Twins are a great team! But..........?

[Doctor Gast]

This Twin team is great! Buxton has been great offensively with Correa, Polanco and Kepler are starting to heat up and Arraez as always pretty steady. The rotation has been doing pretty well with IMO has a lot of upside. In 2019 we had a great team but we had some weak areas. They have finally resolved some those trouble areas that we've had for years.

1st in 2021, they moved Polanco off of SS and Arraez off of 2B. GBs bled through the INF. Polanco being over stretched at SS caused bad ankles that he couldn't overcome which effected his offense as well as his defense. Polanco has blossomed at 2B once his ankles totally recovered. 2nd this year they added Correa and Lewis has shown great promised. Having Lewis and Gordon that could play SS, Polanco can stay at 2B. 

3rd Celestino and Gordon have blossomed at CF defensively and offensively, where they can adequately sub for Buxton, where Kepler can remain at his natural position. Taking care of these problems at these critical positions has and will continue to help us win games where we normally lose.

In the off season Falvey mentioned about adopting the piggy-back system. I was all for this idea because our rotation at the time was made up of 2 rookies (which I think is good idea not to over burden them) and Bundy (who had a pretty good shorten season but was terrible in a normal season). Later we picked Archer up who was still recovering from a long injury absence and missed practically all of ST. When we picked up Gray I hope we had a work horse but as it turned out for some reason he wasn't ready for the season, causing delay and when he did, he injured himself. Coming back from injury it'll be a little while until he can pitch 5+ quality innings.

I like the piggy-back system because it depend more on long relief, long relief has been a neglected position here for some time now. Long relief takes off the pressure from short relief and the rotation. Baldelli isn't on the same page as Falvey, he loves to use 4 short RPs every game and basicly ignore long relief. Focusing on short relief, short relief gets over burdened then they need to rely on overextending the rotation and some short RPs to pitch 2 or 3 innings when they are used to pitch 1. Resulting in short RPs to burn out then the SPs to burn that could result in injuries.

The main difference between SPing and short RPing is SPing is more of an marathon where short RPing is a sprint, SPs need to pace themselves. This HOU serie I was impressed that our SPs felt the pressure of a red hot potent HOU line-up and our battered up line-up, to come out of the blocks sprinting therefore getting burnt out in 3 or 4 innings. I'm very concerned about our short RPs and SP burning out. I'd like Baldelli to establish a good long relief corp to keep our short RPs and SPs fresh and strong to compete in the post season not limping across the finish line if at all.

Another concern of mine is the "moonblast" mentality. Pitchers have ajusted to this mentality for a long time now by throwing a high fastball up in the zone where the batter can't get a good swing on it which produces whiffs and popups and because of the "dead ball" even if they get a good swing on the ball it ends up as a FO. . Yet this organization still has this mentality. It did my heart good to watch a MLB commentary by Jim Thome praising Trout on focusing on leveling his swing.

I love this great team they have a lot of potential and I'd like to see them have every opportunity to advance into the post season.