stringer bell

Huge play. What do Corey and Gladden think? Ooops. I now know what the replay umps think.

I said before that I was a Dozier fan, but that Polanco might be a better fit for the club. I think that the Twins chances this season were predicated on having a lot of homers from a lot of players. If they continue to get low power production from first, center and catcher, they need the additional power production from second base (Dozier). My previous thought was that the Twins have a lot of right handed hitters whose best asset is power--Dozier, Plouffe, Sano, Park and that having a guy like Polanco, who looks like he could have pretty good on-base skills, might be a better fit. Don't know which theory is the right one right now, but Dozier has certainly come alive. Good on him!

If Dozier were to maintain that OPS, it would be the best of his career by quite a bit. I guess maybe we shouldn't write off players after a bad stretch.

What did you win, a bus ticket out of town for Plouffe?

The Twins need to get down to 12 pitchers. They should have Rosario, Buxton, Kepler, and Grossman with Santana as the fifth OF/25th man. Whatever pans out from the four outfielders is the way it should be with Grossman certainly getting at-bats against every left hander and occasional starts against right handers. If Buxton truly isn't ready the DanSan can be the fourth OF with a starting trio of Grossman, Rosario and Kepler. I am on board with trades of Suzuki and Nuñez with Murphy and Polanco getting recalled. Again, just play it out and whoever is better gets the playing time. Finally, if Plouffe isn't traded, then Park needs to go down to Rochester, making room for Sano.

Well I saw the new Yankee Stadium last night. It was determined before we got to New York, that we would see Lions vs. Christians er Yankees vs. Twins on Friday night. My son, serving as tour guide/babysitter had us heading for the Bronx by 5 PM. After spending all afternoon in a museum, I was ready to go. We got to a subway station and headed towards the stadium. An uneventful 20 minute ride later and we were there. But wait! We hadn't eaten and the majority of our party didn't want ballpark food. We decided on seafood and the nearest place was only nine minutes away on foot. What we didn't know was that it was nine minutes straight uphill. We walked through what can charitably called a mixed neighborhood, broken bottles on the sidewalk, cars stopped/parked in unusual locations and Latin music blasting from stereos. The seafood place was small, smelled like fish, and had zero seating. We waited for our food and decided to walk back to the stadium to eat and wait for my son's fiancee, who had to work late and was to meet us. We got back and started exchanging texts with the fiancee, Irina, who just missed the subway train she thought she had to take. She was going to be late, so we split up we us old folks getting seated, while Jon waited for his sweetie. It turned out that Irina got on the wrong train and would not arrive until 7:30. Anyway, for me it was game on! Almost! A day of travel had drained the battery of my phone, so I tried to find a recharge station. After looking awhile, I found an AT&T place, but it took almost an hour to charge my phone. Meanwhile, the Twins grabbed an early lead, gave it back, took another lead and then gave it back for good. My observations--Milone was Milone, working the corners, hurt by bad defense and squeezed by the ump.After the first, Milone pitched from behind and he doesn't have the stuff to do that. Grossman made a couple of OK throws, but a good throw would have gotten Beltran. Escobar is supposed to be super reliable. He hasn't been this year. Buxton's first AB was great--he needs to go the other way more. The back of the Yankee bullpen was dominant.Chapman was something else. Yankee fans weren't very obnoxious and the stadium is functional, but not anything special. My son called new Yankee Stadium "soulless". My opinion is if you're a baseball fan and are in NY, it's worth the trip.

True story. Telling my future daughter-in-law about Aaron Hicks, recounting how he just would never hit enough to be a corner outfielder. "Looks like I'm right. I wish him well. Who knows, he'll probably hit a homer on the next pitch."..................and wattayaknow?

Beer is not $8 here in Gotham. 16 oz cup is $11. BTW an absolutely gorgeous day and evening in the Bronx.

Damn autocorrect! Unhittable.

Aabout half the time Pressly looks unhurt able.

Greasy fingers smearing shabby clothes.

Mauer should have fielded Hicks' grounder, once it rolled away, he had no chance.

Malone works the corners (has to) and didn't seem to get the corners from the ump. Three errors hurt, especially Esco's.

Hello from "the Stadium". Twins 3 Evil Empire 4. Much to say, not much positive. Bad defense has hurt the most so far.

I certainly think that the Twins could go .500 the rest of the way. There's more talent than the last Gardy teams and there's a chance that a couple of guys could go nuts (Sano, Kepler, Rosario, Buxton) in the second half. As was written above, the big issue is pitching. The veterans on the staff can fill the back end and the back end of the bullpen needs to be established. That is a lot of work. Regression to the mean would garner more close wins and also from some players. If the right amount of trades are made at the deadline, the club could emerge from this disaster of a season with some palpable improvement. Not sure that will happen, but I still have hope.

Don't necessarily agree with this, but if Buxton were returned to Rochester, I'm pretty sure that Danny Santana would get the bulk of the playing time as the center fielder.

It would be nice to have Grossman as a platoon guy. He's really solid as a RH hitter and holds his own as a lefthander. He could give either a Rosario or Kepler a day off versus a lefty and maybe give Buck a day vs. RH pitching (Rosario to center).

Strikeouts don't exactly equal lack of plate discipline and walks don't exactly equal selectivity. As was stated above, the key for a Rosario is to stay in the hittable zone and not chase pitches. It will get him to more favorable counts and get him more good pitches to hit. It is nice to draw an occasional walk, but far more important to get good pitches to hit.

My eyeball view of Santana as a defender is that he is not great, but especially in center he's able to outrun many of his poor routes, plus he has a strong arm. I see his DRS is pretty bad, but he is being compared with other center fielders, some of the very cream of the crop. Buxton, undoubtably, is better.

Santana is Plan B in center field. Kepler would play center if both Buxton and Santana are out of a game. DanSan has started one game each in right and left IIRC. I would anticipate he will get a few more infrequent starts on the corners and subs more regularly for Buxton.

Two thoughts about the outfield (without Sano) going forward: Grossman has been........unimpressive defensively. Kepler looks like he has a left field arm to me.

OK, here's my take. Oswaldo Arcia is vulnerable to high fastballs and breaking balls in the dirt and he can't lay off either one consistently. That is probably one too many holes to be an effective major league hitter long term. If that is the case, then what else does Arcia offer? Well, he looks like a good teammate and he's good with the GatorAde bucket. He's not fast, he is a poor defender and he plays left and right field. "Good" Arcia happened in 2013-2014. Since then, he has been a poor player. Since 2014, Danny Santana has been a poor player as well. If you want to include 2013 and 2014 for Arcia in assessing his upside, you have to look at Danny's 2014. Santana was pretty spectacular in 2014. So what you have is two players who both looked like they had broken through coming into 2015. One of them is a switch hitter who has played a lot of games up the middle of the diamond and who has very good speed and the other who has only played the corner outfield spots (poorly) and has demonstrated power. It is not so cut and dried that Oswaldo Arcia is the superior option.

Yesterday, Ricky Nolasco and the Twins were cruising to a victory against the weakened, but still hated, New York Yankees. A funny thing happened on the way to the winner's circle--the Twins gave up seven runs in innings 7, 8, and 9 and were beaten despite getting two homers against Chapman in the ninth. Here are some of the culprits: Kevin Jepsen entered in the eighth with a two-run lead and one runner on first and one out. He yielded the game-tying homer to Carlos Beltran, which gave the Yankees with their great end of the bullpen a huge advantage. 2) Ryan Pressly came in with the bases loaded and nobody out. He allowed the go-ahead run to score on a 3-2 fastball to Ellsbury, then wild-pitched the runners to second and third where the Yanks final run. 3) Fernando Abad who walked the leadoff batter and allowed a bunt single to Didi Gregorious setting up the Yankee's big inning. 4) Juan Centeno who failed to catch a low pitch and was charged with a passed ball and then partially blocked another pitch in the dirt, which still allowed the runners to advance. 5) Paul Molitor, who took Abad out instead of having him face a pinch hitter, then two lefty hitters and intentionally walked the number 8 hitter loading the bases. In my humble opinion, Centeno's mistakes, particularly the passed ball, can't be underestimated. If he wants to stay in the majors, he's got to block low pitches. Molitor's strategy was questionable. Abad has been his best reliever and very good against lefties. Asking Pressly to not only get out the pinch hitter, but both Ellsbury and Gardner is asking for a lot. Abad committed the cardinal sin of walking the leadoff hitter. He wasn't in good position to field Didi's bunt. Pressly was asked to perform a near-miracle and probably came close. If he didn't run the count full to Ellsbury, he might have gotten out of the jam. Jepsen threw a nothing off-speed pitch to Beltran, he had a 2-2 count and absolutely needed to keep the ball in the park. Here's my verdict: #1--Centeno. #2--Jepsen. #3 Molitor. #4 Pressly and #4 Abad (a tie).

I think the key component here is that Arcia is not a good fit as a bench player and perhaps not so much as a platoon option (and there aren't that many true platoons in MLB). To be productive (IMHO), Arcia needs to play almost every day and he simply hasn't hit enough since Molitor became manager to justify that. As I said earlier, the Twins are at fault for creating the logjam at DH/1B/corner OF, with little choice but to start Arcia on the team but on the bench.

There really should be two 40-man spots available. Arcia's will come open and also Mastroianni, as soon as he is healthy enough. With Buxton and Santana being what they are, they really don't need Mastro.