Yawn Gardenhose

Lotta blue in that Baseball Savant graphic. Wouldn't have thought that.

Another factor for "expected" payroll should be the wealth of the owner. According to this list, the Pohlads are tied for 8th among MLB ownership wealth. I think that's at least as important as market size when discussing payroll expectations. If Jeff Bezos for some dumb reason decided to buy the Twins, would you be just fine with them having a "league-average" payroll?

As someone who is a very casual football fan, one who hasn't watched a full Super Bowl game in nearly a decade, I would find the screenshot that accompanied the initial post on this thread annoying more than anything. I don't know what "under center percentage" refers to. I can make sense of the receiver stats on the right of the screen, but I don't like that these graphics take up so much space on the screen. And the arrows and such superimposed on the players is clutter and distracting. Just trying to get in the mindset of a casual baseball fan if they were confronted with such an MLB broadcast. Now I imagine this is just one option for viewing the same NFL game and that there is a version of the game without all the fancy stats and artwork. If so, I'm all for the different options.

On July 5th, the Twins were 10 games over .500 and had a 4.5 game lead on the division. At that time, 11 of these 16 injured players were on the injured list then and most had been shelved for the majority of the season at that point - only Larnach's injury occurred recently to that July 5th date. And of the players whose injuries occurred after 7/5, one was Mahle who was still a Cincinnati Red at this time. Injuries have hit them hard, but I think it's mostly quantity than quality. The most impactful injuries are the latest two - Buxton and Polanco. You could argue that some of the injuries have benefited the Twins too. If Sano doesn't get hurt, Arraez might not have taken off to the extent he did, and it's possible that Miranda doesn't get as long of a look without the opportunity that was created for him. And it's hard for me to put too much stock into Lewis's injury from a "how it affected the 2022 Minnesota Twins" standpoint, as he wasn't expected to be a major contributor to the big-league club this year anyway, particularly after they signed Correa (his injury is much more concerning from a development/big-picture organizational standpoint). The injuries in total are definitely a factor in the collapse, but more importantly I think they've helped to expose some glaring flaws with this organization's philosophy and approach on several fronts. Acknowledging and correcting those flaws will make this season not totally for naught as good organizations adapt and learn from mistakes. Unfortunately I don't think this organization is in the hands of people that are terribly good at identifying their mistakes much less righting them. I hope I'm wrong.

Twins oughta pitch in for a gift basket for Larry Vanover.

The title of the article is blatantly wrong. I realize what you're implying - that short starts are a league-wide trend - but the plain fact is, short starts are very much a Minnesota Twins thing. Again with the flawed interpretation of the third-time-through stats...sigh. Let me try this again. Let's use Archer for example. This season he's faced 15 batters three times in a game. Read that closely - that's not "15 starts he's gone through the order three times." In total in 2022, he's had *15 plate appearances* against a batter who's facing him for the third time. This is such a comically small sample size that it's fundamentally insignificant from a data standpoint. Furthermore, each of these 15 plate appearances were against the #1 or #2 hitters in an opponents' lineup - typically where teams' best players hit. So again, you're comparing data sets of once through an order and twice through an order - based on facing 9 batters in those samples - against a data set where a pitcher is facing 2 out of the 9 hitters, and 2 of the *best* hitters to boot. Of course the numbers are going to look lopsided when you're comparing two entirely different data sets and assuming a meaningful equivalence between them. I consider this to be a rudimentary error of data analysis. And yet here we are, watching the Twins completely throw away a chance to win perhaps the worst division in the wild-card era largely because of this demonstrably flawed philosophy. "Total system failure," I'd say.

This isn't even half true. The 09 team started September 3.5 games out of first. The 2010 team was leading the division by 4 games on September 1.

You lost me, Alex. Lately pitchers have been cruising and haven't been allowed to face the lineup for a third time. Bundy's last start, in which precisely zero balls were hit hard through 5 innings against the Angels, comes to mind, for one. The bigger flaw is that the 3rd time through numbers are incomplete. I went through Gray's starts and he hasn't been allowed to FULLY face 3rd time through the lineup even once this season. By fully I mean batters 1 through 9. He's been pulled a few batters into the third trip, as have most of the starters. Bundy in Arizona in June was the only starter I found this year that has been allowed to fully go through the lineup 3 times, and that was in an 11-1 game (I haven't checked Ryan and Smeltzer yet but I doubt they've done it. Archer and Ober I don't need to check). Since lineups are top-heavy, the stats against the lineup are going to look worse because you're only facing the BEST hitters 3 times. I'd venture that the statistics would look better if they'd be able to face the 7-8-9 hitters 3 times too. As the old saying goes, there are three kinds of lies: Lies, damned lies, and statistics.

The flaw of the "it's the front office's fault for giving Baldelli a bad bullpen" argument is that Baldelli, through his philosophy, has made the bullpen worse that it already is by overtaxing it. By choosing to have your starters go 4 innings in half of the games, by choosing to pull a cruising Bundy after 60 pitches last night - these unforced decisions create unneeded strain on an already strained bullpen. Now, the front office and Baldelli are simpatico in this philosophy - overthinking pitching staffs and baseball in general are in Falvey, Levine, Baldelli, and Johnson's DNA - so it's maybe a moot point after all. But the mere idea of letting Baldelli getting any extra benefit of the doubt in this argument is a flawed one. He's actively turning a 3/10 bullpen into a 1/10 bullpen through his very intentional decision-making of turning the starting staff into a glorified collection of openers.

Terrible managing bailed out terrible managing today. Baldelli makes a bad move removing Smeltzer for Smith in the seventh, but Francona bailed him out by not pinch hitting Naylor and/or Kwan with Clement/Maile after Smith predictably pitched himself into a jam. And then Naylor doesn't bat in the ninth inning either...very head-scratching move, particularly when the last time Naylor swung a bat he hit a ball halfway to Anoka County. And removing Duran for Thielbar ... sheesh. That's a move that needs to backfire on Baldelli just to clearly show him how idiotic that is on its face. But, instead, he'll chalk it up as a managerial coup, and continue mismanaging this ballclub, whistling in the wind. One win today will translate into 3-4 losses in the future employing that philosophy.

The baseball fan in me really appreciated the sacrifice bunt and sacrifice fly on consecutive pitches immediately after the game-tying hit for Cleveland. Manufacturing runs, and efficiently so. It's a sadly (and needlessly) dying artform. Francona has been eating Baldelli's lunch this series managerially.

Baldelli's post game comments were enlightening about his approach. When asked if the plan was Pagan for the 8th and Duran for the 9th, Baldelli stated that "when we made that decision we were not up." And then he fumbles about "we were down a run, right?" A reporter had to clarify the situation. So he made the decision about his 8th inning pitcher an inning before, when Cleveland was up 3-2. He then refuses to change that decision when Arraez's home run gave them the lead. Then he pitches Duran for 2 innings in a tie game; both of these decisions goes against his earlier word salad blather he gave during the Yankees series when he said he only wants to use Duran when they're leading in a game. You can puff your chest out as much as you want that you're "new-school," "data-driven" and "smarter than everyone else," this is just good old-fashioned stubbornness from Baldelli. Or ignorance. Either way, pretty pathetic.

Thanks for the laffs! Comedy like this is the main reason I come to this site. If we're getting a Manager of the Year crowning on Game 1 of the second minor-league portion of the May schedule, I can't *wait* for the content after Game 18 of the second minor-league portion of the May schedule. Keep it up!

Twins record vs teams better than .500 = 5-3 Doubters love to look at a team's record against winning teams, but the Twins are one of only three teams better than .500 versus winning teams. That can be a tricky stat. Some teams go back and forth over that line. For instance, the Twins are 3-0 versus the White Sox, who are precisely .500 when I'm writing this. If they win one more game, the Twins' record improves to 8-3, which is even better. This is not correct. With the loss last night, the Twins are 5-4 against teams better than .500. This *includes* the 3-0 against the White Sox, who are currently 15-14. If they drop to .500, that record would be 2-4. The only series so far against current winning teams are 0-2 vs Dodgers, 2-1 vs. Rays, 3-0 vs White Sox, 0-1 vs. Astros. The Charmin-soft AL Central-loaded schedule has always worked against the Twins historically when they were competitive. In 2019 they won 100 games and were 5 games below .500 versus teams with .500 or better records. Their record deludes the team into thinking that they don't need to add significant pieces at the deadline. That mentality results in things like thinking it's a sensible idea to start a cab driver on the mound at Yankee Stadium in the playoffs.

It's not even 30 games into the season and this was the Twins' fourth 2-1 game and second 1-0 game this season. Yes, Twins are winning, but man is baseball duller than ever. I'm not sure I've watched a full game in three weeks. Very difficult to keep my attention with all the non-action (strikeouts, walks, launch-angle fly balls, etc) that's so highly valued in today's game, especially with things like the NHL playoffs a channel or two away.