Game Recap: Twins 8, White Sox 5

Very nice to see one of our potential young guns, take a stand and show some backbone against the Sox.  Very impressive performance for Ober as his previous 2 starts were U-G-L-Y to put it nicely.  

Count me in the "Ober camp" as a legit option for our 2022 starting rotation.

Not intending to be overly negative, as I know Thielbar has been above average all season, but he sure appeared to be doing his best early season "Colome impression" in his 1 inning of work.  Not making the call right now, but with additional outings of this nature (hoping this is not the case), I believe Jovanni Moran would make a viable replacement.  

Always nice to see anyone against the Sox.

Nice to shut Ozzie Guillen's piehole...at least for 1 night.

I was there tonight and it was a fun and exciting game.  A little bit of everything.  What was up with the White Sox backup catcher?  He allowed the Twins to advance four bases on passed balls.  What you probably didn't see on the television broadcast was that the Twins runners on bases clearly smelled the blood in the water and were taking huge secondary leads at every opportunity.  Gordon's triple was a thing of beauty.  I look forward to seeing him in the lineup for years to come.  I think Thielbar was left in too long and Duffey just looked terrible.  Rogers really deserves the credit for preserving the lead and saving the game.  Robles was alright but he had some margin of error to work with. 

What you are missing is the Sano at bat after Kirilloff's HBP and Kepler's walk.  Sano looked lost up there.  Sure, he got a hit later in the game and eventually scored a run but you need to advance the runners with two on, no one out in that situation.  Put the ball in play.  Don't worry about swinging for the fences.  Bunt the ball, if you need to.  I was not surprised he struck out on 3-2 (in fact, I commented to the person next to me that Sano wasn't going to take this pitch so why throw him something in the zone).  If I know it, every pitcher on the planet knows he wants to swing on that count and is going to throw him something low, probably out of the zone.  That is exactly what happened.  

Nice win.  I know it's only one but that's all we got last week.  Hope Berrios rebounds from his last start.  Trade deadline in about 3 weeks

I like his starts, but is anyone else wondering if its just a matter of time until batters start to figure him out? His slider did look very legit at times last night however and that should continue to play well.  

Nice to see Kepler with those 2 HR and Sano with a 2-for-4 day. It wasn't long ago that we expected those guys to be the core of this lineup, the fact that our expectations are so low for those two is unfortunate. Maybe they can turn it around in this otherwise lost season.

Wish we could see Gordon every day. He didn't get an AB in the last Sox-Twins series, what a crime.

Can't go down the rabbit hole that is the Twins bullpen, but let's just say I don't think any Twins fan felt that a 6-1 lead was safe and we were all correct.

A win's a win. Go get 'em tonight.

They gave losing a good shot in the 7th!

I felt one of the bigger things that happened last night was Kepler's opposite field homer.  Nice to see he doesn't need to be pull happy to get them and the more he goes oppo I think his BABIP will improve and with it his average.  Here's hoping he has turned a corner.

41 minutes ago, Dodecahedron said:

Over the course of his career, Kepler's OPS has been too low considering the number of home runs he hits.  He is all power...

Kepler gets a lot of flak on the forums for not being an All Star. I don't see him being the Twins' problem and his contract doesn't suggest to me he's being paid to be a core part of the lineup. If Kepler turns into his 2019 self, I think it's safe to say the Twins would have gotten one of the biggest steals in MLB at $7MM per year. Right now, today, he's an above average hitter for MLB in terms of wRC+, and it doesn't seem to me it should generally matter much where the production comes from. Kepler isn't an automatic out at the plate with a sky high strike out rate: he's not a swing at anything kind of guy as he walks quite a bit. Kepler's swing looks beautiful, but as a lot of analysis out there has shown, it doesn't travel through the contact zone as well as it looks and that leads to a lot more poor contact. My expectation is he's probably going to remain a relatively low average hitter with a bat somewhat above league average. I'm not sure what you're really wanting? .280/.360/.390 OPS = .750 instead of a normalish kind of line for him of like .225/.320/.430 = OPS .750?

4 hours ago, JW24 said:

All good points made by Nick, but I think he is missing one significant point, which is, what is the plan for Nelson Cruz next season? Assuming Cruz is not a Twin (though at this point, why not offer him a 5 year extension, the man is ageless), JD could slot into the DH role more regularly to try to keep him more available. Going into next season expecting a combination of Sano/Kepler/??? to take 650 plate appearances as DH is going to be a more significant production decline than JD to the 3B depth outlined in the article.

6 minutes ago, Dodecahedron said:

Very good.  Thank you for looking that up.  Do those other players seem like empty power guys too?  I admit I don't know.

Kepler's ISO in 2019 was .267, ranking 13th in MLB of 135 qualified batters. His wRC+ was 121 ranking 49th of 135.

In 2020, he ranked 48th and 82nd of 142, respectively.

This year, Kepler is at ISO .231 and wRC+ 101 ranking 37th and 132nd out of 217 batters with 200 plate appearances or more, respectively.

Kepler is not an empty power guy (assuming you mean HR or nothing), in my opinion. There are those handfuls of players with averages across the season significantly lower than Kepler with ISO's much higher and high K rates where it's a 2-3 outcome event at the plate. Kepler's K rate, typically, isn't bad and he usually has more doubles than HRs.

11 hours ago, minman1982 said:

I was there tonight and it was a fun and exciting game.  A little bit of everything.  What was up with the White Sox backup catcher?  He allowed the Twins to advance four bases on passed balls.  What you probably didn't see on the television broadcast was that the Twins runners on bases clearly smelled the blood in the water and were taking huge secondary leads at every opportunity.  Gordon's triple was a thing of beauty.  I look forward to seeing him in the lineup for years to come.  I think Thielbar was left in too long and Duffey just looked terrible.  Rogers really deserves the credit for preserving the lead and saving the game.  Robles was alright but he had some margin of error to work with. 

What you are missing is the Sano at bat after Kirilloff's HBP and Kepler's walk.  Sano looked lost up there.  Sure, he got a hit later in the game and eventually scored a run but you need to advance the runners with two on, no one out in that situation.  Put the ball in play.  Don't worry about swinging for the fences.  Bunt the ball, if you need to.  I was not surprised he struck out on 3-2 (in fact, I commented to the person next to me that Sano wasn't going to take this pitch so why throw him something in the zone).  If I know it, every pitcher on the planet knows he wants to swing on that count and is going to throw him something low, probably out of the zone.  That is exactly what happened.  

For his career, on AB's that get to a 3-2 count, Sano has 178 bb, 205 k's, and has put the ball in play 150 times, with 64 of those going for hits.  So...not quite the hacker you want to make him out to be.  In fact, if you look at the entire league since 2016, in PA's that go to 3-2, the league records outs 54.5% of the time (27.7% in play outs, 26.7% k's).  Sano records outs 54.6% of the time (16.3% in play outs, 38.3% k's).  In other words, Sano is essentially no different than the league at creating outs in 3-2 counts.

37 minutes ago, Dodecahedron said:

Very good.  Thank you for looking that up.  Do those other players seem like empty power guys too?  I admit I don't know.

As the league has shifted more towards hitting homeruns, the value of an individual homerun has decreased.  As such, hitting 35 homers no longer has the same impact as it once did, and since OPS+ compares a player to the rest of the league, it's not surprising that players hitting a lot of homeruns would not have huge OPS+ numbers, unlike players in the past who hit the same number of homers.

Think of it this way--if in 1980 you had 5 TV's in your house, that would be a ton of TV's, and would give you a high "TV+".  in 2021, you would still have a "TV+" above 100, but it would not be as dramatic, as most people now have at least 2 or 3 TV's in their house.

9 minutes ago, Dodecahedron said:

Yes, I am aware of these things, but what you may not realize you are saying is that this means Kepler's 36 home runs was an anomaly.  This narrative has the opposite effect you think it does.

I was saying nothing of the kind.  I was saying anyone hitting 36 homers in today's game will have a lower OPS+ than someone hitting 36 homers 20+ years ago did.  I do think that Kepler had has one big year in 2019, when all the stars aligned for any number of players, and I would be surprised to see him hit 36 again, but that in no way correlates to my point that Kepler's OPS+ was not too low for a guy who hit 36 homers.

14 minutes ago, Dodecahedron said:

OK, but take away those home runs and what happens to his wRC+?  That's the question.  We have to compare him to other players for that.  It seems there are Kepler-like players out there, so he's not a complete anomaly.

Almost any batter's wRC+ without homers is going to be horrific, as homers carry the most weight in wOBA (which is what wRC+ is based on).  If you're saying that Kepler's 2019 wRC+ was anomalous due to a skewed HR ratio, then I would respond that we should instead be looking at his whether his HR rate would be expected to continue.  As it turns out, the 18% HR/FB rate Kepler has in 2019 has not recurred, probably due to Kepler's failure to maintain the 40%+ hard hit rate he managed in 2019.  As such, I think we can all stop waiting for 5 WAR Kepler to come back, but appreciate that he's still 2-3 WAR Kepler, which is perfectly acceptable for a guy who slots in the bottom half of your order, and is only owed $15Mish over the next 2 years.

15 hours ago, darwin22 said:

Not intending to be overly negative, as I know Thielbar has been above average all season, but he sure appeared to be doing his best early season "Colome impression" in his 1 inning of work.  Not making the call right now, but with additional outings of this nature (hoping this is not the case), I believe Jovanni Moran would make a viable replacement.  

He's allowed 71% of his inherited runners to score this season. I'm sure that's factored into some performance metrics already but it's a pretty atrocious stat line if we're talking about somebody as being above average. 

2 hours ago, Dodecahedron said:

You only unpacked half the box.

Finishing the thought:  36 home runs is not very valuable, and thus, Kepler is less valuable.

Fully explaining the thought: 36 homeruns is quite valuable, just not as valuable as it used to be.

Put another way--$1M is still a large amount of money, just not quite as large as it was in 1980.

2 hours ago, Dodecahedron said:

Thank you for repeating what I said, but with more words.

Certainly not repeating what you said, as what you said was Kepler gets too much of his value from homeruns to be considered a good player.

I said that if Kepler stops hitting homers (which seems likely, given the stats I referenced), he goes from being All-Star caliber to simply solid regular, which still has value for the current iteration of the Twins.

Perhaps if you'd used more words, you'd have arrived at the same, nuanced, conclusion.