Pie chart of blame

[twinssporto]

20 hours ago, Squirrel said:

So PROFESSIONAL players, who actually play the game, are not accountable at all? They should still be better and play better in spite of coaching/managing. Seriously ... I really think that's way off

I agree, that's why I thought they need to shoulder half the blame. Maybe the team chemistry is a little off. Chemistry plays a huge factor in championship teams. I know it's somewhat anecdotal evidence but I just remember the 87 and 91 teams had a great clubhouse. 

[Dodecahedron]

19 hours ago, PseudoSABR said:

Part of your consideration is blaming the results for the results??

If you look at the radar chart, "poor results" is shorthand for the two categories "Coaching" and "Team Performance."  

When I decided to use the shorthand at the top, I knew someone would fall on the sword and ask this question before thinking about it.  I believe you should be able to see that the graph does not have a category labelled "Poor Results."  Let me know if you are still having trouble.

[Number3]

At least the owner dodged a bullet unless I missed a post. The team has simply declined across the board compared to the past 2 years when the expectations were that they might even take another step forward. Losing leads to blame and winning leads to credit period. If the win loss numbers were reversed the pie charts would reflect the apportionment of credit. Simply put the FO has put an overall less talented team on the field that has been poorly managed and coached and unable to stay healthy. Better luck next year. Don't forget trading away their best pitcher and immediately saying they need better pitching. By the way, it is fair to say that Jorge Polanco and now I will say Miguel Sano have shown that it is possible to just show up every day and play ball through it all.

[Squirrel]

1 hour ago, twinssporto said:

I agree, that's why I thought they need to shoulder half the blame. Maybe the team chemistry is a little off. Chemistry plays a huge factor in championship teams. I know it's somewhat anecdotal evidence but I just remember the 87 and 91 teams had a great clubhouse. 

Ahh ... I misread your initial post ... 

Hmmm ... but not sure it's chemistry. I mean, they are playing pretty well now ... too little, too late ... but is that turnaround chemistry, too? 

[chpettit19]

I don't know what exact percentages I'd give to everything, but I know at least 51% of the blame has to go to the players. They're the ones who play the game. I don't get the logic of the manager being to blame for millionaire, professional athletes not being prepared to play the game. It's their job. They're paid quite well to do it. If you have to make grounders and BP before the game mandatory to get your players to prepare for the game you have the wrong players. It's not like they came into the year as a super young team full of players needing more seasoning in the field or still learning how to be pros. They were one of the older teams in baseball to start the year and guys in their 6th or more season of major league baseball shouldn't have to be told how to prepare for the game anymore. They should have their routines down and show up everyday ready to go. Putting that on Rocco, or the coaches, is absurd. If my boss has to hold my hand every day to ensure I do my job I'm probably not the right employee to have on staff. Rocco, and the coaches, aren't without blame, but to have them as more to blame than the guys paid quite handsomely to play the game makes no sense to me.

No argument can be made that the FO didn't misevaluate guys, but to suggest anyone thought they were THIS wrong is 20/20 hindsight. Nobody expected things to fall apart so horribly. Nobody could have predicted the injuries to be so vast. There isn't enough depth to be created to prepare a team to be on their 7th CFer less than 2 months into a season. That's an unrealistic ask. It's unrealistic to expect a starting staff to see everyone from their original starting 5 hurt or completely fall apart, then see every top arm in your system go down, and still be able to provide MLB quality starters. Honestly, it's impressive the Twins won't lose 100 games this year. At some point injuries and abysmal performance from veteran players with solid track records can overrun even the best depth. If your expectation is to have 8 MLB quality CFers in your system that are prepared to step in at any time before the end of May you're going to be disappointed by every organization in professional baseball because that's not realistic. The FO aren't without blame, but to expect them to provide that kind of depth doesn't make sense to me. 

If you want to give the FO, Rocco, whoever 49% of the blame that's cool. But I don't see any argument that doesn't give the players 51% of the blame as all that reasonable. Maybe 51% to players and injuries combined? But Happ and Shoemaker and Colome weren't the FO signing 3 TD posters. Those guys have all performed in MLB to acceptable results prior to the start of 2021. Colome has gotten back to performing well since his season torpedoing start. Happ is in the rotation for a team making a late playoff push. Shoemaker is still trash. Moral of my rant is FO and Rocco/coaches are to blame, but let's be realistic about what they should be expected to do and put proper blame on the players who many on here are saying were unprepared early because they weren't forced to do every part of their job.

[cHawk]

3 hours ago, prouster said:

Your chart is weird, because it says everyone except the players are to blame.

“Coaches and Players: 10%”

[prouster]

18 minutes ago, cHawk said:

“Coaches and Players: 10%”

How do you disentangle those two very separate categories? Is Wes Johnson the one throwing pitches down the middle of the plate? I haven’t seen that. 

[Dodecahedron]

1 hour ago, prouster said:

How do you disentangle those two very separate categories? Is Wes Johnson the one throwing pitches down the middle of the plate? I haven’t seen that. 

None of us have seen that, but let's talk about what we have seen.  This year, I have seen Twins pitchers getting ahead 0-2 and then dinking around the strike zone until the pitcher's advantage is gone.  One pitcher gets pulled after this doesn't work out for them, only for the next pitcher to come in and do the same thing.  Twins pitchers who never made a habit of this before have been doing it this year. 

My assumption is the number of conversations it would take for Wes (or whoever) to stop this practice could be counted on one hand.  

[Dman]

2 hours ago, chpettit19 said:

I don't know what exact percentages I'd give to everything, but I know at least 51% of the blame has to go to the players. They're the ones who play the game. I don't get the logic of the manager being to blame for millionaire, professional athletes not being prepared to play the game. It's their job. They're paid quite well to do it. If you have to make grounders and BP before the game mandatory to get your players to prepare for the game you have the wrong players. It's not like they came into the year as a super young team full of players needing more seasoning in the field or still learning how to be pros. They were one of the older teams in baseball to start the year and guys in their 6th or more season of major league baseball shouldn't have to be told how to prepare for the game anymore. They should have their routines down and show up everyday ready to go. Putting that on Rocco, or the coaches, is absurd. If my boss has to hold my hand every day to ensure I do my job I'm probably not the right employee to have on staff. Rocco, and the coaches, aren't without blame, but to have them as more to blame than the guys paid quite handsomely to play the game makes no sense to me.

No argument can be made that the FO didn't misevaluate guys, but to suggest anyone thought they were THIS wrong is 20/20 hindsight. Nobody expected things to fall apart so horribly. Nobody could have predicted the injuries to be so vast. There isn't enough depth to be created to prepare a team to be on their 7th CFer less than 2 months into a season. That's an unrealistic ask. It's unrealistic to expect a starting staff to see everyone from their original starting 5 hurt or completely fall apart, then see every top arm in your system go down, and still be able to provide MLB quality starters. Honestly, it's impressive the Twins won't lose 100 games this year. At some point injuries and abysmal performance from veteran players with solid track records can overrun even the best depth. If your expectation is to have 8 MLB quality CFers in your system that are prepared to step in at any time before the end of May you're going to be disappointed by every organization in professional baseball because that's not realistic. The FO aren't without blame, but to expect them to provide that kind of depth doesn't make sense to me. 

If you want to give the FO, Rocco, whoever 49% of the blame that's cool. But I don't see any argument that doesn't give the players 51% of the blame as all that reasonable. Maybe 51% to players and injuries combined? But Happ and Shoemaker and Colome weren't the FO signing 3 TD posters. Those guys have all performed in MLB to acceptable results prior to the start of 2021. Colome has gotten back to performing well since his season torpedoing start. Happ is in the rotation for a team making a late playoff push. Shoemaker is still trash. Moral of my rant is FO and Rocco/coaches are to blame, but let's be realistic about what they should be expected to do and put proper blame on the players who many on here are saying were unprepared early because they weren't forced to do every part of their job.

Yeah I am with you on the players.  They have to perform and for whatever reason our guys did not perform well early.  I don't think coaches can be responsible for dropped balls or poor at bats.  Players have to make plays. 

Coaches prepare players for other teams tendencies and generally try to use statistical data to their benefit that is all they really do IMO.  They also can use statistical data to improve player performance by using trackman data etc. but have to be careful about changing things mid season. If a player is slumping for long periods of time and or making the same mistakes then maybe the position coach works with the guy to figure out another approach but you generally don't mess with a swing that a guy has had his entire career mid season unless absolutely necessary.  There's only so much coaches can do at some point the player either performs or he doesn't.  If you don't think that is true why is it that good coaches in the minors only see a few players succeed each year?  Is it all coaching or the skill certain players develop? The players that perform well move up those that don't, don't no matter how good the coaching is.

The FO did take some risks especially on the pitching side IMO.  Happ at 38 is pretty past a pitchers prime so regression was due at any time.  Maeda had never successfully pitched for a full season in the rotation always breaking down toward the end and ending up in the pen.  Depending on him seemed risky.  Pineda hadn't pitched a full season in while again risky.  Dobnak had had moments at the MLB level but was far from a sure thing and they identified that and brought in Shoemaker who hadn't performed well supposedly because of injury but a low risk flyer they could dump and ultimately did.  The only stalwart they had was Berrios who himself usually had one good half season and one bad at least until this year.  So yeah they could have done more and taken less risk on the pitching side.  Even us arm chair GM's could see that.

Still I agree with your premise this is on the players more than management.  The FO expected these players to perform well and they just didn't for whatever reasons.  Players have plenty of motivation to perform well as the money they make can set them up for life.  They are human though and get in funks and slumps, panic and hurry throws etc.  Coaching only takes them so far. Even the best players make mistakes out there it is part of the game.

[Richie the Rally Goat]

If we cut a circle out of the center of the pie chart of blame, we can turn it into the cone of shame

[chpettit19]

20 minutes ago, Dman said:

 

The FO did take some risks especially on the pitching side IMO.  Happ at 38 is pretty past a pitchers prime so regression was due at any time.  Maeda had never successfully pitched for a full season in the rotation always breaking down toward the end and ending up in the pen.  Depending on him seemed risky.  Pineda hadn't pitched a full season in while again risky.  Dobnak had had moments at the MLB level but was far from a sure thing and they identified that and brought in Shoemaker who hadn't performed well supposedly because of injury but a low risk flyer they could dump and ultimately did.  The only stalwart they had was Berrios who himself usually had one good half season and one bad at least until this year.  So yeah they could have done more and taken less risk on the pitching side.  Even us arm chair GM's could see that.

I agree they took a number of risks this off season and they certainly got burned for it. But I think the plan was for a handful of prospects to step into the Happ, Shoemaker, Dobnak roles, and I think that was a reasonable plan. They knew they'd need a ton of pitchers to get through this season coming off the shortened 2020 and I don't think bringing in Happ and Shoemaker were ridiculous. My guess would be they wanted Shoemaker to give them a few months of reasonable MLB pitching before handing over the #5 rotation spot to the young guys. Then he was horrendous and all the young guys got hurt.

If Berrios, Maeda (I don't think its totally accurate to say he wore down, the Dodgers had about 183 guys capable of starting in their rotation and they saved a few bucks by putting him in the pen where he was able to dominate most of the time), and Pineda pitch roughly to their expectations and the pen does what it was expected to do (what it has done since the calendar flipped to August) their pitching strategy works. It most definitely wasn't a perfect plan, and had a lot of risk in it, but I think it went way worse than anyone could have predicted. Worst case scenarios very rarely actually play out, but this was about as close to worst case scenario as possible (at least Berrios was good!). Overall I think the FO had a reasonable plan for the year, but the injuries to the minor leaguers they expected to come up mixed with the injuries and complete failure of the MLB staff created a perfect storm of disaster.

Berrios, Maeda, Pineda, Ober, and Balazovic (with a handful of others getting shots) seems like a decent little rotation for an August and September push for the division. Not ideal, and certainly able to improve that, but it's certainly not close to what actually came to fruition. They failed last offseason, but I don't think it was as much on them as some seem to think. They couldn't have seen Happ, Shoemaker, and Colome being completely unusable (and any fan being honest with themselves would know they didn't see them being that incredibly bad either) and couldn't have predicted basically every single prospect arm they have missing extended time. You prepare as best as you can for the worst case scenario, but it's almost impossible to actually survive a worst case scenario coming to life. Nobody has the depth to cover for your top 15 arms all going down.

[prouster]

1 hour ago, Dodecahedron said:

None of us have seen that, but let's talk about what we have seen.  This year, I have seen Twins pitchers getting ahead 0-2 and then dinking around the strike zone until the pitcher's advantage is gone.  One pitcher gets pulled after this doesn't work out for them, only for the next pitcher to come in and do the same thing.  Twins pitchers who never made a habit of this before have been doing it this year. 

My assumption is the number of conversations it would take for Wes (or whoever) to stop this practice could be counted on one hand.  

What should the pitching coach say? “Throw a strike”? Do you think these guys need to be told to throw strikes? If a guy gets ahead 0-2 and then, say, walks the batter, that’s on the guy throwing the baseball!

[Battle ur tail off]

Injuries would get a zero from me. Every team has them and the the front office is responsible for having capable guys around that can fill in, in case of one. 

 

That is all. Rocco has been bad too. Terrible really. The rest I would put on the anyone that thought you could dump half of your bullpen before the season and still be successful. 

[Dodecahedron]

54 minutes ago, prouster said:

What should the pitching coach say? “Throw a strike”? Do you think these guys need to be told to throw strikes? If a guy gets ahead 0-2 and then, say, walks the batter, that’s on the guy throwing the baseball!

. . .and it's on the coach to coach against dinking around the strikezone in that situation.  

I have seen it too many times this year where the Twins pitchers are Walter Johnson for the first 2 pitches, and Sam Deduno for the rest of the at-bat.

If you can't imagine what a coach should say in this situation, all I can say is that it's good that you're not a coach.

[Dodecahedron]

7 minutes ago, Battle ur tail off said:

Injuries would get a zero from me. Every team has them and the the front office is responsible for having capable guys around that can fill in, in case of one. 

 

That is all. Rocco has been bad too. Terrible really. The rest I would put on the anyone that thought you could dump half of your bullpen before the season and still be successful. 

I think injuries are a factor, but as you say -- all teams have injuries.  This comes down to bad planning by the front office and coaches.  If you know injuries are coming yet you still field a team with no depth, that's on you, not the injuries.  With good planning, injuries will still have an effect, but a less dramatic effect.

[KobieJr]

I believe the loss of Mike Bell had a bigger impact than anyone is letting on.  Take nothing away from Bill Evers, but how well did he relate to the much younger players.  The hitters often looked off balance with their swings.  Is that the approach they were taught?  IDK

[nicksaviking]

20 minutes ago, KobieJr said:

I believe the loss of Mike Bell had a bigger impact than anyone is letting on.  Take nothing away from Bill Evers, but how well did he relate to the much younger players.  The hitters often looked off balance with their swings.  Is that the approach they were taught?  IDK

Yeah, I'm not sure how big of a role his passing had on the players, but logic would indicate that his responsibilities would have to fall on others; it may have been more than the rest of the staff could handle.

[old nurse]

On 9/19/2021 at 9:17 AM, Greglw3 said:

Not blocking Kirilloff with a batting titlest contender? How has that worked out? Brantley isn’t a depth piece, he’s a batting title contender. My hope for 2022 is an OF of Brantley, Buxton and Kirilloff. 

The farm wasn’t going to and hasn’t provided a player anywhere near Brantley’s caliber. As to the money, pay up!

The Twins and many fans are always bemoaning their fate as a non-playoff advancing team but always seem to be saying this guy or that guy is too expensive. I don’t buy it (pun intended).

The Twins have been cheap so long first with Calvin Griffith, then with Carl Pohlad and Terry Ryan. I really think Jim Pohlad would spend the money necessary. The definition of insanity is  doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. I think the only reason the Twins won those world championships was Andy MacPhail who acquired premium talent to win those both: Gladden, Berenguer, Reardon, Baylor, Morris, etc.

Even starting off with Brantley, Buxton and Kirilloff next year would provide playing time for Kerrigan or Contreras, Kepler (backup OF if he’s still around).

The FO has bumbled and fumbled and decimated a 101 win franchise to a 70 win franchise. If they hope to contend next year and I think they can, they’re going to have to spend money to rectify their many mistakes - maybe too many of them related to saving money that Jim Pohlad would have authorized. 

McPhail has done nothing to turn a club into winners since then. That includes the years after 91 he ran the team

[old nurse]

1 hour ago, Dodecahedron said:

. . .and it's on the coach to coach against dinking around the strikezone in that situation.  

I have seen it too many times this year where the Twins pitchers are Walter Johnson for the first 2 pitches, and Sam Deduno for the rest of the at-bat.

If you can't imagine what a coach should say in this situation, all I can say is that it's good that you're not a coach.

Twins pitchers have been that way for years.  Pitch counts and innings pitched may indicate it is pretty much a pitching problem through baseball

[chpettit19]

1 hour ago, Dodecahedron said:

I think injuries are a factor, but as you say -- all teams have injuries.  This comes down to bad planning by the front office and coaches.  If you know injuries are coming yet you still field a team with no depth, that's on you, not the injuries.  With good planning, injuries will still have an effect, but a less dramatic effect.

The Twins problems with injuries this year were that even their depth got hurt. How many teams are set up to replace 6 or 7 CFers on their major league roster? The answer is 0. And the Twins were 7 CFers deep before May came to an end. If your expectation is that the Twins have 7 MLB caliber CFers available every year you're going to be disappointed every year. How many teams are set up to replace 13 or so of their top 15 or so rotation arms with MLB caliber players? Cuz the Twins had basically every pitcher not named Berrios or Ober go down with injuries (or be Happ or Shoemaker who would've been replaced by the depth had it not all been hurt). 

The FO absolutely needs to provide depth to cover for injuries, but there's a limit to that. Every team has struggles they need to overcome, but losing your starting LF, CF, and catcher like the White Sox did is much easier to overcome than losing your top 6 players at every OF position, plus your top 2 catchers, plus your 3B, plus your best reliever, plus basically your top 15 starter arms at some point in the season. Expecting them to stock the minor leagues with MLB caliber players 6 deep at any position is absurd. 

Yes, the FO failed this offseason, but lets not act like there should be an expectation that any MLB organization runs as deep with outfielders and arms as the Twins had to this year. Discounting the injuries that this team faced as simply normal, every year occurrence is simply wrong. It's certainly not the main problem, but this level of injuries shouldn't be counted as every year happenings.

[Squirrel]

51 minutes ago, KobieJr said:

I believe the loss of Mike Bell had a bigger impact than anyone is letting on.  Take nothing away from Bill Evers, but how well did he relate to the much younger players.  The hitters often looked off balance with their swings.  Is that the approach they were taught?  IDK

Welcome to TD!

[prouster]

2 hours ago, Dodecahedron said:

. . .and it's on the coach to coach against dinking around the strikezone in that situation.  

I have seen it too many times this year where the Twins pitchers are Walter Johnson for the first 2 pitches, and Sam Deduno for the rest of the at-bat.

If you can't imagine what a coach should say in this situation, all I can say is that it's good that you're not a coach.

How do you know it’s “dinking around” and not poor control? Why is a player not ultimately responsible for how he plays? By this logic, a player should never be benched, because his performance isn’t really his performance—it’s the coach’s. That’s absurd. 
 

And I’m also glad I’m not a coach.  

[cHawk]

On 9/19/2021 at 3:45 PM, sampleSizeOfOne said:

That is one fine dog! How long do i wait until i get one for lack of an opinion?

Sorry I was just kidding about the dog.

[Dman]

3 hours ago, chpettit19 said:

 

Berrios, Maeda, Pineda, Ober, and Balazovic (with a handful of others getting shots) seems like a decent little rotation for an August and September push for the division. Not ideal, and certainly able to improve that, but it's certainly not close to what actually came to fruition. They failed last offseason, but I don't think it was as much on them as some seem to think. They couldn't have seen Happ, Shoemaker, and Colome being completely unusable (and any fan being honest with themselves would know they didn't see them being that incredibly bad either) and couldn't have predicted basically every single prospect arm they have missing extended time. You prepare as best as you can for the worst case scenario, but it's almost impossible to actually survive a worst case scenario coming to life. Nobody has the depth to cover for your top 15 arms all going down.

Yeah I totally agree with your take.  Even at the beginning of the season I told myself that rotation maybe doesn't look world series bound but it looks solid and there is some depth behind it.  This FO had built solid pens the past two season's and while I didn't like some of the arms for the pen who was I to doubt them since they had done well the past couple of years.  The bats are what killed us in the playoffs but the offense was top 10 I believe the past two years and with a healthy Donaldson and Buxton had a chance to be even better IMO. It all looked good on paper but was a disaster for a variety of reasons the first two months of the season.

But yes I agree with you that you just cannot plan for the kind of depth they needed this year no team can and even teams that took ultra proactive steps in the offseason (I'm looking at you AJ Preller and San Diego) can and are having a disappointing season.  The Trever Bauer decision hurt the Dodgers as well and they had to dig into the farm to get Scherzer for their run this year.  Strange things happen in a baseball season and you cannot predict every thing will go your way. Even the best laid plans can go up in smoke.

[Richie the Rally Goat]

On 9/19/2021 at 3:45 PM, sampleSizeOfOne said:

That is one fine dog! How long do i wait until i get one for lack of an opinion?

You get the cone of shame

how dare you not have an opinion on everything on the internet

[PseudoSABR]

10 hours ago, Dodecahedron said:

If you look at the radar chart, "poor results" is shorthand for the two categories "Coaching" and "Team Performance."  

When I decided to use the shorthand at the top, I knew someone would fall on the sword and ask this question before thinking about it.  I believe you should be able to see that the graph does not have a category labelled "Poor Results."  Let me know if you are still having trouble.

So you intentionally lead with bullet points you knew may mislead people? ?

Team performance is the exact same thing as saying poor results; the question is who is to blame for that.  Is that another way of saying players are to blame or is that a way of avoiding saying players to blame? Or does player snafus only account for players (i.e. their mere mistakes, as opposed to ability or effort)? So what's team performance other than results?  

[a-wan]

16 minutes ago, PseudoSABR said:

So you intentionally lead with bullet points you knew may mislead people? ?

Team performance is the exact same thing as saying poor results; the question is who is to blame for that.  Is that another way of saying players are to blame or is that a way of avoiding saying players to blame? Or does player snafus only account for players (i.e. their mere mistakes, as opposed to ability or effort)? So what's team performance other than results?  

Oh my head hurts now. I blame Baldelli 100%, since it is professional sports team sucking. Managers always fall on the sword.

[Squirrel]

15 minutes ago, a-wan said:

Oh my head hurts now. I blame Baldelli 100%, since it is professional sports team sucking. Managers always fall on the sword.

They don't usually fall on it ... they are usually pushed

[TheLeviathan]

5 hours ago, prouster said:

How do you know it’s “dinking around” and not poor control? Why is a player not ultimately responsible for how he plays? By this logic, a player should never be benched, because his performance isn’t really his performance—it’s the coach’s. That’s absurd. 
 

And I’m also glad I’m not a coach.  

I'm pretty sure half the signs from the dugout are also telling the hitters to "aim for the little white ball" and I've heard Arraez and Donaldson need constant reminders to breath and digest.  Worst of all, Alex Colome will literally wet himself if not reminded by his coaches to hold it.

It's a shame, I'd gladly take the league minimum if my utter failures could just be chocked up to "my coach didn't tell me to".

[Dodecahedron]

15 hours ago, chpettit19 said:

The Twins problems with injuries this year were that even their depth got hurt. How many teams are set up to replace 6 or 7 CFers on their major league roster? 

I don't remember 6 or 7 center fielders going down due to injury.  The Twins may have rotated that many players through the position, which I would wager is very close to the average number of CFs a team fields over the course of a typical year.  The point isn't the total number, it's the level of talent in the number.

I'm surprised you raised the point of the CF depth instead of pitching.  Anticipating that type of response coming down the pipeline from you or someone else, most teams put over 30 pitchers on the field over the course of a season.  The 2021 Twins have used 35, the 2019 Twins used 31.  I'm doubting that those 4 extra pitchers are responsible for 30-40 more losses.  I'm betting you have the same doubt.

So yes, injuries are a factor.  The Twins knew this but did not adequately plan for it.  Choosing CF as your example is even more strange, given the Twins know the name on the back of the jersey for their starting center fielder and know he is often injured.