Twins ALDS Game 3 Recap: Twins Season Ends in Heartbreak

 

The glass is half full, but this will be a very important next few months.

 

I am willing to say that this is the most important off-season in Twins history.

I concur on the playoffs....

If they expand the playoffs any further to more teams then I am out. My nightmare is a 16 team playoff tournament where the regular season is basically meaningless - see the NBA and NHL. The wild card round reminds me of a slow pitch softball tournament - why are we condensing a 6 month season to a random one game elimination. Either these teams are playoff teams and deserve a 7 game series or have them stay home. Also, bump the LDS to 7 games. Why cheapen determining who is the best team with multiple travel days that rarely, if ever, happen in the regular season. I know it's all for television.

 

Too bad baseball doesn't have a "Quick Lane Bowl"

I don't think this Gopher team is bound for the Quick Lane Bowl. 

 

coinciding with moving to the DC area, I’m just not sure I’m going to be investing this kind of time into this team. I probably read every minor league report this year and watched most games.

It’s one thing if we’re losing in games 4 or 5 of the ALDS every year. Competitive. A bounce here or there. A clearly high ball four to garver on a pitch four feet away from the target here or there. A Yankee not catching one of our 108 mph laser beams here or there.

But we get swept every year. It’s clear we only build to compete for the central. Never for the title. We don’t draft and develop pitching. We don’t trade for it. We don’t sign it.

Why bother.

Rant over. Have a good offseason. I’m off to become a nats fan I guess.

 

Good.  Get out.

This was such a mismatch, I was surprised to see the Yankees celebrate the win. I expected them to slap hands and give each other a look like, "Well, preseason game against the nearby DII college. Good thing we dominated."

 

But you're not playing all teams from the other divisions; you're playing the best. Our winning percentage against "winning" teams was below .500. 

 

And the Red Sox were a good team who are saddeled in a division with two great teams. If you traded the two Sox teams, I would wager that you would have seen more wins by the Red Sox and fewer by the White Sox. 

 

The numbers you've posted are interesting, but for this discussion who we did against divisions writ large is unimportant. How we did against playoff teams is, and the Yankees and Rays did a number on us while we got a series win against the 'Stros. 

 

I think there's a good analog to my college team, Villanova. The Big East is good competition, but it's not the Big 10 or the ACC. And 2016 and 2018 excepted, it shows in the tournament. 

 

And most every college fanbase except probably Duke and Carolina would be overjoyed with that 2016 and 2018 run.  But you find a way to crap on it.

Two things that concerned me about this team all the way back in July ended up coming to fruition in the playoffs:

 

--Rocco's lack of being able to manage a pitching staff.  The examples have been discussed ad infinitum in this thread already so no sense in repeating them.  This is the playoffs and you have to go with your absolute best on the mound, not some silly 'rotation' that worked in the regular season.  Stashak had no business being out there in Game 1 and Dobnak should not have started Game 2.  I was fine with him starting Game 3 at home but not in that crucible of Yankee Stadium.

 

--Hitting all these home runs is great but it won't win you playoff games.  The lack of situational hitting throughout the regular season was annoying (despite the high placement in RISP stats).  The at-bats in the playoffs are a lot more pressure-filled.  The Twins came up extra tiny when it mattered most time and time and time again.

 

That being said, I hope that this season is one that can be built on rather than a cute one-off.  But for that to happen, Falvine is gonna have to pick up at least 1, if not 2, front-line, high-end starters.  If the starters can match the quality of hitting, then they'll be built more for a playoff run.  But to attract those FA starters, they better make sure that guys like Cruz are back for another bomba run.

 

Not leaving Berrios in to start the 5th in game 1 (after only 88 pitches and a 1-2-3 4th on 12) with the game tied, and the pitchers he didn't use in a close and tied game, and starting the Uber driver for game 2 instead of a professional like Odorizzi.......... some of the managerial/front office choices I will never forgive or forget. Some process. 

 

Snow forecast for the Twin Cities this weekend? That would have been lovely.

It was like I was in the twilight zone to be honest. The crazy thing is that it seemed like Rocco was trying to mimic Boone and the Yankees' strategy. Pulling a pitcher after five is the Yankees' strategy because they have a very experienced bullpen. This what they do. We don't have to follow suit. Just because Boone pulled Paxton after five, we have to pull Berrios to match this move? Despite having a bit of trouble locating his curve, Berrios' fastball still had plenty of pop. He was still throwing 95+ in his final inning, and he had only give up one earned run and only two balls had been hit hard. Isn't this a case where you apply the vaunted metrics? Berrios is still hitting 95+ and getting swinging strikes; he's only given one earned run, so let's pull him???...I wouldn't have cared if he had thrown 108 pitches if he was still bringing it.

 

My point is this: The Twins are not the Yankees and this notion that we can play like there is a tomorrow in the playoffs reminds me a lot of the mindset brought by Gardenhire. Berrios would not be an ace on many teams, but, for the time-being, he is the Twins' ace, so let him pitch until he starts getting hit. If we think back (way back) to 1987 and 1991, the starters in those games went as long as they could. It's different era, but the general principle should still apply IMHO. We lost the first game (which was sooooo winnable) by horrible game management and this set the tone for the next two games, whereby the process was repeated.

 

Tom Kelly, for all of his weaknesses as a manager, knew how to manage the team in playoff games. Maybe a chat with him is in order? Let's see if we can get this figured out by next year. I love Rocco, but that was indefensible playoff management.

 

OK, my rant is finished, but I'm still frustrated (apparently more than Rocco). Let the poison arrows fall from the skies.

 

 

Crap on it? Not so much. We were ecstatic. And if both Omari Spellman hadn't been forced to sit and Phil Booth hadn't gotten injured in 2017, we would have had a legitimate chance at a threepeat. 

 

My point, though, is that one of the criticisms since the BE realignment is that the conference doesn't necessarily test a team. 'Nova had been in the top 10 more than any other team since 2014, had more wins than any other team in NCAA history for a four year span (2014-2018), and yet were bumped out of the tournament in the second round twice. Prior to realignment, when Jay Wright went to the tournament, when the BE included 'Cuse, Beileins's WV, Louisville, and UCONN among others, he made it to the Sweet 16 twice, the Elite twice, and the Final Four once. He didn't make the tournament every year because the conference was so stacked, but when he did he went further than he has every year since realignment, 2016 and 2018 being the (amazing) outliers. MSU, Duke, NC, and KU are primed for the tournament not just because they field great teams every year, but because their conferences are virutal abattoirs. 

 

Get out and play better teams in the non-con schedule.  Wright's smart enough to know that the Tournament breeds a different type of game than they see in conference play.  As an example, the Big East doesn't really have a Belmont (maybe Creighton could fit but not really) or a Stephen F. Austin so they should be thinking about playing a team in that same skill level.  But big-time teams are so loathe to go on the road to play the mid-majors of the world and in my opinion, that puts them at a disadvantage sometimes when they get to March.  The mids aren't afraid to ball out when playing the big boys because they've basically been doing it the whole non-con season since they often have to go into the bigger arenas.  This year, Nova's got Ohio State, Kansas, UCONN, and Temple as their biggest non-con games.  That's a good start but they're all virtually the same type of team.  I'd argue the games against Ohio and Middle Tennessee will be just as important to your March success.

 

Good luck to Nova...but not too much cuz I'm a Temple fan and I'm sick of being on the short end of the rivalry the last few years.

 

The math is pretty clear, because the pitching is better in the playoffs, home runs are better than high batting average in the postseason. You are less likely to string together hits against the better pitching.

 

Then why'd the Yankees always seem to get the big hit when they needed it and the Twins didn't?

The odds of losing 13 postseason games in a row must be astronomical even if 10 are to the Yankees.