cHawk

This is a loss where you blame the players. Donaldson - I have nothing. A major leaguer catches that, DP and out. He’s a good fielder, so WTF. Rortvedt - Oh FFS. What an idiotic move. A middle school catcher would get benched for that, but we didn’t enough bench depth to take him out. D!ck move by Andrus for sure, but Rortvedt let it happen to him. I thought we would be able to rely on Duffey. How foolish of me. How do you regress that much in one offseason?

In save situations, you would much rather see them than the likes of Thielbar, Law, Anderson, etc. IDK but whenever Rocco puts a reliever in a high-leverage situation they fail every single time, no matter who it is so it probably doesn’t make a difference.

Well that's the case with Average Joe's team in all aspects of play. If a team is playing sound fundamental baseball, they should score at least one with a runner on second in any given situation. The Twins are not playing sound fundamental baseball, their opponents are. In a situation where 1 run is expected, if the offense scores 0 and the opponent scores 1, the pitching performed as expected. The offense did not perform as expected, much worse infact.

I'll go back to run expectancy stuff, because it does matter. The situation that Robles was in had a 1.352 run expectancy. The pitch to Vaughn wasn't even that bad. A good offensive team that is having good ABs at the plate will score at least once every time, against any reliever. The Sox are a good offensive team. We are not, and for this reason exactly. For a run to not score, the pitching has to be ABSOLUTELY perfect (which you aren't going to get night after night after night) or the offense has to be really, really bad in that scenario. The Twins have been the latter almost every time when they bat.

Varela needs to be gone. Fire his ass.

I don’t think firing Rocco is the answer. He won back-back division titles, with a combined 137-85 record. He’s been bad this year, but I don’t see why a bad stretch of 40 games negates 220 games. A bench coach is probably the way to go, since he had a competent one (Bell) in 2019-2020.

But most other clubs are winning ballgames, the Twins are not.

That is true. My point isn't that it IS bad (it shouldn't be, at least), but it HAS BEEN quite bad thus far. (and it has)

Runs scored is irrelevant when it comes to this club. A few 12 run explosions here or there make the run differential much higher. And most of those 12 run explosions, they're padding their batting stats in garbage time.

FINEEEE??!!!!!?! You’re saying our offense is FINE? We haven’t been just “not great” in clutch situations, we’ve been downright putrid. The way the Twins hit with RISP is completely unacceptable for any team. It has scored 3 or fewer runs in 20/33 games thus far. That isn’t going to work, no matter how good your pitching is.

The two worst things an MLB team can have: 2. A bad bullpen 1. An offense that refuses to hit with RISP, score very few runs, and dissipates late in games The Twins have both of those things.

I don’t think anyone predicted this. It certainly looks like we’re out of it after these next six games, the way we’re playing right now. I hope I’m wrong.

Um...no. There is no evidence that the players are doing their best. There also isn’t clear evidence that they aren’t, but they don’t look like they are (at least at the plate). We’re not seeing them take good at bats or them constantly getting hits taken away by great defense or deep fly balls just come up short. We’re seeing 4-pitch K after Pop-up after weak dribbler (almost always in scoring situations). If that’s not the case then the professional hitting careers of half our lineup are all over. 5% to the players? Players should receive criticism for bad performance and that’s what we’ve been seeing this year.

Hate to say it but you might be right. We seem to be in the same spot as the Cubs.

If you're talking about fixing the hitting, Varela is the guy to fire. He took over Rowson's spot in 2020.

How about a bad offense or a bad coaching staff Looks like the Twins have both of those too.

I wasn’t just referring to Berrios with Johnson. I don’t think Falvey did a good job but I don’t think he gets 100% of the blame for the pen. It seems like Johnson broke pretty much every reliever.

I want to hear from Wes Johnson. Why are even our good relievers breaking down every game? I don’t think betting on Taylor Rogers and Tyler Duffey being reliable late was a terrible decision. If you think it was, go ahead and tell me. How about Stashak? Was 2020 just a fluke? Or has he completely lost his control? Colome needs no introduction. Edgar Varela (the hitting coach) NEEDS TO GO after this season. Ever since he took over, we have seen nothing but relentless underachieving and bad performance from the hitters. Not having a bench coach could cause a start like this, so I’d hire a bench coach too this offseason. This is frustrating. If we were serious about getting back in this thing, we needed to sweep Detroit. And instead we’re making them look competitive.

It’s not like he’s giving up smoke rockets to the warning track. Most of the time it’s routine grounders. An example of BABIP being meaningful was Kirilloff’s start. An example of it not was Polanco’s start. He’s gotten 34 Outs on BIP: 3 of them Barrels 1 of them Solid Contact 3 of them Flares/Burners 27 of them Poor (combines Under, Topped, and Weak)

*Polanco, Sanó, Kepler show encouraging signs. The bullpen doesn’t* Allow me to fix that: “Polanco, Sano, Kepler show encouraging signs. Cody Stashak doesn’t” Stashak gave up all of the runs, the rest of the pen was solid. That being said, this was all against the worst team in the league, and it’s not close. Robles looked good and Colome was getting more Whiffs with his cutter.

Thank the lord Waddell is gone. Looking forward to watching Larnach.

Exactly. My point was that the players don’t get zero, like some are saying.

The amount of talent doesn’t matter if you can’t work as a team. That’s the case with this team right now.

Once again, players need to be held accountable for poor performance. They’re getting paid to play way better than they are right now, and most of them are probably capable of playing the way they’re paid to play. Those of you who say “It’s the manager’s job to make sure the team does well” you’re right. (Well, actually more half-right). Managers can’t control their players. This idea that no player should ever be held accountable at all for poor performance is horse****. Go ahead. Explain to me how Maeda shouldn’t be held accountable for pitching like absolute ASS. Just tell me how Donaldson shouldn’t be held accountable for striking out on three pitches yesterday. Just tell me how Colome shouldn’t be held accountable for throwing BP with the game on the line. Just tell me how Arraez and Blankenhorn shouldn’t be held accountable for botching BASIC PLAYS IN THE FIELD WITH THE GAME ON THE LINE. (And BADLY, too) Also, ask yourself these questions: Should we not blame Gary Anderson at all for missing from 39? Should we not blame Brett Favre for throwing that INT? Should we not blame Blair Walsh for...you know what? Should we not blame Polanco for Game 1 of the playoffs last year? I think I know my answer to the those questions

If we remove the 5 worst games, we then have: Scored 10+ Runs: 0 Times Scored 9 Runs: 1 Time Scored 8 Runs: 1 Time Scored 7 Runs: 0 Times Scored 6 Runs: 2 Times Scored 5 Runs: 1 Time Scored 4 Runs: 2 Times Scored 3 Runs: 8 Times Scored 2 Runs: 5 Times Scored 1 Run: 0 Times Shutout: 0 Times That’s 13 games out of 20 where we score 3 or fewer, which is even worse. Sano may very well come around. I do like Kirilloff, he’s a legit MotO bat. But the offense was bad all last year, putrid in the playoffs, and bad so far. I see it as quite optimistic to predict that it will turn around. Nobody has been in sync.