Twins Game Recap (9/18): Twins’ Offense Absent Against Chicago Bullpen Game

2.) The pitching has been bad? No way, they've been pretty solid. Odo and Berrios looked really good. The pen looks to be solid too. They dominated in Cleveland and the guys who have been hit this series have been regression to the mean (May) or not likely to be on the playoff team but pitching because its the 12th (Harper). Perez hasn't even been that bad. Will we be confident in the playoffs with him? No. Is he capable of shutting down a team on a given day? Yeah. Buy some antacids Twins fans.

Berrios has had a tough 2nd half no matter which way you spin it. Perez has been "that bad," since June. Unless it's mop up duty I don't want to see him throwing pitches in the postseason. 

Jake Odorizzi has gone at least five innings and surrendered no more than three earned runs in nine consecutive starts now.
Here's Twins Pitch from last night's 3-1 loss:

He's averaging a hair over 5 IPs during that stretch so setting the bar at 3 runs isn't terribly impressive. 

More encouraging is that he's pitched well against twice against Cleveland and once against Atlanta during that stretch. 

Beat me to the link!

 

On the White Sox broadcast, Steve Stone raked him over the coals for it too, and he's right. That lack of hustle coming out of the box is what produced an out instead of a triple.

 

And the line about not seeing the CF coming over is BS. The play is behind him, so he should be picking up his 3B coach to tell him what's going on.

I was more saying that it wasn't the 2-3 second pause that people were indicating. Announcers are hyperbolic because that's their job. He wasn't moving as fast as he could and should regret that but he wasn't standing at home plate admiring it. He was moving down the line. Not a great play but not anything unusual in today's game.

Interesting about checking in on the 3B coach. Its kind of in that weird in between area where he can get an eye on it but not see everything. I wonder what the 3B coach was saying, none of the angles show it.

That's even worse: that he didn't see the center fielder coming over. That's what a center fielder is supposed to do, especially with the overhang! The question is would Rosario have hustled to back up teammate like that?

I could be wrong on this but I thought the CF was remarkably shallow on that. It was a great play, don't get me wrong, but most of the time the CF takes a deeper route back to the wall on that - usually when a RF falls the CF is chasing the ball towards the infield from the fence area. Guys take routes that get them to where the play is.The White Sox CF played it off the wall like it was his ball at Fenway off the Monster. It was a great play but it was atypical of how MLB outfielders handle that play. And yes, Rosario is always backing guys up. I've never heard even the biggest Rosario haters say that he doesn't back up teammates.

But this kind of thing happens habitually. I don't think he learns from his mistakes. Still with the one-handed fancy grabs in the outfield too.

And Rosario also habitually makes baserunning plays and throws that other guys wouldn't. With the good comes the bad.

OK 

I'll play.

 

1. Rest does nothing for you if you don't win the playoff spot. Absolutely nothing. Crazy things happen in the last couple of weeks of the season. Who did Detroit get swept by in 4 games in 2006 that gave the Twins the Central? 62-100 KC. That's who. They still got in as the Wild Card (They still got in and beat the Yankees and Oakland, who trounced the Twins, though) . With Cleveland, Oakland, and Tampa Bay lurking just a couple of games back, the loser of the Central just might not get that chance at redemption. And that is just one of several horror stories that I could pipe in with.

 

2. Our pitchers have been giving up hits like they are going out of style. I am not going to go back and total it up.... tons of baserunners and hits. As far back as the last Detroit series. Regardless of the other points.... giving up hits (against poor hitting teams too) is not a good formula to advancing in the playoffs. That is what I am noticing.

2. Don't make claims and then say you're not going to bother to go back and total it up. At that point, you're not adding anything definitive. I went back. The Twins pitchers' WHIP on the year is 1.31. The WHIP since Detroit? 1.31. The WHIP since the first Cleveland series? 1.33. The WHIP since the last Cleveland series? 1.30. Your feeling of the game is not backed up in numbers and is an apt testament to the severe limitations of the eye test.

Oh and the average MLB WHIP is 1.337. The Twins are 11th in WHIP. The pitching is not as dire as you make it seem.

1. You aptly name that a horror story. Horror stories are scary but they don't really come true. If I told you that one time a kid got killed in a park so my kids don't ever go to parks, you'd think I was insane. Similarly, trotting out one example doesn't suggest a pattern and shouldn't dictate behavior. (And that doesn't even take into consideration that Detroit didn't rest their guys when they stumbled, which perhaps indicates that they should have rested their players down the stretch.)

The majority of teams who are up big rest players, particularly those who are banged up. The majority make the playoffs and do fine. Numerous articles have shown that there's no correlation between going on a huge winning streak into the playoffs or backing your way in. Its the team you have that determines that. A healthy Twins lineup is going to be key to advancing. If that means Ryan Lamarre plays five times a week, so be it. This Twins team is not going to collapse and the Clevelanders are not going to get to play Detroit every game. Lean on the depth, its what got us here. They're not sitting guys any more than they have been all year, why mess with what has worked?

Even if you can walk to third, NEVER even attempt to go to third in that situation. Just don't do it! Period! You're going to score on a hit from second, anyways, with two out. We needed Sano to come up to bat there. Rosario blew it big time. 

Well this seems hyperbolic . If you can walk to 3rd, you should. You score on a wild pitch or an infield single or a balk. Or a solid single right to an outfielder. You get a runner in a right handed pitcher's vision. You prevent an infield from shifting as strongly on a lefty. This is just me, but it sure seems like a triple fires up a team in a way a double doesn't. There's just something magic about a triple. There's a million good things about being on 3rd instead of 2nd.

The "never make the last out at 3rd" is a great axiom for Little League, where most of us learn it. Most kids don't have the judgment to make good calls there and any hit to the OF is probably a run with two outs since the odd of a throw going home and a tag being applied are low. The rule still definitely applies to MLB but it should be relaxed a bit. There are definitely situations where it makes sense to make a reasonable gamble and get to 3rd. We should loosen up a bit on it.