Minnesota Twins Talk

It was announced that Martín Pérez is on paternity leave and that Kohl Stewart will replace Pérez. The Twins have a doubleheader scheduled today and no off days in the next ten days. I would assume Stewart will start the makeup game this evening. Berríos could start on Sunday on normal rest and Gibson could go on Monday, but then the team would need another starter for Tuesday unless Pérez is back. With Pineda scheduled to start this afternoon's tilt (and considering his recent struggles) it would seem that suddenly an eight-man bullpen makes sense. Is that why Astudillo hasn't been activated? It appears that Marwin Gonzalez won't miss much time, but with a doubleheader s…

After a strong start giving the Twins the best record in baseball (for now), and the Indians in substantial trouble after Kluber's injury, winning the division this year is looking more and more likely. I've seen a lot of propositions as to who the front office should try to add to the team, from free agents Kimbrel and Keuchel to potential trade acquisitions like Bauer or Bumgarner. Being realistic, who (if any) do you think is the player or players most worthy of pursuit? And when is the time to acquire them?

Should his golden statue be 100 or 200 feet tall?

I read and ESPN article on my phone today. I found the following funny. I'm sorry for not linking the article but I'm using my phone and switching between sites is a little difficult on this thing. "Gonzalez, Goodrum leave after scary collision... "He's very sore," Twins manager Ron Gardenhire said. "They had it checked out -- X-rays, the whole package -- and everything came back negative." So after reading that my question was, was Rocco baldelli talking how about Gonzalez, or was Ron Gardenhire talking about Good room or was it actually Ron Gardenhire talking about Gonzalez and they just quoted the wrong manager?

This has to be my best quote I have heard on MLB radio so many times. https://twitter.com/caseystern/status/625683269330317312?lang=en

https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/p/perezma02.shtml Just curious if it's something the Twins should be worried about going forward. Last year Perez only threw 85 innings and already 41 innings so far in 2019.

Yesterday's five hits also propelled Jorge Polanco to the top of the AL in batting average. He's hitting .344 with Michael Brantley second checking in at .340. Great to see a Twin leading the league again.

We will have a much more informal game thread procedure this year (similar to how we ended last year.) In short...there is no procedure. First come, first serve. If you're here, and there's a game, start a game thread. We'll all stop by and make inane comments, and you might even get a classic Chief joke or three.

It's pretty clear after the last 3 games that the Blue Jays don't really need a closer, like at all. Giles is still under his rookie deal earning $6.3 mil this season and arb eligible for 2020, his age 29 season, as well. His whip is 1.1. 13k/9. 90% stand rate bolsters his 1.79 Fip. avg 97.4 on his fastball, 87 on slider per fangraphs. Jays save money, and likely want prospects and or major league ready pitching. Romero plus seems reasonable to me. What would Giles take? Should we be interested?

https://www.mlb.com/twins/news/mitch-garver-willians-astudillo-jason-castro-production Do-Hyoung Park wrote a strong article talking about how good the Twins catchers have been this year. All three of them have been productive with the bat, especially Garver, while also doing well behind the plate. Mitch Garver says he believes in this group but that they're just competitive... I like this point made by Baldelli about playing time.

https://www.twincities.com/2019/05/09/venezuelan-twins-have-more-than-baseball-on-their-minds/ Betsy Helfand from the Pioneer Press wrote about the four Twins players and one Twins coach from Venezuela and how much the country is struggling. Those players worry about their families and friends. They worry about getting kidnapped, being robbed.

11 games over .500 was May 31st, 2015. The last time they were 12 games over .500 was October 3rd, 2010.

Damn, I had just sat down to buy some of those $5.00 flash sale tickets, and they got swooped up *real* quick. Being a devout but poor Twins fan sucks, haha. Oh well. At least there will be more people at the May home games. Go Twins!

Jorge Polanco has had an absolutely incredible start to the season. He's been pretty incredible at the plate since the last half of 2017 (if I recall correctly he's top 20 in OPS during that period; albeit in a smaller sample size than most). Let's take a quick deeper dive into the numbers to give some context of the type of production that we're watching on a daily basis. ___________________________________________________________________________________________ Polanco's current 2019 162 game pace ___________________________________________________________________________________________ Slash line (http://www.espn.com/mlb/player/_/id/32525/jorge-polanco) .…

Stroman was mentioned in trade rumors over the winter, and voiced his displeasure with Toronto over extension discussions. https://www.sportsnet.ca/baseball/mlb/blue-jays-stroman-divergent-paths-seem-headed-divorce/ He's rebounding nicely this season after a disappointing 2017... Averaging nearly 6 innings per start, 2.96 ERA / 3.10 FIP / 8.1 K/9 / 3.5 BB/9 He's 28 years old and controlled through 2020. Who would you give up for Stroman?

About me I want the Twins to win more than anything else I don't care if Gardy is managing, our best player is from St. Paul or Germany, if we are using an opener, Dave St. Peter is giving away 2 for 1 beers or Mike Pelfrey battles his tail off, I just want to win. I read this site all the time and twitter and everything Twins related but rarely say much but I have to get it off my chest. Why does the average Twins fan hate Falvey? I feel like this early season attendance problem is tied directly to the front office. This state just doesn't like Derek Falvey and it boggles my mind. I don't know if it is the 20 years of hearing getting the bunts down on our TV broadc…

Today marks the last day that the Twins get to beat up on the Baltimore Orioles. Right now, the team is riding high with the top OPS and slugging percentage in MLB. On the position player side, there has been only one disappointment and that is the subject of this thread--Marwin Gonzalez. Let's face it, Gonzalez has been poor at the plate. He's hitting .164 and his OPS (.488) is lower than the team's slugging percentage.Talk in the game threads on this site is to trade him, release him, bat him ninth or bench him. I don't see any statistic (advanced or otherwise) that suggests that Marwin has been particularly unlucky. Yet Gonzalez has been a regular with almost 80 plat…

ESPN did an article yesterday on what every team needs to do in MLB. I looked with interest at the suggestion of what the Twins should do, expecting maybe that they get another starter or another bullpen arm. I was surprised to see that the writer said that the Twins should improve their bench. The article mentioned that Gonzalez has been playing third, but not that the presumed regular (Sanó) was on rehab assignment and expected back this month. I have mentioned on a couple other threads that I really like the Twins bench, presuming that the eventual four-man bench would be Marwin, la Tortuga, Adrianza, and whoever isn't playing between Garver and Castro. There is a tr…

Here’s a space to debate old trades, since a large number of threads have been re-hashing this very debate, on topic or not.

Beat the Astros 1-0 with 7 strong innings. Beat the Yankees with 6 scoreless innings. I'd say Well Deserved for Jake Odorizzi. https://twitter.com/Twins/status/1125497698700886017 More information on Odorizzi: Major League Baseball announced today that right-handed starter Jake Odorizzi has been named American League Player of the Week...Odorizzi claimed his first career weekly award, the first for a Twins player since Eduardo Escobar for the week ending June 11, 2018, and the first by a Twins pitcher since Francisco Liriano for the week ending May 8, 2011...Noah Syndergaard also claims his first career weekly award, and the first for a Mets player since Jaco…

I’m a Twins fan on the East Coast, so I took my daughter to the game yesterday. We had pretty good seats in left field. The Yankees fans can get pretty vicious with their own team—they were yelling out the name of their AAA affiliate to their own left fielder—so you can imagine they spent a good amount of energy yelling at Eddie Rosario. It wasn’t very creative, but there was a lot of volume. Cue Rosario coming out in the bottom of the 6th, and some fan yelling at him that he stinks for being on first when Gonzalez grounded into a DP in the top half of the inning. The Twins were up 4-0 at that point. Rosario held up his left hand with four fingers, then clenched …

I think most of us can agree that this offense is not going to continue its torrid pace, though it should remain very good given its depth. But there has been one weak spot thus far... Gonzalez. I think he'll turn the corner and be the league-average guy he usually is and that's a good thing to have in a tenth player... but Marwin isn't a tenth player right now. What happens when Sano returns? Is he going to be the .750 OPS guy we've been frustrated with or will he be the .850 OPS guy we all know he can be? Overall, I think we'll see some tapering off on offense from individual players, particularly home runs. But how much will overall output change if you add a .10…

Amazing! Let's keep it going, Twins!

40 man roster is now full. I would think Mejia will take the 10 days at a minimum, and then need the full 30 days of rehab. Pretty "bad" timing for an injury like this PS: I wish nothing but the best for Mejia, and hope that the injury isn't serious. He wants to succeed far more than any of us want him to succeed.

Twins didn't get their 19th win until May 20th last year. Also noticed Yanks are 0-5 against .500> teams. Let's get a couple and stop holding our breaths everytime we play them

Crickets?

Does anyone know if people wear costumes for game of thrones night? If I wear an ikea cloak will I look like a crazy person? Help please --Ladyhawk

I hope we don't handle it like Baltimore did a week and a half ago and postpone the game hours before it starts, only to see barely any rain at the scheduled gametime...

I am Mr. Flexibility... I have no problem with a player playing a different position.. in fact I encourage it. I'm honestly not concerned with Astudillo playing RF at face value. However... What I don't understand is why not Astudillo at 3B and Marwin in RF if they both in the same lineup? Astudillo has not shown himself to be a defensive issue at third. Astudillo has shown himself to have marginal speed over distance while possessing fairly decent reactionary quickness over shorter spaces. Marwin has years of experience in the OF. Next question.. that I must raise again because of this deployment of resources. If the team can option Cave to the minors …

Marwin Gonzalez got a gift two-run single yesterday against Baltimore, resulting in him leading the batters in WPA on the day. I don't often take a look at the year-to-date totals for WPA, but I was curious this morning. While Marwin has been the Twins' worst hitter, he's not actually the worst in terms of WPA. That would be Jonathan Schoop, who is in fact the 18th-worst hitter in terms of WPA this season among the 189 qualified hitters. How is that possible? Per Baseball-Reference, Schoop has a .347 OPS in high leverage, .406 OPS in medium leverage and a 1.177 OPS in low leverage situations. Meanwhile, Marwin has a 1.200 OPS in high leverage along with a poor .384 OP…