Twins Wait Till Next Year

The 2025 Twins’ 70-92 season is officially in the books. Because they traded away one-third of their roster at the trading deadline, the last two months have effectively been a try-out for the 2026 season. All the free agents were sent away early. There will be new ones next year–there had better be!–but it is not too soon to evaluate the players under contract: who might make the team next spring, and what chance will that give the ’26 Twins.

Starting Pitchers. The Twins ended the season with six consecutive stellar outings, against good opponents, from fairly young starters, all of whom will be legitimate candidates for the rotation: Simeon Woods-Richardson, Zebby Matthews, Bailey Ober, Nick Abel, Taj Bradley and Joe Ryan. Pablo Lopez, not young but the purported ace, also excelled in his last start before a minor injury ended his season. Then there’s David Festa, whose season was cut short but has long been considered a rising star. By my count, that’s eight arms for a five-man rotation. This is far and away the strength of next year’s roster, so much so that I wouldn’t mind losing Lopez (and his salary) to a trade for some relievers or some offense.

Relievers: The Twins famously traded away their five most-used relievers, presumably believing that rebuilding the bullpen was the easiest part of reconstruction. This gave them the chance to try out arms from their Minor League system as well as some pickups. The results were not encouraging. Of the relievers they retained, Cole Sands was given the most high-leverage situations to deal with, with some success and some failure. I expect him to be retained but if he is more than the fourth man in the pen they’re in trouble. Of the newbies, I’m most excited about Kyle Funderburk. He flopped in his first two call-ups, but the last time around he had gained in control and confidence. I expect in 2026 he will fill the designated lefthander role assigned in recent years to Caleb Thielbar and Danny Couloumbe. It’s hard to see where six more relief pitchers will come from. I don’t expect the Twins to convert any of the above starters, as it’s clear by now that teams need starting depth to get through the season. Travis Adams and Pierson Ohl were given every opportunity and will be, again. If one of the two rises to the occasion I will be happy. Thomas Hatch looked good for awhile but tailed off. I’m less hopeful for someone like Hatch who is not young and has been let go by five previous clubs. Genesis Cabrera should have no future, and Anthony Misiewicz was terrible; but both are lefthanders so will be given another look. Michael Tonkin is old and was a stop-gap this year. Justin Topa has better credentials than the others but was disappointing. In short, this is where the Twins should concentrate their recruiting efforts and free-agent dollars.

Outfield: This is the most intriguing part of the plot. Byron Buxton’s in center, although we all know a backup should be on the roster, always available. But who among this group is worth the future: Matt Wallner, Trevor Larnach, Austin Martin, James Outman, Alan Roden? Compared to the Twins’ top three prospects, all of whom, I believe, are corner outfielders: Walker Jenkins, Emmanuel Rodriguez and Gabriel Gonzalez. Wallner and Larnach have both been given plenty of runway to reach their potential, and, as with Max Kepler, it seems vain to expect a higher level of play from either in the future. While Wallner was second to Buxton in home runs, he hit for only a .202 average and, despite his homers, was seventh in rbi. Larnach has a lovely swing, but .250 seems to be his ceiling as well as his floor. They both hit lefthanded and I can’t see the Twins continuing to employ them both. (It would be nice if another team would trade a relief pitcher for them; it would have been even nicer if the Twins had kept Brent Rooker, who lost a roster spot to them a few years ago.) The Twins clearly hoped Roden would develop if given a chance to play and were hoping that Outman could revive a career that had flailed with the Dodgers. Neither should stand in the way of one or more of the prospects. Martin is a more interesting case. He ended up with a .282 average and has speed and defensive versatility. He made several bonehead plays, which you think can be eliminated with experience. In short, there is at least one, and maybe two, open outfield  positions to be won in spring training next year.

Infield: Luke Keaschall is the Twins second baseman for the foreseeable future, if he can stay healthy. Brooks Lee is adequate, but barely, at shortstop and can hold the position until one of the Twins prospects is ready. It’s astonishing how slow he is for a shortstop though. Royce Lewis should be the permanent solution at third, but his hitting is nowhere near the level he demonstrated when he first arrived. His swing-and-miss rate is high, especially on balls outside the strike zone, and his power has fallen to warning-track level. .237 with 13 home runs is not what the Twins are expecting. A return to the Royce Lewis of old is the single conceivable factor that would most elevate the Twins’ offense. I like Kody Clemens at first. He is solid defensively (unlike Eddie Julien), and I read that he has the second-highest hard-hit rate on balls in play, which suggests his .216 average is not indicative. Just as important, he had a knack for big hits and big home runs this year that the rest of the lineup lacked. I like the idea of giving him the chance to start a year as the regular first baseman, instead of bringing in a retread free agent as the Twins have done recently. That leaves us to consider Julien, who was a good hitter before he wasn’t but who showed signs of life when necessity called upon him this year. I’m afraid, as with Jose Miranda, he just couldn’t take the next step to become a solid Major League hitter. The Twins need a backup, but I’m looking for a fresh face.

Catcher: Ryan Jeffers, after Buxton, is the longest-serving, most dependable player on the team and will remain the #1 catcher for next year and beyond. Christian Vazquez, paid a lot of money to hit .189, will be gone, which means new backup catcher is needed. In a limited window, Mickey Gasper hit .158 and Johnny Pereda .345, but both were stopgaps and I don’t think this question has been answered. I expect a trade or free-agent signing for a good defender who hits .210.

Did I forget to mention DaShawn Keirsey Jr. and Ryan Fitzgerald? Both plugged holes which one hopes won’t be so glaring next year.

In sum, unlike this year when almost all the roster spots were decided before spring training even began, there could and should be plenty of new faces, open competitions and surprises before Opening Day 2026.

The Comeback

This Netflix three-part documentary tells the story of the Boston Red Sox’s unprecedented comeback, in the 2004 ALCS against the Yankees, from an 0-3 deficit in the best of seven series. What was just as remarkable to me was its depiction of the very personal rivalry that existed between the two teams. Has there been such a rivalry since, and if not, why? Not living on the East Coast anymore, maybe I just don’t sense it, but let’s explore what’s different, twenty years later.

1. In 2003 the Yankees beat the Red Sox in the seventh game of the ALCS, a crushing loss on Aaron Boone’s homer. 2004 was a rematch between the two top teams in the American League. The Sox and the Yankees aren’t the two top teams anymore, and haven’t been for a long time. In fact, Boston hasn’t been terribly good for awhile.
2. Rosters today are far more fluid. Free agency existed in 2004, but it didn’t dominate the scene as it does now. The characters in the Netflix series are pretty constant from 2003 to 2004. The Yankees add Alex Rodriguez, the Sox bring in Davey Roberts (for pinch-running), but that’s about it. This year alone the Yankees have added Cody Bellinger, Paul Goldschmidt and Ryan McMahon to their starting lineup. And see 3.
3. All teams rely on younger players than before. It’s an economic necessity, as arbitration jacks up veteran salaries and teams can compensate for their big-ticket signings with numerous rookies and players who haven’t reached arbitration. And for whatever reason, modern rookies seem to taking bigger roles than their counterparts did in the past. If you’re new to the club and adapting to the Big Leagues, you’re not likely to have acquired an antipathy to a rival team.
4. With interleague play, division rivals face off twelve times a year, instead of eighteen. Playing a greater variety of opponents makes you less likely to focus on any one.
5. Improved fan behavior, although it’s hard to explain this, or even believe it. The Netflix show has frequent instances of rabid fans yelling, “Boston sucks” and “Yankees suck.” This ugly cheer, which was common in sports back then (I remember cringing when I heard it at a Columbia basketball game), seems to have faded away, thank goodness. Maybe because there’s so much division in society, and we have the Internet to express hostility, people see a ballpark as a place to be a little more polite.
6. A-Rod. There’s no one in uniform today with the smarmy arrogance of Alex Rodriguez. I can see how much someone would hate to lose with him on the other side. (Personally, I felt that way about Derek Jeter too.)
7. Of course, much the same could be said about the Yankees in general in those days. They won too much, their owner George Steinbrenner was obnoxious, and they represented the biggest, most arrogant city in America. Now that they haven’t won the World Series in ages, you don’t exactly feel sorry for them, but there isn’t cause for the intense dislike you get when someone always beats you. This holds, as well, for every other franchise, although the Dodgers are threatening to take this position.

Whatever caused it and is missing now, the rivalry made for exciting baseball and an excellent documentary. By piecing together current interviews with archival footage, the moviemakers added a dimension to the games they showed, which were exciting by themselves. The story seemed all the more historic given the recall by the principals twenty years later. And these people hadn’t been resting on their laurels: Theo Epstein had gone on to bring the Cubs a world championship, Terry Francona continued his Hall-of-Fame career managing Cleveland and now Cincinnati, yet they remembered 2004 like it was yesterday. Without such rivalries, playoff series these days are more ho-hum: who’s going to get excited by the Texas Rangers? Indeed, the 2004 World Series was treated as an anticlimax in the documentary, despite its being Boston’s first championship in 85 years–sort of like the U.S. Olympic hockey team’s gold medal win after beating the Russians in the semifinals. The latter game is the one everyone remembers. And thanks to Netflix, we won’t forget the year the Red Sox stunned the Yankees.

Twins Diary ’25

September 29:  The 2025 Twins’ 70-92 season is officially in the books. Because they traded away one-third of their roster at the trading deadline, the last two months have effectively been a try-out for the 2026 season. All the free agents were sent away early. There will be new ones next year–there had better be!–but it is not too soon to evaluate the players under contract: who might make the team next spring, and what chance will that give the ’26 Twins.

Starting Pitchers. The Twins ended the season with six consecutive stellar outings, against good opponents, from fairly young starters, all of whom will be legitimate candidates for the rotation: Simeon Woods-Richardson, Zebby Matthews, Bailey Ober, Nick Abel, Taj Bradley and Joe Ryan. Pablo Lopez, not young but the purported ace, also excelled in his last start before a minor injury ended his season. Then there’s David Festa, whose season was cut short but has long been considered a rising star. By my count, that’s eight arms for a five-man rotation. This is far and away the strength of next year’s roster, so much so that I wouldn’t mind losing Lopez (and his salary) to a trade for some relievers or some offense.

Relievers: The Twins famously traded away their five most-used relievers, presumably believing that rebuilding the bullpen was the easiest part of reconstruction. This gave them the chance to try out arms from their Minor League system as well as some pickups. The results were not encouraging. Of the relievers they retained, Cole Sands was given the most high-leverage situations to deal with, with some success and some failure. I expect him to be retained but if he is more than the fourth man in the pen they’re in trouble. Of the newbies, I’m most excited about Kyle Funderburk. He flopped in his first two call-ups, but the last time around he had gained in control and confidence. I expect in 2026 he will fill the designated lefthander role assigned in recent years to Caleb Thielbar and Danny Couloumbe. It’s hard to see where six more relief pitchers will come from. I don’t expect the Twins to convert any of the above starters, as it’s clear by now that teams need starting depth to get through the season. Travis Adams and Pierson Ohl were given every opportunity and will be, again. If one of the two rises to the occasion I will be happy. Thomas Hatch looked good for awhile but tailed off. I’m less hopeful for someone like Hatch who is not young and has been let go by five previous clubs. Genesis Cabrera should have no future, and Anthony Misiewicz was terrible; but both are lefthanders so will be given another look. Michael Tonkin is old and was a stop-gap this year. Justin Topa has better credentials than the others but was disappointing. In short, this is where the Twins should concentrate their recruiting efforts and free-agent dollars.

Outfield: This is the most intriguing part of the plot. Byron Buxton’s in center, although we all know a backup should be on the roster, always available. But who among this group is worth the future: Matt Wallner, Trevor Larnach, Austin Martin, James Outman, Alan Roden? Compared to the Twins’ top three prospects, all of whom, I believe, are corner outfielders: Walker Jenkins, Emmanuel Rodriguez and Gabriel Gonzalez. Wallner and Larnach have both been given plenty of runway to reach their potential, and, as with Max Kepler, it seems vain to expect a higher level of play from either in the future. While Wallner was second to Buxton in home runs, he hit for only a .202 average and, despite his homers, was seventh in rbi. Larnach has a lovely swing, but .250 seems to be his ceiling as well as his floor. They both hit lefthanded and I can’t see the Twins continuing to employ them both. (It would be nice if another team would trade a relief pitcher for them; it would have been even nicer if the Twins had kept Brent Rooker, who lost a roster spot to them a few years ago.) The Twins clearly hoped Roden would develop if given a chance to play and were hoping that Outman could revive a career that had flailed with the Dodgers. Neither should stand in the way of one or more of the prospects. Martin is a more interesting case. He ended up with a .282 average and has speed and defensive versatility. He made several bonehead plays, which you think can be eliminated with experience. In short, there is at least one, and maybe two, open outfield  positions to be won in spring training next year.

Infield: Luke Keaschall is the Twins second baseman for the foreseeable future, if he can stay healthy. Brooks Lee is adequate, but barely, at shortstop and can hold the position until one of the Twins prospects is ready. It’s astonishing how slow he is for a shortstop though. Royce Lewis should be the permanent solution at third, but his hitting is nowhere near the level he demonstrated when he first arrived. His swing-and-miss rate is high, especially on balls outside the strike zone, and his power has fallen to warning-track level. .237 with 13 home runs is not what the Twins are expecting. A return to the Royce Lewis of old is the single conceivable factor that would most elevate the Twins’ offense. I like Kody Clemens at first. He is solid defensively (unlike Eddie Julien), and I read that he has the second-highest hard-hit rate on balls in play, which suggests his .216 average is not indicative. Just as important, he had a knack for big hits and big home runs this year that the rest of the lineup lacked. I like the idea of giving him the chance to start a year as the regular first baseman, instead of bringing in a retread free agent as the Twins have done recently. That leaves us to consider Julien, who was a good hitter before he wasn’t but who showed signs of life when necessity called upon him this year. I’m afraid, as with Jose Miranda, he just couldn’t take the next step to become a solid Major League hitter. The Twins need a backup, but I’m looking for a fresh face.

Catcher: Ryan Jeffers, after Buxton, is the longest-serving, most dependable player on the team and will remain the #1 catcher for next year and beyond. Christian Vazquez, paid a lot of money to hit .189, will be gone, which means new backup catcher is needed. In a limited window, Mickey Gasper hit .158 and Johnny Pereda .345, but both were stopgaps and I don’t think this question has been answered. I expect a trade or free-agent signing for a good defender who hits .210.

Did I forget to mention DaShawn Keirsey Jr. and Ryan Fitzgerald? Both plugged holes which one hopes won’t be so glaring next year.

In sum, unlike this year when almost all the roster spots were decided before spring training even began, there could and should be plenty of new faces, open competitions and surprises before Opening Day 2026.

September 22: The nadir of the Twins’ lost season came in a split doubleheader against the Guardians at home last Saturday. It wasn’t just the lopsided final scores–6-0 and 8-0– and the futility of their offense. It was the implosion of starting pitchers Joe Ryan and Bailey Ober. These were two of their aces coming into the season–and in Ryan’s case for the first half of his All-Star season–and both were considered long-term cornerstones for the Minnesota rotation. What hope do we have for next year as we go into the long offseason? The two youngsters who were supposed to provide depth to the rotation–Zebby Mathews and David Festa–have largely disappointed. Pedro Lopez, despite missing two months with an arm injury, seems to be the Twins’ best hope at relevancy. Simeon Woods-Richardson, who seemed an afterthought much of the last two years–i.e., a potential fourth or fifth starter–had better luck against Cleveland on Sunday, after an excellent outing against the Yankees; so there is that. But watching the minor leagues I’ve seen no help on the horizon. Interestingly, while the starters have crumbled, the relievers have shown some success, and it has not been the remnant trio of Sands, Tonkin and Topa that has steadied the ship. Kody Funderburk has pitched much better this last time around, although there’s room to improve his control against the first lefthanded hitter he routinely faces, and Travis Adams and Pierson Ohl have both profited from being used one inning at a time, instead of as long relievers. In short, the Twins pitching staff next spring should be a wide open competition.

September 13: Even a meaningless game in the homestretch of a wasted season can provide thrills, with last night’s Twins-Diamondbacks game a great example. I turned it on in the bottom of the 9th inning, with the Twins behind, 8-6. Worse, I quickly realized, was that they had been ahead, 6-4, going into the 9th, but their woeful, post-trade-deadline bullpen had surrendered four runs. Actually, they had come off Cole Sands, the closest thing the Twins have to a competent reliever who will make the team next year. Usually, the Twins fold up and die in such a situation, but leadoff batter Kody Clemens ended a 10-pitch at bat with an opposite field home run, to cut the deficit to one. More exciting was the news that this was Clemens’s third homer of the game, the first Twin in five years to accomplish this feat. Clemens, who was hitting a pathetic .202 entering the game, also had a double and raised his average 11 points. Just as surprising, Eddie Julien then sliced a single to left, Buxton was HBP, Austin Martin walked on four pitches and Trevor Larnach, facing a leftie, walked on a 3-2 pitch to force in the tying run. Luke Keaschall, the Twins’ deserving rookie, clubbed a deep fly to left. It resulted in the first out of the inning, but also a walk-off win, with three obligatory Gatorade dumps to follow.

September 7: A footnote from the Friday box scores in today’s L.A. Times: The Colorado Rockies, on their way to a 120-loss season, have no one in their lineup hitting below .238. The Twins have six.

September 3: The last-place Chicago White Sox had not won a game when trailing in the 9th inning for more than a year–205 games, to be exact. Nor had they won a series in Minnesota since 2023. But tonight the Twins took a 3-1 lead into the 9th and lost 4-3 when Kody Funderburk and Justin Topa combined to give up three White Sox runs, the last two on a two-strike, two-out pitch to former Twin Michael A. Taylor, who had struck out his previous three at bats. It just goes to show what you can expect when you trade away your five top relief pitchers at the same time. The Twins are now officially the least interesting team in the American League and, with only the Colorado Rockies as a contender, perhaps the entire Major Leagues.

August 28: I’ve rarely seen a player who looked less like a professional athlete, let alone a Major League catcher, than the Twins’ Mickey Gasper. His build is slight for a position where the Cal Raleigh/Salvador Perez/Ryan Jeffers build is more the norm. His demeanor is timid, such that it is hard to imagine him calling the game for his pitcher. His face is boyish, despite a mustache that seems designed to mask his youth, although he’s 29 approaching 30. His catcher’s gear and batting helmet sit on him like something he’s borrowed from their rightful owner. The fact that he entered Tuesday’s game with Toronto on an 0-for-27 streak wasn’t all that surprising: he’s playing on the remnant Twins only because Christian Vazquez, the regular backup, is out, probably for the year, and the Twins have no prospects in the Minors. What was surprising, and indeed heartwarming, was watching Gasper hit his first Major League home run leading off the 9th inning to tie the game, 4-4, after he had hit two singles and scored a run earlier. That the Twins held on to win, 7-5, after Matt Wallner’s similarly rare three-run homer later in the inning, only made the occasion sweeter still.

One day after stunning the Blue Jays with only their second 9th-inning comeback of the year, the Twins returned the favor by blowing an 8-6 lead in the 8th. There were two principal culprits, both indicative of the Twins’ situation. The less obvious one was Byron Buxton, because he had given Minnesota much of its early lead with two solo home runs. What more could you expect from someone? The problem came in the top of the 8th inning. Twins led, 8-6, but you knew that lead was not safe, given the uncertainty of their relief corps. With two outs, the Twins had runners on second and third and Buxton at bat. A hit would have provided some comfort and certainly discouraged any Toronto comeback. But hitting with runners on base in a pressure situation is where Buck is weakest. Or maybe it is just that the pitcher is bearing down, as opposed to the game’s first pitch, where Buxton excels. Buxton swung at the first pitch, even though it was low and more than a foot outside. Clearly, he had decided to swing at the first pitch, regardless. He showed better control as the at-bat progressed, and worked the count to 3-2. I knew, you knew, and presumably Buxton must have known, the next pitch was going to be a breaking ball down and away, likely out of the strike zone (first base was open, remember). Nevertheless, Buxton swung and missed at a pitch he couldn’t reach. Buxton has good stats, great power, but can’t be counted on to even make contact when contact is all that is needed.
The second culprit was manager Rocco Baldelli, and the usual complaint is from his managing his relief corps. Once he got only four innings from starter Simeon Woods-Richardson, he had to cobble the rest of the game from his relievers. Baldelli’s obsession with never using a reliever for more than one inning meant here that he would need good outings from five pitchers–highly unlikely given the makeup of his current roster. One who has performed admirably is Thomas Hatch, who is also a long reliever, but Baldelli pulled Hatch after he pitched a 1-2-3 5th inning once he walked the leadoff batter in the 6th. This didn’t work particularly well as lefthander Kody Funderburk, brought in to face lefthanded hitters, gave up hits to the first two lefties he faced before retiring the third. Cole Sands then struck out the side in the 7th, but rather than seeing how he could handle a second inning, Baldelli brought in Genesis Cabrera, and the lead was soon gone.

August 20: One half inning tonight convinced me that the Twins should find a new manager for next season. In the 3rd inning, down 1-0 to the A’s, James Outman, in his first week, led off with a double. Ryan Fitzgerald, the Twins’ 31-year-old rookie, followed with a routine single to right. When he saw the rightfielder’s lob throw coming in to the cutoff man not to second base, he just kept running and made second easily. No other Twin would have tried that, which just goes to show the joy Fitzgerald has playing baseball. With runners on second and third, the Twins, as they always do, put on the “contact” play, otherwise known as the suicide play. When Buxton hit a one-hopper to third, Outman was out at home by ten feet. With runners then on first and third, the broadcasters kept expecting Buxton, who has yet to be caught this year, to steal second to obviate any double play possibility. The A’s pitcher, they observed, was a ground ball specialist. For five pitches Buxton never moved, and when Larnach hit a grounder to second on the sixth pitch, the A’s turned a double play and the Twins, after having runners on second and third with no outs, exited the frame scoreless.
To my mind, there were two obvious tactical – i.e., managerial – errors: the contact play with no outs and two runners in scoring position and failing to move Buxton off first. I’ll explain my reasoning on the first in a minute. But beyond the tactical errors, I saw the effects of Baldelli’s conservatism on his club. As I suggested, no player who had been playing for Baldelli for more than a month would have gone to second as Fitzgerald did. Then Buxton, who has learned nothing playing for Baldelli for years, used his usual all-or-nothing swing, pulling a grounder to third base. Contact to any other part of the field would have produced a run. And how great it would have been for Buxton to lay down a bunt, putting huge pressure on the defense. I’ve been waiting for Buxton to bunt for ten years now. Getting Outman in would not only have given the Twins a run and perhaps the victory (they lost, 4-2, in extra innings), it would have given Outman a psychological boost as he tries to make his new team.  Baldelli, in short, may be good managing established role players, but he won’t inspire new players, and let them, or make them, play aggressive baseball, which is what the new-look Twins will need next year.
Now, as to the strategic point:

August 16: With competitive baseball out of reach, you might think that the rest of the Twins season will consist of auditions for next year, except that few on the current roster figure to be in the Majors next year if the Twins are to be competitive. Among the pitchers, there’s Joe Ryan and, if he recovers from his injury, Pablo Lopez. Ohl, Adams, Urena should be distant memories. Probably Ramirez and Funderburk too. Sands, Topa and Tonkin could fill some low-pressure relief innings, but it’s not like they’re starting careers and have room for improvement. The only “find” among the newcomers is Thomas Hatch, who is willing to throw strikes where all the others prefer to nibble. Bailey Ober, once the most reliable of the starters, has lost whatever his magic was. Matthews, Festa and Woods-Richardson, the next generation, can’t seem to stay healthy enough or consistent enough to be counted on, although that’s what the Twins will do. Nabbing a successful pitcher in the free agent market is the hardest thing to do, and the Twins have the track record to prove it.
Things are not much rosier on the offensive side. Let’s say Luke Keaschall improves his defense and continues to be the Twins best hitter. We can hope, but we’re discouraged by so many recent examples of Twins who have never lived up to their rookie promise: Sano, Miranda, Julien and Lewis come to mind. It’s pretty clear that Wallner and Larnach will never rise above being streaky, below-average corner outfielders. Roden and Outman, acquired in Black Thursday trades, rank a notch below. Brooks Lee at short makes you realize how good Correa’s arm was and makes you hope the Twins #1 draft pick this year gets to the Bigs sooner than later. The Twins don’t even have a backup catcher to critique. The only bright spots I see are Jeffers, who is putting up good numbers for a catcher, and Kody Clemens, who has more big hits than any other Twin and is performing well above anyone’s expectations. I can see him holding down the utility spot on the roster next year. Buxton is playing more and putting up bigger numbers than in recent past years, but like every other Twin, except perhaps Keaschall, he can’t be counted on to even put the ball in play in a clutch situation. The other teams that are regularly beating the Twins have that in common: they more consistently put the ball in play, and lots of times that leads to good things happening.
I’ll revisit this picture in a month, when the sample size will be bigger. I don’t, however, expect it to be any better.

August 10: Every spring training I watch the box scores, looking for little-known players who surprise. This year I was enamored with the statistics of two Minor Leaguers: Mickey Gasper and DaShawn Keirsay. Could either add a surprise spark to a roster of mostly well known average players? Gasper made the Opening Day roster but didn’t last long. Keirsay has spent a fair amount of time in Minneapolis, as injuries sidelined Buxton and Wallner for stretches. Based on what I’ve seen since, neither belongs in the Majors. Gasper looks clueless with the bat, although he has taken some valuable walks. He caught his first game today and didn’t embarrass himself, except when the Royals stole second base. With Christian Vaszquez’s days as a Twin numbered, it appears that acquiring a veteran backup catcher should be the Twins’ offseason priority. As for Keirsay, his value was as a pinch-runner, but the new look Twins appear both to be faster and overstocked with outfielders. I suspect his window has closed. And once again I’ve learned the lesson that spring training statistics don’t matter.

August 10: There are a number of sensational rookies shaking up rosters around the Majors, but the Twins’ Luke Keaschall looks second to none. He’s on a 12-game hitting streak to start his career, with 12 rbi to boot. Today, with the Twins looking bumbling and outclassed, he hit a two-out, two-run opposite-field home run in the 11th inning to beat the Royals, 5-3. How bad were the Twins? First, their parade of relief pitchers put batters on base every inning, and when they got outs they were line drives and long flies. Only the Royals’ 1-for-15 with RISP kept Minnesota in the game. The Twins’ first three runs came on a walk by the hapless Mickey Gasper and 31-year-old rookie Ryan Fitzgerald’s first Major League hit, a home run. Then behind 3-2, Austin Martin opened the 8th with a triple when the Royals rightfielder rashly dove for a line drive in front of him and let it run to the wall. The next two batters failed to produce, but Ryan Jeffers, the closest thing the Twins have to a clutch hitter, lined a single. In the 9th Kansas City loaded the bases but didn’t score; the Twins went out 1-2-3.  Michael Tonkin pitched two courageous extra innings to give the Twins two chances for a walkoff win, but both times they failed to advance the ghost runner. In the 10th, Baldelli curiously used Royce Lewis to pinch-run for Brooks Lee at second while letting the hapless Mickey Gasper try to advance the runner to third. Gasper made the worst attempts at bunting I’ve seen in the Majors (just as he had in a game last week), striking out. Ryan Fitzgerald then hit a long fly that would have won the game had Lewis been on third. Lewis failed to tag and move over to third, not that it eventually mattered, just looked bad. In the 11th, with Martin on second, Jeffers hit a long drive to rightfield, far enough to move the ghost runner to third with one out. Martin, however, hesitated on the basepaths before returning to second to tag up; starting late for third he was thrown out, seemingly a rally-killing doubleplay. Until with two outs, Keaschall ended it with his third hit of the game.

August 4: With a little distance, the Twins’ trades look a bit worse. The only player received in return who has played significant time, Alan Roden, has looked harmless at the plate, leading the team in strikeouts, and took a bad route in the outfield, turning an out into a double. As for the dump leading to a youth movement, yesterday’s win came via a 34-year-old starter and 35-year-old reliever. Meanwhile, we have to watch Eddie Julien try to play second and UCSB alum Noah Davis throw batting practice. Duran is looking like a monster in Philly; but bless him, he’ll have many more save opportunities there than he would have had in Minnesota. Whatever the Twins got for trading Willi Castro won’t replace what they should have had by signing him to a multi-year contract. And Kendry Rojas better be good eventually if Minnesota fans are to forgive the Twins for trading Louie Varland. As noted, Alan Roden isn’t likely to do it; and moreover, he’s a lefthanded-hitting corner outfielder, of which the Twins already have one too many.

August 1: Knowing nothing of what they got in return, I can confidently state that the Twins’ fire sale this week–trading away 10 players from the 26-man roster–was a disaster for their fan base in general and me in particular. They were hard to watch as is, but now it will be pure masochism. Even should the hitters get lucky and score some runs, who will protect a lead, with the five top relievers all gone. The ones who remain were used only in blow-out games, and when they weren’t the games quickly became blowouts. But let’s take a fond look back at the faces who are now gone:
Jhoan Duran, the Twins closer, is the biggest name and received the most promising return, partly because, like Griffin Jax, he is under team control for a few more years. As readers know, I was never confident in his closing ability, statistics aside. As someone pointed out, it will be interesting to see how he will hold up in Philadelphia, where stakes are higher and fans less forgiving. His sporadic control, inability to hold baserunners and nervous looks will come under scrutiny, without the dispensation he had in Minnesota of being the first to consistently throw over 100 mph and being “ours.”
A year ago Griffin Jax was the Twins’ best reliever, but he has slipped this year. Perhaps management saw this as a trend and thought they were selling high by getting a needed starting pitcher (Taj Bradley) in return.
The biggest surprise, and trade most questioned, was sending Louie Varland to the Blue Jays. He was the most used reliever on the Twins, he’s a native Minnesotan, he has only begun his career in relief, he would not be arbitration-eligible for five more years and is seemingly a player who could grow with the Twins long-term. Maybe he was necessary to secure another potential starter, but it’s unknown whether the trade target will be better than Varland, who is also a potential starter, as far as that goes.
Carlos Correa is the headline in the purge, but his situation is unique. He was given the Twins’ largest contract ever with the hope that he could produce championship-level baseball in Minnesota. Once that appeared out of reach–i.e., by June of this year–his Twins paycheck made no sense. If there is a positive byproduct of the Twins fire sale, this is it: it enabled them to get out from under Correa’s contract that would have impacted their payroll for the next three years. As it is, they are paying the Astros $30 million to take him off their hands. Between frequent injuries, diminished power, advancing age and his veteran’s lackadaisical lack of hustle, Correa was no longer someone to build the team around.
The logic behind trading free-agents-to-be once the playoffs are out of reach is clear; hence the remaining moves are easier to justify. Also, once the team signals its intention to punt on the season, it’s only decent to let your rentals ply their trade with teams playing for a championship. There’s always the chance to reacquire them at the end of the year if so inclined. Harrison Bader, Ty France and Danny Coulombe were this-year free agents intended to plug holes and they all performed beyond expectation. I could have made the argument for re-signing any or all of them at year end, unless and until younger alternatives appeared. If any of them netted a useful prospect in return, the Twins will come out ahead. Once the Twins lost series to the Colorado Rockies and Washington Nationals coming out of the All-Star break, their fates were sealed.
Willi Castro and Brock Stewart both had a year-longer history with the Twins than the above trio and were among the ten most valuable Twins. Stewart’s age and injury record are excuses for letting him go. The only excuse for trading Castro is the belief that he has played so well that the Twins would not have been able to re-sign him. Last year he was the Twins’ MVP and lone All-Star, and this year he continued playing all over the field.
The trade–more like a give-away–of Chris Paddack earlier in the week was the signal that the Twins would be sellers in the market. Other than that they had no one to replace him–calling up unheralded minor leaguer Pierson Ohl to take his next start, a predictable loss–Paddack’s departure was a largely neutral event: he pitched some strong games but just as many bad ones. He filled a spot in the rotation but was not in the plans for next year, when the Twins would count on a rotation of Lopez, Ryan, Ober, Woods-Richardson, Matthews and Festa.
All that remains is to judge the value the Twins received, beyond substantially reducing their payroll. Of the 13 players the Twins received, maybe eight are considered Major League “prospects.” Of course, the Twins’ minor league system is littered with “prospects” who have never made the Big Leagues and never will. Then again, some of these prospects who previously failed have now been called up to fill the roster spots vacated in the purge, including Eddie Julien and Austin Martin. Clearly, the future is not now.

July 28: Waiting for what I expect to be a 4-3 loss to the BoSox I have two observations, one old, one new. The old is my frustration at Jhoan Duran’s complete inability to hold a baserunner on. In most save situations, the Twins seem willing to let any baserunner steal second, counting on Duran to strike out the batter or induce a harmless ground ball. Tonight, however, he entered the 9th in a tie game. He displayed his second weakness by walking the leadoff batter. To me, that’s a reliever’s cardinal sin. Boston’s pinch runner promptly stole both second and third base; the next batter singled him home to, essentially, decide the game. Oh, two other batters reached base and both immediately tried to steal. Luckily, Vasquez caught one. Every other pitcher works on holding the runner; why give Duran a pass?
My second thought is prompted by the Twins’ trade of starting pitcher Chris Paddack and, as an inexplicable throw-in, former starter now minor leaguer Randy Dobnak to division rival Detroit for a 19-year-old catcher/first baseman. This continues a trading deadline pattern of teams trading starters for minor league prospects–e.g. the Rockies giving the Yankees Ryan McMahon to the their new starting third baseman.  I get it that teams would rather get something for players approaching free agency when they would get nothing after the season (although I don’t understand the compensation pick rules). But surely there would be trading partners competing for someone like Paddack, who can hold down a rotation spot, and at least give a contending team pitching depth. Couldn’t the Twins get more than a single minor leaguer who might never make the team–or if he does it won’t be for three or four more years? Given the paucity of arms in the Twins’ farm system, I was hoping they could get at least two pitching prospects, not a part-time catcher.

July 21: Any thoughts that the Twins would turn around their season with the weak schedule following the All-Star break were quickly dashed by consecutive blowout losses to the Colorado Rockies, on pace to the worst record in modern history. As expected, the Twins won the third game behind their ace Joe Ryan, but they can only count on him every five days–and even then he could be facing Tarik Skubal. Chris Paddack, who has shown signs of competence, effectively ended the Twins’ season by giving up four runs to the first four Rockies hitters he faced coming out of the break. Normally reliable Brock Stewart lost the second game by giving up a two-out three run homer, which turned an initial 3-0 Minnesota lead into a 6-3 deficit. If the Twins hitters had more pluck or luck that might not have mattered, but they have been streaky, at best, all year, and it appears they will remain that way.
Now, the interest is in what moves the Twins will make before the end-of-month trading deadline. It would be foolhardy to give up value for a short-term asset in the hope of reaching this year’s playoffs. The question is, what could they get for a valuable piece, like Griffin Jax or, my preferred trade target, Jhoan Duran. Louie Varland seems ready to assume the closer role and Duran, despite good statistics, makes me nervous. Harrison Bader and Ty France, free-agents-to-be, are mentioned as trade bait, but it’s hard to envision much value coming in return. And I do like both of them, as well as Kody Clemens, among the marginal Twins who’ve made this year somewhat enjoyable.

July 17: Hooray for the two Twins All-Stars! Joe Ryan pitched a 1-2-3 4th inning with two strikeouts, looking as dominant as any AL hurler. Byron Buxton lined out to left then doubled to right, igniting the AL’s 9th-inning rally that tied the game, scoring the fifth run with a smile on his face. But someone please tell me: what was Aaron Boone doing, hitting Jonathan Aranda, with 11 home runs for the season, cleanup in the homer-off instead of Home Run Derby champion Cal Raleigh, with 38 dingers. That would have made a fun All Star finish a classic.

July 13: Against all my expectations, Byron Buxton has turned himself into a good hitter. He has always been an elite defender, although with the recent arrival of several sensational new centerfielders he is no longer nonpareil there. But in past years he has seemed vastly overpaid because 1) he has missed more games than he has played, due to a series of unrelated injuries, and 2) he inevitably strikes out when facing a good pitcher in any important situation. My least favorite moment from Twins games of the last decade has been watching Buxton trudge back to the dugout after striking out, looking over his shoulder–at what, home plate, the opposing pitcher? Never the kind of disappointment or anger at himself you sometimes see from others; more a look of bewilderment, as in ‘how could that happen?’ I’ll tell you how: you continually wave at breaking balls off the outside corner, except when you’re watching a fastball down the middle. Clark Griffith long ago told me that Buxton would never be a good Major League hitter because of some flaw in his swing, but I never knew exactly what that was.
This year, however, Buxton has 1) largely remained healthy, even eschewing the DH role he was accorded last year, and 2) developed a feel for the strike zone, taking walks and laying off the low, outside breaking balls. In the past, he punished mistakes, and he’s doing that again, regularly striking balls at over 100 mph. But he’s also hitting some good pitches by some good pitchers. In short, he has become a force at the top of the Twins lineup, and once he gets on base his speed is another weapon: so far he has stolen 18 bases without being thrown out.
All this is a lead-in to one of the most remarkable moments I’ve witnessed in a baseball game, which occurred in yesterday’s win over the Pirates. In his first at-bat Buxton beat out a routine grounder to shortstop! Next at-bat drove the ball over the centerfielder’s head and raced to a triple. His third time up he hit a ball to the left-center gap that might have been his second triple, except that the ball bounced into the stands for a ground-rule double. The announcers quickly noted that Buxton was 3/4 of the way to a “cycle,” with the hardest part, the triple, already in the books. With the Twins winning big, Buxton’s fourth at-bat came early, in the fifth inning. He lined a single to left–no cycle, but a not-bad 4-for-4 day at the plate. There would be one more chance, which came around in the seventh, with everyone hoping for the impossible: a home run on demand. Strike one. Strike two. Then a fastball or sinker at the bottom of the strike zone: Buxton swung, the ball flew out to centerfield, going, going, gone into the batter’s eye greenery, 15 feet over the farthest fence in the park. The first cycle in Target Field history.

July 6: Now that my hopes for a championship season, never high, are gone (although the AL title appears wide open for the taking by someone this year), I can enjoy Twins games for their own merits, not concerned with what a win or loss does to their standing. On that score, their series this weekend with Tampa Bay was quite fun. The opener was won by a walk-off homer by Harrison Bader after coming back from 3-1 down. The next game was even better: down 5-1, at which point I wrote the Twins off, they came back to a tie on a Royce Lewis line drive and a totally unexpected three-run homer by Kody Clemens. In the 9th, Buxton walked, went to third on Castro’s ground ball single to right and scored the winning run when Brooks Lee laid a bunt down the first base line on the first pitch he saw. The kind of small ball Twins fans have been asking for, in vain, for years. The Twins lost the final game, but only after a two-run pinch-hit home run by Bader, again, tied the score at 4. (The Rays had taken the 4-2 lead cheaply, on a pair of swinging bunts.) Reduced to using Justin Topa in the 10th, who hurt his cause with a throwing error on a bunt, the Twins fell 7-5. But it was a fun game.

July 1: The Twins reached the season’s halfway point with encouraging wins over division leaders Seattle and Detroit. Throw in the next game and the Twins could point to stellar starts by Ryan, Woods-Richardson and Festa, which gave hope that the pitching implosion earlier in the month was an aberration. Then, unfortunately, Bailey Ober continued his mysterious inability to do anything but throw gopher balls and a decent Chris Paddack start meant nothing when opposed by Cy Young winner Tarik Skubal. The hitting malaise prompted by Skubal  traveled with the team to Miami, where Ryan’s one-run outing was wasted. So, my faint glimmer of hope has faded, and I am reconciled to, at best, a .500 year for Minnesota.
That wouldn’t be the end of the world–everybody can be average; what bothers me is the lack of hope I see for the future. Watching Recap on mlb.tv each morning I am impressed with the young players almost every team has: Jackson Holliday and Jackson Chourios, just to name players named “Jackson.” Who do the Twins have? St. Paul is full of “future Twins” who didn’t make it: Austin Martin, Edouard Julien, Jose Miranda. The bright lights of spring training that were given a shot–DeShawn Keirsay, Mickey Gasper–came and went without an impact. There is literally no one at Triple-A that I can’t wait to see. What about young Twins on the roster that could develop? Brooks Lee’s hitting has improved this year. If he can be made the regular second baseman he could turn into a solid cog. That depends largely on Royce Lewis’s ability to 1) stay healthy and 2) emerge from his almost year-long slump. In short, while other teams are getting better, or at least more interesting, what we see now for Minnesota is all we’re likely to get for some time to come. Larnach and Wallner are what they are, .250 streak hitters who will never rise above average. The Athletic had a great article with data showing that Correa left his reputation for clutch hitting in Houston; he has been one of the worst since coming to the Twins. My eyeball said that; statistics confirm it. Willi Castro, Ty France, Ryan Jeffers, Harrison Bader, even Byron Buxton are well into their careers and aren’t going to suddenly get better. The Twins do have good pitchers, and if Ober can figure something out the pitchers will keep them in most games. I only wish they had a better, or at least more interesting, offense.

June 24: An interesting counterpoint: yesterday Emilio Pagan closed out a Reds win over the Yankees; today Jhoan Duran singlehandedly lost a game to the Mariners. Like everyone else, I was happy to see Pagan leave the Twins, where he had lost several key winnable games in midseason, sabotaging their season, a year after he had excelled for the Orioles. Now Cincinnati has reclaimed him as their closer; although his statistics aren’t remarkable, he does have 18 saves (against 3 blown saves) and an excellent o.85 WHIP. Duran, who somehow was given the Reliever of the Month award in May, has been horrendous this month. At the moment, he is clearly the fourth best reliever for Minnesota, and you wonder how long Baldelli will continue him in the closer role. Earlier in the season Baldelli spread around the closing opportunities. That seems the best strategy again, although I’m not sure I’d trust Duran even in an earlier inning.
Tonight Varland, Jax and Stewart threw relatively stress-free innings, holding Seattle to a 5-5 stalemate. That left the 9th for Duran, and I was nervous from the first pitch. (It also begged the question: if Duran held and the game went into extra innings, who would pitch for Minnesota?) He got the first batter out on a scorching line drive that Brooks Lee caught with a dive.  With an 0-2 count on the next batter he spiked a breaking ball onto Polanco’s foot. A ground-ball single–a Duran specialty this year–put runners on the corners. Then he hit another batter. A long sacrifice fly basically decided the outcome. Duran got out of the inning with the bases still loaded, avoiding disaster. But with the Twins’ usual 9th-inning flailing the loss was assured. I have as little confidence in Duran as my closer as I had with Pagan back in the day.

June 22: When you get 18 hits and still lose, for a series sweep, you know you’re in trouble. Three quick observations: the Twins pitching staff, formerly the team’s strength, has fallen apart. Every starter has lost his most recent outing, and both David Festa and Simeon Woods-Richardson appear not ready, if they ever will be, for a Major League rotation. There hasn’t been a “quality start” in two weeks. The offense still lacks a clutch hitter. Even when the Twins are scoring runs, they are leaving many more on base, often loaded. Byron Buxton is on a home-run tear, but they come with no one on base and rarely in a clutch situation. Today, with the tying run on second in the 9th, Wallner popped up and Larnach struck out looking. Third, the defense is sloppy. Partly this may be due to Baldelli’s practice of giving players a different position to play each game. Who’s at second? Lee? Clemens? Castro? Another part may be the inevitable lack of confidence instilled by losing eight of nine games in a row. One last point: the Twins continue to play boring baseball. Other teams bunt runners over, pull off double steals and cause balks, put the ball in play, build rallies. There’s no sparkplug on the Twins: no Nick Punto or what’s-his-name “Tortuga.” Harrison Bader is about the only one offering excitement. Oh, well.

June 18: The only comforting thing about the Twins’ six-game losing streak is that the Yankees have also lost six straight. Plus, they were shut out three times in a row, ending a 30-inning scoreless streak tonight.

June 15: I’ve never been convinced that Jhoan Duran was the closer the Twins needed, despite the supposedly nasty “splinker” and 100+ fastball in his arsenal. It never looks like he knows where the ball is going, and his face conveys none of the confidence you want in your closer. Watching Josh Hader, Emmanuel Clase and a half-dozen of the other established closers you can see the difference. Yesterday and today he blew two great starts, by Joe Ryan and Simeon Woods-Richardson, just when the Twins needed a pick-me-up. Instead, they are now officially in free fall and will be a .500 team very soon. The first rule for a closer is, Don’t walk the leadoff batter in the 9th, but Duran just did that twice. It’s especially stressful when, problem two, you have no pickoff move or ability to hold the runner at first. I’ll bet the steal rate when Duran is pitching is between 95 and 100%. When the lead is two or three, you can wave that base off as unimportant, but it has become a habit that Duran can’t break when it’s important, as it was today. When Duran came up, his ability to throw 100+ was unusual and helped him get strikeouts. It’s no longer unusual, and his velocity has dropped to, more often, 99. In any case, hitters seem better able to handle his fastball, and in fact he now relies more on his breaking ball, which unfortunately he has trouble controlling. In fairness, he is often getting beat on ground balls that turn into hits. But still, they are turning into hits. Last year I would’ve preferred Griffin Jax as my closer. This year I’d use Louie Varland. But where, then, would you use Duran?

June 13: It turns out the Twins pitching staff was a finely tuned vehicle and once a wheel came off the whole thing collapses. The wheel in this case was Pablo Lopez; he was not always great, or as great as his reputation as the putative ace, but he took the ball every five days and delivered six or seven solid innings. Shortly after, Zebby Mathews, who hasn’t been great but has shown potential, went on the IL too. What this did was put more–too much–pressure on the remaining starters. When Simeon Woods-Richardson was called up and quickly imploded, the pressure built. Then formerly reliable Bailey Ober, who has arguably been the most consistent pitcher over the last year, mentioned a hip injury that may or may not have contributed to a loss of already low velocity. He was rocked by the formerly offense-challenged Rangers. Now tonight Chris Paddack, who has been excellent for more than a month, has just been socked for five runs in the first two innings by the Astros. When the Twins starters falter, Rocco brings in his second-line relievers: the result was a 16-4 and 16-3 loss to Texas, which has to do something to the team’s former confidence. Joe Ryan, the Twins’ best All-Star prospect, is the only starter left with an intact reputation. But even if he pitches well, there’s no guarantee his teammates will score enough runs behind him. The summer is suddenly looking awfully long.

June 6: The Twins come home after a 5-5 road trip, their longest for 2025, without significant change in the standings–they bounce back and forth with the Guardians for second in the AL East–but with some positive clarity in their roster and one big question mark. I didn’t mind the losses: they were well played games against tough opponents–Tampa Bay and Seattle in their parks–and the Twins showed an unusual comeback ability in tying all three games against the Mariners in the 9th inning. Kody Clemens and the returning Matt Wallner suddenly give manager Baldelli solid options all over the field, even at catcher where Christian Vasquez is showing some life. The Minor League fill-ins–DaShawn Keirsey, Ryan Fitzgerald, Mickey Gasper–are gone, and the promising Luke Keaschall is still on the horizon to enliven the dog days of August. Royce Lewis ended his horrendous 0-for-32 slump and is still far from the force he once was. I will say that he has hit more hard balls that were outs than was probable; but if his hard hits are all ground balls to short and line drives to left that won’t change fast enough.
On the pitching side, Joe Ryan has been an All-Star, Bailey Ober has pulled his weight and Chris Paddack has been a revelation. When Pablo Lopez was eating innings the Twins, regardless of the fifth starter, had a dominant pitching staff. The relievers, minus Jorge Alcala, put up strong numbers, often filling in four innings in close games. Duran, Jax, Stewart, Sands, Topa have been more or less reliable. Without Coulombe they are short a lefty, and they could use a long reliever if they could jettison Alcala. The big question is whether the Twins will survive losing Lopez for two months. Zebby Mathews is starting to grow into the fifth starter spot. David Festa was pitching even better than Mathews in Triple-A, but he was rocked when he took Lopez’s spot yesterday. One hopes it was an aberration, just as Mathews suffered in his debut. The bottom line: the Twins look competitive. We’ll see how they do when they play the Tigers and Yankees.

May 31: If last night’s game in Seattle was for real, then these are not your 2024 Twins. Earlier this year and for the last several years, a 9th-inning comeback was not in the Twins DNA. Going meekly was almost their trademark. But last night, down 6-3 with two outs against the league’s best closer, who had yet to be scored upon all year, they scored three times to tie the game. Willi Castro hitting his second home run of the night was surprise enough, but then Byron Buxton, usually a sure strikeout in the clutch, singled and stole second. Trevor Larnach singled him home with his third hit of the game. What made the comeback even more remarkable was that the Twins had come back from a 4-0 1st inning deficit to 4-3 only to see Cole Raleigh hit a two-run homer off Cole Sands in the 8th, the kind of deflating knockout punch that generally puts the Twins to sleep. Jhoan Duran threw a clean 9th and the Twins exploded for six runs in the 10th, with Correa, Buxton and Larnach each driving in two. Everyone had a good game except, another surprise, Kody Clemens, who had been carrying the Twins the last two weeks. As we know, momentum is tomorrow’s starting pitcher, but this result has to boost everyone’s confidence, which can only make the Twins play better. Now if Wallner returns and hits as well as he has on his rehab assignment, if Zebby Mathews builds on the six shutout innings he threw after the disastrous 1st, if Royce Lewis tries to hit up the middle or to right instead of rolling over and hitting ground balls to short (and if no one gets hurt)…

May 27: The Twins have reverted to their early-season formula of limited offense and shaky relief work, losing 7-2 in Tampa Bay thanks to Brock Stewart, Kody Funderburk and, more surprisingly, Trevor Larnach. The very inning he was shifted to leftfield from right, the Rays hit three long flies that resulted in four runs. Harrison Bader would have caught two, possibly all three. It felt like watching instant replay!
If that was the kind of thing I’d never seen before, there was an even odder moment when Baldelli challenged a Tampa Bay runner who went back to first on a pickoff attempt then scampered to second when the throw was bounced past the first baseman. It seems Baldelli contended that the runner had past first base, into foul territory, then reversed toward second without retouching the bag. Who knew such was required? Neither of the announcers had heard of such a rule. We all know that when a runner passes second base and has to return to first – e.g., when an outfielder makes a surprising catch – the runner has to retouch second. But why would such a rule apply to a runner that goes backward to first base? Perhaps I’ll learn more in the future.

May 22: The Twins’ 13-game win streak was undoubtedly as much an aberration as their 7-15 season start; so I will put both in the rear-view mirror and look at the 2025 season as starting now. With all the ups and downs, the Twins, Guardians and Royals have arrived at this point with roughly identical records, mostly accumulated by playing outside the division (also true for the Tigers, who have stunned the baseball savants by jumping out to the best record in the AL, a couple notches above their division rivals). As they start to have more games within the division we will see who is playoff-worthy and who will fade.
I went to Minneapolis to watch the series opener with the Guardians and unfortunately was rained out after three innings. The teams wound up splitting a doubleheader yesterday, with the rubber game postponed to later in the year. The bad news is that when the Guardians were behind 5-2 in the 9th they scored three times to tie before losing in the bottom of the inning; when the Twins were behind 5-1 in the nightcap they went meekly. So, although the teams ended up as they began, with the Twins a half-game up in the standings, the optics favored the visitors. Also troubling was the sudden reversion to bullpen weakness: after the phenomenal string of 19 scoreless relief innings, we’ve just seen Varland, Duran, Sands and Funderburk give up runs. The Twins top four starters remain the team’s main strength. Zebby Mathews was a disappointment as a replacement for Simeon Woods-Richardson, but we can still hope he will look as good as he did in spring training and at St. Paul earlier this year.
The most interesting development at this point in the Twins’ season is the role being played by players who were not on the roster, or even heard of, when the season began. Jonah Bride, Kody Clemens, Luke Keaschall, DeShawn Keirsay, Carson McCusker and Tk Richardson all came from nowhere to start games and currently fill roster spots that should belong to Matt Wallner, Carlos Correa, Byron Buxton, Eddie Julien and (until he recently returned) Willi Castro. (N.B. No pitchers in the bunch.) How this will shake out over the course of the year will be fun to see, and depend partially on injuries, but it’s safe to say that the Twins in September will be different from the Twins this week. Of the newcomers, Kody Clemens has already proven worthwhile and Keaschall appears to have the highest ceiling. If Baldelli can figure out how to integrate four second basemen into his regular rotation it could be an impressive roster. Again, as always, depending on Correa and Buxton.

May 11: A seven-game winning streak brought the Twins back to .500 for the year, something that seemed remote just a week ago. Credit the pitching: the starters have uniformly kept the game close and the relievers have held every lead and, more significantly, not imploded as so often happened earlier in the season. The return of Willi Castro and Royce Lewis has brought stability to the lineup, freeing us from Eddie Julien and Mickey Gasper. The only negative is that the Tigers, Guardians and Royals have won just as often over this period. Regardless, the Twins games have become fun to watch again.

May 5: Another data point in my admittedly random study of the Twins’ practice of routinely “bringing the infield in” when there is a runner on third with less than two outs:
The Red Sox got the first two men on in the second inning(!), behind 1-0. They successfully bunted(!) the runners over (a play the Twins scorn). The next batter hit a high chopper that bounced over the drawn-in shortstop’s head and two runs scored. Had the infield been in regular position, only one run (at most) would’ve scored and an out would have been recorded. My two takeaways: when there is a runner on second as well as third, the risk/reward ratio goes against bringing the infield in. Two, the second inning of a 1-0 game is too early to worry about a single run–i.e., the runner on third.
The previous few games highlighted another regular strategic mistake by the Twins, their automatic use of the “run-on-contact” play when they have a runner on third with less than two outs. When Buxton was the runner he scored, barely. When France and Jeffers were the runners, they were out by a mile, killing Twins’ rallies. The clear corollary: when a slow-to-average runner is on third, the old adage–wait to see if the ball gets through–should apply.  As for the Twins’ 2-1 series win at Fenway Park, it’s nice to see some life from the Twins offense–e.g, yesterday was the first game they have won after being behind in the 6th inning!–and the imminent return of Lewis and Castro will at least make them more interesting. The route to the playoffs, however, seems fairly well blocked by Detroit’s strong start and solid roster, not to mention that Cleveland is also in the way. Still, the games can be fun.

May 2: When the Twins won six of seven, admittedly against the weak opposition of White Sox and Angels, the season appeared to have some promise. Four straight losses, against the Guardians and now the Red Sox, have brought us back to what seems to be the reality of 2025: these Twins just aren’t very good. Yes, the starting pitching is solid–Ryan, Ober, Lopez, even Paddack are keeping the Twins in every game–but relief pitching and defense continue to show cracks almost every day. And finally, worst of all, the hitting is atrocious, led by the utter lack of a reliable clutch hitter. Buxton and Correa have the best recent averages, but both are prone to strike out amid rallies. Due to injuries, the Twins are playing journeyman Minor Leaguers–Mickey Gasper, Jonah Bride and Kody Clemens, to name names. Eddie Julien shouldn’t be starting either (and was the obvious goat tonight). One hopes that Royce Lewis and Willi Castro will soon return, at which point some or all of the players just named can be sent to St. Paul.

April 21: The Twins’ collapse alluded to in the previous post was deeper and more profound than anticipated. Being swept by an Atlanta team that was in last place in its division offers little hope for all-important upcoming series with the even more lowly  White Sox, but that’s all we’ve got. An interesting subplot is the instant success of Luke Keaschell, who was supposed to be a year or two away from the majors. Not only is he the Twins’ leading hitter after three games, his at bats are professional, he’s got good speed and a great body and hair. How they use him, or even whether they keep him, once Wallner returns will be telling. Both Wallner and Larnach are decent players, but neither shows signs of stardom, whereas Keaschell’s  ceiling is already much higher. And then there’s Harrison Bader, who has quickly become a fan favorite with his hustle and who, until Buxton hit a meaningless homer in yesterday’s 6-2 defeat, was leading the team with three home runs! Already, Bader had been spoken of as midseason trade potential, which Keaschell’s showing, if it continues, in the bigs or St. Paul, would make even more likely.

April 18: The Twins finally showed some life by taking a series, 2-1, from the NL-leading Mets. The starting pitching was excellent, but that hasn’t been the problem. I don’t think any starter gave up more than a run the last time through the rotation. Relievers have been mostly good, but with the starter generally leaving after five and Baldelli insistent on not using a reliever more than an inning at a time, it has meant that the Twins have to have clean outings from at least four separate relievers. If a reliever is on three out of four times, that means that there will be one slip-up per game. In the finale against the Mets, normally reliable Griffin Jax came in to protect a 3-0 lead in the 8th and gave up four hits and three runs. Duran and Sands pitched a scoreless 9th and 10th and the Twins walked it off, but it was harder than it should have been. As I watch the Twins playing the Braves tonight, they once again are turning over a three-run lead to the bullpen for four fraught innings. If the Twins hitters could add on late-inning runs I’d breathe more easily, but for some reason their offense is generally limited to early in the game.

PS: Hate to say “I told you so,” but the problems I just identified caused an excruciating loss. Baldelli pulled Paddack after five dominant innings. He didn’t let Varland or Coulombe go more than one inning. His third reliever, Jax again, gave up the 4-1 lead and his replacement, Sands, gave up two more, transposing a comfortable 4-1 win into a 6-4 loss when the Twins did nothing in their 9th. Once again, they scored four runs in the first four innings then went 1-for-16 the rest of the way. I want to check box scores tomorrow to see 1) how many managers let their relievers pitch more than one inning, and 2) if the Twins are last in the Majors in home runs.

April 14: One day after playing what manager and broadcasters called their best game of the year, a 5-1 win over Detroit, the 2025 Twins were back today, looking terrible in a 5-1 loss to the Mets, with three hits, 13 strikeouts and two errors. When a Twins pitcher airmailed an easy throw to first, allowing a run to score, the Mets broadcaster commented, “You come to a town where the team is 5-12 and you see why.” Indeed.

April 9: Keeping track, as promised, the Twins lost yesterday when Bobby Witt Jr. scored from third on a ground ball to a drawn-in infield. The strategy didn’t hurt, but neither did it help. As for the Twins’ play  over the last four games, their lack of hitting seems to be a permanent feature, not just the result of a slow start. They won one game with a six-run inning, but the bats were quiet for the other eight frames. Most disturbing was the rubber game with the Astros when the Twins got off to a 7-1 lead in four innings, which should have decided the day (and would have if the Twins had been the team on the short end). The Astros, still very professional, outscored the Twins 8-0 from there. Most disheartening to this fan is the Twins’ general inability to rally in the 8th and 9th innings, as well as any extras. In the Astros’ 10th, they started with a successful sacrifice bunt, then threw in a couple stolen bases–all plays foreign to the Twins–to score twice. When it came the Twins’ turn, their ghost runner never left second base. Some teams just consistently put the ball in play, which is at least fun to watch and often produces results. The Twins still bat Byron Buxton third or leadoff, where he struck out four times yesterday.

April 4: The dispiriting thing about the Twins’ Home Opener loss to Houston is not the 5-2 score or the failure of Joe Ryan, but how boring the game was. The Twins put together a fun first at bat: Wallner triple, Buxton infield single and stolen base, Larnach rbi single. The next eight innings – nada. Nothing to see here.
On defense, though, one topic for further discussion: with the scored tied, the Astros put runners on second and third, courtesy of a Ryan hit batter and balk. Although ony the fourth inning, the Twins played the infield in, as they do invariably. A ground ball just beyond Correa’s reach resulted in two runs and, essentially, the Houston victory. Had the infield not been in, the grounder most likely would have resulted in an inning-ending double play. For some time I have felt that the Twins are burnt by playing the infield in, but they must have analytics that show otherwise. I will try to note this year when the strategy is effective and when, as yesterday, it is counterproductive. I certainly think that when there is a runner on second as well as first, the damage to be done must outweigh the chance of preventing a run.

April 3: My low expectations dropped even further when the Twins went to Chicago and instead of having the horrendous White Sox cure their ills, they played terribly, two hits and 13 strikeouts and an ineffective Chris Paddack, and fell to last place, 0-4. On Tuesday, however, their luck turned, and an opposite field doink by Jose Miranda scored the runs for their first win. Then Wednesday everything clicked: Pablo Lopez looked the ace he’s supposed to be,Byron Buxton hit his first home and Carlos Correa collected his first two hits. The defense was sharp, Jhoan Duran threw a clean inning, and Harrison Bader emerged as an offensive force, hitting his third multi-run, albeit meaningless, home run. Miraculously, the Twins find themselves, despite a 2-4 record, in a five-way tie for first in the Central Division.

March 29: So much for the notion that the Twins might have the best bullpen in the league. Jorge Alcala looked like a Minor League call-up, as he did all last year, and Jhoan Duran, who had an ERA over 5.00 in non-save situations last year, started down that path again this year, unable to finish the inning he was assigned to keep him sharp. Louie Varland looked good for two hitters, then gave up the game-deciding hit. Griffin Jax, the only sure thing, gave up a home run in his inning yesterday. Maybe they will all try harder if they are given a lead to protect, but when will that happen? Maybe in the upcoming series with the White Sox. For now, the offense is as feeble as predicted. And the contrast with the Cardinals, who have exciting players who can run, play defense and make contact, is stark.

March 28: Two takeaways from Opening Day: Pablo Lopez secured his spot as a non-ace for the Twins. How this will be recognized once Opening Day is over and the rotation rotates I don’t know, but next year I will expect to see Bailey Ober or Joe Ryan open the season. The second disappointment is the 11 strikeouts for the Twins. I was hoping that their “make-contact” philosophy would cut down on double-digit strikeout games, but so far no results. (By contrast, the Cardinals had only 5 K’s against Lopez and several strikeout-dominant Twins relievers.)

Twins Preview 2025

Rarely have I looked forward to a season with less enthusiasm and optimism than I have for the 2025 Twins. Their collapse at the end of last year is still bitter in my mouth and I wonder where to look for improvement. Their strategic plan for 2025 comes down to two propositions: 1. We expect everyone to be better than they were last year . 2. We expect everyone to be, if not healthy all season, at least healthier than they were last year. The problem with 1. is that these are not young players we are talking about. Most have been in the majors three or more years and have track records that so far aren’t trending up. The problem with 2. is that Royce Lewis already hurt himself just running to first base, Byron Buxton’s fragility is legendary, Carlos Correa is showing why the Giants and Mets opted out of deals for health concerns, and baseball players in general don’t get through a season uninjured anymore (why is another question). The Twins did nothing to upgrade the roster in the offseason and in fact lost two regulars, Max Kepler and Carlos Santana. Despite my pessimism, many commentators are picking the Twins to win their division, but mainly because their competition appears even weaker.

The Twins’ strength is their pitching, and good pitching should keep them in most games, which means the season should at least be entertaining. The designated ace, Pablo Lopez, can get anybody out when he has to but has the depressing tendency of giving up a big inning when he’s not focusing. He can beat anyone, but he’s not a stopper. The most reliable starter is Bailey Ober, with Joe Ryan just behind him. Both have fastballs that batters can’t catch up to, even though they’re not throwing in the high ’90s. Chris Paddack is a wild card, injured the last two years. Simeon Woods-Richardson must be better than he has shown, because he’s been awarded a spot in the rotation over the more promising Zebby Mathews and David Festa, both of whom we will see a lot of as the season goes on and injuries mount. The Twins claim to have the best bullpen in the league, which is true if you take everyone at their best. One thing I’ve learned about relievers, however, is that past performance is no guarantee of future success, and their career peaks tend to be short. I’m most worried about Jhoan Duran, the putative closer, who never looks relaxed or confident on the mound. For some reason his velocity went down last year, his breaking ball became hittable and his control wavered. There were very few clean innings when he came in, which made the ends of games nerve-wracking. Griffin Jax had the most success and could wind up closing, but he experienced bumps along the way. Beyond them are pitchers who could be very good but aren’t sure things, with Brock Stewart and Cole Sands leading the way. Unfortunately, the relief corps does not include a shut-down lefty, especially as manager Rocco Baldelli invariably brings in a southpaw to face a lefty hitter whenever he can, regardless of the hitter’s historical success against southpaws. Who will be the dependable relievers is a story to be told, with arms currently in the minor leagues undoubtedly having a role to play.

The Twins’ weaknesses are their hitting, defense and baserunning. Management made a point over the winter of saying, we’re changing our hitting philosophy, and indeed they fired all three hitting coaches. No more swing for the fences and not worry about strikeouts; now we will concentrate on making contact. From what I saw in spring training, the strikeouts are still coming. Partly that is due to the general improvement in pitching throughout baseball, but it still makes the game less fun to watch. In the outfield it’s not clear that either Trevor Larnach or Matt Wallner will be an improvement over Kepler, who kept failing to live up to his potential and had to be replaced. Wallner hits the ball as hard and far as anyone and should lead the team in home runs, but both he and Larnach can be struck out when needed. The same is true, but moreso, with Buxton, who has good streaks but can fan three times a game and is not someone you want at the plate in a clutch situation. Speaking of defense, Jose Miranda is a natural for DH, although with Lewis out he will have to man third base (where he’s at least better than at first). Correa is the Twins’ best all-around player, but he has yet to play with the Hall of Fame consistency he showed as an Astro. He will play solid shortstop and hit .275-.280, but he won’t scare anyone and doesn’t give the Twins the Bobby Witt Jr. or Jose Ramirez star power his contract calls for. The Twins did add two minimum-salary-type veterans: Harrison Bader should be a competent backup for Buxton and spell a corner outfielder when facing a tough lefty. Ty France had about the best spring of any Twin and, if lucky, could be the surprise at first that Santana was last year. The catching duo of Ryan Jeffers and Christian Vazquez should be no better, but no worse, than last year, ho-hum. Second base is the principal uncertainty, with Willi Castro, Eddie Julian and Brooks Lee all probably getting turns in the hope that one will overperform. The bottom line is, the Twins don’t have a dependable slugger, a dependable contact hitter, a dependable base stealer, a dependable clutch hitter or a dependable run producer. They will lose games because they won’t score enough runs to back up their pitchers. It’s especially noticeable when they are behind in the 9th inning and go out meekly.

I hope I’m wrong, but I expect too many 3-2 losses, where we just made one bad pitch or couldn’t get that one big hit. Play ball!

World Series

The Dodgers’ thrilling comeback win in Game 5 of this year’s World Series highlighted one more flaw in the universe of Baseball Statistics: base hits with runners(s) in scoring position, known in box scores as RISP. The Twins have traditionally been very bad in this category, allowing manager Rocco Baldelli to make postgame comments like, “One hit here or there would have made the difference.” This glosses over the obvious facts that opposing pitchers tend to try a little harder when there are runners in scoring position, and that a mark of a good hitter is the ability to get a hit (or at least make contact) in this situation. That you did poorly with RISP may reflect the fact that the other team is just better, not that your luck was bad. (A similar situation exists in NBA games where the inferior team stays close or even leads until two minutes remain in the game.)

But getting back to the statistic itself. The Twins as a team have been notable in recent years for their lack of speed on the bases. Absence of stolen bases is one obvious result. But another less noted result is the number of base hits with RISP that don’t result in runs because the runner on second is held at third or is thrown out at the plate. Thus, even if they get an RISP hit it may not produce the result the statistic is designed to measure.

Getting back to the World Series: with the Dodgers now down 6-5 in the 8th inning, Kike Hernandez led off with a nice line drive to right. Surprise hero Tommy Edman then beat out a grounder to the shortstop hole and the next batter walked, prompting Aaron Boone to replace Tommy Kahnle with his closer Luke Weaver. Gavin Lux hit a clutch sacrifice fly that not only tied the game but moved Edman from second to third. Ohtani refilled the bases on a rare catcher’s interference and Mookie Betts, one of three Dodger MVPs, hit another sac fly to plate the Series-winning run. How many times this season in a bases-loaded-no-outs situation did I see a Twin hit an infield popup or strike out? So often that it became expected. But with the season on the line, against the Yankees’ best pitcher, two Dodgers, including their number nine hitter, came through. How is that reflected in the team’s RISP? Actually, I don’t know, but a sacrifice fly is not a hit so it wouldn’t count there. Since it’s not an official at-bat, I presume it wouldn’t count in that ledger either. Thus it would produce a nullity when in fact these were two of the most consequential, clutch plate appearances in the World Series “with runners in scoring position.”

Twins Preview ’24

As the Minnesota Twins’ 2024 season opener approaches I am more doubtful than sanguine. While the national prognosticators uniformly pick the Twins to win their division, I read this more as a referendum on the weakness of their rivals than an endorsement of the Twins’ strength. And given their success last year–winning the division plus a playoff round–a mere division title this season will not satisfy Minnesota fandom.
Of the five most important considerations in making a prediction, two are related but particularly unknowable. (One consideration that is not important is spring training, where the Twins finished in last place. It would have been nice to see some of their pitchers dominating and their hitters collecting hits, but when someone named Hellman is getting more at-bats than any regular and non-roster pitchers are pitching the last four innings the final scores hardly matter. I don’t know what Buxton, Correa, et al., were doing instead of facing live in-game pitching, but I have to presume the organization knows what it is doing.)
The two big unknowables are injuries and roster additions. The era of the day-in, day-out player is gone. (If you want to know an unbreakable record in sports, look no further than Cal Ripken’s consecutive-game streak.) But who will be hurt and miss how many games can make a big difference. Even though Carlos Correa played most of the year, we are now told that his plantar fasciitis changed him from a future Hall of Famer to the league leader in hitting into double plays. Byron Buxton has been a Platinum Glove winner and offensive Player of the Month, but he is now better known for the variety of injuries that have shut him down, year after year. What will be his story in ’24? Then, partly due to injuries, every team has players contribute who aren’t on the opening day roster and, for most fans, haven’t even been heard of. At this time last year I knew nothing of Eduard Julien, Matt Wallner or Louie Varland, yet they played significant roles by season’s end and are counted on heavily this year. In one memorable year, a midseason trade for Shannon Stewart totally transformed the Twins’ season. Who will it be this year, and how big an impact will the unknowns make?
A third consideration, already alluded to, is the strenght of competition. As someone who predicted that the Guardians were building a dynasty at the end of 2022, I have no claim to expertise in this area. I see a lot to like when I look at the lineups for the Guardians, the Royals and even the Tigers–not so much the White Sox–and I wouldn’t be surprised if one or all posed a more serious challenge than others are predicting. But that comes down, and brings me, to the two areas I am comfortable discussing: the Twins’ pitching and the Twins’ hitting.
Pitching: Pablo Lopez was anointed as their ace when they gave up batting champion Luis Arraez to acquire him, and by the time of the playoffs he had earned the designation. He started the season slowly, however, and his spring training, as for all the Twins’ starters, has been unimpressive. Joe Ryan and Bailey Ober are similar young studs, who have to dominate with their fastballs. Assuming they can stay healthy, which they haven’t yet, they can be the meat of the staff. Even when they are on, though, their fastballs become a home run here or there. Depending on the Twins’ offense that day, that can mean a loss. I am unusually optimistic about Chris Paddack, the fourth starter. After missing almost all of last year, his health and durability are in question, but I’m hoping he will be the surprise of the staff. Varland has potential as the fifth starter, but he has yet to prove it and his similarity to Ryan and Ober makes me wonder if the Twins would not do better with a crafty lefthander mixed into the rotation. Perhaps the biggest concern is, who will the Twins use when, not if, one of these five gets hurt. Varland was to have been the first call-up, the safety net. With him now starting at the Majors, there are only unproven prospects waiting below. And maybe Randy Dobnak?
The relief corps is supposedly what raises the Twins above the competition this year, but already three are on the injured list. Then there is the overriding issue that success for a relief pitcher one year seldom repeats itself. Even within the same year, a reliever can go from unhittable to unreliable: see Jorge Lopez’s record with the Orioles and Twins last season. Or, for the reverse, look at Emilio Pagan’s year with the Twins. That said, here’s my rundown on key relievers: Jhoan Duran, the closer, lacks swagger and makes me nervous. A 101 mph fastball is no longer an oddity for batters and his “splinker” is not in the reliability league of, say, Mariano Rivera’s cutter. He can’t hold runners on base, he rarely posts a 1-2-3 inning, so all too often the tying run is in scoring position when the game ends. Griffin Jax is the most-used late-inning reliever, and we’ll see how he does as a closer while Duran is injured. I like Caleb Thielbar, the ranking lefty, but he is getting old, which makes me wonder. Jorge Alcala has always been touted as the next best thing but has yet to stay healthy. Brock Stewart was a revelation, but that was last year. Then there is a bevy of newcomers whom I have not seen: Topa, Staumont, Okert, Jackson. As mentioned, a relief pitcher is a crap shoot. There are no guarantees here; one can only hope.
Hitting: This is where the rubber meets the road. If the Twins hit at, or close to, potential, they will win games even with mediocre pitching. But for every one of their players, as high as is the ceiling, the floor is very low. And the low floor contains a lot of strikeouts–the Twins led the league last year–which can make a game not fun to watch or read about. Byron Buxton is the poster boy here. I get sick of seeing him look over his shoulder at the pitcher as he walks back to the dugout after striking out. He has power and great speed, and he hits mistakes a long way. What he doesn’t do is make contact when that is all that is needed. He never bunts, when that would be an easy way to raise his average and cause havoc on the basepaths. And in clutch situations, a good pitcher can almost always strike him out. We don’t know what he could accomplish by playing a whole season, and no one really expects it to happen this year.
Carlos Correa, based on his salary and experience, should be the engine that drives the offense. He wasn’t last year, at least not until the playoffs. If he could hit more line drives and fewer ground balls to shortstop, the lineup could come alive. By OPS rankings, the next two key offensive weapons are second-year players Eddie Julien and Matt Wallner. Both impressed early on, but both cooled off as the season ended. How much was fatigue, how much was opposition scouting? I am especially doubtful about Wallner, who was useless by season’s end and got about two hits all spring training. I fear that a sophomore slump is more likely than a further blossoming, for Wallner especially. Which raises the question, will we see Trevor Larnach or Brooks Lee make contributions this year?
I have much less concern about a sophomore slump for Royce Lewis. He has shown a Buxton-like propensity for unusual injuries, which is the only thing that will keep him, I predict, from stardom. I’m also comfortable with a first-base tandem of Alex Kiriloff and Carlos Santana, although one is oft-injured and the other is relatively old and worn. On their worst days, both will be an upgrade from last year’s Joey Gallo. Ryan Jeffers provides offense at catcher; Christian Vazquez can cut down base stealers and can’t hit worse than he did last year. I love both Willi Castro and Kyle Farmer as utility backups.
The outfied may or may not be centered on Buxton. If he can play regularly, the defense is elevated a level. Manuel Margot was acquired offseason as insurance for Buxton. I like his experience with the Rays, and if he starts to hit he can spell Wallner in leftfield against left handers, but his production remains to be seen. Wallner/Larnach in left leave me queasy. Max Kepler is back in right, despite expectations the Twins would trade him, if they could. Every year we talk of his great potential, which he never lives up to. Eliminating the shift helped his average last year. You just hope that for once he can “put it all together.”
Overall: The Twins could be an offensive powerhouse. Or they could strike out a lot and have a lot of batters hitting .240. Someone needs to be a spark: it could be Lewis, or Correa, or even Buxton. Hitting is contagious, but it has to start somewhere. As it did last year, the pitching will keep the Twins in most games, but depth is an issue. On paper, based on last year’s numbers, the Twins should be good. But this is this year, and the games aren’t played on paper.

 

 

 

 

Stupid Rule 2

While baseball has a stupid rule or two–one less next year, as I’ll discuss later–football has a doozy that has more actual impact on the game: the fumble-out-of-the-end-zone-for-a-touchback rule. When this rule was invoked against the Vikings in mid-season it may have cost them a win and led to general speculation that the rule would be changed in the offseason. Now that it almost cost the Kansas City Chiefs their spot in the AFC championship game, on national television, the chances of a change must have gone up exponentially. The “rule” is this: when an offense fumbles and the ball goes out of the end zone without being recovered, a touchback is called and the team on defense gets the ball on the 20-yard-line. The team on offense, which has worked its way downfield, not only gets nothing, it loses possession. Why? There is no equitable reason for such a result. If a player fumbles out of bounds anywhere else, his team retains possession and the ball is spotted at the site of the fumble. There should, obviously, be no reward, in terms of yards gained, for fumbling. But the defense, which may have caused the fumble but was not able to recover it, gets no reward. Why should it be any different at the goal line? If the defense recovers the ball in the end zone, it’s a touchback. There’s no reason the outcome should be identical when they don’t recover! The fix is obvious: apply the same rule that governs fumbles everywhere else on the field. The offense keeps possession at the spot of the fumble. If there is something different about an end-zone fumble and you want to penalize the offense accordingly, spot the ball back at the 10. But there’s nothing different and that makes no sense.
Getting back to baseball: the late Gordon Harriss and I once had extended debate about the injustice (my position) of calling the batter out when he is hit by a throw from the catcher while running to first base inside the foul line. My point was that for a righthanded hitter, the natural, direct route from the batter’s box to first is necessarily inside the foul line and it makes no sense, and is impractical, to require him to reroute his path to the bag. The Rules Committee finally recognized this injustice by creating a lane inside the foul line where, from now on, the runner to first will be protected. Hallelujah!

World Series

A quick note on Game 2 of the Rangers-Diamondbacks series: yesterday the Diamondbacks bounced back from a heartbreaking extra-inning loss in Dallas to whump the Rangers, 9-1. Arizona struck out only two times the whole game. With 16 hits. I wonder if the Twins were watching.

Post mortem: I was part of why this was the least watched World Series on TV. Texas v. Arizona with a lot of new names just wasn’t as captivating as the matchup we expected, Phillies v. Astros. Other than Game 1, the games weren’t that close, either. The concluding game was tight until the Rangers ran away at the end, 5-1, but still that was only Game 5. Corey Seager was the deserving MVP, which gave Twins fans some hope that his counterpart, Carlos Correa, might play such a role in the future. Rather than anointing a Series hero – a la Jordan Alvarez or Adolis Garcia in division championships this year – I was struck by one goat (in the negative sense, not the “greatest”) who almost singlehandedly determined the Diamondbacks’ quick exit, with an assist from another teammate. I had never heard of Christian Walker before, but he showed up at the pivotal moment of three separate losses. In Game 3, when Series’ dominance was on the line, he ran through a belated stop sign by his third-base coach and made the inning’s first out at home plate. Instead of runners on first and third with no outs, Arizona failed to score, and in their next turn at bat the Rangers broke the scoreless tie and gained momentum that carried them to victory. In Game 4, Walker (a Gold Glover, we were told), muffed a ground ball in the third inning, which led to five unearned runs and put the game out of reach (although the final 11-7 score was within that five-run margin of error). Then Game 5 was a scoreless pitcher’s duel, with the D’back’s Zac Gallen throwing a no-hitter through six innings. Nathan Eovaldi, on the other hand, was in constant trouble over the same span. Most significantly, somewhere around the fourth inning, Arizona’s first two batters hit singles. Sensing the importance of scoring first, Arizona had its #3 hitter lay down a sacrifice bunt (his first of the year) to move both runners into scoring position and bring up the cleanup hitter, Walker. The middle infielders played back, willing to concede a run on a ground ball. But Walker struck out, and when the next batter hit a grounder to short it was the third out. The Diamondbacks’ best chance was gone, as was their momentum and perhaps their spirit. They never scored until they were down 5-0 in the ninth. Three game-changing plays, all by Walker. The secondary goat was Arizona’s closer Paul Sewald, who entered the Series with six saves and no runs allowed in the postseason. The two-run homer he gave up to Seager in the ninth was the decisive play in the Game 1 loss, and the four runs he allowed in the ninth in Game 5 made sure there was no comeback there.

A Stupid Rule

On Sunday (7/11) the Twins blew a game, 7-6, to the Blue Jays when Emilio Pagan gave up two singles and a home run in the 8th inning, but the loss equally belonged to Carlos Correa, whose throw in the dirt on the back end of a sure double play allowed the Jays’ three previous runs to score. One run came in on the play, two more when the next batter hit a home run with two outs. Twins pitcher Louie Varland was charged with three earned runs, because you can’t presume a double play. In other words, if the defense gets the first out on a force, they won’t be charged with an error for not completing the double play, even if the throw from second to first clearly beats the runner. Why not? The throw from second to first is not inherently difficult; infielders practice it all the time, to the point it’s second nature. It’s not like a ground ball that’s “too hot to handle,” or a bad hop that handcuffs the infielder. It’s a play that’s totally within the control and competence of the middle infielder. If he throws wildly, or if the first baseman drops the throw, it’s an error in the mind of everyone but the official scorer. I’ve yet to hear an argument that supports this “rule,” nor can I think of any. Well, something good happened, and you can’t count on anything more. Really? It certainly affects one’s opinion of the fielder’s play, and his evaluation deserves downgrading. More humanely, it’s unfair to the pitcher, in this case Varland, who would have exited the game having given up only one run instead of three had Correa made a halfway decent throw, resulting in a major bump in his ERA. Anyone?
PS: On later thought, I expect the rule’s basis to be the situation where a fielder slightly bobbles the grounder at the start of the play and the resulting throw on to first is late or even not made. In that situation, I can understand that it is too much a judgment call whether a cleanly handled ground ball would have resulted in two outs. But when the throw clearly beats the runner and is dropped, no judgment is required to deduce that the second out should have been made and an error should be charged. (8/7)

Twins Diary

October 12: I can’t complain or feel surprised that the Twins’ season ended last night with a 3-2 loss to the Astros. For one thing, the Twins won three playoff games and lost three, a .500 record that reflects the way they played most of the year. And when you see that both the Orioles and Dodgers, division winners who won 100 games during the season, were eliminated 3-0, it seems that the Twins did pretty well. (The Atlanta Braves, who had the best year of all, are in danger of losing their series 3-1 as well.) For a second thing, the Houston Astros are not only a division winner and defending world champions, they are measurably better than the Twins in every department and at every position. Sure, Royce Lewis hit two home runs, but Yordan Alvarez hit three–and batted .500 for the series while only one Twin hit over .200. Pablo Lopez was dominant in pitching seven shutout innings in Game 2, but so was Justin Verlander in Game 1, while Cristian Javier pitched one-hit ball for five innings in Game 3. Jhoan Duran was effective in relief, but he gave up walks and hits, while Ryan Pressly, with the game on the line, struck out the side, getting Polanco, Lewis and Kepler on 3-2 pitches in the zone. Correa was good at short, but Jeremy Pena was spectacular. Etc., etc.
The Twins pitching was as good as could be expected. Sure, you can wish the usually reliable Caleb Thielbar did not surrender homers to Alvarez and Abreu (and I wished that MLB would make Abreu button his shirt), but Pagan, Paddack, Ryan, Jax and Duran all performed admirably in addition to Lopez. No, the responsibility for the loss falls squarely on the Twins’ offense, or lack thereof. In each of the last two losses, the Twins managed but three hits while striking out 14 times. To come as close as they did in Game 4, getting two runs on three hits–a double and home run by Julien and a homer by Lewis–was remarkable, not the loss. The Twins had only one runner at second base all game!–and he was doubled off when the next batter hit a line drive out behind him.
So cry not for Minnesota. In fact, one can hope that this experience will help the Twins for years to come. The pitching staff is in good shape for next year already. Lewis and Julien look like they will be anchors in the lineup for years to come. (The jury is still out on Wallner and Kiriloff, who both appeared overmatched in the playoffs. Kiriloff’s shoulder may have affected him, but that is itself cause for concern.) Most promising is the play of Correa, who looked like a middle-of-the-lineup hitter for the first time all year. If plantar fasciitis was holding him back, we might see the star the Twins are paying for next year. What to do about Buxton, who was given a courtesy spot on the last-game roster, is another issue, but we will address that another time.

October 6: Three plays epitomized the Twins’ wild-card playoff victory over the sluggish Toronto Blue Jays. 1) Royce Lewis’s first-inning, full-count two-run home run in Game 1 was as exciting a moment as I can remember in sports. His second home run in his next at-bat left my jaw dropped. 2) the  Carlos Correa-to-Ryan Jeffers connection that cut down the Jays’ Bichette at home plate after Polanco whiffed the slow grounder was more than a remarkable, Derrick Jeter-reminiscent run-saver, it was a momentum-shifter. After that play, you had to think this could be the Twins’ year – and I suspect the Jays, at least subconsciously, must have felt that, too. And don’t overlook Jeffers’s part in the play: he fielded the throw on a short hop, pivoted and made a lunging tag, cleanly blocking the plate. 3) The Pickoff. We’ll never know if Gray had thrown the 3-2 pitch whether Bichette would have made the third out, walked or driven in two runs, but ending the rally and the inning by embarrassing the Jays’ best player, Vlad Guerrero Jr., was a soul-crusher. Even more than the Correa throw in Game 1, it signaled that the gods were with the Twins and must have made the Jays think, This just isn’t our year.
All three plays also underlined just how intense playoff baseball is, at a whole different level than it is played for the preceding 162 games. However well the Twins do against the Astros, the experience has to help them in the years to come. (Which is one reason I wish Baldelli were not so quick to pull Kiriloff and Wallner or even Julien when a lefthanded pitcher enters the game.)

October 5 Before getting wrapped up in the postseason, I want to acknowledge that, despite throwing the last game to save their pitchers, the Twins finished the regular season 12 games above .500 after spending a seemingly interminable period yo-yoing between two above, two below that mark. Granted, their year-end schedule was soft and several opponents were already looking to next year; still, the schedule evens out over the year for everyone.

October 2: Matt Wallner. The Twins seem to have finally settled on a regular leftfielder for the first time since the departure (expulsion?) of Eddie Rosario, and I’m a big fan. Not only is Matt Wallner a local Minnesota product, but he overcame great odds and many prospects in line ahead of him to claim the position. In one spring training the battle was among Brent Rooker, Kyle Garlick and Trevor Larnach, with utilityman Nick Gordon in the mix. Then this year the Twins spent $11 million on Joey Gallo to take the spot. Meanwhile, Wallner kept putting up good numbers in the minors, awaiting a chance., which came when Larnach was injured and Gallo struggled. Gallo, in fact, was a bust, and fouling a pitch off his foot finally gave the Twins a face-saving way to remove him from the active roster (why he hasn’t been DFA’d, however, remains a mystery). Wallner, in another fact, has been exactly the hitter the Twins hoped Gallo would be: he has led the team in home runs since the ASG and, to my eye at least, he has led the team in strikeouts. When he hits the ball he impacts the game, but just as often his lineup spot is a black hole, a la Correa and Buxton. The Twins have a lot of players who, on a given day, contribute nothing–they set a Major League record for strikeouts–but Wallner’s upside has so far made him a positive addition. The plus factor is his arm: one of his outfield throws was clocked at 100 mph and they’re generally on the money. His defense is adequate and will likely improve, and with that arm he will eventually migrate to rightfield when Kepler’s run is over. As much as I like Wallner and his even demeanor, I have to wonder if the Twins have really upgraded the position from possibles who got away: Spencer Steer, the Reds’ MVP as a rookie; Rooker, Oakland’s home run leader and All-Star; LaMonte Wade, a regular for the Giants; or Rosario, a fixture on the Braves’ offensive juggernaut.

September 23: The Twins clinched their division on their first try, 8-6 against the Angels. All was not copacetic in the win: the offense continued to frustrate, with 10 strikeouts, 10 runners left on base–including bases loaded twice–and success somewhat due to receiving ten walks from Angel pitchers. Pablo Lopez reverted to his merely okay form: lots of strikeouts but suffering a three-run inning. Sonny Gray and Kenta Maeda are looking like better options for Games 1 and 2 of the playoffs. Most disconcerting was the “save” by closer Jhoan Duran: gifted a three-run lead with the chance to close out the division race, he gave up two hits, two walks, one wild pitch and one run before getting the third out on a grounder up the middle with the bases loaded. On the other hand, who has really been much better? Cleveland’s Clase and the Orioles’ Cano both blew saves in the same game last night; the Twins got to the Reds’ star Diaz and the Astros’ Pressley has been hit hard. Maybe a resurgent Josh Hader, but that’s about it. Nevertheless, should the Twins carry a one-run lead into the ninth inning of their first playoff game, there will be a lot of nervous Twins fans watching.

September 19: Neither Joe Ryan nor Dallas Keuchel helped their cases for usage in Game 3 of the playoffs, if there is one. Ryan threw another gopher ball and admitted that his walks–three in five innings, two of which prolonged innings and wound up scoring–killed him. Keuchel ate up three lost innings, but that’s not needed in a short playoff.
Speaking of playoffs, it is only the current wild card system, which I bemoaned when it started, that is maintaining any interest in the last two weeks of this season. All three National League division titles are salted away, and the top WC team, which would have been the only playoff participant in the previous system, is 3.5 games clear of the other contenders. The race for the fifth and sixth playoff spots, however, is intense: four teams are within one game of each other. Similarly, but less so, the American League, where there is an 8.5-game gap between the top WC team and the rest. Three teams fighting for the fifth and sixth spots have been in a virtual dead heat for the last week.

September 18: While I was away, the Twins surged to an 8-game division lead (now 7 but still overwhelming) and showed signs of being competitive in the playoffs to come. They held their own, and occasionally won, series against the other playoff-bound teams: Baltimore, Tampa Bay, Texas, Seattle, Houston. Their season-long strength is also the reason they will have a chance: their starting pitching. No one has a great won-loss record, but their combined ERA is currently fourth-best in the Majors, and I think they are at or near the top in innings pitched. The Twins played .500 ball most of the year but generally avoided long slumps because the next game’s starter usually gave them a chance to win. Pablo Lopez and Sonny Gray both had occasional bad outings but rarely back-to-back. And almost unheard-of, the five starters at the beginning of the season (if you include Bailey Ober, who should have been on the opening-day roster and was quickly added when Tyler Mahle went down) are the five starters as the season comes to an end.
What accounts for the Twins’ recent rise above .500 is their improved offense. It is still homer-dependent and strikeout-prone, but the insertion of Royce Lewis in the middle of the lineup and the increased production of Max Kepler have led to more games scoring more than three runs. Thirty runs in four games against the White Sox may be an aberration as well as a reflection on the opposition, but it’s something that wouldn’t have happened earlier in the year.
The remaining suspense for Twins-watchers centers on the composition of the playoff roster. I think we can all agree, finally, that Joey Gallo’s days as a Twin are blessedly over. But what happens to the current roster when Michael A. Taylor, Byron Buxton and even Nick Gordon are no longer injured? Taylor, one assumes, will replace his replacement, Andrew Stevenson. Gordon, one has to believe, has no shot, as he was hitting .176 before he missed the last four months and has a skill set duplicated and exceeded by Willi Castro. As for Buxton, the team has performed better without him, he can’t be counted on to stay healthy, and his strikeouts are rally-killers, especially as, like Correa, he is placed above his station in the batting order. When he played he was limited to DH, but now that is where the valuable Eddie Julien is slotted. Is it really worth disrupting team chemistry so that Buxton can DH against a potential lefty? On the other hand, Buxton is signed for many millions for many more years; will it damage the Twins’ long-term investment if they tell Byron they don’t need him?

September 1: I lost some respect for Rocco Baldelli when he said something like, “Funderburk will get more chances like that,” after the three-run 10th-inning homer to Kyle Calhoun, instead of saying, “My fault; I shouldn’t have put him in that spot.” I don’t remember Baldelli every admitting to a mistake, even when it would take some heat off his players. Maybe he feels he will lose some control if he acknowledges fallibility, or maybe he never thinks he’s wrong, despite constant criticism from the online kibbitzers.

August 31: The Twins proved they are not a playoff force and they also suggested they may succumb to a division race after all by blowing a 2-0 lead and falling 5-2 to the Guardians. Poor Sonny Gray, who pitched a three-hit shutout for seven innings only to see the Twins’ four best relievers and a rookie give up seven hits and five runs in three. Every move the manager made backfired: lifting Gray after only 81 pitches; inserting Michael Taylor in center in time for him to nonchalant a single into a double, leading to a run; replacing Jax, who had given up that “double” with Thielbar, who gave up a run-scoring single; trusting Duran with the 9th and seeing a blown save; then, most inexplicably, replacing Pagan, who hadn’t given up a hit, with Kody Funderbunk who in his second Major League appearance gave up the game-winning three-run homer on a 3-0 pitch. But as bad as the Twins’ relievers and manager were, let’s not forget the Twins offense: only four hits (by two batters) and 14 strikeouts. One good sign: Baldelli pinch-hit for Gallo mid-game even though a righthander was on the mound because he didn’t want a strikeout (alas, pinch-hitter Luplow still struck out), signalling that Gallo’s days are numbered (probably Luplow’s too). One bad sign: Baldelli still used Correa third in the lineup and was rewarded with two strikeouts and two double plays. Correa was 1-for-12 in the series and shows no signs of a late-season resurgence. If Correa batted eighth and wasn’t paid umpteen millions we would gladly accept him as a smooth-fielding shortstop who gets occasional hits, a model of which there used to be many. Let’s see how the September return of Kiriloff, Castro and Buxton shakes things up.

August 30: After seeming to turn the corner with two good wins, the frustrating Twins offense returned last night, as they went 0-for-9 with runners in scoring position in a 4-2 loss to the rival Guardians. Polanco swung for the fences instead of moving over the runner from second with no outs; with a runner on third and less than two outs, the best a Twins batter could do was a short popup. Solo home runs were their only scores. Not even fun to watch.

August 28: What’s wrong with Carlos Correa? I can perhaps overlook his league lead in grounding into double plays, as several have resulted from commendable attempts to go the other way that happened to find the second baseman. His failure to hit with runners in scoring position is more troubling, especially as manager Baldelli insists on batting him third or fourth in the lineup. What bothers me most, and which relates to his RISP failures, is the way he strikes out. He’s not “just missing” or “swinging through” or “getting fooled.”  He’s taking third-strike fastballs down the middle and, worse, swinging wildly at balls way outside or in the dirt. He’s missing strike three by six inches. No one else on the Twins has looked so bad.  The other day a pitcher buzzed a fastball at knee-level for strike one and Correa fouled off a pitch for strike two. I predicted that the next pitch would be a slider off the plate. It missed the strike zone by a foot, Correa swung futilely and was gone. That everyone else is aware of this is probably why, in an important situation, he is so easily disposed of. Yes, he goes 1-for-4 or 1-for-5, keeping his average at a pathetic .225, but they are rarely the key hits in a game. For those you have to look at Solano or Lewis, yesterday’s hitting heroes, or Wallner, Julien, Kepler, Farmer, Jeffers, even Michael A. Taylor.

August 26: With the Twins down 5-2 to Texas Thursday, headed for a third straight loss, I was seriously contemplating the Tigers, if not the Guardians, taking the Central title away from them.  They came back to win 7-5, in one of the year’s best games, and then mauled Texas yesterday, 12-2, hitting on all cylinders (excluding Gallo and Buxton, of course), prompting me to look ahead, for the first time, to the playoffs. As the third seed they would be matched against the lowest wild card, at the moment the Mariners, against whom they should at least be competitive

August 24: As much as I deride the Twins’ propensity to strike out–they are a lock to set a Major League record for most in a season–I should note that they are not unique. While their 10 K’s last night was slightly below their season average, in 11 of the 12 other box scores in today’s paper at least one team had strikeouts in double digits, and in two games both teams had 10 or more. The White Sox struck out 17 times, albeit in 10 innings and three teams had 14. Over all baseball yesterday, the average number of strikeouts per team was 10.23. [Four games went 10 innings, but four other games only went 8.5, for the statistical quibbler.]

August 23: Now that infield shifts have been legislated, my new quibble is with the “infield-in” formation the Twins generally employ with a runner on third and less than two outs (“double-play depth” being an alternative option with a runner on first and one out). In this data-driven world there may be a reckoning of runs-prevented versus runs-allowed with this alignment, but my eye test is convinced that it hurts the Twins more than it helps. Never moreso than last night, when the Brewers flipped a 2-3 deficit to a 7-3 win with a five-run 6th inning aided by two, maybe three, hits that wouldn’t have been hits against a normal infield alignment. It’s conceivable that no runs would have scored. Most egregious was a soft liner that tipped off Correa’s glove at shortstop. He perhaps should have caught the ball anyway, but if he had been playing back it would have been an easy out, and maybe two if he could have doubled off the runner at second. The final runs scored on a routine ground ball up the middle that leaked past the drawn-in infielders.  Less certain, but possible, was the Texas Leaguer that drove in the first runs. A second baseman in normal position would at least have had a shot.
On the other side of the scale are runs prevented. This only occurs when a ground ball is hit directly at an infielder (who has no range on a hard-hit ball). Any statistic on this would overlook the fact that even in normal depth an infielder could throw out at the plate an average-to-slow baserunner on a normal grounder. It also doesn’t account for the damage that potentially accrues, not from the run scoring, but from the new baserunner who gets on as a result of the shift.

The hardest decision a manager has to make in a game is when to relieve his starter. At least that’s the subject of most critical second-guessing of Twins manager Rocco Baldelli.  Sonny Gray complained preseason that Twins starters should be allowed to pitch further into the game, but he has a record this season of imploding when allowed to pitch the 6th or, more rarely, the 7th. A prime example was Saturday, when he gave up four runs in the 6th after pitching a perfect game through five. Yesterday Baldelli lifted Bailey Ober after five innings, despite having thrown on 78 pitches and retiring the previous five hitters in a row. If he had allowed Ober to successfully navigate the 6th, as all the second-guessers wanted, he could have closed out the win with Thielbar (7th), Pagan or Jax (8th) and Duran (9th). Instead, he brought in Dylan Floro who gave up two hard hits before a succession of weakly hit balls over and through a drawn-in infield produced a five-run inning and a loss.

August 20: It may be too soon to judge, but I’m starting to think that Falvey/Levine may know better than me what they’re doing. It’s not just that Arraez’s batting average has dipped below .360, but Pablo Lopez is taking on the mantle of a #1 starter that the Twins needed. And with Eddie Julien and Jorge Polanco both capably playing second base, and Kyle Farmer in reserve, the Twins were dealing Arraez from a position of strength. I couldn’t believe the Twins brought back both Emilio Pagan and Max Kepler, but both are solid contributors at the moment. I’ve noted before that Michael A. Taylor, Donovan Solano and Willi Castro, plus Farmer, all quiet offseason free agent pickups, have been much more valuable than the big-tickets Correa, Buxton and Gallo. And today the flyer they took on Dallas Keuchel paid off with a 2-0 shutout of the Pirates. The Twins aren’t out of the woods: the expected returns of Buxton, Kiriloff and, less likely, Nick Gordon, could disrupt the lineups and chemistry; and absent the injured Brock Stewart the Twins are short at least one reliable reliever. But for now they lead the division by six games, their high point, and with their excellent starting rotation it’s easy to think they can play .500 ball the rest of the year, which should be all they need to reach the playoffs. And I’ll discuss their chances there as we get closer.

August 17: Win some, lose some. Yesterday’s 8-7 loss to Detroit hardly bothered me for four small reasons and one big. The Twins were coming off a three-game win streak and you can’t win ’em all. The Guardians also lost, so the Twins’ 4.5-game division lead is intact. The loss was attributable to just one player–Griffin Jax who gave up four runs and a 4-3 lead in his one inning of pitching. And the Twins showed unusual life in the bottom of the 9th, scoring three runs on homers by Polanco and Jeffers and almost winning on another long drive by Wallner. The big takeaway, though, was the hitting of the rookies: Julien was 4-for-5, Lewis was 3-for-4 with a walk. They are the Twins’ future; if they continue to lead the team in hitting, while Wallner learns to hit lefties and Kiriloff stops being injured, I will have less cause to complain about the Twins’ having given away two budding stars to the Reds (Steer and Encarnacion-Strand) last year for Tyler Mahle (i.e., nothing).

August 14: I must acknowledge Joey Gallo’s 4-for-4 night with two home runs in Saturday’s 8-1 win over the Phillies. It doesn’t change my mind as to who should go when Royce Lewis and Byron Buxton return to the active roster. He does have value at first base with Kiriloff not close to returning, but Baldelli showed he has options by using Christian Vasquez there yesterday with Solano still not 100%. The second win over the Phils on Sunday, 3-0, was even more heartening, as it turned a potentially disastrous road trip into a 3-4 march, which at least kept pace with the rest of their pathetic division. (In fact, at 6-4 the Twins are the only one of the five with a winning record over the last ten games.) Always on the lookout for trouble, though, I note, despite the shutout, both Jax and Duran were hit hard in their relief appearances. Thielbar and Pagan pitched the only clean innings. I wonder, again, how long Baldelli will stick with Duran as his inevitable closer.

August 10: The Twins brought back their lackadaisical offense to conclude a third straight loss to the Tigers, coming down hard from their season-first five win streak. It’s bad enough that they are shut out on only two hits, the problem for me is that so few of their at-bats are even competitive. To wit: two times the Twins got a runner to third base with one out. Both times the next hitter struck out (Jeffers swinging, Julien looking). Nine strikeouts in all, on their way to a Major League record. Correa is on a hitting streak, but his hits come early in a game, rarely with anyone on base. The night before he hit a first-inning solo home run; but when he batted in the 9th with two outs and the bases loaded, he swung wildly at strike three. Poor Kenta Maeda, who pitched 5-2/3 shutout innings before surrendering a two-out, two-strike homer that gave him the loss.

August 7: I think Matt Wallner walked off the competition with Joey Gallo for the Twins leftfield spot yesterday, when his two-run homer in the 9th inning knocked off the visiting Diamondbacks, 5-3. In the field he made a diving catch coming in and an over-the-shoulder catch at the fence, two days after registering 100 mph on a perfect throw headed home. He’s hitting 95 points above Gallo and has hit six homers in the last 11 games, while Gallo somehow managed three strikeouts Saturday in a game the Twins won 13-1. All it should take is the return of Alex Kiriloff from the IL, where he is challenging Byron Buxton, for the Twins to officially say goodbye to Gallo. But why won’t I believe it?

August 5: Am I the only one who starts sweating bullets when the Twins bring in Jhoan Duran to “close” a game? Baldelli must think that if he continues to treat Duran as his closer, he will become one, but there is no evidence it is working. In his last four outings, he has given up six runs, three walks, three stolen bases, a wild pitch and been twiced “saved,” once by a fantastic play by shortstop Correa and last night by a missed call on a 3-2 pitch. He struggles with his control, throws his “splinker” in the dirt and exudes more sweat than confidence. His fastball at 102-104 is impressive, but big league hitters are learning to time it; and when Ryan and Ober are on, their slower fastballs seem harder to hit. For my money, Duran is now the #4 reliever on the Twins. Caleb Thielbar, back from injury, puts up clean innings and seems the most confident. Emilio Pagan has the best stuff (although newcomer Dylan Floro may challenge) but is still working his way back into stress situations. Griffin Jax has been Duran’s setup man, and although he has seldom been perfect he’s gotten by so far. Whether Baldelli will mix up the closer position–as he has mixed-and-matched everywhere else on the field, beyond shortstop–will be worth watching.

July 31: In retrospect, how big was, and will be, the Twins’ loss on July 25 to the Mariners? Riding a four-game winning streak and ahead 6-2 in the 8th inning, their bullpen collapsed for seven runs and a 9-7 loss. At the time it seemed a blip on their post-ASG ascendent trajectory. Now it heralded the start of a crushing five-game losing streak to inferior opposition that has brought them back close to the Guardians and .500. And worse, troubling performances by their entire pitching staff.  I don’t expect any pre-trade-deadline moves, unless it’s for a reliever, and am still waiting for the Gallo shoe to drop.

July 29: Three quick observations after last night’s 8-4 extra-inning loss to the Royals:
1. The trio of lefty rookies that has carried the Twins for awhile went a collective 0-for-11. Might they be cooling off as the league discovers them, or simply due to the dog days of…July?
2. The second most telling statistic, after strikeouts, that represents the frustrations of this Twins offense, is RISP–hits with Runners In Scoring Position. The Royals last night were an outstanding 4-for-8. By contrast, the Twins were 3-for-16. (They also doubled the Royals’ strikeout total, 14 to 7.)
3. The Twins closer, Jhoan Duran, is not there yet. Because of his stuff the Twins optimistically expect him to be unhittable. But his control is undependable, and his maturity and experience aren’t there yet. Also, he can’t hold runners on base. Once someone gets on, whether it be via walk, infield squibber or actual hit, the situation is often dicey. There’s a chance with another year of work his confidence and command will elevate; but for now he’s a reminder that the distance between “closer” and “loser” is just one letter.

July 28: A roster decision will have to be made when Jorge Polanco comes off the IL, perhaps today. It’s conceivable that Donovan Solano will be released now, or when Royce Lewis is activated. The obvious choice, though, is one of the three lefthanded-hitting corner outfielders. Max Kepler is going nowhere, despite my despair at his still being on the roster when the season started. That means it’s Joey Gallo versus Matt Wallner. Let’s compare the two using this year’s statistics, although Wallner has only played 21 games compared to Gallo’s 80.
Batting average:                Wallner .294      Gallo .177.
OPS (much ballyhooed): Wallner .988      Gallo .748
Strikeout rate:                   Wallner 29.8%    Gallo 52.3%.
HR/AB:                              Wallner  1/12.7     Gallo  1/10.4.
Age:                                     Wallner   25          Gallo  29
Future:      Wallner  several years of team control       Gallo   free agent after season
Intangibles:  Wallner  MN native drafted by Twins    Gallo  drafted by Rangers, on 4th ML team
With the chance to develop Wallner into a regular for years to come while he potentially leads the team in hitting versus hoping Gallo continues to hit a home run for every five strikeouts while hitting .180, the decision seems beyond obvious.  The only, and I stress only, reason to keep Gallo is to not admit that giving him an $11 million contract for one year was a mistake. We will see.

July 24: Last night the Twins came back from a 3-0 deficit in the 9th and won 5-4 in 12. According to ESPN, it was the first time in eight years that the Twins had won after being behind by three runs or more in the 9th. That sounds about right.

July 23: Nobody’s good every day in baseball, and it takes contributions from everyone to forge a winning streak. Last night, the lefty duo of Julien and Kiriloff went 0-for, leaving runners all over the bases. The Twins won, though, because of rbi hits from Correa and, less expected, Christian Vasquez and Michael A. Taylor at the bottom of the lineup. And the win went to Jordan Balazovic.

July 22: In predicting the Twins’ season, I largely punted on relief pitching, believing that commodity couldn’t be evaluated by reputation. So often the known quantity will falter and an unknown or two will carry the load. Cases in point: Jorge Lopez, acquired late season last year from Baltimore, where he had been an effective closer, is now basically unusable after returning from a “mental health” stint on the IL and hitting three Mariners in one inning after giving up a single and home run. Emilio Pagan, whom no one wanted to see on the roster this year, has quietly emerged, after a bad start, as a stalwart. And in the absence of Brock Stewart–another reliever not on anyone’s preseason Bingo card–Baldelli has turned to Oliver Ortega, who came from who-knows-where. And there’s Jordan Balazovic, who has been on the horizon in the Twins’ farm system. Caleb Thielbar did perform as expected before getting hurt and has been replaced as the staff lefty by Jovani Moran. Griffin Jax and Jhoan Duran are the only two who have fulfilled a role anyone could have predicted.

July 20: While a Twins win gives me an overall good feeling, I get much less excited now by a Yankees loss.  I look at their box score and wonder, Who are these guys? With Aaron Judge out and Stanton below the Mendoza line, there is no offense to fear and their pitching is just as sketchy. I’m already pretty sure that the Twins won’t lose more playoff games to New York this fall–not because the Twins will do their usual postseason falter, but because the Yankees won’t even be there.

July 19: Two quick comments on last night’s 10-3 win over the Mariners:
1. Once through the rotation after the ASG, Bailey Ober has the only win by a starter, adding to my prediction of July 1 that he is the de facto Twins ace.
2. Without Buxton in the lineup, the Twins scored 10 runs on 14 hits. Granted, the replacement DHs went 0-for-4, but they had been lowered to fifth in the batting order so didn’t interrupt rallies as Buxton’s strikeouts did. Everyone is waiting to see what happens with Julien when Polanco and Lewis return from the IL. It will be hard to justify giving the DH spot to 3K/game Buxton over your hottest hitter.

July 15: Just as I was about to pronounce the Twins front office brain dead for not jettisoning strikeout king Joey Gallo at the All-Star break, he hit a game-winning two-run ninth-inning homer to edge the hapless Oakland A’s last night. Now I will have to focus on the idiocy of batting 3K Byron Buxton third in the lineup every day.

July 9: The Twins are limping into the All-Star break having lost three straight at home to the Orioles, in second place behind the Guardians for the first time since the season opened, a half-game behind, one game below .500. To know why, look no further than the averages of the four highest-paid batters: .225 (Correa), .208 (Buxton), .207 (Kepler) and .186 (Gallo). The only Twins having respectable years are the journeymen they picked up in the offseason: Solano, Farmer, Castro, even Michael A. Taylor is outhitting Buxton and Kepler. The pitchers are doing their job, but the pressure of being perfect has to wear them down. Today Joe Ryan struck out 10 in his first four innings but was still mired in a 1-1 game before a slight stumble in the 5th opened the door to the Twins’ middle relief and an eventual 15-2 rout. The final ignominy was the victory went to Kyle Gibson, who never quite made it as a Twins starter but now, with the O’s offense behind him, has nine wins, more than any Twin, despite a 4.60 ERA that is worse than any Twins starter.
I’ll say it once again: if the Twins expect me, and thousands of their other critics, to care about the second half of the season, they will have to show that they are trying to win despite the bad contracts they’ve given out. Specifically, Joey Gallo must be gone by next week.

July 5: The Kansas City Royals come to town for three games and all is right with the world. In the last spin through the rotation, Twins starters have been excellent to spectacular, with only Duran’s meltdown costing a loss. No sooner did I proclaim Ober the staff ace than Pablo Lopez spins a complete game, four-hit shutout, Sonny Gray shows he deserves his All-Star selection and Kenta Maeda looks, for the first time, like the pitcher who finished second in Cy Young voting two years ago. There isn’t a starter I don’t look forward to. The batters are striking out a little less, and each game produces a different hitting star: Kiriloff, Julien, Jeffers, even Kepler. If they keep it up against Baltimore later this week we will have a pleasant All-Star break.

July 2: Last night we saw the difference between the Orioles’ real closer and the Twins’ optimistic closer. Jhoan Duran, whom the Twins have touted as their closer for the near future but who does not yet look all that confident, came on in the 8th to protect Sonny Gray’s 1-0 lead and basically imploded: three hits, albeit two were cheap, a walk and a hit batter gave the O’s two runs before being pulled. In the Twins’ 9th, Felix Bautista, headed to the All-Star Game, made mincemeat of three batters, hardly breaking a sweat. What a luxury, if not a necessity, to have a close-down closer. At the same time, however, the Guardians’ Emanuel Clase, another All-Star and last year’s top closer, blew a 4-run lead in the 9th before Cleveland won in extra innings.

July 1: Is it too soon to crown Bailey Ober as the ace of the Twins staff? He exudes confidence with his size and demeanor, his fastball and changeup are both strikeout pitches and, almost best of all, he hardly walks anyone. (How many of the runners who’ve scored against the Twins this year were given free passes? A large percentage, I’ll bet.) He also handles pressure: the Twins have rarely scored runs behind him, and today was the second 1-0 win he’s started.
Two days ago, when the talk was all about the need for the Twins to change their approach at the plate to cut down on home run swings and the resulting strikeouts, I was about to write that talk was fine, but so long as they kept Joey Gallo on the team the talk was nothing but that. Yes, I would have said, he hit the occasional home run, often with no one on, but his two strikeouts and one pop-up per game killed offensive momentum and was the poster child for the claimed “bad approach.” Then today, what happens: Gallo hits a solo home run and it’s the only run in an important 1-0 victory over the Orioles. So, you take the good with the bad and just hope for more of the good.

June 28. The Twins arrived at the season’s halfway point one game below .500, but still barely in first place in their division. Losing badly to the Braves, however, just showed how far they are from competing against the upper echelon. Before I despair completely about the Twins hitters, though, it’s worth looking at the Yankee lineup: Josh Donaldson is batting .134 after hitting a homer for the only run in a 2-1 loss to the A’s; Giancarlo Stanton is at .146; and former batting champ D.J. LeMahieu is hitting.234.

June 26: The Twins edged the lowly Tigers 6-3 in 10 innings, but note how they did it. Eleven of their 12 hits were by Julien, Lewis, Castro, Vasquez and Solano, none of whom were projected starters for 2023. No contributions from the big tickets: Buxton, Kepler, Polanco or Correa, who not only went 0 for 5 but hit into two double plays, the only category in which he leads the league.

June 22: Is it premature to eat crow? Correa and Buxton hit solo homers in the first inning to lead the Twins to a split of their four-game series with the BoSox after being outclassed in the first two. Buxton then hit a second solo shot, with both listed over 465 feet, a StatCast record. While I was demanding accountability, moving Buxton down in the order or taking him out of the lineup as he went 0-for-24, manager Baldelli said he’s not going to get his timing back by sitting on the bench. And Baldelli presumably knows that without Buxton the Twins will just be an average team. So it’s okay to sacrifice a few games now in order to play for the long run. As for Correa, he earns his spot, if not his pay, with his defense. A home run here and there does not yet convince me he’s an offensive asset.

June 20: Last night Pablo Lopez’s record fell to 3-4 and his ERA rose to 4.40, although in fairness it should be noted that the winning runs came in, not against Lopez, but on a triple given up by reliever Jovani Moran. The same evening Luis Arraez went 5-for-5 for the Miami Marlins, including, ironically, three hits against ex-Twin ace Jose Berrios, raising his batting average, once again, to .400. Because the two were traded for each other last offseason, their names, and fortunes, will be forever linked in Twins’ fans minds. The fact that Lopez was given an absurdly rich long-term contract after his first four starts, after which he’s significantly underperformed, only magnifies the attention he receives.  But even though the season is not half over, and the two players’ fortunes could change, nothing will diminish what the loss of Arraez has meant for the ’23 Twins.
Luis was a fan favorite, far and away the most fun player to watch at bat: he bounced around in the batter’s box, taking every at bat seriously. He fouled off pitches he couldn’t handle and pounced on ones he could. The announcers ritually noted that his at bats “didn’t begin until he had two strikes.” He hit to all fields, singles mostly but an occasional home run, like he was showing off. Batting leadoff, he made the pitcher show off all his pitches, wearing him down for teammates who followed. If his make-contact approach didn’t directly influence others, it couldn’t have hurt. Twins hitters this year are uniformly terrible at shortening their swings, just trying to get a piece of the ball when down two strikes. Game after game we see the opposing team take a two-strike pitch the opposite way and hit safely, however weakly, to set up or continue a big inning. Meanwhile, the Twins batter swings for the fences and, more often than any other team in the Majors, strikes out. Win or lose, Arraez gave fans something to take from the game, something that has been missing so often this frustrating year. And his effect on the Marlins has been notable: with one of the lowest payrolls in baseball and playing in a much tougher division than the Twins’, they are 11 games over .500 vs. the Twins at 1 game below.
In analyzing the trade, though, there are two other questions worth asking: what would the Twins rotation have been without Lopez, and would Arraez have had the same success had he stayed in Minnesota? Without Lopez, the Twins would have begun the season with Bailey Ober in the rotation. He had the best spring training of any starter, deserved to be on the team and by now has proved he belonged. The Twins, then, would have been without an obvious call-up from the minors in the likely event that one of their five starters got injured. Slightly less likely was that two starters would be hurt, but that’s what happened, with Tyler Mahle out for the year and Kenta Maeda lost for two months. That opened a spot for Louie Varland, and although his hot start has cooled off, his record is still better than Lopez’s. At this point, it is probably better that Lopez is on the squad, although we don’t know what Brent Headrick or Simeon Woods-Richardson, the next line, would do. They would at least be getting experience. So it’s not clear that adding Lopez was essential. Nor is it clear that Arraez would be hitting .400 for Minnesota. In Miami he has been given the second base job and is assured of playing every day. The Twins were not going to give him second base over Jorge Polanco, although they should have. And they were saving first base, his primary position last year, for Alex Kiriloff. Arraez was not the defensive liability some called him–in fact, he turned into quite a creditable first baseman on the fly–but the Twins insisted on using him as a utility player. Even if he started hitting, Baldelli’s practice is to move his players around and give them rest, whether needed or not. Would this have hurt Arraez, rather than helped him? We’ll never know. For now, let’s just marvel at his bat control and the joy he gets playing the game. Who would have thought I would ever start my day by searching out the Miami Marlins box score!

June 16: Two miserable performances against the formerly miserable Detroit Tigers have convinced me to stop watching the Twins until they indicate a desire to win by doing something about Byron Buxton (I almost called him the black hole in their lineup, but caught myself). Yesterday’s roster move sent Larnach down and reinstated Buxton from the IL. He has, so far, five strikeouts to show for himself, while batting cleanup yesterday and third today. No hits and the average down to .211. Personally, I would have ditched Gallo for good instead of Larnach, but there may be something in Gallo’s veteran status that prevents a trip to the minors, whereas Larnach might conceivably improve by playing everyday. But on to the Buxton problem.
And it is a real problem. The online critics are so over him, a combination of his outsized salary, his longstanding underproduction, his constant trips to the IL, the pampering he is getting this year from management and the continuing over-the-top claims of how great a talent he is. When he first came up, Twins expert Clark Griffith assured me that he would never hit. Griffith identified some problem in Buxton’s swing that I can’t recall which he thought was fatal. Now we hear from Doug Mientkiewicz that the Twins mismanaged Buxton in the minors by not batting him in the middle of the lineup where he would have had to learn to hit sliders. For whatever reason, except for a month here and there Buxton has been strikeout-prone as well as injury-prone. I have long been annoyed by his habit of looking back over his shoulder at the pitcher as he walks back to the dugout after striking out, like “how did he do that,” instead of taking responsibility on himself. He hits the ball hard when he does connect, but his connections are usually off a mistake pitch from a mediocre pitcher. When the game is on the line his at-bats are abysmal.
The Twins make a big deal about their record being better with Buxton in the lineup, but we’ll see if their current collapse coincides with his return. Since they have to use him, because of what they’re paying him, my solution is simple: Let him play centerfield every other day. Maybe that will wake up his bat. Maybe playing in the outfield will give him back some of the confidence he needs to hit. This will free up the DH spot for other Twins who are hitting better. And if playing in the field leads to injury, the Twins are probably better with him on the IL anyway. His most recent injury, in any case, didn’t come from playing centerfield–he was hit in the ribs while batting. Unless and until the Twins show a willingness to shake things up, I’m just not that interested.

June 15: One thing that sets Major League Baseball apart, aside from its 162-game season, is the accessibility and transparency of personnel management. In football, who really knows how a left guard is performing, or whether a team has better options. In the NBA, five of a roster’s 13 players may hardly see the floor, and how can an outsider assess team chemistry, which can be more impactful than individual performance. In baseball, on the other hand, you can see and evaluate every play made by all 26 players and have your own opinion of who should be playing where and when. No manager or general manager is exempt from scrutiny and second-guessing.
The Twins have won four of five games and are 3.5 games in front of their most dangerous rival, the Guardians. Almost everyone on the current roster has been a contributor to this surge. But this surge has been built while three highly paid regulars have been on the Injured List: Byron Buxton, Jorge Polanco and Kenta Maeda. All will be eligible and physically ready to return to action probably within a week. Also, currently on the AAA roster are outfielder Matt Wallner, who excelled in a brief stint with the Twins earlier this year, and Jose Miranda, who led the Twins in RBI last year and is rediscovering his form. But adding any of them will mean subtracting someone else. This is where the guessing, and the fun, comes in.
Twins tradition is to send the younger player down to the minors in favor of the veteran, but the two newest additions, Royce Lewis and Eduoardo Julien, have captured the fans’ attention and given every indication that they are the future of the team. Willi Castro, Donovan Solano, Michael A. Taylor and Kyle Farmer were all picked up as free agents over the winter, presumably as stopgaps and placeholders, but each of them has been invaluable in getting the Twins to first place. Trevor Larnach (.211), Max Kepler (.193) and Joey Gallo (.194) would all seem expendable. Moves will be made, and I’m sure I won’t agree.

June 14: PS. A Stupid Rule. On Sunday (7/11) the Twins blew a game, 7-6, to the Blue Jays when Emilio Pagan gave up two singles and a home run in the 8th inning, but the loss equally belonged to Carlos Correa, whose throw in the dirt on the back end of a sure double play allowed the Jays’ three previous runs to score. One run came in on the play, two more when the next batter hit a home run with two outs. Twins pitcher Louie Varland was charged with three earned runs, because you can’t presume a double play. In other words, if the defense gets the first out on a force, they won’t be charged with an error for not completing the double play, even if the throw from second to first clearly beats the runner. Why not? The throw from second to first is not inherently difficult; infielders practice it all the time, to the point it’s second nature. It’s not like a ground ball that’s “too hot to handle,” or a bad hop that handcuffs the infielder. It’s a play that’s totally within the control and competence of the middle infielder. If he throws wildly, or if the first baseman drops the throw, it’s an error in the mind of everyone but the official scorer. I’ve yet to hear an argument that supports this “rule,” nor can I think of any. Well, something good happened, and you can’t count on anything more. Really? It certainly affects one’s opinion of the fielder’s play, and his evaluation deserves downgrading. More humanely, it’s unfair to the pitcher, in this case Varland, who would have exited the game having given up only one run instead of three had Correa made a halfway decent throw, resulting in a major bump in his ERA. Anyone?

June 13: I noticed that the Guardians demoted James Karinchak to the minors after an ineffective outing that left him with a 3.90 ERA in 30 games, after having been a “mainstay” in the Guardians bullpen, especially against the Twins, for the last four years. Which reminded me of something missing from the Twins’ management style: accountability. I keep waiting to read in the StarTribune that 1. Kepler, with his .187 batting average, has been replaced as the regular right fielder; 2. Correa, hitting .150 with runners in scoring position, has been dropped to sixth in the batting order; and 3. Pagan, 1,128 of 1,133 in “win-probability-added” since 2021,  has been designated for assignment. But no, Baldelli keeps trotting them out, despite clearly more promising alternatives, led by Matt Wallner in right field. Lefty reliever Brent Headrick looked good in his one shot with the Twins and leads the Saints in strikeouts. And Kyle Farmer, a quite competent shortstop, is hitting .261 vs. Correa’s .217. Why is this? One theory is that Baldelli wants to build these guys’ confidence and thinks that benching them when appropriate would hurt, not help, their superior long-term value. The other is that the front office needs to save face and/or protect its investments. Correa, Pagan and Kepler are all big-contract players and not playing them, in favor of cheaper talent, would be an admission of misguided spending. The next test will be Jorge Lopez, who has underperformed since signing a huge long-term deal. Or will, at some point, Baldelli/Falvine say to their “stars,” if you don’t produce there will be consequences. I.e., accountability.

June 11: Just when I was ready for my weekly give-up on the Twins–i.e., they struck out 16 times!– they erupted in the most uncharacteristic 8th inning of their year. Larnach, who has been useless since his return from the IL, hit a home run for the first run in the 7th. Correa, whom I regularly malign for his lack of clutch hitting, then put the Twins ahead 5-3 with a grand slam! (after Kiriloff continued a year-long theme by striking out with the bases loaded and no outs). The more maligned Kessler added a three-run shot and the Twins were clear to rise above .500. Will this be the start of the long-awaited offensive awakening, or merely a footnote, an aberration, to strikeout summer?

June 10: The Twins broke their five-game losing streak with an unsatisfying win at Toronto. Once again the offense was dormant, their only runs in nine innings coming on a two-run homer by Michael A. Taylor. Royce Lewis went 4-for-4–good for him–without a hard-hit ball, but showing the value of “putting the ball in play,” a missing strategy for most of the Minnesota hitters. The suspect outfield troika of Kepler, Larnach, Garlick was 0-for-5. Correa got another hit to raise his average further above .200, but it was another inconsequential hit. It seems that when the opposing team needs to get him out, they know how to do so, often easily. Baldelli secured the win by using his closer, Jhoan Duran, for two tough innings–not because he was dominant (in fact he had runners in scoring position in all but the first at-bat), but because he doesn’t trust anyone else in his bullpen. And Caleb Thielbar, who would have been used earlier in the season, went back on the injured list, perhaps for a long time.

June 8: The Twins lost their fourth straight last night and fell to .500 for the season, but I didn’t mind because: 1. I didn’t watch the game (watched excellent Happy Valley instead). 2. They came back to tie the score 1-1 in the 9th; 3. on an rbi single by their promising star and already best clutch hitter Royce Lewis. 4. They could have won if a subsequent hard smash down third with one out and the bases loaded by Ryan Jeffers had gone through instead of being turned into a remarkable inning-ending double play. 5. The ensuing loss was mercifully clean and quick, a home run by one of the best, Randy Arozarena, on the second pitch from the Twins’ best reliever, Jhoan Duran–and it wasn’t a bad pitch. And 6. the Twins were in the game because Pablo Lopez gave up only one solo home run in pitching his best seven innings in the month since he signed his long-term contract, a first ray of hope that trading Luis Arraez (now hitting .403) for him won’t rank as the worst trade in Twins history.

June 4: Ah, the dreaded 7th inning! In hindsight, the time to take out starter Joe Ryan was immediately after he walked his first batter and had to face the Guardians’ most dangerous clutch hitter, a lefty, no less. But hey, there were two outs in the 7th, he was pitching a one-hitter, and you had to let him finish the inning for a chance to get the win in the unlikely event the Twins could score even one run, didn’t you? Let’s just say it didn’t go well. But why obsess on the Twins’ pitching when their offense is so feeble? When they did get a runner to second with no out, the next two batters struck out. When they threatened in the 9th, Willi Castro, who accounted for their only run with a homer, struck out swinging on three pitches in the dirt. And having Max Kepler bat cleanup? Please! I will take the Twins’ chances seriously only when they jettison Kepler and see what Matt Wallner, or even Trevor Larnach, can do.

June 3: What’s a manager to do? The last time Sonny Gray pitched, manager Rocco Baldelli pulled him in the 7th inning with a one-run lead when two runners reached base, despite Gray’s having thrown only 79 pitches. Reliever Jorge Lopez let those two runners score, plus two of his own. Online critics screamed, Why take out your best pitcher? Let him pitch his own game. Then tonight Gray is again cruising into the 7th with a 2-1 lead. The first batter singles and Baldelli leaves him in. The next batter homered and Gray went down to his first loss of the year. Last year Baldelli, with a weaker rotation, never let a starter pitch the 7th inning, leading to a chorus of off-season complaints, notably including by Gray. Let the starters pitch longer and save the bullpen from overwork. Ideally, Baldelli would prefer, I’m sure, to have his starters pitche six innings and have three shutdown relievers finish the job with an inning each. This year that would be Griffin Jax in the 7th, Jorge Lopez the 8th and Jhoan Duran as closer. Unfortunately, Jax sprung a leak and Lopez is on pace for worst-reliever-of-the-month honors. And utterly reliable Caleb Thielbar has been injured. This has led Baldelli to use Duran for five and six outs and the rise of other relievers to prominent roles. It will be interesting to see how Baldelli approaches the 7th inning the next time Gray pitches, and with his other starters as well.

May 28: The futility of preseason prognostication in baseball was never more apparent than in Saturday’s Twins victory over the Blue Jays. Minnesota won, 9-7, on the strength of two home runs from Willi Castro and one each from Eduoard Julien and Matt Wallner, plus effective relief pitching from Jovani Moran and a clutch save by Brock Stewart.  None of those names were even mentioned in my scouting report. On the other hand, reliance on projected minor leaguers might not be a long-term solution, either, as the Twins fell 3-0 the next day, bringing their 12-game record to 4-8.

Then on Monday, the Twins had one of their more surprising wins, and their first in Houston in two years, thanks to Royce Lewis, playing his first game since being injured exactly one year ago. His three-run homer gave the Twins a big lead, which they later relinquished, and his 9th-inning, two-out, game-tying run-scoring single off previously impeccable Ryan Pressley qualifies as perhaps the biggest clutch hit of the year. The Twins have been notorious for not getting “the big hit,” and when they have given up a lead late in the game have regularly gone docilely to defeat. Whether Lewis will rub off on his teammates, or whether the Twins will rub off on him, is probably the biggest question mark on the rest of this season, if not the club’s near future.

The other questions, all related to remnants of the preseason view: how long will the Twins stick with Max Kepler if his weak hitting continues, given the other options that have now arisen–including Castro and Wallner if not Trevor Larnach? Same for Joey Gallo, now that Alex Kiriloff seems entrenched as their first baseman of the future? The tougher issues are Carlos Correa and Byron Buxton, if only because they are being paid a king’s ransom each. So far they have been dead weight in the middle of a lifeless batting order. Buxton has value as a baserunner but when he strikes out two or three times a game he is not much of a baserunner, and by not playing centerfield he is clogging up the DH spot, which Baldelli would normally use to give his regulars a day off their feet. Correa hits one ball hard a game, but it is often caught, and his swings-and-misses are shockingly bad. The assumption is that he will hit at least .270 or .280 for the year, but he is running out of time. Kyle Farmer has been a much better hitter, partly because he swings to make contact not hit home runs, but he doesn’t have a big or long-term contract. Will Baldelli be able to go with the hot hand and give the team the best chance to win each day (as football coaches like to say about their quarterback), or will he be stuck with the front office’s decisions, as reflected in the player contracts?