DMN13

What a novel idea, to not be in the "what have you done for me lately" camp! Fantastic article and well thought out points regarding management. This team and overall organization still has a lot of talent and a lot of hope for the future. Personally I'm hoping for a re-tool and not total re-build so it will be interesting to see what happens in the off-season. Whatever it is, Falvey and Levine have earned the right to be in charge and keep moving the Twins forward!

Kirilloff is still very, very young. It is a huge compliment that pitchers have adjusted to him in such rapid fashion. He will be a better player for it, hopefully sooner than later. It will also help to get Buxton and Kepler back, Cruz hitting again, as these players will offer more protection than we have for him now. I'm not sure we expected him to be hitting #3 in the order at this point, but again, a compliment to his sweet stroke. Let's hope his wrist can fully heal while he is still playing.

Definitely trade him. Get some value and if he loves our organization and if we want him back, then perhaps we can work out a deal in the off-season. We do however, need to find a way to extend Berrios. Let's see what we have in the young guys in the 2nd half of this season.

Let's hope it is just bad luck. The Twins have certainly had more than their share of that with injuries this year, so if the numbers are telling the truth, then a reversion to the mean would be good to see. Assuming we believe Garver and Sano are truly coming around, adding Donaldson's bat bat to the mix would be a really good thing. This is especially true given Kiriloff's solid performance and hoping we get Arraez and Buxton back and hitting. The lineup could indeed become what we hoped it would. Let's hope the heat of the summer helps this team get healthy and hit like we expected them to! But what are we going to do about the bullpen??!

Was Maeda hurt? If not, why do we continue to pull him after so few pitches. He was in a groove....does Rocco not see the downside in using so many relievers in a close game? Assume we had pitched Maeda two more innings, then, theoretically, we get through the 8th, 9th, 10th and 11th, without having to go to Colome. Even the Twins might score a run in extra innings if we get through the 10th without losing!! We are still inept with moving runners over, and in getting a clutch hit.... It's going to be a long season I am afraid.

We are in need of some clutch hitting for sure, but we have 5 starters (Sano, Polanco, Garver/Jeffers, Cave and Kepler) hitting poorly, with two of the others only playing 1/2 our games so far. So, hopefully the hitting will come around. However, we need to get everyone back and playing, and we need to improve our ability to get runners on....the HR hitting capabilities are still there, but we can't always depend on it. Starting pitching will be fine and if not, we have depth there. The bullpen is still a question mark, but the biggest problem is our inability to score runs. Kirilloff time? Hopefully we will face more right handers in the near future. We are only 3 games out which is a plus, but some wins soon would be nice.

Cave started poorly last year and improved, however, he is not STARTER material. We are supposedly loaded with OF talent, so let's get it up here if Buxton continues to play only half the games in a season. Thorpe pitched very well. Disappointed the velocity isn't as advertised, but if that bleeder doesn't get through in the 4th, he would have pitched the 5th and then who knows what might have happened? Unless he was on a pitch count, I believe he should have pitched the 5th anyway, as he had not been hit hard at all. Clearly I am old-school, but really, can't we at least try to save some bullpen arms by expecting starters to at least go 5 innings?! Are the bombas long gone or will we heat up when/if we get our full lineup in play?

Tony & Rodney, I like your lineup and agree with it wholeheartedly. I would not slot Kiriloff that high if he were playing. Let him get some swings in before anointing him as worthy of that spot in the order. Hopefully we can get healthy enough to get this lineup in action more often going forward. So far, despite a couple of Colome problems, it has been more about the bats, or lack thereof, than it has the pitching. Our starters in particular, have kept us in the games. Need a clutch hit or even a break here or there to get going again. Seems we hit a lot of balls hard with runners on, that just didn't fall. Keep the faith Twins fans, we will get rolling, perhaps with the nicer West Coast weather!

Why not Alcala in the 8th today and Robles in the 9th? I believe we will need to get Alcala into higher leveraged situations eventually and I thought we were going to mix and match "closers." Given the analytics related to pitching guys on back to back days, it seems these two were well-rested. Thoughts?

Way too early to judge the bullpen. While we haven't had 10th inning success, overall the pen has been solid. Rogers, Colome and Robles look like good late inning pitchers. If Duffy is as good as he was last year, then this is very solid. I'd like to see more of Alcala in higher leveraged situations and if he can be an 8th inning type arm, then we have something going. Still more power arms that may come up later in the year, so relax and let's see what shakes out going forward. With the Polanco, LF, Garver and Sano struggles, it is hard to be consistent scoring, but hopefully there will be improvement with at least a couple of these guys. If Donaldson comes back healthy for at least a couple weeks, that should help the line up as well. The extra innings stuff will even out in time, but it is quite a positive to have 5 wins and the only 3 losses are all games tied after 9.....lots of excitement ahead for this team!

It will be interesting to see if our closers rotate or not in high pressure situations going forward. To me, it seems Colome is the early Rocco choice. The game discussed here was a 3-2 game so trusting the closer to throw 2 innings was unusual to see, especially after a non-easy 8th. If we need closers back to back, obviously it will be someone else the next day. Kind of old-school, so not sure what the analytics are actually showing here. Turned out to be a good move and a good win.