Matthew Trueblood

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.

If Infantino would get off his ass and back to work creating a FIFA Post Prize, this one should win that.

Image courtesy of Bruce Kluckhohn-Imagn Images The song that gave rock-and-roll's flagship publication its name and turned Bob Dylan into a whole new caliber of superstar was not, at first, part of a grand plan. Dylan was a popular musician just back from a tour in England, but he was tired and cranky. He started putting down lyrics as a means of processing those feelings—and then a funny thing happened. "Last spring, I guess I was going to quit singing. I was very drained, and the way things were going, it was a very draggy situation," Dylan told Playboy in 1966. "But 'Like a Rolling Stone' changed it all. I mean it was something that I myself could dig. It's very tiring having other people tell you how much they dig you if you yourself don't dig you." Ballplayers talk about that a lot. They can sometimes seem brash, and even ridiculous, but as they point out, the great game of failure demands deep reservoirs of confidence. It's also the great game of daily grinding, and thus, it demands deep reservoirs of energy. You can only find positive energy, sometimes, by digging yourself. Before the 108th game of the 2026 Twins' season—the one that marks two-thirds of the campaign done and signals that it's time to shift out of marathon mode and into a sprint—GM Jeremy Zoll met with reporters in the work room at the back of the Target Field press box. He does this often, but he doesn't always do it like he did Tuesday. Zoll himself is never in dig-me mode, but it was time for the team to operate that way a bit. Twins media relations were more proactive about finding reporters and gathering them in that room. There was a Twins.tv camera in the room, and a portable backdrop had been set up behind Zoll. This wasn't just another chance to give injury updates and answer questions. This was an announcement. The thrust of it: Minnesota has officially returned to relevance. This week, Zoll said, the Twins are buyers at the MLB trade deadline. "If we go back to spring training, we spent a lot of time talking about [how] our goal was to play meaningful games in September," Zoll said. "We're really excited about how the team has played over this last stretch. We're really encouraged about that. In turn, we're going to use this next stretch, this next week, to do everything we can to find ways to improve the club and continue to execute on that goal and make it a reality." As has been a theme all year, this was Zoll doing the same things behind the scenes that predecessor Derek Falvey would have done, but going about the job very differently in public. Falvey compulsively clutched his cards to his vest. He never minded leaving the media a little bit in doubt about the depth of his dedication to a direction or about the specifics of anything. In fact, he felt that it was essential. Information, to Falvey, is precious. He never wanted to surrender any of it, to let any of it filter out of his office and become a resource for the agents and other teams with whom he needed to negotiate. Zoll, with the urging of Tom Pohlad, has taken the opposite tack. When in doubt, he communicates clearly about the team's plans. He did so by tamping down Byron Buxton trade rumors earlier this summer, and he did it in grand fashion Tuesday night. Pohlad and Zoll are trying to win over a fan base whose relationship to the team has grown chilly and distant over the last two years; they believe being direct and earnest is more important than staying guarded. Again, though, Falvey would have come to the same conclusion Zoll has. Although the national media has kept the Twins in the in-between space (or even persisted in treating them as sellers), it's been clear for a week that the team would be in position to buy. They entered play Tuesday just three games back in the AL Central and 1.5 games out of a Wild Card spot. More importantly, as Zoll acknowledged, the team has shown immense resiliency. When they lost four in a row in Chicago and Cleveland just after the All-Star break, there was some remote chance that the team would be forced to sell because of another July collapse. They bounced right back to win four of five, though, responding just in time for the third or fourth time this year, and Zoll and company never had to seriously entertain selling. "All along, we were optimistic we were going to be in this spot to be able to add," the GM said. "I know the playoff odds have ebbed and flowed along the way. But looking at the standings, it's felt really tight both between the Wild Card and the division this whole way. We remained confident there was going to be another bounce-back, given how resilient the group has been. This has been what we were focusing on and what our pro personnel group over the last couple of months has been focused on: the 'buy' version of things. It wasn't some situation where they were prepping [to] sell and we're switching. Now we're looking forward to [trying to] execute on that work." Without question, the league has swung open to the team, like an aged gate. When Zoll gave his mission statement to the press, the team was still one game under .500, at 53-54. They're not a great baseball team. They're unequivocally in the mix, though, because of the weakness of the AL Central and the muddle that is the Wild Card race. Given where the team stands with its fans after last year's fire sale at the deadline and a botched ownership transition, the circumstances demanded that they capitalize on this chance. That's what they'll try to do. In the game that followed, however, it looked for a while like the team would only realize some moral victories. Manager Derek Shelton is hardly ever seen in the clubhouse or his office, anymore, without a "Hunt the Good" t-shirt on, but it felt like one of those nights when that would require a skilled sportsman, indeed. Byron Buxton, who has remained hampered even since his return from the injured list last week, left the game in the fifth inning after experiencing more soreness in his right hip. When he departed, Minnesota led 1-0, but in the top of the sixth, the Royals stole one run, and the Twins gifted them another. With runners on the corners, Kansas City executed the double-steal perfectly. Lane Thomas took off for second. As soon as Ryan Jeffers threw through, lead runner Josh Rojas broke for the plate. Minnesota's defense wasn't crisp enough at either end to thwart the play. Then, with two outs, Salvador Perez hit a lofted wedge into right-center field. It was poorly struck, but when Buxton left the game, the Twins shifted Luke Keaschall from right field to center and installed Alan Roden in right. Keaschall was playing at his standard too-deep depth and had shaded Perez toward left-center, so he had no chance to reach the ball. Roden could have had a play with a good jump; he got a bad one. In a blink, a sterling showing from Taj Bradley had turned sour, and the Twins offense kept snatching frustration from the jaws of opportunity at the plate. The pivotal moment, as it would later turn out, came in the bottom of the seventh—but it paid no immediate dividends. Shelton pinch-hit Royce Lewis for Trevor Larnach in the bottom of the seventh, with a runner on second and two outs. Larnach had been due to face left-handed Royals reliever Daniel Lynch IV, but Shelton's move prompted Kansas City manager Matt Quatraro to go to right-handed reliever John Schreiber. Schreiber is a low-slot right-handed reliever; it was a tough matchup for Lewis. Shelton, however, had a plan. "I forced them to make a move; I wanted to see what would happen," the skipper said after the game. What happened immediately was that, in an excellent six-pitch at-bat, Lewis drew a walk against Schreiber, revealing one benefit of choosing that matchup over the Larnach-Lynch one. Next up was Roden, who had come into Buxton's place in the batting order and got to face a righty instead of Lynch. Alas, his sharp opposite-field liner was snared by the Royals' Isaac Collins, quelching the rally. That good plate appearance off the bench by Lewis was a positive takeaway, even as the team appeared to trend toward a loss. So was Bradley's 10-strikeout start. Roden's well-struck ball was an encouraging sign of his progress. The Twins bullpen added another moral victory, too. In successive innings, Kody Funderburk, Travis Adams and Jack Anderson held the Royals scoreless, so it was still 2-1 going into the bottom of the ninth. That's a good amount of 'good,' for those hunting it. One of the bittersweet liberties of being a contender again, though, is that you're free from moral victories. The night would have felt hollow and ominous—a good start wasted, a star reinjured, and worst, a game down in the standings—if nothing had changed, even to an optimist, and even after Zoll's proclamation of progress. We'll never have to molder in that particular feeling; it burned off in a sudden zap of heat as intense as a summer lightning strike. Victor Caratini cracked a leadoff single. Luke Keaschall was robbed by Collins on a diving play down the left-field line, but Brooks Lee worked a smart hitter's walk to put the winning run on base. After Ryan Kreidler swung ferociously but came up empty, it was Lewis again—Lewis, in a do-or-die moment, after two-plus years of being the very embodiment of the Twins' ups and downs, and after starting the game on the bench. On a 1-1 count, he got an Alex Lange cutter up and away and hit it squarely. "I've faced him before," Lewis said of Lange, afterward. "He hammered me with cutters. And so I was like, 'Yeah, I hope he throws that same pitch.'" The ball arced high and had good backspin, soaring toward the deepest part of the park: right-center field. It hit partway up the high wall and caromed right past Thomas, the visitors' center fielder. Just like that, the game was over. With two outs, Lee had been able to run without hesitation from first base, so once it got past Thomas, the Royals had no hope of stopping the winning run from scoring. As Lewis charged around second, sprinting toward and diving into third base, something interesting happened. The crowd (21,518, officially, as the community only slowly falls back in love with this team; there were fewer than that in the stands by the end, but they were straining to sound like more) roared and the players jumped and laughed and jubilated—and "Like a Rolling Stone" played over the Target Field sound system. The Twins' victory song, for years now, has been "Don't Stop Me Now," by Queen. They played it, for instance, when Lewis had his first career walkoff hit, on June 25. "Like a Rolling Stone" is not usually played at moments like that one, and if you listen to the lyrics at all, it doesn't especially fit that mood, either. It's a sneering song. It's self-righteous and self-satisfied, and although it's not quite angry, it's not happy, either. The edge Dylan found—the way he stepped, in writing and then collaborating on the recording of that tune, from folk-bound bard to symbol of rock and its unapologetic bluntness—is a sharp and jagged one. There's just enough bounce in the guitars and the Hammond organ that burble over Dylan's prose to give the sneer that upturn toward a smile at the corner, though, so the song landed just fine on the raucous celebrants of this now-.500 team. They hit a huge milestone Tuesday in their climb out of the very pit into which Dylan observes his subject plunging throughout the song. All of life is reference points. When you hear "Like a Rolling Stone" at a moment of triumph, it's all that jangling organ and none of the haunting metaphors, and when Dylan lets his voice swell into the chorus's "How does it feel?", it hits like the DJ screaming over a dubstep beat. How does this feel? Incredible! The Twins have survived. They're 38-31 in their last 69 games. The White Sox and Guardians are floundering; the team is now just 2 games behind Chicago for the AL Central lead and a half-game out of a playoff spot. In this contest, they survived grounding into five double plays and their best player leaving due to injury. They won without using any of their true high-leverage relievers. Lewis, who was in St. Paul two months ago, cast down very much like the antagonist Dylan's protagonist taunts throughout "Like a Rolling Stone," put together two excellent at-bats and got another chance to dig himself. Like Dylan, he feeds off those moments, when he can fall in love with his own brilliance. "I think my walkoff hit, personally, shows the intent to never give up," Lewis said after the game. "I mean, my story just keeps living on. It's so impressive. I'm proud of myself in that, just because—whether it's two ACL injuries, or other soft-tissue injuries, I just keep pushing and keep coming back." It's hard not to laugh at that genuine, unabashed self-regard. It can sound ridiculous, at times, and when Lewis said many similar-sounding things during the lowest of his lows, it felt like a lethal cocktail of delusion and solipsism. On a night like Tuesday, though, you can see it in a more forgiving light, as the shield that protects a player (and a team) from the grind and the failure of the season. Dylan, to be sure, has built his own legend and legacy on an unrepentant self-regard. The song that taught him to dig himself fueled him to keep going, and it played over the latest symbol of the Twins' own ability to keep going. "I think the thing about this group ... is just the resiliency," Shelton said. "They continue. They don't let that stuff affect them." Tuesday might be remembered a long time in Twins Territory, as a pivotal one in the history of the franchise. Under a new owner (albeit with an old name), the team vowed to do its best to build on the success they've had this year, and then they went out and sustained that success, in improbable fashion. On a night all about reaching out to Minnesota itself and trying to forge a new and robust connection, at their moment of unexpected triumph, they played—perhaps accidentally, or perhaps unthinkingly—a song that not only emphasizes that connection by emanating from Minnesota itself, but captures some of the feelings they and their fan base have had to survive over the past two-plus years. The notion of a rolling stone—the one that gathers no moss, as the saying from which Dylan borrowed his chorus and title goes—is that lacking a firm place to rest leaves one without the stability to foster growth. This Twins team is, in a sense, made up of those rolling stones. Buxton has moss all over him, but he's not going to be able to carry them to playoffs himself. That's been clear since he first tweaked his hip. He has a .514 OPS in July, and it's only .611 even if you go back to the midpoint of June. The team will have to depend, instead, on the likes of Josh Bell, Caratini, Kody Clemens, Bradley, and more—journeymen who have landed here but won't stay especially long. In the medium-term future, the organization will get back to relying heavily on a homegrown core, but the homegrown and long-tenured members of the current squad are mostly struggling or injured. Instead, it's Shelton—a rolling stone in his own right—leading a group that has forced the front office into this buying posture at the deadline. Neither Shelton's nor Zoll's work is by any means done; it never is. Sisyphus's rolling stone is just as good a metaphor for this team's plight as Dylan's is. For one night, though, the Twins got to the top of the hill in style, and a moment to take stock of what's already been accomplished isn't unearned or inappropriate. How does it feel? It feels like October, even though it's scorching-hot and the calendar still says July. It feels like this team of complete unknowns has a direction again—and like it's starting to reestablish its connection to its home. View full article

I know it's increasingly ubiquitous, but I will never stop pushing back at the idea that the only goal should be a championship. The Twins have a chance to win their division. They have a chance to make the playoffs. Those are objectives worth pursuing. This is not an all-or-nothing game and it costs you nothing, really, to put the best team you can together when you're in a position like this in late July. Winning more than you lose, winning your division, going to October, those are worth doing, even if your hopes of winning a Series in a given year are remote. Not to mention, this team right now is as good as the 1987 Twins were—maybe better. The format is expanded; it's harder to luck your way into a title. But no fan base should be more keenly aware that you don't have to be Great to win a championship than this one.

Image courtesy of Jeffrey Becker-Imagn Images It wasn't equivocal, and it wasn't compulsory. This April, as part of a slow-motion goodwill tour in which he's tried to rebuild the fan base's faith in (or even tolerance for) his family, Tom Pohlad piped up. He gave Dan Hayes of The Athletic a quote that left little wiggle room. That even seemed to be by design. You can't gain much goodwill by going halfway. "As we go throughout the year and more opportunities present themselves for us to put action to words, so long as we do that, I’ll be happy," Pohlad said. And later: "We owe it to our fan base as much as we owe it to [Derek Shelton], [Jeremy Zoll] and the players, to do everything we can to improve our team at that point.” We should presume he meant it, because whatever goodwill (and time) it did buy him was nowhere near worth the backlash he'll receive if he goes back on that asseveration. However, it was an easy time to say those words. The Twins were 13-17 when Hayes's article ran, which was right on schedule; most fans, pundits and projection systems forecasted a losing season for them. In fairness, they're still sub-.500, too. Since that day, however, they've gone 40-37, and they find themselves right in the thick of the race for the AL Central, as well as a possible Wild Card berth. They've proved themselves resilient, and they've played near the top of their spectrum of possible outcomes based on their talent. Unequivocally, this team is in position to buy at next week's MLB trade deadline. It's time, in other words, for Pohlad to pony up. In fact, the baseball gods have offered him no quarter. Although this team (frankly) is not all that good, they're also plainly not bad, and they're playing in one of the weakest divisions and leagues in recent memory. They have a glaring need for pitching help, and a strong farm system with which to pursue it. They have, by any reasonable reckoning, plenty of money to spend. The stars all aligned. The dictate is clear, and Pohlad's own words have painted him into a corner. Admittedly, it would be strange (and ill-advised) for the team to go all-in and trade top prospects to bolster this squad. They're just entering a competitive window, not peaking or trying to maximize the final phase of a cycle. They can get better easily, though, and Pohlad's money can do a lot of that work. Here are five guys they could acquire, for whom the prospect cost could be minimized if the Twins take on the salaries involved. Kevin Gausman is a tough, durable veteran starter—someone who could start a playoff game and give the Twins a chance to win even against a tough lineup. He's an impending free agent and is still owed over $7 million. If the Twins are willing to take on that money, he wouldn't cost that much, and he could be a difference-maker for them both in the regular season and come october. A major bullpen upgrade is the most obvious way the Twins could get better this week. Weaver is under contract for 2027, too, so while he would cost a good prospect or two, he could help them not only this year, but next. He's an ideal fit for their situation, as long as Pohlad is willing to shell out the relatively high financial cost for a non-closer. It's a similar situation to that of Weaver, but Antonio Senzatela offers the bonus of not being obligated to pay up for 2027. The salary taken on for this season wouldn't be terribly onerous, and if it pans out well, the team could elect to bring him back at a moderate price. Dustin May could be a huge upside play for the Twins, and although the mutual option on his deal for 2027 is almost certain not to be mutually exercised, even a fistful of starts that get the team over the hump and into the postseason could be a huge windfall. The Cardinals will want something good for May, but his salary does give the Twins leverage, if they're willing to eat that money. This should, at this point, be the bare minimum. The Twins need help in the bullpen. Andrew Kittredge is one of several available right-handed hurlers who could assume a high-leverage role for them and slightly upgrade the relief corps, and who are making somewhere between $7 million and $12 million. If the Twins don't at least trade for someone like Kittredge, Pohlad will have failed to keep his promise to the fan base and to the team. The good news is that this team is in the hunt. The even better news is that the season has left much less uncertainty than one might have worried it would even a month ago. The only bad news is for Pohlad, and then only for his bottom line. He said he wants to help Zoll make this team better. Now, he gets to prove that he meant it. View full article

Image courtesy of © Matt Blewett-Imagn Images The Twins officially optioned Royce Lewis to Triple-A St. Paul on May 18. That very day, they lost Ryan Jeffers to a broken hamate bone. At that point, they were already a sub-.500 team, and the trend arrows were all pointing in the wrong direction. Many assumed, reasonably, that the team was about to collapse. It nearly did, too. After hanging tough for about a week, Minnesota lost 10 of 13 and fell all the way to 30-38, fading even in an extremely forgiving AL Wild Card race. They were on the brink. Since then, however, they've turned things around admirably. Lewis returned from the minors on June 1, and is hitting .269/.328/.500 since. Jeffers just returned for the final series before the All-Star break, and even while he was gone, hard-working fallback plan Alex Jackson kept the team afloat. They're 18-11 since hitting their nadir in mid-June. They're right back in the thick of the race, with guys they'd hoped to count on but been forced to live without (Lewis, Jeffers, Bailey Ober) back in the mix, to boot. That invites a new question: How can they keep this going? The pace at which the team has played for the last month is impressive, but they have to sustain it for a while to climb into a safe position in the jostle for playoff berths. That should be easier, in theory, because they're a stronger roster coming out of the break than they were until just before it—and certainly than they were in May and the first part of June. They've reorganized the team defensively, fixed Lewis's bat, and reinstated Jeffers and Ober from the injured list. Alas, regression will tug on their capes as they endeavor to take flight. To be as good a team as they've been of late, they have to improve their roster—or at least the deployment of their current one—to stave off the pull toward average (or worse) that will afflict several members of the team. Here are three ways the Twins can proactively swat at the gnats of regression during this summer heat wave, to keep enjoying that heat without being bitten or pestered into irrelevance. Make Royce Lewis a Platoon Bat The very first suggestion—first because I feel it has the greatest potential to help the team sustain its overachievement—comes with some friction. Lewis is an ebullient teammate, but he's not without ego, and this would come as a blow to that. It could sour some of the clubhouse sweetness that has given the team such positive energy the last several weeks. However, with Jeffers returning to the roster, it has to be a real consideration. The coincidence of Lewis being optioned and Jeffers being hurt means that we've yet to see how the lineup best works when they have the revived Lewis (but no longer as a third baseman, with Brooks Lee having taken up that post) and Jeffers each available. With Jeffers back in the fold, Victor Caratini is free to contribute at first base again—especially since the club is carrying three catchers at the moment. When a right-handed hurler starts for the opponents, the best version of this lineup doesn't contain Lewis. Even since he returned to the majors, much of his value has come from crushing left-handed pitching. Here are the key stat lines for Twins hitters against righty pitchers since June 1: Lewis: .258/.311/.464, 7.5% walk rate, 26.4% strikeout rate, .308 BABIP Caratini: .313/.420/.567, 13.6%, 12.3%, .315 Josh Bell: .293/.346/.596, 7.5%, 19.6%, .319 Kody Clemens: .288/.321/.644, 5.4%, 17.9%, .263 Jeffers will remain the regular catcher, unless the team trades him before the August 3 trade deadline—which is unlikely, according to multiple league sources. That makes sense, but it means that Caratini is likely to find some playing time elsewhere, and that has knock-on effects. Lewis can't make a strong case to play over Bell (with Caratini as the DH), Clemens (at second) or Caratini. Yes, some of the players listed here have been hitting better than they're likely to hit the rest of the way against righties, but then again, how confident are you that Lewis won't regress a bit, himself? Against righties, the everyday lineup should look like this: Trevor Larnach - LF Byron Buxton - CF Kody Clemens - 2B Ryan Jeffers - C Josh Bell - DH Victor Caratini - 1B Brooks Lee - 3B Ryan Kreidler - SS Luke Keaschall - RF If Buxton doesn't return from the injured list immediately, the team could resume the project it rapidly abandoned last month and try Lewis out at second for a while, with Clemens sliding back out to center field. Even in that case, though, playing Lewis wouldn't be the optimal deployment of their talent. Alan Roden is batting .269/.402/.471 against righties between Triple-A St. Paul and the majors this year. The sample is small, but the promise is real, and an alignment in which Roden plays center and Clemens is at second is stronger defensively than one with Lewis at second, anyway. This whole conversation highlights the fact that Lewis's hot streak since rejoining the team might only play him out of town. We don't have to tackle that notion in full right now. Suffice it to say that if Lewis is around, he should be in a roving, lefty-mashing role at least while the team is at this level of health and availability. He's their best option against southpaws. You can't say the same on the big side of the platoon. Shift Mike Paredes to the Bullpen, and End the Woo-Suk Go Experiment Because more pitching injuries seem to jump out at this team every time they turn the corner, the temptation to send Mike Paredes back to St. Paul to stay stretched out will be strong. The team will reinstate Cole Sands from the injured list soon, barring a setback in his rehab assignment, and Connor Prielipp could be close on Sands's heels. Optioning Paredes would allow him to stay available for bulk appearances and keep an extra arm in the organization; Go can't be optioned to the minors. Paredes is the better pitcher, though. If you put all the pitches each hurler throws into a shared ranking, Paredes's sweeper and changeup would be first and second, ahead of anything Go throws. If the team hopes to compete into September or even reach October, they need a further infusion of pitching depth, anyway. They shouldn't prioritize preserving shaky depth over optimizing the skills of the players they have. Making Paredes a full-time reliever would give them a genuinely useful right-handed relief boost and leave flexibility for them to piggyback starts with Ober and/or Prielipp. It's the best short-term management plan for that roster spot, once Prielipp is healthy enough to resume his role as the fifth starter. Start Ryan Kreidler at Shortstop Every Day Until Kaelen Culpepper gets healthy again and has his nagging butt issue figured out (it's a glute muscle injury, but 'butt issue' is funnier, right?), the Twins should give Ryan Kreidler all the playing time at shortstop. There's no need to keep auditioning Tristan Gray there; there's no need to so much as keep Gray on the roster. When Buxton is activated (whether that comes immediately or in a week or so), Gray should be the rsoter casualty. Keeping Alex Jackson around until the trade deadline plan is fully solidified is a must. Roden and Austin Martin have clear utility for the team, even if it's limited to specific roles and their playing time will be a bit sparse. Gray, whose approach has collapsed and whose glove at shortstop has been unimpressive, has no such defense for being farmed out. By contrast, there are concrete reasons to play Kreidler more often, including against righties. For one thing, he's not hitting lefties at all. He's actually been much better against right-handed pitchers this year. He didn't hit well at all in the final stretch before the break, but neither did Gray. Offensively and defensively, Kreidler has been the superior player for weeks, now. He's also more versatile, and thus more worthy of keeping around whenever Culpepper does get the call. In the meantime, though, Kreidler should play every day. Lee can be the backup plan, for a little while. Each of these recommendations are about roster decision points. This one will come down to the Twins having the guts to jettison Gray when they reinstate Buxton, keeping three catchers and a bunch of guys they don't particularly like at various infield spots. Keaschall is an outfielder now; so is Martin. Clemens has slid as far up the defensive spectrum as is at all possible for him. Lee and Lewis are already playing different spots from the ones at which they began the campaign, and the new roles are demotions. Across the board, this is a team with flaws. They're 48-49 for a reason. With some momentum and improving health, however, they have a chance to make the playoffs, anyway. They ought to seize it, and that means making some changes that precede and even replace traditional "buyer"-coded trades. View full article

Image courtesy of © Mark J. Rebilas-Imagn Images Alex Jackson will make his 15th start of the season Thursday afternoon, as the Twins go for a pivotal sweep of the Guardians at Target Field. Surprisingly, that doesn't feel ominous in the least. Jackson came into this season as a .153/.239/.288 hitter—a former top-10 overall pick turned journeyman, whom the Twins became the seventh team to trade for in a paripatetic 12-year pro career. Even after they dealt for him, the team went out and added Victor Caratini to supplant him as the backup to Ryan Jeffers, stashing Jackson at Triple-A St. Paul to start the season. Now, though, he's become a surprisingly vital ingredient in the team's unexpected surge toward the postseason. In his first 14 starts behind the plate, Jackson is 9-5. For the second year in a row, he's showing plus bat speed, and results to match. He's batting .314/.340/.431. He's struck out 15 times and drawn zero walks in 53 plate appearances, so that batting line isn't exactly sustainable, but to suggest he'll revert to his previous career norms would be to rashly dismiss what has been not only a tangible improvement, but an impressive bit of hard-won hustle value. Jackson is a plus athlete for a catcher. He even has average-plus raw sprint speed, according to Statcast. That makes his surge in bat speed, which happened last year in Baltimore, unsurprising; he just needed longer than initially hoped to learn how to get off his 'A' swing. More surprisng, though, is the way he's applied that athleticism every time he takes the field, with a relentlessness and tenacity that have endeared him to fans, teammates and coaches alike. Jackson has three bunt hits this season. He also hustles down the line on ground balls harder than anyone else on the team. On Saturday against the Yankees, for instance—despite searing heat, the demands of catching under those conditions, and a preposterous combination of hidebound rulemaking and poor preparation that meant the Twins could each wear only one jersey during the game, rather than changing once or twice over nine innings as catchers usually do in such heat—Jackson busted it out of the box on a routine double-play ball in the sixth inning. He beat it out, keeping a rally going. The Twins didn't even go on to score in the frame, but that moment was one distillation of a trend that has been on full display whenever Jackson gets onto the field: effort and hustle in the extreme. TDY1eXFfWGw0TUFRPT1fQUFNQUFGWlFYd1lBRDFzRVhnQUhVQUpTQUFBR0J3Y0FCZ1pVVTFVQ0JRUUdWbFJR.mp4 The bunts Jackson has laid down and the grounders on which he's put pressure on the defense by running hard are good examples of the same traits he shows behind the plate: unselfish dedication to the team. It's an impressive attitude for a player who has rarely stayed with any organization for very long and didn't get especially generous treatment from the one he's in now. Jackson hasn't been a great defender, in the measurable ways. He's not a good pitch framer, and hasn't navigated the ABS system well. He's not excellent at blocking pitches, though he does have an elite throwing arm. In terms of managing a young and not-very-talented pitching staff, though, he's been great. Between the hustle on offense and the situation management on defense, he's gotten the team over the hump nine times in 14 tries since coming up to take Jeffers's spot when the starting catcher got hurt. Yes, the Twins clearly still trust Caratini more. No, this won't necessarily stop them from demoting Jackson (even at the risk of losing him on waivers) when Jeffers returns from the IL. However, when you're a fringy playoff hopeful with a star-caliber catcher and that guy goes down for over six weeks, you brace for a handful of extra losses. In 15 starts, you have to accept that you might lose 10. If the Twins were 4-10 in Jackson's starts, entering Thursday, they'd be lagging the Tigers, in fourth place in the AL Central. They'd be 5.5 games out of the final AL Wild Card spot, with several teams clustered ahead of them. As it is, they're 2 games back in the division and a half-game behind the Rangers for the last prospective playoff berth. Not all of that difference is attributable to Jackson, of course. The team has stepped up in various ways over the last few weeks to salvage their season, staying alive longer than was expected of them. They've also gotten a bit lucky, along the way. But Jackson's motor and his surprising competence are echoes of what the team got right from the moment they acquired Kody Clemens, and of what they've gotten from Ryan Kreidler since turning to him in a similar pinch earlier this year. They're giving chances to guys who had nearly run out of them, and those guys are finding success. That's a testament to the team's scouting and analytics groups and to their coaches, but it's also a testament to the dedication, perseverance and baseball IQ of those players. Jackson is as good a symbol of that as anyone. He's the guy the team saw something in and proactively acquired, but whom they didn't quite trust until they were left with no alternative—and who has essentially saved their season, once the chance to do so arose. View full article

I do find it really odd that they've chosen right for him, especially in their home park, where the right fielder's range isn't as important as their ability to field the ball off the wall and make a quick throw, or make a strong peg from the corner. I can only surmise that they don't want to displace or displease Larnach right now. I would hazard a guess that LK will spend much of the last two months in left, instead. Or center? The old Bill James thing was, "If you can throw, but not run, you play right. If you can run, but not throw, you play left. If you can do both, you play center." I agree with Sam that Keaschall's arm will stay below-average even as an outfielder, but I could see it getting to the point where he could play center without causing a problem.

I broadly agree. I think they'll be trying to replace him pretty much for as long as he's a regular, even if that's not the way they present or even conceive of it. But it's certainly a good sign that he's been playable this year. Last year's Brooks Lee didn't belong on a major-league diamond.

Image courtesy of © Jerome Miron-Imagn Images Technically speaking, in his third big-league season, Brooks Lee is playing his third different primary position. He's wearing his third jersey number. It's third base at which he appears to be settling in for the long haul. But the key number around Lee will always be two: two swings, two plans at the plate, two tracks on which he's trying to simultaneously develop into a solid big-leaguer. This year, he's 2-for-2, which is why he's finally becoming that solid player the team expected and hoped for. As a rookie in 2024, Lee found time at three infield spots and showed flashes of a natural feel for the barrel. Overall, though, he hit an anemic .221/.265/.320. It was ugly. His approach was horrendous. He looked not so much overmatched, as confused, which isn't all that surprising. He was a 23-year-old who'd only had about 800 total professional plate appearances before he arrived in the bigs, and as a switch-hitter with two pretty different plans from the two sides of the dish, he needed more reps than that. Despite the atrocious numbers, that first exposure to the majors seemed likely to be good for him. If the seeds of success were sown in that soil of failure, though, the tree didn't bear fruit in 2025. Lee batted just .236/.285/.370 last season, playing virtually full-time in his first full season with the parent club. Technically, it was forward progress, but it felt woefully insufficient, especially as he demonstrated that his athleticism would be a lasting limitation on his value as a defender and baserunner. He was a bad player, even if he was a little less bad than he'd been the year before—and it was harder to wave away the badness on the basis of injuries or inexperience. That's what makes this year so refreshing. He's not some sudden superstar, but you don't have to squint to see the progress or hunt and plead to make the case that he's a viable regular. The move to third base is good for him, defensively. More importantly, he's batting .242/.297/.429. You'll rarely hear me praise a player with merely moderate defensive value and power whose OBP comes in on the light side of .300, but Lee has made some important strides that are much easier to see below the surface. Specifically, as is true of so many switch-hitters, you have to break him down into his two component selves to properly understand him. From the left side, Lee has made some vital improvements in the way he addresses the ball. His swing isn't massively overhauled, but it's a tick faster, and his timing is better. Here are the distributions of his swing timing on fastballs when batting left-handed for his three seasons in the majors: From left to right, these images show: the frequency with which Lee centers the ball on his barrel, horizontally; the frequency with which he's on time, as opposed to early or late; and the frequency with which he hits the ball off the center, the top or bottom side of the bat, or misses above or below it. The easiest way to see what he's changed, in this case, comes on the left, where Lee has gone from most often hitting the ball just toward the end of his bat from the sweet spot when he came up in 2024 to most often hitting the ball just toward the label or handle. Like most hitters, Lee mostly centers up fastballs well, in general, but the fact that he's more often catching the fastball toward the hands a little now tells us something important about what he's looking for and how flexible his approach is. Remember, as a switch-hitter, he's only facing righties when he bats lefty. Being on time for the fastball (as he's done more consistently this year, which you can see in the center image) but catching it slightly off the center of the barrel toward the hands means that he's extending better through the ball. That might mean slightly less hard contact on the heater, but then come the breaking balls: Breaking stuff moves in on a switch-hitter at all times, and Lee is getting them in on his label a bit more this year, but look at the righthand image. He's hitting the ball with the center of the bat, vertically, more often than last year, too. He's not swinging over the top of it as much or as often. And the story is different on offspeed stuff, but similar: Lee's hitting the top half of the ball a bit more on changeups and splitters this season, which might sound bad—but that's coming instead of whiffing altogether, which he's doing less often. Put the whole profile together, and Lee has a much better batted-ball profile from the left side this season. Here's his spray chart from the left side for last year: And here's the same image for 2026 to date: Lee hasn't hit the ball harder this year, left-handed. He's not even effecting a huge change in the frequency with which he lifts the ball. When he does hit it in the air, though, it's much more often going to the pull field, rather than to center. When he hits it well (at least 88 MPH off the bat and a launch angle of at least 10°), he's hitting it on a line more often, rather than hitting the bottom of the ball and flying out lazily. Here's the distribution of his launch angles on such batted balls in 2025: And here's 2026: This stuff is why Lee batted .220/.278/.365 last season from the left side, but is at .253/.299/.463 this season. He's tapped into more power and more overall value on contact. From the left side, he's a low-OBP guy, but the power is legitimate. Twenty of his 25 extra-base hits this year have come as a lefty. From the right side, alas, there's been no significant change to bat path, timing and contact profile. Indeed, there's been (so far) no actual improvement. He had a .677 OPS against lefties last year; he has a .642 OPS against them this year. But there's been one important change: Lee knows what he's looking for now. From the right side, he's become more selective within the zone, which has more than doubled his walk rate from last year, from 3.4% to 7.5%. He's not actually swinging less often, as a whole. He's not even chasing less often. By being willing to let some pitches his righty swing can't generate any punch on go by, though, Lee has made himself a viable hitter from the right side, with more upside. He's striking out less, in addition to walking more. The contact is pretty empty, but he's gotten slightly unlucky from that side, too. This version of Lee can be a useful player for multiple big-league seasons. He might always be the infielder you're hoping to replace with a better one, but plenty of good teams go far with players they always hoped to replace but never got around to actually shaking. Lee's two positions this year mirror his two different swings and two different approaches. He's made two different adjustments this year, based on handedness, and he's increasingly looking like a useful player—even though he's had to do two (or more) things at once almost since the moment he put on a uniform. View full article

Image courtesy of © Jesse Johnson-Imagn Images© Jesse Johnson-Imagn Images The second pitch Zebby Matthews threw Monday night in Minneapolis was a changeup. It leaped off the bat of Shohei Ohtani, and came down 414 feet away, long gone for a leadoff home run. Matthews missed his spot badly, and Ohtani made him pay with a rising line drive to the plaza beyond right field. That wasn't just a one-off, either. Matthews didn't have command of his changeup (almost) all night. He would throw another change to Freddie Freeman later in the first frame; two to Kyle Tucker and one to Tommy Edman in the second; and two to Ryan Ward in the fifth. All six of those pitches missed the zone, and none of them induced a chase. He succeeded only in falling behind with the pitch, and had to shelve it entirely in the third and fourth innings of his outing. Yet, Matthews found a way to hang around. He turned to a slightly hybridized version of his slider that had more movement than his cutter but was harder than his usual slider. he spotted his four-seamer well to all quadrants. Against a top-heavy but lethal Dodgers lineup, he got through the first five innings without giving up another run after that Ohtani shot. In the sixth, not having the change working finally caught up to him. After missing with both a four-seamer and a cutter to Freeman, he left another cutter in the middle of the zone on a 2-0 count. Freeman hammered a game-winning homer, putting the Dodgers up 2-1. All night, as it turned out, only homers by Ohtani, Freeman and Byron Buxton dented the scoreboard. But Matthews recovered nicely. After the Freeman bomb, he walked Mookie Betts, but the breaking of the tie also broke some tension for him. He and catcher Victor Caratini decided to come back to the changeup, doubling up on it to start Max Muncy's at-bat. Both pitches were called strikes. Muncy lined out. Derek Shelton let Matthews keep working, even though he'd already thrown 97 pitches at that point. Alex Call singled, but Matthews then got a flyout from Edman and struck out catcher Chuckie Robinson to escape the jam. In the end, Matthews put up six innings of two-run ball, and threw a career-high 108 pitches. More importantly, he found a way to survive without a pitch he usually throws about a quarter of the time against left-handed batters. If he successfully establishes himself as a mid-rotation starter for the Twins this year, bookmark Monday night's start. It was a huge step forward. The Twins lost, but Matthews gave them every chance to beat the two-time defending World Series champions. He did it without a pitch he'll have a better version of most of the time, through some good on-the-mound problem-solving. He rewarded his manager's faith and discovered a new capacity to pitch beyond his previous limits. View full article

Image courtesy of © Jerome Miron-Imagn Images Over the years, a somewhat facile narrative has attached itself to Josh Bell: every season, he has one good half, and one bad one. It's not quite true, of course. No player's career divides up that neatly; people just tend to generalize to save themselves time when nuance seems unduly weighty. Bell has had some years in which his first- and second-half splits stood in stark contrast to each other, but even using a generous definition of "good" (anything over an .800 OPS) and an unforgiving definition of "bad" (anything under .750), Bell has four "neutral" halves in his eight full seasons of play, to go with six of each of the other two types. In this table, I've bolded halves that count as "good" by the criteria I just described, and italicized the ones that count as "bad." Results Table Rk Split Year ▲ G PA BA OBP SLG 1 1st Half 2017 88 339 .239 .322 .472 2 2nd Half 2017 71 281 .274 .349 .460 3 1st Half 2018 96 374 .261 .342 .396 4 2nd Half 2018 52 209 .263 .383 .440 5 1st Half 2019 88 388 .302 .376 .648 6 2nd Half 2019 55 225 .233 .351 .429 7 1st Half 2021 73 274 .245 .310 .446 8 2nd Half 2021 71 294 .277 .381 .506 9 1st Half 2022 93 394 .311 .390 .504 10 2nd Half 2022 63 253 .194 .317 .289 11 1st Half 2023 82 332 .230 .319 .381 12 2nd Half 2023 68 285 .266 .332 .461 13 1st Half 2024 94 396 .228 .289 .356 14 2nd Half 2024 51 207 .292 .379 .506 15 1st Half 2025 84 326 .219 .307 .372 16 2nd Half 2025 56 207 .267 .353 .489 17 1st Half 2026 70 276 .232 .286 .366 Provided by Stathead: Found with Stathead. See Full Results. Generated 6/16/2026. As Twins fans are finding out, though, facile narratives obscure more complex realities. Bell isn't a guy who just plays at a solid, high level for three months, then slumps for three, or vice-versa. He goes through the same undulations as most hitters; he just has some things that stretch the periods of those rises and falls. For one, he's a switch-hitter. For another, he's always had good (though not elite) plate discipline. Those things set a high floor for him, but the switch-hitting (along with his swing path from each side) also sets a lowish ceiling; he can't reliably produce pulled fly balls in a way that yields lasting power and could make him an elite slugger. Thus, we've already seen Bell go through a streak and a slump in his brief tenure with the Minnesota Twins. He started the season red-hot, then went ice-cold. That's not some acceleration of his career norms for performance variance; he had multiple slumps (and neatly counterbalancing streaks) in 2024 and 2025. As yu can see, though, Bell is on the upswing again. In fact, after Monday night's 2-for-4 showing (including a three-run homer), he's now batting .218/.314/.490 over the last 30 days, with five home runs and five doubles in 102 plate appearances. He's not walking much. In fact, he's swinging quite a bit more than his norm, which is a trend we had better keep an eye on. Still, Bell has entered another productive phase of his sinusoidal batting curve, and his three-run homer Monday night against MacKenzie Gore of the Rangers was a good example of how it's happening. Gore tried to backfoot a breaking ball to Bell, but left it in the lower, inside quadrant of the strike zone. That's a costly mistake to any right-handed batter with power, but especially one who's locked in right now. In fairness to Gore and the Rangers, though, they were trying something clever. On the previous pitch (a 1-0 fastball), Bell had challenged a strike call. It was a heater down and in, but it nipped the corner, and Bell's challenge failed. In addition to leveling the count, that appeal told Texas that Bell wasn't seeing the ball especially well down in that spot. Going back to it with another fastball would be one way to take advantage of that, but they were trying the cousin of that strategy: a pitch that would look like the fastball in the same spot, but then dive under Bell's bat. They asked him, in effect, to get himself out (or at least into a 1-2 hole) by chasing a pitch for which he'd been primed by the previous pitch itself and his own frustrating failure to overturn its outcome. We'll never know what would have happened if Gore had executed better. My guess, though, is that Bell would have just spat on that offering and gotten ahead, anyway. Though the Rangers might have been right to perceive that Bell saw that fastball poorly, they were wrong to conclude that it was because of the location. Here's how we know. New Statcast metrics available at Baseball Savant show us not only by how much batters miss when they whiff, but how their swing timings are distributed within any given sample. We can see how consistently the hitter centers their swing to put the barrel of the bat in the path of the ball, horizontally; how often they line it up vertically; and how often they're on time (versus being early or late) for the pitch. Here are Bell's swing timing distributions by month, for right-handed swings only. This month (and, if I were to re-run this and show you the distribution isolating the time since the middle of May, rather than breaking it up by month for easier visual comparison, you'd see the same thing), Bell is a danger to all left-handed pitchers. See how the orange distribution curves representing June rise higher and are more centered in each of the first two images, relative to the previous months? That's Bell consistently finding the barrel and being on time, whereas he was often early or late and working out to the end of the bat in the two previous months. He's locked in, and when you're on time and the ball is on the center of the barrel, exit velocity is going to follow. Charts like this are going to help us understand and explain slumps and streaks much better than we have in the past; Bell's resurgence in power is no surprise given what we see here. When he's had any trouble at all from the right side, this month, he's found it by getting underneath the ball. Southpaws have had some luck throwing it over his bat, both inside: MTZOVlZfWGw0TUFRPT1fVWxJRFZGd0FWZ0VBQUZBSFhnQUhVZzVUQUFCUlYxWUFWd01CQlZBTUFBVmRBd01E.mp4 and outside: Uk85cm9fWGw0TUFRPT1fQXdJSEJnRlFYMUFBWGxvQlZBQUhCUU5lQUFOUVV3TUFVd01FQWdOVVUxSlJWQUpm.mp4 At this moment, if you try to get Bell out as a right-handed batter by throwing a breaking ball below the zone, you're only setting yourself up for failure. He's not chasing those, and when you miss, he's lined up to punish you ferociously for it. Gore erred as much by even attempting to throw that tricky curveball as by mislocating it. That worked out wonderfully for the Twins, though, and it illustrates another thing we can see more clearly as we get more comfortable with the new Statcast data: everyone's scouting report should be changing often. Sometimes, the back-foot breaking ball is the right pitch to Bell. Right now, he has that covered. The Twins need Bell to continue producing the way he has over the last month. Whether they end up hanging around in the woebegone AL Central or are looking to trade Bell in July or August, they need his bat to keep humming. He's not some unique case of a player tidily cutting their season in half and choosing to hit in just one of the two, but he's certainly prone to long stretches of cold or hot hitting. During the latter type of run, he can win games for you on his own—as he did, practically, in the very first inning Monday night. View full article

Hey that's right! It *IS* Culpepper's butt that is injured!