Week in Review: Stumbling and Grumbling

It’s baseball. Everyone knows, and has known for years, that teams with sub-.500 records and double digit deficits in the standings move players come the end of July and August. Players who don’t want that to happen to their team should ensure the team isn’t in that position.

So begins the hype for the Twins on there next wave of prospects of Lewis and Krilloff  to give Twins fans something else to think about than this current group of players. Just remember both these kids are in minors and Lewis is still in A ball there's long way to go until they reach the majors. Just remember Sano and Buxton they were taring up minor baseball too not so many years ago. If this current group doesn't turn it around were looking at another 4 to 5 years of rebuilding.

I know I responded to this on twitter, but I think it's an important point and one worth bringing up for discussion here.

 

Kirilloff isn't walking a lot, but I don't think he "swings at everything" at all. He's got a real good approach at the plate. He knows the strike zone well, but he also knows where he can barrel the bat. As Steve Buhr pointed out in a subsequent tweet, he's able to take a pitch 2 inches off the outside corner and drive doubles and homers the other way. 

 

Of course, if he was hitting .270 instead of .370, this would be a bigger deal...

Seth, that is a great observation. If you want that outside pitch, you will get it...often.  And a step into the pitch but slightly towards the plate moves the sweet spot on the bat a few inches outside on your swing.  Then the "inside out" swing, or what I call the "push away" swing can drive the ball hard the other way because you have moved the sweet spot farther outside on the swing so that you hit it dead solid perfect. Kirilloff has that figured out already. 

Sano, is a real question mark.  Is he another Morrison?  He seems to be regressing instead of getting better.  When he first came up from AA, he was killing the ball and taking his walks but if the ball got in the strike zone he mashed.  Something is off and I don't like were this seems to be headed.

Sano was out of shape after leg surgery. He tried to yank everything 500 feet to left field and lost discipline.   He went down, lost some weight and got back to basics hitting wise.  He is more selective now and not trying to pull everything. Don't get me wrong, he is still a dead pull hitter, but he is looking at more pitches now and leveling off his windmill swing. I think he will settle in and be better for the demotion. Give it time. 

It's hard for me to take Santana's comments seriously after his performance in the wild card game last year.

He relies on his slider and with the middle finger injury he was unable to get it to bite. I appreciate his giving it a try, but maybe we should have started someone else instead of a guy with a hand injury. 

"The Twins lost their "beloved closer""? Beloved by whom?   Not by me and I may   qualify as the longest tenured Twins' fan who posts on TD. I have pulled for this franchise continuously since 1954. Fernamdo Rodney was one of my least favorite   Senators/Twins due to his   showboat arrow shooting. 

He only does it at the end of the game, correct? Do you also consider it to be showboating when the three outfielders run to center field to jump together (or when Buxton was up, miming a fade away jump shot together)? I'm curious about when something crosses the showboat line for you. Or for anybody else.

What irritates me is that if Morrison is having hip problems that are affecting his game throughout this season, then why wait until the season is in the dumpster to shut him down? I just don't get that logic at all...Am I missing something here?

I'm skeptical that Morrison was injured "all season" without any of us hearing about it at any time. Was there any point in the past six months that a journalist asked him how he was feeling? I'd love to know his response.

If he was injured all year, the Twins gave up the opportunity cost of having someone in his place who would have almost certainly hit better... Vargas or any number of other guys at AAA. Seems like a strange choice for an organization to make for a guy who clearly can't play.

Beloved by apothecaries and dispensers of indigestion powders. 

"The Twins lost their "beloved closer""? Beloved by whom?   Not by me and I may   qualify as the longest tenured Twins' fan who posts on TD. I have pulled for this franchise continuously since 1954. Fernamdo Rodney was one of my least favorite   Senators/Twins due to his   showboat arrow shooting. 

I'm not sure if the motivation particularly matters. If an act is "flashy" and frequent enough, I think it can qualify as showboating, regardless of its motivation.

Is it showboating when a player makes the sign of the cross, fist bumps his chest, kisses that fist, then points and looks skyward?

Rhetorical question maybe, and I'm certainly not picking on you...

I just made a post on one of yesterday's threads, which I'm sure is now lost to history, but I think it applies here as well so I'll paraphrase.

I said earlier "the pieces weren't there" less in agreement with Santana's comment but to my own way of thinking and that is that even if the Twins had kept everybody they traded, or even if Santana and Castro had been healthy and Polanco available, they were still without Buxton and Sano at anywhere near optimal performance and as it turned out were 'stuck' with Lynn, Morrison and Reed. I don't know how anyone here could realistically consider that roster as potential contender--not even in the weak-teat AL Central where even a sub-performing Cleveland team was able to hold them off most of the season without any sort of a serious threat.

The 2018 Twins as structured were not a playoff-caliber team, nor were they in 2017 (despite their sneaking in as a Wild Card), not when you compared them with the perennially few legitimate contenders, and in my opinion the "pieces" for that haven't been there, certainly not the right ones or enough of them, for most of the past 30 years.

So, go ahead and beat me with a stick, preferably something less than a 34-oz. Slugger.

I know this has been discussed before, but I don’t consider honoring his grandfather as showboating. That said, he wasn’t my least favorite Twin, but I could barely watch when he came in to pitch.

The whole idea of honoring his grandfather..... great. For a couple times. For a season, maybe, although even that is a bit excessive. But now, I believe, that is just his excuse to get in his trademark. He can say he is still honoring his grandfather, but that ship has sailed. Now it is only about his trademark, like the crooked hat, no matter what he spins he gives it. You don't do a 21 gun salute everyday, or every time you do your job instead of blowing the game. How many times does it take before the "honoring" becomes so redundant that it has no point?

It's not clearcut like a broken femur. First you try therapy on an injury. Then you try rest (he was DL'ed mid-July, right?). Surgery's the last resort, and you prefer to put that to the off-season. With the team in sell-mode, that choice was finally faced, sooner than later for the benefit of the player.

 

I give the player props for playing through, rather than making a public issue of it. That effort has to stop at some point, where management (at some level in the org) makes the call, on behalf of the player, for the good of the team. But until the manager is told by the player "I can't go", it remains a judgement call - are they better off with their first choice playing only at 85% (realize that such "percentages" result in a steeper than linear dropoff in actual production), or their backup plan at that position or role.

 

We can quibble about when it became apparent "it can't get better on its own". I hope people will resist the urge to assume downright malfeasance. This outcome clarified, for me, why they stuck with him as long as they did, through what appeared to us fans to be just a terrible slump.

What has not be said yet is exactly when it started. It seems like he had it over the off season, and entered his contract with it at its beginnings. He says he has been dealing with it all year. I wonder if he would have made it through Baltimore's physical? It would be really nice to know the inception, and not just the standard spin that seems to be happening now. I am not doubting he has a problem, and has had a problem and it has affected his play, but I am really interested in knowing when it started, exactly, and if it was disclosed then, and if he carried it over from last season and the off season.

What irritates me is that if Morrison is having hip problems that are affecting his game throughout this season, then why wait until the season is in the dumpster to shut him down? I just don't get that logic at all...Am I missing something here?

Aerodeliria? By The Loud Family off the release, Plants and Birds and Rocks and Things?

Trying to figure out how Lewis' progress through the minors makes Carlos Correa's look sluggish.  Correa played A+ ball as a 19 year old in 2014, same level as Lewis at the same age.  

But we will see if Lewis plays for the Twins as a 20 year old.  Correa jumped to AAA to start the 2015 season as a 20 year old, then was called up by Houston and had 432 plate appearances that season.

Most likely, the Twins will continue their conservative approach, despite losing, and Lewis will go to AA next season, AAA perhaps the following with a 2020 debut during the season.  IF that happens, you can see the difference between the Twins approach and successful MLB team's approaches.

Is it showboating when a player makes the sign of the cross, fist bumps his chest, kisses that fist, then points and looks skyward?

 

Rhetorical question maybe, and I'm certainly not picking on you...

Ben, I always thought it was showboating when you disrespected someone or did a "look at me" gesture. 

Yeah, the arrow qualifies in my book. But Batista's bat flip and Rickie Henderson picking up a base are clear examples.

My favorite saying about Reggie:    "There ain't enough mustard in the world for that hot dog." 

I think Correa was much more ready with the glove. If Lewis is going to play SS it is going to take longer. If they want his bat sooner they might shift him to RF. I would keep trying to develop Lewis as a SS.