Doomtints

He was playing fairly well.

It's interesting how the Twins keep saying "it was just one bad inning" for Pineda. Welcome to being the next Gibson, I guess, but the bad innings count too. In fact, the bad innings are the only ones people will remember. I wonder how many baseball games are decided by "one bad inning" for the pitcher. I would think it's at least 40%.

Why? They have four (or 3.5 if you're nitpicky). The #5 is almost always an AAAA dude. The Astros also have four and I'm thinking they're not too worried.

If the Twins still had Pressly, they would be indisputably the best team in the AL right now.

I don't think a team should ever put a wild card berth over building for the future. If you have 98 wins and end up in a wild card game, take that as you will, but a sub-90 win team should never, ever shoot for the moon to get into a WC playoff. Teams in this range should be planning for the upcoming year.

Though this is interesting I hope none of the Twins would think to follow advice from an online forum. As others have pointed out, Sano looks lost up there, like he isn't even seeing the ball. This is similar to how Buxton would look when he struggled. Compounding matters, his defense has been worse. I think the best thing for Sano right now is to ride the pine a couple of days and work on a plan with the hitting staff. (Assuming it wasn't a talk with the hitting staff which caused this mess, mind you, in which case the advice would be to forget everything he was told and buddy up with Cruz to shake things off.)

The word right now is Callaway's job is safe ... but I imagine this could change very quickly, even by the end of the day. Whatever happens to Callaway, I think Vargas's behavior needs to be looked at.

I think there are more sellers. With the current sudden-death wildcard format, no team in its right mind is going to push on for a wild card berth. Pushing for 87 wins and the bottom playoff seed would be ridiculous. A wild card game on the road adds little to nothing to the owner's coffers. 1) If a team is in this range and can give up a pitcher to fill a hole at some other position, I think a smart team makes that deal. And heck, this could help them in the current year. 2) If a team is in this range and has a chance to get an impact player for next year while unloading salary or a future free agent, I think a smart team makes this deal too.

Astudillo was rated properly, I think. He was playing hot and we wanted him in the majors until he cooled off. Now that he has, it's OK that he goes to the minors.

Defense matters. Buxton is out. Sano is having some major issues both offensively and defensively. The team record since they sent Astudillo down (yes I know he's back) just has not been good. The Twins haven't won anything yet, Cleveland can still get hot.

Sell off players because the task ahead of them is difficult? Wouldn't this make things even more difficult?

So ... he's like every pitcher who has been around 7+ years? Looking at Perez's stats at a high level and ignoring all the splits, he has an overall 4.09 ERA and 110 ERA+. This is still a tip over his career norm, but he is playing within his conceivable range. For all the hootin' and hollerin' over him on his "hot streak" -- his quality start percentage is still only 42%. That's not good enough as the Twins bats cool off. I don't suspect he will be as good the rest of the way through, but he won't be a disaster every time out either.

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There is a 0% chance the Indians will give up Hand until next year midseason at the earliest, and probably not even then. This would be as daft as if the Twins had given up Joe Nathan after 2007. What was the methodology TwinsDaily used for picking the candidates for these threads?

I still consider Sano to be a young guy and his struggles right now are exactly what I expect to see from a young slugger, so yes he is doing OK. Sano playing as well as he did out of the gate this year was the real surprise.

Gun violence is a problem in Chicago because people who live in those neighborhoods feel like no one gives a **** about them, especially the police and politicians. They feel they have to protect themselves because no one else will. The shootings eventually snowballed. In the 70s, the mayor got an apartment in one of those areas and was so frightened he ended up only being there for two weeks, in spite of the fact that the apartment was remodeled to having metal walls and metal doors. It was impenetrable. After the mayor left, this became one of the worst areas as the fortified apartment became a home base for drug activity. Southerners love the wild west myth but seem to be uncomfortable about it when it actually happens.

If this is the only move the Twins will make, don't bother.

When he struggled in the past his timing was all off, he either looked like he was ahead or behind on his swings. This is how he has looked this week.

Exactly. This is what the Sox were showing several times last night. I don't know how you look at that, either as a player or a manager, and not exploit it. Not only will it get you on base, but it will make the other team feel like morons. Stuff like that turns a game around.

When Baldelli sees a shift where the entire infield is on one side and playing deep, why isn't he calling for a bunt?

Whoever wrote the first piece stating Archer would be a good guy to trade for has real power because it's impossible to slice that and not find it to be complete nonsense. I'm going to take a shot in the dark and say it was Keith Law.

I listed in another thread the teams who have pitching but have major gaps in hitting. Beyond that, there are two additional scenarios where a team could be willing to give up a pitcher and the Twins won't have to give up that much: - A team trying to dump salary because they're not playing like they expected - A 3-team trade can unload some of the risk onto another team who wants to fill a gap but can't do it on their own

More important are the upgrades at the #1, #2, #3, and #4 slots.

Why not bunt if you think the defense is not expecting a bunt? Fans hate bunts, especially when they don't work, but this is the worst reason to not bunt.

The Twins have historically done a good job v. Price.