Per b-ref, he's 5-for-5 vs. LHP. Byron doesn't need to know the stats, that's not his job. That's on the manager and his staff to know that stuff. Not saying they don't, they may have been fully aware of all the numbers and just decided to bunt instead.

Thank you for that.   I had a hard time finding the stat.   So he is 5 for 5 against lefties but it is still hard get a read against them.   I assume Buxton has the green light at all times and can go when he has a good feel for it.   

The whole board thinks the bunt was a bad idea unless he was going for a hit and I am in line with that thinking as well.   It is one of the rare times a move has been criticized even though it worked better than hoped for.  I respect that.    Ok, its unanimous that Rosario shouldn't have bunted.   Not a whole lot of discussion about what happens then even though you brought it up in your original report.   I think they should have tried a double steal because I said to my wife at the time that Vargas was either going to strike out or hit into a double play.    You mentioned the possibility of subbing for Vargas in order to sacrifice the guys to 2nd and 3rd.   I liked that idea.   Would this move meet with unanimous approval I wonder.

 

Which has pretty much been all of the Twins recent sac bunt attempts, right?

Its true but I think the feeling right now is that aside from a catcher, all we have got is good hitters.   What a switch from earlier in the year and all of last year.

 

 

 

3.) It's frustrating not to have him out there but the team is doing well so I'm okay with them making sure he's healthy enough to be back for the long haul. If the Twins don't make the playoffs, it won't be because Miguel Sano wasn't there.

 

 

Well, if we don't make the playoffs it might because Sano wasn't in there but we will never know one way or the other.    If he is healthy then he shouldn't be playing at all if our general odds of winning are not increased while he plays.  Funny thing about the team game aspect of baseball is that it could very well be that if Sano had been in there all along we might have lost some games that we have won.   I thought that without Sano we had a much smaller chance of making the playoffs when in reality not having Sano might be the reason we do.  (knock on wood, kow,kow)    An Escobar that is hitting well trumps a slumping Sano but there again we will never know.

I'd like to add one note about managers. Toronto pitcher Brett Anderson was pitching an excellent game, but as soon as he started losing it in the 5th inning, manager John Gibbons or one of the Toronto coaches should have noticed Anderson looking at his fingers and twitching his hand. That is a sure sign of a physical problem, as our own boys in the broadcast booth were commenting.

 

Gibbons immediately should have sent the pitching coach out there to interrogate Anderson and demand to see the problem finger, not just accept a nonsense reassurance from Anderson. It's the job of coaches to see through jock bravado, for the sake of the team. Gibbons should have yanked Anderson the moment he started missing and glancing at his hand. They lost the game because they weren't willing to believe their own eyes. 

 

...

3.) Vargas is bad defensively, but we don't know if Garver is a better defensive 1B. We assume so. And, in one of his 2-3 games at 1B, he had a pretty bad error too... 

 

 

In an effort to get a two- or three-run lead, I would have liked bunting with a real bunter instead of Vargas. Maybe it was during the Game Thread, but I heard people point to Garver, Giminez, and even Kepler as options to take over on defense for Vargas, but I didn't hear anyone point out what seemed like the best option to me:

 

Burn the DH spot, and bring in Mauer for defense. It's a long bench and there aren't other spots that are going to need pinch hitters, so stick the pitcher in the 6 hole and pinch hit if we get around to that spot again. If we run out of pinch hitters, we've got bigger issues than a pitcher needing to hit!