best for the team, but that probably won't give Simeon Woods Richardson a great deal of solace. He's (semi-)officially out of the starting rotation now, after the team plainly planned a piggyback of Rojas and Woods Richardson Monday night. Rojas left after four frames so that Woods Richardson could make a multi-inning appearance in relief, and it was nice that he was protecting a lead when he came in—but that's the kind of thing you do to emphasize how important a guy's new role is, when both you and he know his new role is a smaller and less important one. Woods Richardson only got one inning in, as it happened, because of the weather's disruptive influence on the game. He stayed on the plate, though he didn't have command of his curveball. Clearly pacing himself for an almost-normal outing, he didn't tap into the extra velocity the team surely hopes he might access as a reliever, but it was a first appearance in what's likely to be his new standard gig. It went fairly well, and Woods Richardson took the right attitude. Far, far more worrisome for the Twins than Woods Richardson's loss of a job is the danger that they might have lost their best player for a little while, on about as innocuous a play as you can imagine. After fouling off a pitch on which his bat broke, Ryan Jeffers initially stayed in the game—but two pitches later, he called for the trainer and departed. After the game, the team said Jeffers was being evaluated for a left wrist sprain. Though catchers play through dings that bad and worse, this figures to sideline Jeffers for at least a short time. If it's any more than a very mild sprain, it could (and probably should) land him on the injured list; no one's wrist ever got better by catching 120 pitches a day averaging 90 miles per hour. The truth, though, is that losing Jeffers for any meaningful stretch would mark the end of even half-hearted hopes of the Twins competing this season. He has a team-best .949 OPS. He's garnered the respect and trust of the pitching staff, thin though that group might be. Without Jeffers, even a hot streak from Bell wouldn't make this a very robust offense, and (despite Victor Caratini's ABS wizardry) they'll probably lose a bit on the run prevention side, too. It's breath-holding time—although, come to think of it, you were probably already holding your breath while you waited to see how long Byron Buxton will be sidelined by his hip flexor problem. Ok, let it out. Catch a few deep gulps of air. Now: hold your breath again. ... And Some Days it Rains. The game was delayed by nearly two hours right at its midpoint, with the Twins up 3-0 in the bottom of the fifth. You can make a pretty strong case that it just should have been banged, and the Twins declared the winners; it was official once they got through the top of the fifth. In some future version of the league, mid-game rain delays of more than 90 minutes will probably be banned, and we'll all be better for it. Baseball is an outdoor game, which is a wonderful thing. We're meant to live in contact and conversation with nature, and not to conquer it outright. Sometimes, it's ok to let Mother Nature win. This is a level of philosophizing that would make both Rob Manfred and whoever's running the MLB Players Association these days puke, but it's also pragmatic. Neither fans nor players benefit from long rain delays, and despite your wisecracks to the contrary, they're not moneymakers for teams, either. What's Next The Astros and Twins continue their three-game set Tuesday night, under clearer skies—but it's going to get chilly, with temperatures dipping into the 40s by the late innings. Lance McCullers Jr. (2-3, 6.86) gets the ball for the visitors, while Zebby Matthews (1-0, 0.00) makes his second start of the year for the Twins. First pitch is at 6:40 PM CT. Bullpen Usage Chart THURS FRI SAT SUN MON TOT Morris 0 24 0 12 16 52 Orze 0 0 26 0 19 45 Topa 0 0 0 11 31 42 Rogers 0 23 0 8 11 42 Gómez 0 7 11 0 11 29 Banda 0 8 0 18 0 26 Garcia 0 0 0 22 0 22 Woods-Richardson 0 0 0 0 18 18 Adams 0 0 0 0 0 0 View full article

Image courtesy of © Matt Krohn-Imagn Images Throwing the way Andrew Morris comes with some limitations. At 61°, he has one of the league's highest arm angles; few pitchers have a truer over-the-top motion than his. That can be good—it's deceptive, and it gives him easy access to the top of the strike zone with his riding four-seam fastball—but it can also be bad. Most pitchers who operate from a high slot struggle to consistently generate much horizontal movement. Most of them struggle to target the bottom of the zone or to get out of it and induce chases, except with steep breaking balls that can be hard to command and/or easy for opposing batters to spot. Throwing overhand helps you stay over the 17-inch plate and can be the most natural movement for some pitchers, but the league is trending toward lower slots for a reason: it's easier to tinker from there. It's easier to manipulate the ball and challenge hitters with unusual angles. For all those reasons and more, it made sense for the Twins to move Morris to the bullpen when they needed help there earlier this season. He's made 62 starts across parts of five minor-league seasons, and he began the year as a starter with Triple-A St. Paul. Quickly, though, the Twins' historic, insupportable lack of hard throwers or bat-missers in the bullpen became a problem they had to solve, and Morris was the sensible solution. Called up to pitch in multi-inning relief, Morris has rarely opened the tank and fired with reckless abandon. When he has, though, his fastball has touched 99 miles per hour. It's averaging 96, and he can live there, comfortably. His movement—a little more carry than one would expect (but only a little, because of the high arm slot), but very straight horizontally and very true to the spin direction of the pitch—is unexceptional, so he has to throw hard to succeed; it's easier to do that in short bursts. The heater has worked fine so far, and in this role, that's sustainable. His sweeper is also working well. Few pitchers can create so much sweep from that high slot, so he's not only getting a good whiff rate on it, but inducing weak contact when batters do meet the ball. His pitch mix has consisted mostly of the four-seamer and the sweeper against righties, and it's worked pretty well. He's only fanned six of the 41 right-handed batters he's faced, which is a problem, but he's also only walked three of them, and he's yet to surrender an extra-base hit to a righty. With the right sequencing and the command he's already shown, he'll miss a few more bats and benefit from some better defensive support; those two pitches can get righties out for him. Lefties are a different story. Morris has already allowed six extra-base hits to left-handed batters this season, and it's not a coincidence. The sweeper really doesn't work against them, so the converted starter has tried a kitchen-sink approach. His four-seamer is the main offering, but otherwise, he's mixing his sweeper, cutter, sinker, curveball and changeup in, trying to find something that will flummox opposite-handed batters. So far, that's been elusive. His walk rate is excellent against them, too, and he has 10 strikeouts in 44 plate appearances—but missing bats isn't enough to make up for how hard he's getting blistered when he fails to do so. To fix that, the Twins and Morris need to find a third pitch that works for him—or, rather, a second truly functional offering against lefties. It's not going to be the current version of his changeup. He kills spin relatively well on that pitch, but again, most pitchers struggle to generate depth on a changeup from that high arm slot—and Morris is no exception. His change has a decent amount of run, relative to his four-seamer, but it comes from noticeably lowering his arm angle. There's a decent velocity gap (around 10 MPH), but that's partially because he doesn't use the same arm speed on the changeup as on the fastball. Worst of all, he can't get to the bottom of the zone or below with it; the pitch hangs in hittable regions. Right now, Morris uses a version of a circle-change grip. That's ill-suited to his motor preference and to his arm angle. The team does have a ready-made model Morris can emulate in the pursuit of a better fit, though: Taj Bradley. Like Morris, Bradley throws from an exceptionally high arm angle. His splitter has been the key to his success this season. One path forward is to have Morris try a splitter instead of this unusable changeup. Another option is his unique cutter. The spin direction and movement on his cutter make Morris very unusual. His cutter has a good mix of carry and glove-side movement, and it's something hitters hardly ever see from this arm slot. Guys who achieve that shape on the cutter tend to have much lower arm angles and less ride on their four-seamers. The one guy who matches Morris well, in terms of spin direction and actual movement direction from such a high angle, is Guardians right-hander Tanner Bibee, but his has a bit more depth and acts as his main breaking ball. Morris's could best be used another way. Its spin makes it easy to distinguish from his four-seamer early, but it moves deceptively after that. He could use the cutter to force lefties to cover the inner half and be more defensive, the better to set them up for a four-seamer that they'd then be less likely to hit hard. His curveball (so far, not especially polished) could factor in, too, as the pitch the hitter chases because they're locked in on the four-seamer and cutter and the curve looks enough like the four-seamer to earn the bad swing. Morris is learning on the fly, not only because he had a change in role sooner than the team initially envisioned but because injuries have interrupted his development since the team selected him in the 4th round in 2022. He isn't yet dominating hitters, though he's been able to work out of some jams and did a marvelous job to strand two Brewers runners in the top of the 7th inning Sunday. The sheer stuff will be good enough to make him a high-leverage arm, but Morris and the Twins have to make a few more adjustments first. It might mean letting go of the idea that he will ever be a big-league starter—but that's the right choice for the player and the team, right now. View full article

Image courtesy of © Denny Medley-Imagn Images The Twins will option struggling outfielder Matt Wallner to Triple-A St. Paul on Thursday, two sources with knowledge of the team's plans told Twins Daily, Taking Wallner's place on the roster will be utilityman Ryan Kreidler, who made his Twins debut during Royce Lewis's stint on the injured list earlier this season. Kreidler is expected to serve in the same roving backup role he filled in Lewis's absence, as the team gives Austin Martin a fuller opportunity as a regular corner outfielder. By now, there should be little suspense or surprise around that move. Wallner's demotion is overdue. The massive Forest Lake native is batting .167/.259/.292 on the year. His last two starts came Wednesday night against the Marlins and Saturday in Cleveland, and in each, he went 0-for-4 with four strikeouts. He's been slowly phased out of the team's plans over the last four weeks, with Martin gaining an ever greater share of the playing time in the outfield and Trevor Larnach becoming the left-handed batter manager Derek Shelton kept in the lineup even against left-handed opposing starters. Compounding the negative value of his bat, Wallner has been the worst defensive outfielder in baseball this season. He's lost speed; takes bad routes on fly balls; is too slow to field balls that fall in and to get off throws back to the infield; and doesn't communicate well with the infielders or with Byron Buxton on balls hit between defenders. He has no business playing in the major leagues right now; the team will hope that a hard reset in the minors can fix that. Right-hander Zebby Matthews is also coming over from St. Paul Thursday, and that promotion has portent, too. All the team is saying so far is that Matthews is making a spot start to facilitate the team bumping back Connor Prielipp's next one by a day, as they monitor and mete out the latter's workload for the year. However, Matthews looks likely to stick around and take over the starting rotation spot occupied (until now) by Simeon Woods Richardson, who was knocked out early again Wednesday and has an untenable 7.71 ERA for the year. Wednesday night's game was also the latest indication of a more gradual change. Tristan Gray made his fourth start at third base in the last 10 games. Two of those starts came one week ago, when Shelton gave Royce Lewis back-to-back days off as a reset. So far, however, Lewis has shown little to give the team renewed hope since then, and he's only batting .167/.269/.300 for the year. His two-day benching came one week after Wallner's, and now, Wallner is heading for the other end of the Green Line. The clock is ticking on Lewis, too, with Gray threatening to take his job even before the prospects about whom he's so worried are ready to come to the big leagues. The 2025 trade deadline amounted to a reckoning for the previous year's worth of failures—for the collapse that led the 2024 Twins to miss the playoffs and for an offseason in which they were hamstrung by the Pohlads' attempts to sell the team, preventing them from sufficiently addressing the causes of that collapse. As roster overhauls go, though, it was actually relatively small, and when a Derek Falvey-led front office once again plodded most of the way through the winter without proactively moving on from any of the players who'd dragged them down over the previous year-plus, they began this season in something eerily similar to the same place they were in before that so-called fire sale. Falvey's conservative approach and belief in the core he'd assembled led the team to hold onto Wallner, Lewis, Larnach and Woods Richardson over the winter, when there were strong arguments for moving on from any or all four of them. In fact, those arguments were also there last July, and even the previous offseason. The team went 1-for-4 in its long-running series of gambles on those young players. Larnach might not be a long-term piece for the club, but if nothing else, he's boosted his trade value substantially this spring. The other three are now being proactively replaced by a front office that still bears Falvey's fingerprints but has departed from his plans in some key aspects, and at the behest of a manager who isn't inclined to be especially patient with players at this phase of their careers. Shelton lost half a decade of his life in Pittsburgh, making no progress toward winning because he was handed a parade of players on whom the organization was placing doomed bets a year after they should have stopped. He's been quick to try new things and shake up the way he deploys his roster, and slow to trust anyone. He and Jeremy Zoll are reshaping the big-league roster relatively early in the season, both because the utter ineptitude of the AL Central has allowed them to hold onto a dream of competing this year and because they agree that it's no longer reasonable to keep expecting Lewis, Wallner and Woods Richardson to turn things around. Thursday marks the dawn of an interesting interstitial period. Martin, 27, will continue to get regular playing time, something he just achieved for the first time after last year's deadline. He's batting an extraordinary .327/.448/.416 in 125 plate appearances so far, though that's still distorted by platoon effects. Martin has faced left-handed pitchers in 49% of his plate appearances, almost twice as much as a full-time right-handed batter can expect to see them over a full season. As his role expands, he'll be tested, and could be exposed. Gray has been less impressive at the plate since his hot start, and looks like an inconsistent, Kody Clemens-style offensive contributor. However, he plays plus defense at third base, separating him from Lewis. Both players will get a real chance to earn an even longer look, but each is also holding down a spot that could soon pass into the hands of one of the team's top prospects. Kaelen Culpepper needs a bit more time at St. Paul, but were Emmanuel Rodríguez healthy, he would already be in the majors, according to one team source. Culpepper's arrival could move Brooks Lee off shortstop and over to the hot corner. This shakeup could also result in Lee moving to second, if Gray shows enough to merit sustained playing time, with Luke Keaschall sliding to the outfield to soak up some of the playing time vacated by Wallner's demotion. For now, Lewis remains on the big-league roster, so he'll play third base at least as often as Gray. The timeline of the Wallner phaseout is a reminder, though, that time is short. The Twins' new chairman, Tom Pohlad, expects the team to win and is evaluating the front office and manager on that criterion. Neither Zoll nor Shelton is as invested in Wallner, Lewis, Woods Richardson or several other players on this roster as Falvey was, even if Zoll has been around for several years and was part of bringing in and developing much of the team. Change is afoot, and while the only unequivocal handoff of playing time marked by Thursday's moves is from Wallner to Martin, the writing is on the wall for several pieces of a core that was once the team's future—but is now being tossed onto the junkheap of the past. View full article

Image courtesy of © Jesse Johnson-Imagn Images The Twins hosted Bark at the Park Night on Tuesday against the Marlins. It's a love-it-or-hate-it kind of event, and generally, I hate it. Dogs are wonderful creatures, of course, but the ballpark isn't a space built for them, and when things are good, the ballpark should be so full as to make the inclusion of dogs an unwelcome inconvenience. Often, that's exactly how it feels. Lately, of course, the Twins haven't had that problem. In fact, as it turned out, Bark at the Park was perfectly timed this spring. A crowd of just 13,471 (I don't care enough to check whether they do, but you have to actually buy a ticket for your dog now, so they should count, too) filed into Target Field, but by the end of the game, they were in full voice, sounding (for the first time since last July, and only a few times, even then) like more than their actual number and like a crowd with a real connection to its team. It was a great night for baseball, with a game-time temperature nearing 70°, with a stiff breeze to remind your it's still only mid-May in Minnesota. It was not a great night to be a hitter, however, especially in the early going. "The shadows are tough—tough on everyone, early," Twins catcher Ryan Jeffers acknowledged after the game. "I think both sides put some ugly swings on the ball the first few innings." Visiting players, especially, have long grumbled about the shadows for summertime 6:40 PM starts, when the sun is behind home plate and shines brightly off the batter's eye and the limestone above it. The shadow of the seating bowl and its roof stretches across the field slowly at first, leaving the plate in shadow right away but the mound in partial sunlight. This was the Twins' first home game in nine days and their first night game at home since May 1; it marked the first time this shadow effect played out at the venue this season. Both Eury Pérez and Bailey Ober took full advantage, though, in ways that go beyond simply profiting from hitters being distracted or scintillated. Pérez has some of the best raw stuff in the big leagues. "We have to stay on his fastball," manager Derek Shelton said of the team's plan against Pérez, before the game. "Because as hard as he throws, if you come off the fastball and you're looking for something else, you're not going to have a chance." Early on, whatever they were trying to do, that was exactly how it felt—like the team had no chance. Pérez carved through the top of the Twins lineup in the first inning, highlighted by a three-pitch dissection of Jeffers: Jeffers froze and watched Pérez's sweeper for strike one, then fouled off a sinker well up and in for strike two, almost in self-defense. After that, when Pérez dotted the outside corner with a four-seamer at 99.5 miles per hour, the at-bat was over before the ball hit catcher Joe Mack's mitt. Ober, of course, is the league's softest-tossing starting pitcher, which made for a sharp contrast with Pérez. Fairly quickly, though, it became clear that he wouldn't be easily outdueled. The young Marlins lineup has shown its upside this season, but they haven't seen a pitcher quite as in control as Ober was Tuesday night. Quickly, they got taken out of their game plan, and then they got taken out, period. After the game, Ober would talk a lot about being able to "get [his] hand in the right position" to throw all his pitches. This is a frequent refrain for Ober, whose huge frame and great extension make it both highly valuable and (at times) very difficult to manipulate the ball the way he needs to. He's at his best when he feels he can adjust his hand position at release without affecting the rest of his delivery, and often, that comes when the rest of his body is healthy and working correctly in sequence. It's remarkable, because it's something fans can't see with the naked eye, and that even turns to useless blur on replays, but when Ober can turn his wrist deftly in each direction and feel the ball coming off his fingers in just the right way, he knows that he has control of the action. In a world making fun of his lack of speed, he's assessing himself based on small adjustments being made at a speed faster than a TV camera's frame rate. All of that was happening Tuesday, and Ober talked about having good feel for all of his pitches—but the truth is that he barely needed three of them. Barely 20% of the pitches Ober threw Tuesday night were breaking balls. He has three flavors of breaker—slider, sweeper, curveball—and he utilized all three, but none were especially important. He got two outs on them almost by accident, with overeager 0-0 swings by Marlins batters when all Ober was really trying to do was steal a strike to start the at-bat. He also didn't throw his sinker at all. No, Ober cut through the Marlins with a simple mix: fastball high, changeup down. He left a few changeups up, but they missed the zone to his arm side, where they couldn't get him hurt. He brought a few fastballs down, but the hitters were sitting on the changeup in that area and couldn't punish those, either. Though Ober's fastball only sits at 88-89 MPH (he touched 90.6 Tuesday) and his changeup comes in at around 83, he can disrupt hitters' timing with the best of them, thanks to the exceptional shape on his four-seamer. Its vertical movement is extreme, considering how low his arm slot is. That's why models like Baseball Prospectus's StuffPro label it as an above-average pitch, despite his extreme dearth of velocity. When he can locate that fastball high and that changeup low, all the way across the plate, he becomes very tough to hit, because the shapes of the two pitches are so much more different than is typical of two offerings at relatively similar speeds. That's what was happening Tuesday night, which allowed Ober to sail through the first five innings with lots of weak, early contact. It was a scoreless tie at the game's halfway point. Ober was pitching masterfully, but Pérez was the one truly dominating. The Twins had cobbled together something almost like a rally twice in the early innings, thanks to walks by Pérez, a Luke Keaschall hit-by-pitch, a strikeout wild pitch, and a throwing error, but they didn't have a hit their first two times through the lineup. Pérez had two quick outs in the fifth, in fact, when Byron Buxton drew a walk to start the third turn for Twins batters. That turned out to be the pivot point of the game. Trevor Larnach hit a soft liner toward shortstop. In another world, it could have been an inning-ending groundout. In fact, under baseball's pre-2023 rules, it almost certainly would have been one. With Larnach ahead in the count 1-0, Buxton took off for second base with the pitch. Miami shortstop Otto Lopez broke to cover the bag, and Larnach's one-hopper floated through a vacant infield toward left fielder Heriberto Hernandez. If the Marlins had still been allowed to load the right side of their infield with three defenders, Lopez probably would have been coming to cover second from the other side, and third baseman Connor Norby would have been in position to field the ball. ek13MDlfWGw0TUFRPT1fVTFSVVVWRU5BRlFBQ0ZzRVZnQUhBZ01IQUZrRFdnVUFWMTFSVTFKVEFBTmNDUXRX.mp4 Because he wasn't, though, and because the ball was hit slowly with the play right in front of him, Buxton was able to hare around to third base. He and third-base coach Ramon Borrego even pondered trying to score. Hernandez fielded the ball and released it quickly, but his throw was an underhand wing to Lopez, near second. The Twins have scored more than once when an opponent underestimated their aggressiveness and threw too casually to the middle of the diamond, and they had it in mind to do it again. It would have been a dangerous play. However, in the context of the game, it would have been justifiable. With two outs in the inning and runs at such a premium, the opportunity to score one only needed to come with about a 25% expected success rate to be worth the attempt. Ultimately, Borrego and Buxton made the snap decision not to risk it, and they were probably right to eschew the try. Even with Buxton running, the ball being on the infield that early should have given the Marlins a four-in-five shot to nab him. Instead, things fell to Ryan Jeffers—but, on another 1-0 pitch, the Twins made things happen, instead of waiting for them to happen. Larnach and Buxton executed a double-steal, wherein Larnach's job was to draw a throw to second base and get in a rundown, allowing Buxton to score. That the Marlins threw through here speaks to the way the game was already tilting, and changing. The shadows had given way to the neutral golden shimmer that prevails when the sun is too low to cast shadows on the field but still bright enough to bounce its light off the mirror-windowed high-rise beyond left field, and off the white sign in center field. Buxton's speed had created a hit for Larnach and applied pressure to the Marlins, and the lineup was getting its third look at Pérez. Under that pressure, the rookie Mack made the wrong play, though he made it the right way. With Buxton as the lead runner, the visitors should have allowed Larnach to take second uncontested. Failing that, though, Mack's throw—immediate, without hesitation and right on the bag—was perfect. Xavier Edwards made the real error. He caught the ball and checked on Buxton, but when Buxton hesitated just long enough to fool him, Edwards turned to try to run down Larnach. That's when Buxton broke for home, just barely beating the throw. Had Edwards simply held the ball and forced Larnach back to first base, a lot of things might have been different. To Larnach's credit, he, too, set the trap well. He waited just far enough to avoid being tagged out easily, but close enough to demand that Edwards make a play on him. Had he retreated faster, Buxton probably would have had to hold. Had he been a half-step closer to Edwards, he might have been out before Buxton could score, one way or another. Larnach has messed up this very balance in the past, but he got it right this time. Buxton's speed had broken the game open, with a double-assist from the lefty slugger. Because the play at the plate was so close, Jeffers and Pérez had to wait out a replay review before the 2-0 offering could be thrown, with a runner now on second base. In those moments, the battle isn't between pitcher and batter, but between each player and themselves. Pérez lost his mental battle during the unwelcome downtime, lamenting the way a run had formed from almost nothing over the previous 10 pitches. Jeffers won his, and when Pérez made a mistake with a breaking ball on the first pitch after the interruption, Jeffers used it to triple the Twins' margin. The game was effectively over, right then. On Tuesday night, the Marlins weren't scoring three runs against Ober. For one thing, he had that fastball-changeup pairing going. For another, Marlins batters were anxious and unable to defend themselves. Miami challenges more aggressively with their catchers than any other team in baseball. As a counterbalance (and as a means of facilitating that strategy), though, they challenge less than all but one other team (the Red Sox) at the plate. Ober, who has now faced all three of the teams who most notably eschew hitter challenges (the Red Sox, the Reds and the Marlins), has a 29.6% strikeout rate in those three outings and an 11.7% mark in his other six games. He stole strikes at the edges of the zone four times, including one for a called third strike; no Marlins batter tapped his head. No matter. Ober's stuff was good enough to win even if those few calls had broken the other way. He was on his game, and despite the denigratiions of velocity lovers everywhere, Ober is still an above-average pitcher when he's on. His command and the contrasts in shape between the fastball and the changeup, with his great deception factored in, far outweigh his lack of power. He cruised so seamlessly through the sixth, seventh and eighth that there was little doubt he would start the ninth. He had only thrown 81 pitches to that point. However, when the towering righty climbed the dugout steps to head for the hill after the end of the eighth, a funny thing happened: the crowd erupted. Again, it was a small crowd. They didn't make an earsplitting roar; they weren't capable of that. But the volume and the passion of the pop that came from merely seeing Ober go out to finish what he'd begun was the perfect capstone to a great night of baseball. The outs Ober actually recorded to put the game away felt academic. They came easily. For one night, with the flair and cleverness of Buxton's speed, the thunder of Jeffers's bat, and Ober pitching an old-school masterpiece, the Twins' relationship with their fan base was repaired. No one left the park thinking the team's many ills were resolved, and no one is deluded about the heavy work still ahead as team and community try to weave themselves back together, but the fans were present and engaged on Tuesday night. The team rewarded them with beautiful baseball, and the fans gave that gift right back to Ober when his cleats hit the top step of the dugout. It might be only the brightest moment in another dark season, or the last flicker of what this team was a few years ago and arguably still should be. But it also might turn out to be a turning point. Ober, Buxton and Jeffers aren't the future of the Twins. Most of that future is currently at Triple-A St. Paul. They made the present bright and worthy of celebration, though, and they'll be the leaders to whom the next wave of talent looks when they arrive in Minneapolis this summer. If nothing else, Tuesday was a demonstration of how good the team's veterans can be for the players coming up behind them—and of how badly the fans still want to be there when it all happens. View full article

This is a great rhetorical question, Vanimal, and if you'll pardon a self-serving answer: Right here! Start here! We have an unusually good infrastructure here, to offer editorial support, compensation and visibility at the same time. Now, of course, TD is also the tip of a spear that includes 10 sites and lets people stretch their legs and their writing muscles throughout the league. Anyone in the community, if you know someone you'd like to hear more from about baseball and/or who you think has a future doing this kind of thing, tell them to reach out to us. We're always looking to help get people started.

Image courtesy of © Jesse Johnson-Imagn Images Derek Shelton knows what he has, and how badly it's needed. Ramon Borrego is very much a valued part of the new skipper's staff. "He's been terrific for us," Shelton said during a pregame media availability early in the team's last homestand. "I think he's had four or five elite sends, already." Because the Twins offense is neither especially deep nor especially powerful, Shelton has been adamant from Day One that the team needs to be aggressive on the bases. They're not loaded with exceptionally fast runners, but they want to push the envelope whenever possible—to create runs on hits and long outs, without waiting for another positive event. Shelton has called multiple runs the team has tallied "elite sends" by Borrego. That's a strange notion, in a way. After all, players have to actually create the runs, with a blend of sheer speed, anticipation, fundamental play and physical creativity on close plays. There's no question that the third-base coach plays an important role, but the replacement level for the job is pretty high, right? And most stop/go decisions are pretty easy, right? I watched 75 plays on which the Twins scored to see just how often Borrego really influenced the play, and to what extent. It's time we get a firm handle on what an elite send is. To begin with, I culled the initial plays I reviewed (including a few non-scoring plays, it was over 80) down to 18 that we'll call 55-grade sends or better. As a refresher, the scouting scale that is one of baseball's essential shorthands runs from 20 to 80, with 50 denoting average. In theory, the scale is meant to track with a normal distribution of skills, so a player whose ability is one standard deviation above the average would get a 60 grade. A player with a skill a full standard deviation below average would be a 40. That part is simple enough. Slightly less intuitive or familiar, perhaps, is the mathematical implication of those numbers in terms of frequency. In a normal distribution, about 68% of the population should fall within one standard deviation of the average. About 95% should fall within two standard deviations. Therefore, only about 17% of a given sample should be better than a 60 on the scouting scale. Let's call it 20%, since the nature of that scale is to cluster people into grade buckets but the nature of a curve is continuous. I picked out just 18 sends that are even above-average, and of those, I graded seven as 55s. In other words, only about 15% of the plays I studied reached a 60 grade. Already, that's some evidence that a third-base coach might not have the same capacity to impact a play as players do (again: duh). However, I did give Borrego a 70 on five different plays—and one 80. Let's study those plays, to discuss what makes them elite and how it's possible that Borrego has had such a big impact already. April 2: Twins at Royals - Josh Bell Scores on Sacrifice Fly R0JyM2pfVjBZQUhRPT1fQmdZQ1VGd0NVUVlBV3dOUlh3QUhWQU5UQUZoVFVnSUFCRkJUQndRTlZGWUJCd0ZW.mp4 One thing should be clear to even a casual fan entering this discussion: It's hard for a third-base coach to have a major impact on a sacrifice fly. They get to advise the runner on whether to go or not, but there's usually a good bit of time to make that choice. The runner starts from a stationary position and can watch the ball and the defender while they wait to break, just as the coach can. I'm the first person I know of who has set themselves the task of grading third-base coach sends like this, but I would venture to guess that there's never been an 80-grade send on a sacrifice fly. Your job just isn't all that important on such a play. Here, however, Borrego does coach Josh Bell very well. Before the play, he probably reminded Bell of the situation: With one out in the inning already, the default aggressiveness on a sacrifice fly should have been set pretty high. As the ball sailed toward Royals center fielder Kyle Isbel, however, Borrego had to weigh a few factors that pushed against one another. The situation says send a runner if you're unsure, but Bell is extremely slow. Isbel has a strong arm, and had time to get behind the ball and catch it with a bit of momentum toward the plate. Borrego needed to use one of the third-base coach's key tools: a keen acuity for the depth of the ball. This one ended up almost 290 feet from home plate, and with Isbel throwing it in from dead center, there was a risk of hitting the mound and creating a bad bounce if he tried to throw a low, hard, one-hop strike. You can see Borrego signal to Bell to go, immediately, but he also runs with him for a few steps, reading Isbel's throw. If it had been especially good, Borrego had a split-second to recall Bell to his base. Instead, he correctly sees that the throw won't get even his slow-footed charge, and lets him go. It's a great play on a tricky one to call. GRADE: 65/70 April 3: Rays at Twins - James Outman Scores from Second Base on Single MDRYbDNfWGw0TUFRPT1fQUZSV1ZsWldCMU1BRGdkUUF3QUhBMU5XQUZrQkFGQUFDd01DVXdvQkJBcFNBQVJm.mp4 This is the kind of play on which a coach can more often have a visible and significant effect. With only one out, James Outman has to freeze for a moment on a ball in the air, and in this instance, he doesn't get a great start once he starts heading for third base. The ball is hit very hard, which means it gets to the defender quickly. On such plays, the third-base coach is the runner's eyes, and he has to read the defender for the runner. In this case, Cedric Mullins had to range slightly to his left, and with the ball hit so hard, that forced him to wait for it to come to him. Charging hard to pick the ball on a short hop would have required too tough an angle to risk. That was exacerbated by the way the ball slices slightly back toward dead center, so Mullins has to change direction a bit to get behind the ball as it arrives. He receives it before Outman reaches third base, but fairly flat-footed and fairly deep. That gives Borrego the leeway to send the speedy Outman. This was an important run, and with just one out, Borrego could plausibly have taken a more conservative tack. With two trailing runners, though, there would have been a force on the runner if he'd stayed at third, so getting him home there—avoiding the risk of an inning-ending double play or a fielder's choice that retired him at the plate from the next batter—was important. Borrego gave Outman the 'go' order right away, and it paid off. GRADE: 70 April 7: Tigers at Twins - Luke Keaschall Scores from First Base on Double eHl3T0RfWGw0TUFRPT1fVUFsV1hGWUVWQWNBV3dSWFVnQUhDQUZRQUZrTVUxWUFWd1pRQVZWUlVGVUFCQVFI (1).mp4 Now we're really going to have some fun. For a third-base coach, this is as big a play as the day-to-day grind of the season offers. Yet, almost half of it is a brainless endeavor, really. Ryan Jeffers shoots the ball into right field, and right away, Borrego knows he needs to wind up the windmill for one runner. But there are two runners in his care on this one, and the trailing runner will be the one where something of note actually happens. He has to make sure his lead runner is headed home without incident, but more importantly, he has to start working out all the relevant components of the play—picking up key details in the right sequences, while seeing the big picture the whole time. Luke Keaschall was on first base, trailing Austin Martin. He had a good secondary lead, and because the ball is hit behind him in a place far from any defender, he immediately knows it will get down and that he can take at least third base. Borrego's attention has to be on Martin for just a moment, but he can spare that, because the ball is clearly heading for the corner. Whether Keaschall will be able to score, though, depends in some measure on how things go in that corner, so that's where Borrego's eyes need to be. He can check the progress of his runner as Zach McKinstry chops down his stride while drawing near the wall, but he has to see how cleanly McKinstry fields the ball and whether he battles the sidewall at all. That will determine how quickly he gets off a throw, and how strong it is, which will determine whether or not there's a play at the plate. It's time to break out a toy that has lots of fun potential future applications for enjoying and understanding the game, but relatively few salient ones right now: Gameday 3D. On the MLB.com Gameday page for any given game, you can click on a play and choose to experience it in a 3D animation. Again, this doesn't often add much, in a world where we have access to multiple video feeds of every play and a remarkable number of numbers telling us what happened, but it can occasionally help us see parts of the field that aren't picked up by the broadcasts. It can also give us an interesting perspective on the game—like that of a third-base coach watching a tricky play developing. Here's the moment when McKinstry first reaches that ball. We can see Borrego waving Martin home, but look how far off Keaschall is. He's only halfway between second and third. Though McKinstry began the play pretty far from the line, he's covered the ground quickly, and it's not a very deep corner. Sending Keaschall here would be tough, if McKinstry were in position to make a strong throw the instant he got there. Borrego knows something this still frame can't convey, though: McKinstry is going to need an extra second to get rid of the ball. As you might be able to see (it's a jumble out there), the animation ends up placing three of McKinstry in that corner, because he has to move in ways the tracking technology doesn't deal with well, vis-a-vis the sidewall. He doesn't slam into it or anything, and he doesn't bobble the pickup. But he has to brace himself, and then he has to turn around to make a good throw. A left-handed right fielder would have had an advantage here that was denied to McKinstry, but Borrego doesn't have to think in hypotheticals. He knows that extra half-second will be needed. While watching and processing this, of course, he's waving his young runner on. Being a third-base coach, like hitting, requires a "Yes, yes, NO" mentality. You have to think you're sending the runner until you see something that stops you, and your runner has to think the same way. Borrego's real decision point, on this particular play, comes here: This is the moment McKinstry actually releases his throw down the line. Closer to us, you can see Gleyber Torres streaking over to take the relay position. Until now, Borrego has the chance to throw up a late stop sign. Because he knows Keaschall is a fast and aggressive runner coming in with that score-if-you-can mentality, though, he keeps waving him on. The Tigers' relay is virtually perfect. McKinstry has a strong arm; so does Torres. Both throws are very accurate. There's even an extra, tiny thing working against the Twins: Keaschall got his feet wrong going into third base and had to slow down slightly as he rounded it. But it doesn't quite matter. Keaschall is safe, and Borrego was right to bring him around, despite the defense's good execution. GRADE: 65/70 April 14: Red Sox at Twins - Byron Buxton Scores from First Base on Single Uk85OGFfWGw0TUFRPT1fVWxOVUFGQlNVUVFBWFZRTEF3QUhWUVJmQUFNSFd3Y0FVQVJYQkZBR1Z3ZGNWVkJl.mp4 Earlier in this same game, as you might remember, Byron Buxton scored on a single to center by Keaschall. That one was initially ruled an out and looks even more daring in the scorebook than this does, but if you break it down, you have to deduct points from Borrego for overaggressiveness. It was a line drive to center, played perfectly by Jarren Duran, and had Willson Contreras not leapt to ill-advisedly cut off the throw, Buxton really would have been dead meat at the plate. We're evaluating Borrego's process here, not just the results, so that play doesn't count as an elite send. This one, perhaps counterintuitively, does. There were no outs in the inning, and the Twins already led by four. They could afford to be a bit more conservative than they had been earlier in the game. Buxton was the trail runner when Trevor Larnach laced a ball into the corner, and though it was a full count, neither Buxton nor Tristan Gray had been attempting a steal on the play. On most balls that are barely doubles, even a fast runner won't score from first base, especially with another runner in front of them. But Borrego knew a few things. Firstly, he knew Gray would score easily, so he waved him by quickly and turned his attention to Buxton, and to right fielder Wilyer Abreu. He knew Abreu has a strong arm, but he also knew it was Buxton running, so again, he kept the wave up while he gathered data on the unfolding play. Larnach, no matter what the Twins' team-owned media sometimes says, is slow, and as Abreu raced into the corner, Borrego could see that there would be a very makeable play on Larnach if Abreu chose it. Abreu, like McKinstry, was quick to the ball, but unlike McKinstry, he does throw left-handed and would be able to get off a throw quite quickly. His second baseman was out in the same position Gleyber Torres had occupied, and was calling for the throw. Here's the moment at which Abreu committed himself to throw to second, instead of toward home. You can do the math several different ways, but that was probably the right choice for Abreu—made for the wrong reasons. He correctly diagnosed that he had a much better chance to get an out at second than at home, but that's because he was seeing and thinking about Gray. The lead runner still wasn't home, so as Abreu released a strong throw to the infield, he wasn't considering whether the trail runner would come, too. He wanted the out, and took for granted that Buxton would stop at third. If Borrego or Buxton had taken anything for granted at any point in the play, that would have been true. Look where Buxton is when Abreu pulls back his arm for the throw. As good as Abreu's arm is, if the throw were coming toward the plate, Borrego would have had to throw up the stop sign. In fact, if he'd even misread the play slightly and thought Abreu would come home, he might have thrown up a premature stop, and had he done that, Buxton wouldn't have been able to get going again and come home even after the throw went to the keystone. Buxton is always running flat-out and with home plate in his sights, though, and Borrego read the play right. He knew almost before Abreu did that the throw would come to second, and once it did, Buxton was in the clear. This was a case of feeling the rhythm of the play, knowing the spatial variables and the numbers, but also of guessing what the opponent would do in a stressful situation and seizing on an advantage. It's an instance of combined brilliance by Buxton and Borrego. GRADE: 70 April 21: Twins at Mets - Kody Clemens Scores from Second Base on Single bGJ3a0JfVjBZQUhRPT1fQmdWWlVRRURCUW9BVzFCV0J3QUhDVkpXQUFNQ1dsa0FCVlVHVkFWVFVBRURDVllG.mp4 One difference between being a player and being a coach on the field is that, while a player can benefit from good preparation, a coach can sometimes make a play entirely based on that preparation, with almost nothing else coming into play. This is one such instance, or close to it. Luke Keaschall hits the ball well, right over the head of Kody Clemens at second base. That's always nice, as a runner. Clemens knew this ball was going to get down right away, based on his pre-pitch check of where the outfielders were playing and on the trajectory of Keaschall's liner. Thus, even with one out, Clemens gets the kind of jump runners often get with two down. Borrego knew where the outfielders were before the play, too. Luis Robert Jr. had shaded Keaschall fairly strongly toward right-center, which meant this ball was going to force him to come in and over quite a bit. Borrego's angle on the play was far from ideal, because the slice we can see from the camera position high and behind home is tougher to notice from the side. That's what made this play a challenging one for Borrego. He had to read Robert's body and see the way he changed his initial route toward the ball; he had to know that that meant a little extra time getting under control and getting rid of the ball. It got to Robert more quickly because of its slice, but Borrego correctly perceived that it forced the outfielder into a slightly uncomfortable position. The rest of the play was just balancing situation with scouting report. Yes, with just one out, there would still be a chance to score Clemens from third without a hit, but the bottom of the batting order was due next. The best chance to score was to get Clemens home then and there. Clemens is good at getting around third base cleanly and taking a direct route to the plate without losing steam. Robert has average-plus arm strength, but it was pretty clear that he wasn't playing at full strength. The Twins probably had that in their advance report for the series, but either way, Borrego acted on what he saw. A good throw would have had a good chance to get Clemens, but a good throw would have been difficult for most center fielders on that play, and it proved impossible for Robert. This is what it looks like when a third-base coach smells blood and goes for the kill. GRADE: 80 April 27: Mariners at Twins - Josh Bell Scores from First Base on Double MnI0cWRfWGw0TUFRPT1fQVZVRVVWRlZYd0FBWGxwVFh3QUhWd01DQUFCUlVsUUFVUUVFQmdVTlYxZFZWbEZm.mp4 Once more, we return to the theme: you have to be "Yes, Yes, No" as a third-base coach. When Keaschall hit a ball down the line, Borrego's job is to see the ways he can get Josh Bell home. In the back of his mind, he has to know that the default decision will be to hold him, because it's Josh Bell, but if the window is open to score him, that has to happen. With two outs, it's especially crucial. With any ball down the line—and this is the third one we've seen—the first thing the third-base coach has to figure out is how close to the sidewall the ball will get and stay. With the play on which Keaschall scored against the Tigers, it was the way Zach McKinstry had to adjust to get a throw off that allowed Borrego to send his man. If the ball kicks off the wall and out into the playing field, instead of going to the corner, that often makes it easier for the defenses and forces a stop sign—but not always. In this case, that's very much the pivotal movement. because the ball pulls one of its most treacherous tricks on Rob Refsnyder. Keaschall didn't exactly blister it, and it's already rolling by the time it finds the sidewall, but because there's a small space between the ground and the padding along that wall, when the ball does get to the wall, it hits concrete. It's still moving faster than a fielder is thinking, given that the bounce has died, and it's still spinning in a slightly funky way. It hits the wall (and the rougher dirt under that padding), and it skips slightly. It barely comes off the ground at all, but that's enough to mess up Refsnyder, whose focus had been on getting parallel to the wall for what he thought would be an uncomplicated scoop. He doesn't get low enough—it's been over half a decade since he appeared as an infielder; this ball would be better for a player who still has that instinct to get down to the ball's level—and his barehand stab pushes the ball slightly behind him. That's Borrego's opening. He had set up and begun giving Bell the wave early. When Refsnyder misplayed the ball, the "no" after the "yes, yes" was flung away. Borrego knew the situation and saw the play develop in time to ensure that his runner never slowed down. It took a review to get it right, but the Twins got their run. GRADE: 70 I'll renew what I said before breaking down each play individually: Third-base coaches affect fewer plays in major ways than is implied by using the 20-80 scale. The decisions one coach would make aren't different enough from those of another coach to merit using that wide a scale. Maybe 30-70 makes more sense for them. However, going through these this way is still instructive. A third-base coach has to be thinking along with both their own team and the opponent, including riding the emotional wave of a play. Borrego stole another run in Toronto, for instance, when he correctly guessed that a bloop single followed by a high bounce fielded with his back to home plate would leave Daulton Varsho too flustered to throw to the right base. Varsho threw to second, and an extremely aggressive send paid off for the Twins. The coach has to be in the moment that way. They also have to have their spatial calculation machines turned on at all times. This is where being a baseball lifer is hugely valuable, and it's why you'll probably never see this particular job done by someone who hasn't played the game at a high level. Reading the ball off the bat, checking and remembering defensive positioning, and the simple pattern recognition that lets one estimate distances and read a runner's stride when they're still six steps away from third base all come from having spent a long time immersed in the game and its clock. Layered over all of that, though, the coach also has to be an analytics maven. They have to think about who's running, which defenders are involved in the developing play, and the score, inning, and base-out state. They have to have carefully calibrated, deeply internalized risk management systems on which they can dial aggressiveness up or down based on all those variables that get discussed as cold theories in pregame meetings and show up on reports. But all of those things are just filters. The coach still has to see the play clearly and make their send/hold decision based on how the actual play before them looks and feels. The Twins ran into two bad outs between third base and home plate on Thursday in Washington. Neither was Borrego's fault, exactly, but his aggressive approach does seem to have started creating situations wherein runners are in peril. By Shelton's reckoning, that's ok. The Twins are getting more value from those elite sends than they're losing when one goes wrong. They intend to keep testing defenses, because they probably can't score enough runs to win games consistently without doing so. Borrego will be little celebrated for his role in that, and much maligned when things go wrong—but he's an important part of the team's offense, and he's been a positive influence so far. View full article

Joe Ryan's MRI Sunday came back clean, a Twins source confirmed to Twins Daily Tuesday. As first reported by Dan Hayes of The Athletic, Ryan played catch Tuesday and will throw a bullpen session Wednesday, after which the team will evaluate when he might make his next start. Ryan left his last start Sunday after just two batters faced, with what the team called "elbow soreness". His scan revealed no damage to his UCL, but until he gets back onto a mound and pitches pain-free, the next steps in getting him back into the starting rotation will not become clear. Wednesday is the last day on which the team can make an injured list stint retroactive to Sunday, so the bullpen session will be important. If it goes well (and Ryan recovers from it well), the team might choose to skate by without placing him on the injured list. If, however, there's any lingering discomfort, a stint on the IL is likely. View full rumor

Image courtesy of © Jesse Johnson-Imagn Images To be fair to Matt Wallner, the Twins have seen a crazy number of left-handed pitchers so far this year. Of the 109 plate appearances Wallner has accumulated over the team's first 31 games, a whopping 40 have come against southpaws. In 2024 (admittedly, an injury-disrupted year), Wallner only had 40 confrontations with fellow lefties all season. There's no question that being the lefty batter tasked with absorbing more of those left-on-left matchups than other Twins batters has contributed to Wallner's slow start. He also got hit in the ribcage with a mid-90s fastball two weeks ago, and can be seen most days since in the clubhouse with a huge wrap around his torso, suggesting there's considerable residual soreness there. All of that matters. It's not a set of excuses; it's a set of legitimate explanations for some of what's happening. The problem, of course, is that what's happening is untenable, no matter what's causing it. It's also getting hard to convince yourself that it will ever change. Wallner will turn 29 years old this winter. Though they haven't come without major interruptions, he has over 1,000 plate appearances in the majors. Right now, he doesn't look like a big league-caliber player—in either half of any given inning. Wallner is batting .168/.275/.284 this season, and striking out 38% of the time. He's lost speed this year and was never good at getting going, anyway, so he's become the worst defensive outfielder in the big leagues, with no serious rival. Last year, I wrote about Wallner's bat path flattening out, and the negative effects thereof. This season, it's flattened out even more. He's also lost some bat speed, though surely, part of that is due to both seeing more lefties (harder to swing with full conviction when you pick the ball up later) and the lingering issues from that plunking. He's just not a functional hitter right now, either. Defenders of Wallner are fond of observing that hitters with high strikeout rates can look disproportionately bad during cold spells, and that he's gotten equally hot at times in the past. That's true, to some extent, but it's not as helpful if you try to apply it broadly to all strikeout-prone hitters as if you analyze each player as an individual. Nor does it remain equally true over time. Wallner's swing is losing its ability to generate consistently lethal contact, even when he gets on time. His approach and pitch recognition have never been all that good, which has been proved for all to see since the advent of the ABS system. And again, he's almost 29. Players age faster than ever in the modern game, and Wallner is already moving out of his prime, physically. It's probably true that, given another 100 plate appearances, he would get on a streak and deliver enough power to invite the team to invest another 200 plate appearances in him. Now that the defense has gone terribly sour (and having seen that there's always another low valley after the next peak), though, that feels more like a threat than a promise: more wasted time, rather than a long-awaited breakthrough. As tantalizing as a homegrown, local product with light-tower power is, the allure is fading, for everyone involved. Even Derek Shelton, who tried to show abundant faith in Wallner by making him an everyday player to begin the season, is moving away from that plan now. Emmanuel Rodriguez is showing the same elite power potential Wallner once had, with Triple-A St. Paul. He's more disciplined than Wallner, and much, much more athletic. The Twins need better defense in the outfield, and they need a lefty slugger with more upside than Wallner offers at this point in his career. Rodriguez offers it. It's going to be awkward. It's going to be sad. Wallner has a minor-league option remaining, but once you admit that he can't hit in the big leagues after this long at that level and that you can no longer justify playing him, it's tough to think of any demotion as temporary or edifying. It's getting clearer all the time that Wallner (rather than Trevor Larnach or Austin Martin) will be the first player replaced by a top prospect arriving at Target Field, and the time for that replacement is extremely close. In all likelihood, we're seeing the final days of Matt Wallner's Twins career. That's exciting, because he'll give way to a player with every chance to be better than him right away and much more long-term upside. It's also an uneasy situation, though, and a sad ending for a player who was a key cog on one of the teams Twins fans will remember fondly: the 2023 streak-busters. He was great for that team. He's just not helping this one anymore. View full article