In the End, the 2022 Twins Never Stood a Chance

[RJA]

If this article was meant to highlight injuries, it certainly did that and I understand why Nick wrote it.  I guess what I question is the headline about never standing a chance.  That simply is not true, as we were still in it a week ago.  I would refer everyone to Gleeman's article in the Athletic where he quantifies the injuries as noted by several commentators above, but also points out that the lack of clutch hitting and bullpen implosions surrendering late leads were also culprits.  We did stand a chance, even with the injuries, but a horrible bullpen (Gleeman points out lots of stats about how bad it is outside of Duran), poorly constructed rotation full or 4-5 innings guys, players not hitting in the clutch, and a manager who kept running Pagan out there to blow games (remember the same tendency with Colome) hurt us in the end.  It would have been remarkable to overcome all these injuries and still win the division, but we could have done it.  It was not impossible in this the worst division in baseball.  Nick, I would change the headline to match your analysis.

[mnfireman]

The biggest thing with the Twins injuries is the drop-off to the next level of player. Buxton, Larnach, Kirrilloff and Kepler become Cave, Celestino, Contrearas and Garlick. All 4 of those players are capable players in reserve and specialty roles, not to run out there daily. Polanco and Correa become Palacios and Beckham, Jeffers becomes Caleb Hamilton, Jose Godoy, and Leon, who was in AAA when traded for. Gordon has been the lone bright spot from these injuries.

I don't think I have the time or the want to go into the rotation and bullpen, but both fall off drastically when injuries occurred and/or pitchers had to pitch in roles they were not suited for. 

Correa and Sano being injured gave the team the opportunity to see what Lewis and Miranda could do, and unfortunately for Lewis he also got injured. It also gave Arraez a chance to play everyday, but I suspect that is also why his numbers have fallen off the last month or so. 

The IL stints also do not include how many games Buxton, Kepler, Polanco, Larnach, Kirilloff, Jeffers and several pitchers tried to play through injuries, affecting their performance and the teams.

Injuries de-railed this team, despite them being able to overcome them and be competeive until recently. They are 39-49 since June 1 and injuries have played a significant role.

[Nick Nelson]

51 minutes ago, RJA said:

It would have been remarkable to overcome all these injuries and still win the division, but we could have done it.  It was not impossible in this the worst division in baseball.  Nick, I would change the headline to match your analysis.

As I watched the team play over the past week, it was the only thing going through my head. You can't expect to beat decent teams with Max Kepler hitting 4th out of sheer necessity and 3rd-string options making up half your lineup. Or with Ryan and Bundy as essentially your only healthy starters. The slide was basically inevitable. Maybe you could argue they could've scraped together more wins early on and been in a better position right now but even if they managed to win the garbo division they'd stand zero chance in the playoffs with this decimated roster. The injuries have given them no chance to realize their (considerable) potential. 

[bean5302]

I wonder how Baseball Prospectus calculated lost WAR. If we're talking about just pure player WAR without context, I could see the Twins really suffering.

i.e. Correa misses the entire season = -5.0 fWAR.

But, if we're talking about net lost WAR

i.e. Lewis doesn't get hurt and produces 4.0 fWAR as a shortstop, thus, the Twins lose 1.0 fWAR net.

I have a hard time believing the stats because so many of the injured players were replaced by guys who were just as good or nearly as good as expected.

https://blogs.fangraphs.com/2022-zips-projections-minnesota-twins/

Those are the ZiPS projections for the Twins in 2022.
Kirilloff = 0.7 
Lewis = -0.3 
Larnach = -0.2
Sano = 2.0

Those guys going down did not hurt the Twins as they were all replaced with players who produced more than the injured players were expected to produce, anyway. For the pitching staff, it's more of the same. Paddack hurt a little, but that's about it.
Paddack = 1.8
Ober = 1.4
Winder = 0.9

In regard to Buxton, there was no world in which it would have been reasonable to expect him to play more than 100 games. It's just never going to happen. The Twins also understood that which is why he's being paid $15MM instead of far more. Even Buxton understood the concerns when he signed the contract.


 

[RpR]

14 hours ago, Beast said:

I get that excitement for the team drives page views, revenues, etc. and I’m sure the people you all deal with in the FO really appreciate articles like these….but woof.  What a parade of “it’s not their fault,” this week.

 

With the exception of Buxton, who said not playing every day screwed him up, all  - If play blah, blah, blah -  is a simple rationalizing excuse/s for the Twins failure/s.

Larnach and Jeffers loss was did NOT have a big effect, Jeffers was/is a run-at-will catcher . Jeffers played approx. one half the number of games Sanchez played, if you doubled Jeffers numbers rbi, hr, etc. they are similar to Sanchez, big difference is Sanchez is far better defensive player.

Larnach - If  you go to Baseball Ref. where he, Kirilloff , Garlic and Cave stats. are directly in a cluster --  per number of at bats in reality very little difference (Cave has so few at bats, a hitting streak or slump changes his numbers drastically) so who played, with the exception of Caves fielding ability, makes little difference.

Celestino and Gordon, hmm, well Gordon fluctuated between the worst and best of the movie character Willie Mays Hays all season; Celestino reflects the Twins , a steady slow decline.

In my opinion Baldelli is just a continuing of the not ready for prime time managers the Twins have had since Tom Kelly left, and until that is changed , it will be more and more disappointment .

Maybe is  the curse of the Gardy.

 

[RJA]

45 minutes ago, Nick Nelson said:

As I watched the team play over the past week, it was the only thing going through my head. You can't expect to beat decent teams with Max Kepler hitting 4th out of sheer necessity and 3rd-string options making up half your lineup. Or with Ryan and Bundy as essentially your only healthy starters. The slide was basically inevitable. Maybe you could argue they could've scraped together more wins early on and been in a better position right now but even if they managed to win the garbo division they'd stand zero chance in the playoffs with this decimated roster. The injuries have given them no chance to realize their (considerable) potential. 

Thank you for your kind response.  I totally agree that injuries gave them no chance to realize their potential, which at least offensively was considerable.   I understand where you are coming from, and the end of the season is a gut punch to all of us.  I think many reacted to your headline and not your article.  Thanks for all you contribute to the site.  Boy, you generated conversation with this article :)!

[Unwinder]

I do feel like it's fishy that the Twins seem to be suffering disproportionally so many injuries over multiple seasons, but I have no idea who, if anyone, has dropped the ball. Are they drafting and trading for more risky players than other teams? Is it poor conditioning? Are players not being trained to play in ways that minimize injury? It seems like it's a too much to attribute to just bad luck, but I'm not totally convinced that it's a problem that requires tearing down leadership and starting over. People love to assume that Falvey, Lavine, Baldelli, etc. are completely set in their ways and can never fix anything wrong with any part of their system and I just don't have the depth of knowledge to know if that's true of this problem. This year they did try pretty hard to avoid injuries with the off days, and we wound up with another very bad injury year. Does this mean they're out of ideas and we can't get any more ideas without getting new management? I have no idea.

As for the Mahle and Paddack trades, I don't have complete information, but I still view them as risks worth taking that did not break in our favor.

[TwinsDr2021]

3 hours ago, chpettit19 said:

While I'm generally on board with these thoughts, Mahle is 27 and Paddack is 26, so not exactly old. Certainly have their own very real injury concerns (although I think the Mahle stuff is blown out of proportion. Plenty of people on these boards wanted them to get Montas but he'd also just missed time with a shoulder issue), but they aren't old. So there should be real hope for Mahle since he hadn't had any other injury problems other than a hamstring back in 2019. Paddack is a wild card coming back from TJ 2.

an both have been pitching in the majors since age 22 and 23, so the odds say they are likely to out perform the guys getting to the majors later (Winder/Ober/Varland for example)

[SpicyGarvSauce]

7 hours ago, KirbyDome89 said:

"I don't see much of a case for holding the manager or even the front office primarily accountable for what's gone down this season."

Audibly laughed out loud at this. I mean yeah, can't be the fault of a FO who constructed a makeshift bullpen, placed immense importance on a "pipeline," that has failed spectacularly, signed two bargain bin starters prone to short outings that further exacerbated the already terrible pen situation, and traded for two more injured starters. Oh, and don't forget, we're still watching Emilio Pagan, the worst relief pitcher in baseball, trot out there and give up runs in crucial games while this team hangs on by a thread. Definitely not much of a case for holding that group accountable. Zero chance any of that has contributed to this being a sub .500 teams for the last 4 months right? The above poster is correct, this is high level cringe....

Lewis and Kirilloff: Losing Kirilloff sucks, no question. We're lacking a ton of context with Lewis. Coming into this year he hadn't played since 2019, and he wasn't exactly stellar in A ball that year. There were real questions about him. The Twins weren't banking on him, hence the Correa signing. It's a bummer he injured the ACL again, and he was hitting the s*** outta the ball before getting sent down, but when the season started this team didn't need or maybe expect Royce Lewis to come up and play the way he did. 

Mahle and Paddack: They traded for broken parts, not once, but twice within 4 months. That's not aww shucks bad luck. It just isn't. 

Buxton: He's never going to play a full season. We knew it before the year started. It's why the 4th OF topic was a hot debate. He basically made it to September before having to shut it down. We can quibble over how his playing time was handled, but you already said it, second most PAs of his career. We take that every time. 

Jeffers and Larnach: Jeffers was bottom tier offensively, even by catching standards and he was even worse than Sanchez at stopping the run game. Would I take him over Leon? Yeah, but that's a pretty low hurdle. He's ideally the short side of a catching split, i.e. a backup catcher. Larnach has been so streaky, Idk which version the Twins would've gotten, but yep, I'd definitely prefer watching him to Cave or Garlick. 

Winder and Ober: No clear red flags? Are we actually serious with this? Both ended last year on the IL, Winder with his shoulder issue that's now flared up 3 times in less than a year and Ober with a hip injury that I imagine is linked to the groin issue that's cost him most of this year. Ober also hasn't been able to stay healthy enough to handle even modest workloads 4 professional seasons now....

Alcala and Canterino: Canterino threw 23 innings in the low minors before missing the rest of the year. Zero chance he was supposed to be relied on. Alcala had a nice September last year, he was borderline unusable through July. We act like he was a solid set up guy, the reality is he was a question mark even if fully healthy.  

Coulombe, Stashak, Romero, Dobnak, and Maeda:  Maeda was injured last August, they knew what his status was heading into the offseason. The rest are AAAA, waiver claim, minor league contract guys. Just stop with this nonsense.

I cannot heart this post enough.

Well done.

[TwinsDr2021]

1 hour ago, Nick Nelson said:

As I watched the team play over the past week, it was the only thing going through my head. You can't expect to beat decent teams with Max Kepler hitting 4th out of sheer necessity and 3rd-string options making up half your lineup. Or with Ryan and Bundy as essentially your only healthy starters. The slide was basically inevitable. Maybe you could argue they could've scraped together more wins early on and been in a better position right now but even if they managed to win the garbo division they'd stand zero chance in the playoffs with this decimated roster. The injuries have given them no chance to realize their (considerable) potential. 

3 of the first games of the season Gio Urshela was hitting 4th.

[SpicyGarvSauce]

2 hours ago, Nick Nelson said:

You must have missed this part of the post, which was in the second paragraph, so I'll type it out in all caps again for ya: "THIS DOESN'T ABSOLVE THE COACHING STAFF OR FRONT OFFICE OF ANY CULPABILITY." There will be plenty of time for you to rant about everything that went wrong and how you saw it all coming. This post is intended to center on the injuries, which are undeniably a massive part of this being a sub-.500 team for the last 4 months. I would say the most significant part, you might disagree. But undeniably a massive part.

The front office built a team capable of winning the division, coming off a last-place finish. It was on its way. Even with all the bad decisions and missteps you cited, is there really any doubt they'd still be in front of Cleveland if even half of the players currently on the injured list were available? I personally don't think so.

Winning a division where the winner of it may not even finish above .500.

Yes, this is relative to your argument supporting the FO by saying they built a team capable of winning the division.

[Bigfork Twins Guy]

Good article that looks to have spurred some good conversation.  Injuries happen and for the most part may not be controllable.  What I do have a concern with is the pattern of incoming pitchers via trade, and even home-grown pitchers having injuries.

Dyson, Paddack, Mahle... are we just taking injured players because they cost less or is our medical staff missing something?  I am thinking it could be the latter as they are not sure what is wrong with several home-grown pitchers (e.g. Winder, Balazovic, Canternio, Enlow, etc.)

When a pitcher says all is fine and he has no pain like Mahle did, and the Twins medical staff says they see nothing wrong, but the player cannot throw above 90 and for that reason goes on the IL, then something is not right.

There seems to be something wrong here in evaluation of injuries for pitchers and possibly in usage that is causing them.  I believe an evaluation by the FO (using outside qualified medical personnel) of our internal medical staff is in order this off season.

[Nick Nelson]

1 hour ago, SpicyGarvSauce said:

Winning a division where the winner of it may not even finish above .500.

Yes, this is relative to your argument supporting the FO by saying they built a team capable of winning the division.

What exactly did you expect coming off a year where they finished last place in said division? Seems like you're not being very realistic or practical. They should be fired for not building a World Series champion in these circumstances?

We can all recognize that 2021 was a mess and was largely on their shoulders. That doesn't mean we can't extend some grace as they try to work back on track, which they mostly did this year outside of the catastrophic injuries.

[jimbo92107]

Mahle's shoulder injury is far from mysterious. Either it's a torn rotator cuff, a torn labrum, or both. Get it sewed up, and maybe he'll be ready to pitch around mid season 2023. If not, it will bite him again inside the first month. 

[Danchat]

11 minutes ago, Nick Nelson said:

What exactly did you expect coming off a year where they finished last place in said division? Seems like you're not being very realistic or practical. They should be fired for not building a World Series champion in these circumstances?

We can all recognize that 2021 was a mess and was largely on their shoulders. That doesn't mean we can't extend some grace as they try to work back on track, which they mostly did this year outside of the catastrophic injuries.

I was hoping they would prove that the 2021 was a fluke - I didn't expect any success in the playoffs, but if I were to know how bad this division was ahead of time, I would have expected us to win it. 

The initial promise was 'sustained competitivity', and I don't feel like that has been attained. We've gone off the rails since a successful 2019-20 stretch, and even during then this team wasn't competitive at all in the playoffs. It feels like we're miles from being our 2019 squad, which already wasn't good enough.

[howeda7]

I'd look at it this way: Who were your 5 most important position players and pitchers going into the season and how many games did you lose due to unexpected injuries.

Position Players:

-Buxton: 100 games was a reasonable goal. Anything more than that would be gravy. That's just reality. He will come up a bit short of that. I'll also grant that he was hampered when he did play to some extent. Wins lost: 1.5

-Correa: He missed a few games with his hand and a few with Covid. Neither are enough to be deemed unusual. Wins lost: 0.

-Polanco: Up until the recent IL stint, he was able to stay in the line-up even if he missed  a few games. Wins lost: 0.5

-Arreaz: He has been fully healthy. Wins lost: 0

-The 5th spot is debatable, but I'll give it to Kiriloff. But we don't know how good he would have been when healthy. Even hampered, his #'s in 2022 were similar to 2021. Being generous: Wins lost 2.0

Pitchers:

-Sonny Gray: He missed about 3 starts early. Not an unusual amount. Wins Lost: 0

-Joe Ryan: He missed 2-3 starts with Covid. Again, not unusual. Wins Lost: 0

-Taylor Rodgers: You willingly swapped him for Pagan on Opening Day, leaving Pagan as your default closer for half the season. Dumb move. But hey, he's been healthy! Wins lost: 0

-Johan Duran: He's been healthy and excellent. Wins lost: 0

-Baily Ober: Again, 2021 was a small sample size. He was essentially replaced by a combo of Winder, Smelzer and Sanchez. While they're not great, they also haven't train-wrecked. So again being generous: Wins lost: 2.0

Total wins lost due to injuries among the top 10 players: 6. I guess that would be enough to have us clinging to first place for now. But it wouldn't make this a great team.

[rv78]

4 hours ago, Nick Nelson said:

I think then problem with this analysis is that it doesn't account for good management decisions and smart calls that led to victories. It's very one-sided hindsight analysis.

Everyone wants to talk about how going to Pagan against Cleveland lost them games. No one wants to talk about how many games the Twins won because Rocco removed a starter before he imploded, or pulled the right bullpen strings. No one wants to talk about how many games they've won because of Jhoan Duran, one of the best rookie relievers in franchise history that this FO targeted, acquired, developed, and unleashed. There were a lot of things done right to generate meaningful improvement this year. With truly incompetent oversight it could've been a lot worse. IMO.

If Rocco makes the right moves, isn't that is his job? Obviously the victories were from the "right moves". I said "most, not all" mistakes cost this team wins. To flip the script and say good management decisions led to victories is what is suppose to happen, every game. That is the sole purpose of the manager and should be expected of him, again ... every game. I'm not going to give him extra credit for doing his job "some of the time". I will give him "extra" credit when he starts doing it "ALL of the time". I don't expect every move to be the right move. No one ever knows until after the fact if it was the right move or not. But when he makes the same mistakes over and over which lead to the same dreadful outcomes then he needs to be held accountable. Remember, this is the guy who said he couldn't figure out how to give Correa and Buxton a day off without them missing the same game if their scheduled off day fell on the same day. Any 12 year old knows enough to push the day of rest for 1 of them either back or forward 1 day. And kudos to the FO for getting Jhoan Duran. Thanks for doing your job. It is... what is expected of them, so we should be grateful. They have produced 1 pitcher that is of Ace quality in 1 season since they arrived and he is relegated to the bullpen where he exceeded expectations and will now remain for the rest of his career since they will never give him a chance to be the Ace starter that they so desperately need. 

[dex8425]

15 hours ago, tony&rodney said:

Because Maeda is really the only guy likely to be healthy next year, does tomorrow's article get titled "From the beginning the 2023 Twins never stand a chance?"

Now I don't mean that in any negative manner (it does sound bad) because I like your articles. It just seems like the Twins are more reactive than proactive. In 2019 Manfred and a very weak AL Central gifted a flawed yet exciting team a path. The Twins had multiple options to address their weaknesses and chose to reboot. I liked that the team won but the manner was flawed from strategy to player personnel. I'm not going to quit on the Twins but having been a fan since the beginning (1961), the poor fundamentals are a sour point for me as it has been with other teams through the years. Perhaps Varland, SWR, Lewis, Lee, and Wallner (DH) can bring something to the team in 2023, but it does seem like there is a pile of players who are going to find themselves too often on the IL again instead of in the lineup. I hope I'm wrong, I really do. From last November it seemed like this was the year but so much went wrong. I agree the injuries were horrendous but the planning and player acquisition along with the continued failure to care about fundamental baseball hurt the team even more. 

Sonny Gray and Joe Ryan will be healthy. The problem is that the Twins have a #2 starter, a couple #3's, and a TON of #5/fringe type starters who could be league average, or not. There's only one great bullpen piece. The only guy in the lineup who can carry the lineup is going to be hurt more games than not.

[dex8425]

1 hour ago, howeda7 said:

I'd look at it this way: Who were your 5 most important position players and pitchers going into the season and how many games did you lose due to unexpected injuries.

Position Players:

-Buxton: 100 games was a reasonable goal. Anything more than that would be gravy. That's just reality. He will come up a bit short of that. I'll also grant that he was hampered when he did play to some extent. Wins lost: 1.5

-Correa: He missed a few games with his hand and a few with Covid. Neither are enough to be deemed unusual. Wins lost: 0.

-Polanco: Up until the recent IL stint, he was able to stay in the line-up even if he missed  a few games. Wins lost: 0.5

-Arreaz: He has been fully healthy. Wins lost: 0

-The 5th spot is debatable, but I'll give it to Kiriloff. But we don't know how good he would have been when healthy. Even hampered, his #'s in 2022 were similar to 2021. Being generous: Wins lost 2.0

Pitchers:

-Sonny Gray: He missed about 3 starts early. Not an unusual amount. Wins Lost: 0

-Joe Ryan: He missed 2-3 starts with Covid. Again, not unusual. Wins Lost: 0

-Taylor Rodgers: You willingly swapped him for Pagan on Opening Day, leaving Pagan as your default closer for half the season. Dumb move. But hey, he's been healthy! Wins lost: 0

-Johan Duran: He's been healthy and excellent. Wins lost: 0

-Baily Ober: Again, 2021 was a small sample size. He was essentially replaced by a combo of Winder, Smelzer and Sanchez. While they're not great, they also haven't train-wrecked. So again being generous: Wins lost: 2.0

Total wins lost due to injuries among the top 10 players: 6. I guess that would be enough to have us clinging to first place for now. But it wouldn't make this a great team.

That is some odd goal-post moving and analysis there. 

[jkcarew]

Sano, Kirilloff, Lewis, Buxton, Polanco, Mahle are the only needle movers here. (In the cases of Mahle, Kirilloff, and Sano, we can call them ‘potential’ needle movers. Maeda doesn’t count, you knew you’d be without him.)

Of those six needle-movers, for half of them, Buxton, Kirilloff, and Mahle, you HAD to know the risk. Meanwhile, Sano has been on the brink of collapse since 2020. That leaves Polanco (healthy for +80% of the season) and Lewis.

Yes, The sheer number of injuries would have tested the depth of any roster. But, I’d say the long, slow collapse was a combination of some bad breaks AND a head-in-sand approach to roster construction by FO. (Additionally, IMO, Baldelli does not contribute to wins on the margin, but that seems like a different topic.)

[singlesoverwalks]

If the name of the game is avoiding injuries, then maybe we need management that selects players and staff who can minimize injuries. 

[bean5302]

1 hour ago, Nick Nelson said:

What exactly did you expect coming off a year where they finished last place in said division? Seems like you're not being very realistic or practical. They should be fired for not building a World Series champion in these circumstances?

We can all recognize that 2021 was a mess and was largely on their shoulders. That doesn't mean we can't extend some grace as they try to work back on track, which they mostly did this year outside of the catastrophic injuries.

As pointed out by many folks, the net impact of the injuries doesn't seem to have reasonably hit the WAR too hard. i.e. the players mentioned as critical injuries mostly had limited projected value to begin with. Obviously, if Larnach was going to put it all together this year and put up a 4 WAR campaign as a left fielder, it was a big loss, but it wasn't expected.

Ownership clearly had much greater expectations. The Pohlad's set record payroll at $145MM and there's no reason to do that if the expectation is a repeat of 2021. With a much weaker than anticipated division, the signing of Correa, and the Twins' hot start, I think it's reasonable for fans to also have higher expectations than a losing record.

There have also been plenty of articles / comments about whether or not the Twins have set themselves up to have lots of injuries through the signings, trades, drafting and development. Is it really just the luck of the draw or is the front office actively targeting players with injury history in the hopes of getting a discount and the belief those injury prone players are really just unlucky.

[Otto von Ballpark]

5 hours ago, chpettit19 said:

And I told you I don't have that because I'm not a baseball prospectus subscriber, and there's no reason for Gleeman to post entire data sets in his articles. What reason do you have to not believe baseball prospectus? Either you think Gleeman is lying about what baseball prospectus' chart said, or you think baseball prospectus is using some sort of bad data that would artificially boost the Twins numbers. Do you have a reason not to trust the BP WAR calculations beyond you just not agreeing that the Twins should be 2nd on that list?

Obviously Gleeman isn't lying.

But there is reason to be suspicious of BP's conclusion, without seeing their data or knowing their methodology.

Big questions:

- Does it account for projected playing time? Maeda has spent the whole year on the IL, but he also should have been projected for few if any innings this season.

- Does it do anything to avoid double-counting? For example, if Sano was projected for 1.5 WAR at 1B and then got hurt, then Kirilloff was projected for 1.5 WAR as Sano's replacement, would it count the Twins as losing 3 WAR to the IL?

I suspect it may be a simple equation -- number of games on the IL, prorated to a seasonal WAR projection for that player -- in which case it's essentially just restating the total days on the IL without really adding anything meaningful.

[Nick Nelson]

2 hours ago, jimbo92107 said:

Mahle's shoulder injury is far from mysterious. Either it's a torn rotator cuff, a torn labrum, or both. Get it sewed up, and maybe he'll be ready to pitch around mid season 2023. If not, it will bite him again inside the first month. 

Pretty sure that would show up on a scan, Dr. Jimbo

[Nick Nelson]

1 hour ago, rv78 said:

If Rocco makes the right moves, isn't that is his job? Obviously the victories were from the "right moves". I said "most, not all" mistakes cost this team wins. To flip the script and say good management decisions led to victories is what is suppose to happen, every game. 

But to suggest his bad moves are responsible for where the team is at, would be to suggest that they're dramatically underperforming their talent level. And my whole premise with this post is that they are not. They are playing about up to what anyone should reasonably expect given the sheer number of injuries that have ravaged their roster. 

He didn't trade Taylor Rogers for Emilio Pagan. He didn't set up the rotation with a bunch of SPs incapable of going 6+ IP, he's just working with what he's got. I'm not saying he's been perfect by any means but I just don't see him as high on the list of problems. The front office is far more culpable for what they provided him (including the pitching plan he's been executing on) but I still don't see this as the time to fire the top dogs. Shake some things up? Sure. 

[rwilfong86]

11 hours ago, Boom Boom said:

 

When you rely on your prospect pipeline to field a competitive team, you can't miss on a trade like Mahle, which the Twins did.  It was a bad trade.

It looked desperate then and absolutely horrible now. 

[KirbyDome89]

4 hours ago, Nick Nelson said:

You must have missed this part of the post, which was in the second paragraph, so I'll type it out in all caps again for ya: "THIS DOESN'T ABSOLVE THE COACHING STAFF OR FRONT OFFICE OF ANY CULPABILITY." There will be plenty of time for you to rant about everything that went wrong and how you saw it all coming. This post is intended to center on the injuries, which are undeniably a massive part of this being a sub-.500 team for the last 4 months. I would say the most significant part, you might disagree. But undeniably a massive part.

The front office built a team capable of winning the division, coming off a last-place finish. It was on its way. Even with all the bad decisions and missteps you cited, is there really any doubt they'd still be in front of Cleveland if even half of the players currently on the injured list were available? I personally don't think so.

I don't care how wiggle room placing "any," in front of culpability does or doesn't buy you, that's not really the point. The issue is we're papering over what has clearly been poor decision making with hyperbole and this woe is me list of injured players. The best part is nobody had to be Nostradamus to be anxious about the pitching coming into this season, but speaking of seeing into the future, aren't you using theoretical WAR to argue how much value the Twins lost to the IL? Interesting...

There's a seismic shift; they're in 3rd place in the worst division in baseball, but not technically eliminated so I guess there's that. Gold star. 

[Aerodeliria]

That elephant was beating on the door with his trunk before the first pitch was ever even thrown. Don't blame the elephant--blame the elephant's trainer.

[howeda7]

12 hours ago, dex8425 said:

That is some odd goal-post moving and analysis there. 

How so? I'd say the original article is goal post moving. "If only Royce Lewis and AK had been healthy..." when one was not being counted on and the other was an unknown quantity to start the season. 

[Doctor Gast]

21 hours ago, USAFChief said:

- I'd argue if Royce Lewis is listed 1st, as your most impactful injury, you're in pretty good shape. Lewis was a bust coming into the season and not expected to have much if any impact.

I agree with Nick, I don't think preseason expectations has any bearing on the impact of Lewis's injury on the team, Lewis potential & performance greatly impacted the team could have impacted more if he hadn't gotten injured, Management's bright idea of putting Lewis in CF to keep his bat in the line up after Correa's return, shows Lewis importance to the team & his development..

What really impacted his absent was that it was 100% avoidable. Lewis could have been used as a SS, 3B, 2B or even because of his athleticism (greater than Arraez) 1B platoon sub instead of placing him in CF. Because of his athleticism, he could have been more available than his alternative (Miranda). To say Lewis had no impact on the team is to say Miranda has negative impact.