Doomtints

I don't think this is the type of reliever to bring in during the season. During the offseason, sure.

Check ebay.

If the Twins had finished what they started in the first inning after loading the bases, this would have been a different game.

Sure, I will give two points. 1) You stated the Twins traded for "Cy Young candidate Odorizzi." The Twins did not trade for a Cy Young candidate. If they had, the Twins would be paying a hell of a lot more than $15M for two years and would have given up a much more important prospect. Odorizzi improved dramatically this year ... and he will be gone next year because the next person WILL be picking up a Cy Young candidate and paying those wages. 2) You listed practically every prospect in the Twins system. A full team's worth of awesome prospects. That's simply never happened to anybody.

OK, some of us are still deluded.

Most Twins prospects aren't worth much and we are not as deluded as we were during the May/Meyer days. I don't see many players fans would care about being traded off.

I haven't seen a team do something like this since the 80s and I question it was necessary even then.

The laws are changing for signing Cuban players. The longer he waited the less likely he would be able to play in the US unless he is a very good swimmer.

Sure. And "Big League Chew" existed because baseball players were known to use chewing tobacco. It was invented solely so children could pretend to be baseball players.

Littell is probably the best internal option at this point.

You seriously didn't notice? I'm betting you did notice but just don't remember. Dipping was a huge part of baseball culture which is why this topic was started. If you seriously don't remember, send a question to Bert or Dan and I'm sure they'll gladly talk about it on the air for you. I can only imagine how disgusting dugouts were until recently. Being the janitor who had to mop all of the dip spit off the floor and empty the spit buckets after each game would have been a terrible job. True, players can do whatever they want to do at home. When Manfred talks about banning it, he's not talking about what players do on their free time. Can you think of many workplaces in 2019 that are supportive of dipping while at work? Yes, when I lived in Austin there was always a country boy who would keep his little styrofoam cup with him all the time to spit in at work. This was certainly the minority, though.

1 - Explain Canada. 2 - I'm aware that there is fundamentalist propaganda stating that fake families are coming over, which shows ignorance of immigration laws and, heck, how humans actually work. "Want to go to the USA? Sounds good. Here, take my kid, they'll let you in if you have kids." No parent would do this. 3 - You consumed 100 hours of propaganda? Ouch man. I'm so sorry. Don't let a group of con-men shape your view of the world.

Is this the panic people keep predicting? The Twins have a .500 record post-Astudillo, btw.

I'm not sure how much the bottom of the order matters. The Cubs had a great lineup when they won the series recently, but they had great pitching too. Having ten great positional players seems like a miscalculation. The team should have probably shot for 7 or 8 elite position players and added a couple of pitchers instead.

They didn't expect it. They said the "window isn't open" yet. It's open, mofos.

That's a part of it I'm sure. But whenever Rosario was brought up before, I was among a very small handful of people who spoke up for him. With these Sano discussions, it seems like more people are liking his production and placing a "but..." after it. With Rosario, people couldn't even see he was playing well until halfway through last year, which was insane....

Maybe. I haven't looked but I'm guessing his low balls in play % this year is slightly out of character and that problem will fix itself with some more at-bats. He missed spring training and a sizeable chunk of the year so far. I'm surprised he is doing as well as he is given his very late start, and I think we all are surprised (thus these conversations). The likelihood of Sano turning into Logan Morrison anytime soon is pretty low, so I'm not worried about it. He will be fine, especially on this team in this year where everyone is putting in their all. Frankly I'm more concerned with how Sano will do in future years. There is some deja vu with this conversation, we had these sorts of convos for a long time around Rosario.

1) The percentage of pitches swung at by Sano is less than Schoop, Rosario, and Buxton. 2) 31.4% of the "strikes" against Sano are foul balls. 3) The only player on the team with a higher 3-0 count percentage is Garver. 4) Sano leads the team in 2-0 count percentage and 3-1 count percentage. 5) Sano is 3rd best on the team for looking strikeout percentage. The moral: Not all strikeouts are the same. Sano is consistently having good at bats and is challenging pitchers.

This is by management decision. Baldelli has a very hard 100 pitch max rule, regardless of whether or not the pitcher is getting good results. Yes this puts more pressure on the pen, and yes it's been surprising to all of us that no moves have been made. If the Twins wait until the deadline, the interesting arms will all be gone to whoever the Twins would be facing in the postseason... and there are no waiver wire trades this year.

I think any coaching to try to get him to change would affect his production. Leave him alone. If he starts to struggle, then start analyzing the problem.

If Sano starts to struggle, that's when you look at his strikeout numbers. Every hitter has a weakness. This is his. He is still a very dangerous hitter, and heck he's still getting better.

He is walking around now, which is good. From the reports it sounds like there was significant damage but it looks like he will be OK. There will be no drinking of the milk of the Papi quite yet.

Tom is on the mark. Of all the teams who should be willing to trade a pitcher to address a hitting problem, the Padres should be at the top of the list. The Twins don't have the depth to trade pitchers-for-pitchers, but surprising things always happen and it's not impossible. Other teams that need hitting and have relief pitching: - Rays (risky, the Rays have a lot of smoke and mirrors going on) - Diamondbacks (Sherfy is in the minors for them, he would be an ace reliever on 25 other teams. Grab Sherfy or grab someone else so they can promote Sherfy) - Indians (won't happen) - Reds (Garrett, Bowman are performing insanely) - Giants (Smith is very good, too good for a non-contender, and the Giants have others who could step in for him) - Marlins* (Brice?) *Only if they are in "let's shuffle the problem around" mode, a la Terry Ryan. 2019 is simply a down year for pitching.

Good cautionary tale for crowning ourselves champions too soon.

Well, yes, this team also doesn't have a dunderheaded GM or a manager who wanted to retire. But, as you said, if two key pitchers go down the team might struggle just to tread water ... and it may not even take injuries for this to happen, just simple regression. Like the comparison or not, it's a valid one. Both teams are playing better than anyone expected, both have dominated the AL for the first part of the year, and both teams are remarkably thin in at least one area. The same thing happening twice is unlikely, but it's not impossible. Even still, a team with half a bullpen setting team W-L records is unfathomable.