Doomtints

It's difficult to imagine any organization would cut Molitor loose at this point. Too many good things happened. If he is cut loose, it will be immediately after the season ends. If we don't hear anything for a while, we know he will be back unless he decides to retire. I am as critical of Molitor as the next guy, but if I were in charge I would try to keep him on. Hopefully the Twins are smart about it and they keep the contract short.

Yes, I figured some of you would not be able to get your heads around this strategy. I'm not going to go down the rabbit hole as I know many would rather fight about it than try to understand game theory.

I realize that when you're batting, the strategy is usually to "take what the pitcher gives you" ... but as I said before the game, once the Yankees bullpen gets involved there is no further hope of scoring significant runs. When the Twins realized Severino had nothing in the tank, they should have held that close to their chests and chipped at him slowly for a few innings with a grand finale outburst the 3rd time through the lineup. Yes, I realize this type of sneakiness is alien in baseball, at least to non-championship teams. Few of us are surprised the Twins did not win, so there are no tears. Next year! Also, it was nice to see a fairly called game by the umps this time around. The last time they did this was the worst called set of games I have ever seen as a baseball fan. Sure it was tilted to the Yanks, but they were getting atrocious calls as well.

Apart from Judge and Sanchez, the Yankees lineup is fairly banal. Santana just needs to do what he does best, and we all know he can do that when he wants to. This game will come down to whether or not the Twins hitters can hit and if the bullpen can perform. No worries about Santana. The worry is 1) will this team hit the ball well, and 2) will the bullpen shut down the team if Santana can't go the distance. There's talk about "Striking against the Yankees the starter early" being the key for the Twins. That's poppycock. If this becomes a battle of the bullpens, the Twins lose. Every member of the Yankees pen is better than anyone in the Twins pen. The best chance for a Twins victory is a low scoring affair with both starters going deep in the game.

I use Twitter but I freely acknowledge that it has become a dumping ground for automated messages (bots). If Twitter added a CAPTCHA, traffic would drop by at least 80% (and investors and advertisers would flee). Twitter can still be good for connecting to others with similar interests. Having said all that, I completely agree with the polling results.

1915 Senators 85-68-2, 4th place, 17 GB Best Player: Walter Johnson, 11.2 bWAR. This was a down year for him. Cough. 17.6 bWAR hitters, 27.5 bWAR pitchers 1927 Senators 85-69-3, 3rd place, 25 GB Best Player: Goose Goslin, 5.3 bWAR. 23.2 bWAR hitters, 15.6 bWAR pitchers 1976 Twins 85-77, 3rd place, 5 GB Best Player: Rod Carew, 6.8 bWAR 30.0 bWAR hitters, 6.8 bWAR pitchers 1987 Twins 85-77, 1st place, WS champions Best Player: Frank Viola, 8.1 bWAR 18.1 bWAR hitters, 13.0 bWAR pitchers 2001 Twins 85-77, 2nd place, 6 GB Best Player: Joe Mays, 8.6 bWAR 26.2 bWAR hitters, 15.2 bWAR pitchers 2017 Twins 85-77, 2nd place, 17 GB, First franchise Wild Card playoff berth Best Player: Byron Buxton, 5.0 bWAR 27.4 bWAR hitters, 7.7 bWAR pitchers

This is an easy problem to solve. Use bWAR. Or heck, as this is most valuable player, dollars per WAR, using any WAR variant of your choosing.

He is playing better than Matt Scherzer did in his second year. Trying to categorize a player with his minimal experience as a #X is a strange thing to do. If Berrios were a Yankee, people would be convinced he was about to blossom into the next ace. Twins fans always try to belittle our young guys.

It's Buxton. The complete list of the others worth mentioning in an MVP conversation, in order (though it's a big drop off from Buxton): Santana Dozier Mauer Other top contributors for offense & pitching: Sano Busenitz Without Buxton's defense the Twins do not finish over .500. Nor do they finish over .500 without Santana. Sorry that's just how it is.

You will win 100% of the time if you don't let the other team score. You can plate 5-6 runs a game and still finish 20 games back. The Indians just set a win streak record because they have pitching in a year when most teams have great hitting but poor pitching. So do you field a team with pitchers who don't give up home runs + elite defenders, or stack the lineup with power bats? Obviously you need a bit of both, but the fielding and pitching has to be there.

Ask the Texas Rangers. They plated 800+ runs for 13 years straight. Missed the playoffs 10 times, lost in the first round the other 3. Swept twice. The Twins have plated 800+ runs six times, yielding 3 playoff appearances and winning one playoff game total. If you count the Senators, the franchise scored 800+ runs 15 times. The nine Senators 800+ run seasons were all in the 1920s-1930s. The Senators had two WS appearances for all of those 9 years and no championships. Like the old saying in the NFL, offense is nice but it's defense that wins championships. The highest scoring Twins team to win a championship was the 87 squad, and they had a negative run differential (though by the end of the year they were pitching fairly well). The 91 team was not far behind. The top scoring Twins team overall was in 1996, and we are all familiar with that era of Twins baseball.

Good game. Gimenez saved the day be telling Belisle to just throw strikes, damnit.

More importantly, if he is scoring runs this means people behind him are getting him across the plate. Seeing as he leads off, this means the bottom of the order is hitting the ball. Also, he is the only player in the league to score 100 runs over the past 4 consecutive years.

Surely you mean WS and not WC.

Heinie Manush's antics in the WS give him a pass. For anything. "I didn't lay a hand on the umpire, but I did grab that bow tie and pulled it two feet away from his neck and then I let it snap right back into his gullet. . . . Even before he could recover his breath his thumb went up and I was out."

As a group, we are bitching a lot about sacrifice hits (bunts) but not at all about sacrifice flies. Which one do the Twins do more? Hint, it's the other one. What's up with the Twins giving the other team free outs with sacrifice flies? Terrible, I tell you. Fire them all! Stop it, Molly!

The bunting 'problem' v. the conversations on this website about bunting. Look at that poor little bunt down there. :/

Yes. This is the year the Twins finally beat the umpires Yankees in NY.

The Twins know what they have to do.

Is Molitor under contract for next year? Semantics, sure, but can he actually be fired?

Yeah. And don't forget, the Indians were one of those mediocre teams for a while. Anything can happen this year.

2017 will not be the year of the Homer Hanky. This year it's Homer Yankee. Let's smack 8 of them in the WC game and see what happens.

The White Sox, Mariners, and Athletics seem to be loving their roles as spoilers. But then, we also overestimated our competition. While these teams were around .500 when it started to really matter in September, but they weren't good teams over the long haul. The Angels and Rangers played over their heads in August but were otherwise not exciting. The Royals were the enigma, playing well in the middle of the year but playing poorly at the start and end of the year. The Twins are the antithesis of the Royals, having started and finished the year well but playing poorly in the middle. 4 months > 2 months.

Gardy made that mistake more than once. Players should be rested, but to me it seemed he was overdoing it.

Provided the other teams don't throw in the towel now that it's hopeless for them, they could still end up going .500 over the final 10 games. The Twins still have a chance of going .500 or less as well over the final 10.