0:07

We met at

0:10

the geeky We

0:15

met at the

0:17

geeky Talking

0:21

baseball every week

0:26

To the glee

0:29

man and the geek And

0:31

welcome to Glee me to the geek

0:33

Home opener edition I'm

0:35

John Bonas, tweets daily with me Here in Glee me

0:37

to the end of it That is me

0:40

That is still you New York

0:42

Times, the athletic Subsidiary of the New York

0:44

Times Eric Lehman, subsidiary

0:46

of the New York Times That's right, you got

0:48

it I am myself

0:50

a subsidiary of the New York Times Not

0:53

the greatest home opener We were both there

0:55

in our respective roles Which is me sitting on my

0:58

butt in the press box And John drinking out

1:00

in the concourses In

1:03

fact, as often happens

1:07

He ends up drinking, going

1:09

out with my girlfriend And

1:11

then they both go You're welcome McComble,

1:13

we know you won't So have a good

1:15

evening Have a good time I'm like, okay

1:17

Yeah, so It's not that you're not

1:19

invited She literally said that She was

1:22

like, hey, we're at, whatever, Glix Or wherever you guys

1:24

were at the time And she's like, can

1:26

you tell Phil Miller Because I was still in the press box Can

1:29

you tell Phil Miller that everyone really wants him to come hang

1:31

out Ramball Stu is here and Bonas is here And I'd like

1:33

to talk to him And so-and-so

1:35

is here And I said, yeah, I'll pass along the

1:37

message to Phil So I said, hey, Phil, you know,

1:39

whatever About three minutes later I get a text from

1:41

Becky My lovely girlfriend of

1:43

10 years, by the way Who says, oh, by the way,

1:45

you know, everybody would like to hang out with you too

1:50

But they know it's probably not gonna happen So I was

1:52

like, yeah, good save, good save I know

1:54

I'm-I'm no worse than like fourth or fifth on the list of people in

1:56

the press box They would like to come over there Can't be Because

1:59

they only know if few people. So

2:01

they don't really know Bobby yet. If

2:03

they got to know Bobby night yet, they would surely

2:06

hang out with him than me, but they just don't

2:08

know him yet. And Betsy doesn't

2:10

drink, so I can't be that low on

2:12

it. So anyway, three and three start for

2:14

the Minnesota Twins. We'll

2:16

break some of that down, but the tricky

2:18

part about early season is in baseball, and

2:21

I find this writing about the

2:23

team, you know, the first couple of weeks

2:25

of each season or even it's hard

2:27

to kind of get

2:29

a meaty topic that's based specifically

2:31

on performance, because you know deep

2:33

down, or at least I know

2:35

deep down, that it's

2:38

very fluid at this point. Like there isn't that

2:40

much to read. Now look, you can write an

2:42

article and say, hey they got to

2:44

start hitting, or you can write an article and say the bullpen's

2:47

been really good, but in terms of trying to

2:49

say, well what does this mean, or what is

2:51

the next steps, or how will this affect them,

2:54

it's pretty tricky. I mean, and

2:56

I was thinking about like, well what we

2:59

always, we literally had a Patreon episode

3:01

earlier this week called Let's Overreact, where

3:03

we're taking the first three games. But

3:06

even when you're willing to overreact, it's

3:09

hard, at least with our mentality towards things, where

3:11

we try to kind of keep an even keel

3:13

and not do as many hot takes. But I

3:15

mean three and three, you'd obviously

3:17

like to be four and two, or five and one,

3:19

or whatever. It's not the prettiest start to the season,

3:22

but you know, if the season

3:24

is like a, I don't know, like

3:27

a cross-country flight, three

3:29

and three just means you've taken off. That's

3:31

it. Nothing has happened. The

3:34

plane did not explode upon takeoff.

3:37

They haven't even started to bring the

3:39

drink carts out yet. You haven't even

3:41

chosen the TV show or movie you're

3:44

gonna watch. Like it's literally just started.

3:46

That's it. You're going. You've

3:48

successfully started. You

3:50

avoided going 0 and 6. Right, exactly.

3:53

And having it be a real problem. Nothing has happened

3:55

yet. You've just sort of started your journey successfully. And

3:57

that is, you know, that's better, like you said, than

3:59

going 0 and 6. six but

4:02

no one goes well maybe people took

4:06

off and it didn't implode or whatever but

4:08

you know that you got a long way

4:10

to go and you haven't even reached like

4:12

cruising altitude yet you know to continue this

4:15

horrible analogy and so it's tricky if someone

4:17

said to you 90

4:19

seconds into the flight how's the flight going

4:22

yeah you go well I don't know yet

4:24

let me find out and so that's kind of

4:26

how I feel like we're at with the twin.

4:29

I mean that kind of rules out the big

4:31

picture stuff but that leaves plenty of baseball to

4:33

talk about some minutia right so three and three

4:35

start they go three and two on

4:37

the road and then they drop the home opener

4:39

we're recording this Friday morning today's an off day

4:41

then they play they finished the Cleveland

4:43

series Saturday and Sunday with the Joe Ryan and Bailey

4:45

Ober on the mound we're gonna talk a lot probably

4:47

about over here in a minute but so that you

4:49

know you'll start to fill in some of the blanks

4:52

at list a little bit but

4:55

you know they've been very very

4:57

low scoring games which you

4:59

often see in April across

5:01

baseball particularly teams that are

5:03

playing outdoors now the twins played the two in

5:05

Milwaukee that were indoors obviously but they

5:08

scored 20 runs in

5:10

six games so that's three point three and a

5:13

third runs per game three point three three runs

5:15

per game you know you want to be

5:17

around four and a half five even

5:19

early in the season but they've only allowed 23 runs which is

5:21

3.8 per

5:24

game and that includes

5:26

one game where they lost 11 nothing great

5:28

you take out that one start now I'm

5:30

not in the I'm not gonna tell you

5:33

it's a smart analysis to remove one-sixth of

5:35

your sample size sure but you get what

5:37

I'm saying you take out even really just

5:39

the Bailey over performance in that game because

5:41

the bullpen only allowed three runs in six innings

5:43

or whatever that game you

5:46

take that out and the team's got a sub 3 ERA

5:48

the rest of the team and that

5:50

it's not like they're starting pitching has

5:52

been dominant they've gotten a few forening

5:54

starts from paddock and

5:56

Varlin Pablo Lopez obviously has

5:59

been their best starter but he wasn't great

6:01

yesterday. Just Cleveland kind of

6:03

dinked and dunked him like they tend to do in

6:05

the fourth inning. I mean, that fourth inning was, it

6:07

was one of those, the

6:11

differences between these two teams offensive philosophies

6:14

was on full display yesterday where the

6:16

twins are gonna be swinging away at

6:18

stuff and that whole rally was opposite

6:20

field looper, opposite field looper, opposite field,

6:23

oh this one's actually driven now opposite

6:26

field. And when that's clicking

6:29

like it was two years ago for Cleveland

6:31

or like it wasn't that fourth inning yesterday,

6:33

you go, man, this is the best type

6:35

of baseball for a team to play offensively.

6:37

It's just constant pressure, guys on the bases,

6:40

as Carlos Correa said afterward, God, they just

6:42

go first to third, first to third, first

6:44

to third. They just always got ducks on

6:46

the pond, there's always pressure, you always got

6:48

to make a big pitch. And you can

6:50

go first to third when you've got a

6:53

pitch with no velocity going into the outfield, you

6:55

know, or hit with no velocity going to the

6:57

outfield. On the left field, they're charging it every

6:59

time. On the other hand, the

7:02

twins have scored more runs than the Guardians the

7:04

past two or three years and last year we

7:06

saw the bad version of that or the Guardians

7:08

fans saw the bad version of that, which is

7:10

nothing really stylistically or even sort

7:13

of, I don't know, underlying metrics wise

7:15

change for them. They didn't strike out much last

7:17

year, they put the ball in play, they just

7:20

didn't get quite as fortunate on the balls in

7:22

play. And you're relying on good fortune, which means

7:25

you can sort of, some games that's gonna look

7:27

brilliant, because they're gonna be clumped together all those

7:29

hits, and you're gonna score three or four runs

7:31

off Pablo Lopez in one shot, and then

7:34

some games or some month it's not, and that's

7:36

what we saw last year for the Guardians and

7:38

the twins benefited from it. And like you said,

7:41

the twins approach is largely

7:43

the opposite of

7:45

that. I mean, they're swinging for damage

7:48

and that leads to more walks. And they don't

7:50

apologize for it. Right. That leads to more walks,

7:52

that leads to more strikeouts, obviously. Although I will

7:54

say the first five games of

7:56

the season, they had a below-average strikeout rate the

7:59

twins lineup. Like I know everyone perceives

8:01

that whenever they're not scoring runs just because of

8:03

strikeouts. We've sort of talked ourselves into

8:05

that being the case. But

8:08

they had a my guess is they fixed that yesterday. 15

8:11

strikeouts in one walk yesterday is very

8:13

ugly. Now Cleveland has good pitching, but

8:15

whatever that's very very ugly. Those sliders

8:17

are... Yeah, I did see a stat,

8:20

I think Parker Hageman our friend tweeted

8:22

out a stat that the Twins have seen the most sliders

8:24

in baseball this year. I believe it. As a hidden group.

8:26

Right. Which is clearly a weakness. I

8:28

mean that's been a weakness for a while. They're

8:31

kind of built to attack

8:34

fastballs. Right. And by the way, that's not a

8:36

bad thing. I mean if you're you can't really

8:38

be built to attack sliders. You're not gonna be

8:40

a successful lineup because people can just pound you

8:42

with fastballs. But

8:44

the Twins, you know, they're trying to swing hard so

8:47

that when they connect the ball goes a long way. They're

8:49

trying to pull the ball in the air because those are

8:51

the most valuable balls that you

8:53

can hit. But there's

8:56

always been a discourse and I know two years

8:58

ago this was an issue with the Twins early

9:00

in the season. Last year it wasn't

9:02

really a talking point early in the season, but for

9:04

the first half they didn't really hit well. The

9:07

idea that when the weather's bad and

9:10

the pitchers are at an advantage, which is always

9:12

the case early in the season. Yeah, especially Minnesota.

9:14

What? Yeah, right. Although they've only played one game.

9:16

Although it was cold in Kansas City too, but

9:20

not like crazy cold, but the

9:23

ball's pulled into the air have less value

9:25

than they do in July and August and

9:28

September. There's also maybe some thought that pitchers

9:30

are just ahead of hitters coming

9:33

out of spring training most of the

9:35

time. Where? Because pitchers are not reacting.

9:37

Pitchers are the ones who are forcing

9:40

the issue and hitters are reacting to them. That's

9:42

always been the premise. We also don't know right

9:44

now how the ball is playing in 2024. Well

9:47

that's true too. That could be... That's 10 months

9:49

a month we don't even know during the season. One

9:52

of the keys in 2019, one of the things that

9:54

we discovered was, oh well, turns

9:56

out the Twins offensive velocity matches up so

9:58

well with a juiced baseball. right

10:00

whereas you know they might not work I

10:03

mean the Cleveland philosophy might work a little

10:05

bit with an unused baseball yeah

10:09

although last year in the second half the

10:11

twins philosophy works true beautifully it's

10:13

a lot of it's just about talent playing well and being healthy

10:15

but you look at the kind

10:17

of game-by-game breakdown the

10:20

lineup the twins lineup here's

10:22

their game-by-game run scored four

10:26

five zero two

10:28

seven two we're

10:30

not gonna win a lot when that's the case on

10:33

the other hand I mean realistically you're

10:35

looking at two or three wins from

10:37

that and they've got three pitching wise

10:40

one run allowed one run

10:42

allowed eleven three

10:45

three four now I

10:47

would look at those numbers and say they've

10:49

pitched better than they've hit and

10:52

if anything I kind of make the argument that

10:54

they've pitched pretty decently I agree they got a

10:56

sub 4 era even though one game they gave

10:58

up 11 runs I don't think they've been clicking

11:01

on all cylinders by any means but the bullpen's

11:03

been really good the rotation hasn't

11:05

been great but I think it's been

11:07

okay in fewer innings than they would like

11:09

to get and the lineup just

11:11

hasn't been good other than you know

11:13

late in one of those Milwaukee games

11:15

late in one of those Kansas City

11:17

games overall they've just they went

11:19

0 for 12 with runners in scoring position they look I looked

11:21

it up for the season they're at 147 batting

11:24

average with runners in scoring position so that's

11:26

the thing that's been standing out to people

11:28

right yes the clutch hitting whatever that is

11:30

worth has not been there and in fact

11:32

even sometimes the clutch put the damn ball

11:34

and play hasn't been there right we can

11:36

that's the that's one of the frustrating

11:39

aspects of watching a we're gonna hit the

11:41

snout out of the ball team right

11:43

is that you're gonna have stretches where it's

11:45

like guys you gotta you've

11:48

got to adjust your hitting philosophy and

11:50

you know it might take a little while for

11:52

them to kind of find that yeah I mean

11:56

last year ball deli initially

11:59

was like him joking, but then he just

12:01

sort of started saying it, which

12:03

was there's a lot of situations where we just have

12:05

to put the ball forward as

12:08

an offense. Especially

12:10

in the first half, when they were, they were

12:12

getting guys on base, they weren't like amazing at

12:14

getting guys on base, but there were plenty of

12:16

opportunities. And they would just two strikeouts at a

12:18

pop-up or three strikeouts or a double play or

12:20

whatever. And it's just like, there's so many situations

12:22

where you literally just put the ball in play

12:24

and that's Cleveland's specialty. He

12:26

sort of got back into that post game yesterday,

12:28

which I thought was interesting so early in the

12:31

season. I mean, he's not gonna call

12:33

guys out, but when you go over 12 throws in scoring

12:35

position and you strike out 15 times, after

12:37

having a decent number of guys on base, his

12:40

point was, we have

12:42

to be cognizant of the idea

12:45

of April baseball or cold

12:47

weather baseball, or at least not

12:49

even, non-summer baseball. Let's

12:51

put it that way. It's different. And he

12:54

said it's different because the ball doesn't play as

12:56

the same. It's different because the pitchers are ahead

12:58

of the hitters. It's different just because you're not

13:00

in a groove. You haven't played a hundred games.

13:02

You're not on a roll yet. You're

13:05

not sort of in your zone yet. And he

13:07

said, we have to be cognizant. Harder to recognize

13:09

that slider. Yeah, there's a lot of factors. And

13:11

this is not unique to the twins, which is

13:13

why I don't think it's really an excuse for

13:15

them. Oh, they're playing teams that are in the

13:17

same environment. So believe me, I'm not making excuses,

13:20

but I think he came as close as

13:22

I would ever expect him to early in

13:24

a season, especially, of saying,

13:28

our normal approach might not work here for

13:30

a month. And we have to

13:32

be quicker than we were the past couple seasons.

13:34

Or at least at moments in the game, there

13:36

are times where we've got to adjust the approach.

13:38

We talked to him about, this was a topic

13:40

in October. Oh, I mean, it's been in the

13:42

top rate for three years. Right, honestly. But we

13:44

had, in October, we had to sit down

13:46

with them at the end of the year. Yes. And

13:49

the question sort of came up, are

13:51

you worried about all the strikeouts, blah, blah, blah?

13:53

And the answer was, no, we are not worried

13:55

about the strikeouts. We're going to lean into the

13:57

F-ing strikeouts because it means we can hit the ball hard.

13:59

It's a natural reason. of us hitting the ball

14:01

hard. That said... And by the way, they led the league in

14:03

Homer's last year. Right, yes. Right. That's an

14:05

affler. Now, they also said, that said, you can

14:08

have that philosophy, we're going to hit Homer's, we're going to

14:10

hit the ball hard, we're going to accept the strikeouts that

14:12

come as an end result of that. And

14:14

still, when you come up with a runner on

14:16

third base, a one out, adjust your approach that

14:19

time. You can still have that philosophy going forward.

14:21

But this time, you just need to maybe shorten

14:23

your swing, you know, and you have to do

14:25

something to put the ball in. It's interesting because,

14:27

you know, study after study

14:29

after study have shown, and we've talked endlessly about

14:31

this, we don't get that deep into it. That

14:34

strikeout, a strikeout in and of itself is

14:36

not any different than just an out. But

14:40

then people always go, what about with, you know,

14:42

one out and runner on third? Well, yeah, there

14:44

are situations where a strikeout is significantly worse. But

14:47

the flip side is also true. Runner on first base

14:49

and no outs, a strikeout is much better than hitting

14:51

a ground ball at a shortstop. That's Carlos Crea I

14:53

learned last year. Well, 30 times last

14:55

year when it would have been better if Carlos Crea struck

14:58

out. So it cuts a little bit both ways. But they

15:01

know that. The hitters are aware of that. They're

15:03

not, it's, you know, the idea when someone like

15:05

me says a strikeout is just an out. I

15:08

mean, that's a big picture concept. It breaks down

15:10

the further you want to break it down. But

15:13

my question with that always is,

15:16

how easy is it to say

15:19

to yourself, as a player,

15:21

as a lineup, as a

15:23

team, well, yeah, we

15:25

usually want to pull fly balls. And if that means

15:27

strikeouts, if that means getting deeper in counts, if that

15:30

means, you know, not shortening up your swing, all that

15:32

stuff, well, okay,

15:34

but twice a game, at

15:37

most, maybe, probably on average, there's

15:39

a situation that arises, comes

15:41

up, not Luis arises. Although that would

15:43

help, too. Where

15:46

it's like, oh, specifically in this spot,

15:49

putting the ball in play has value. And

15:51

I just wonder how, how

15:53

effectively you can just sort of flip the

15:55

switch and go to that mode. Right. When

15:58

A, you haven't really I don't

16:00

want to say practice that but you haven't really have

16:02

as many reps or just Game

16:05

experience doing that approach because there's just a

16:07

limited number of chances especially early in the

16:09

season but then be This

16:12

lineup. Well, this is less true

16:14

than last year when they had Gallo and

16:16

Michael A Taylor huge strikeout guys It's

16:19

not built to put the ball in play. And so it's

16:22

one thing to say, you know Hey run

16:24

around third or you know first and third no

16:26

outs We don't need to be hitting a homer

16:28

here. Just put something in play hard, right? You

16:30

know hit a ball into the gap somewhere hit

16:32

a ball up the middle somewhere, whatever It's

16:35

easy to say that but if the majority

16:37

of the players in the lineup are

16:40

not that type of stylistic Hitter,

16:42

yeah, it would be the same as saying

16:44

to the Guardians lineup. Hey

16:46

in this spot hit for power It's like

16:48

well, yeah, we can there are some approach changes

16:51

we can do to hit for power But

16:53

you know, Stephen Kwan is not gonna just hit for power That's

16:56

not the type of player he is and

16:58

that's not about coaching or adjustments That's just

17:00

about the the pieces you've put in place

17:02

to build this lineup and you look up

17:04

and down the lineup I mean, it's it's

17:06

just not a situation where you can say

17:08

to Ed Julian or Byron Buxton or you

17:10

know Fill in the blame even something like

17:12

Ryan Jeffers or whatever. These are good hitters,

17:14

right? But they're not guys whose specialty

17:16

is gonna be putting the ball in play their

17:18

specialty is gonna be hitting the ball hard And so

17:21

I wonder how much of that is Saying

17:24

you need to change it and maybe even working

17:26

effectively to change it right But being sort of

17:28

banging your head against the wall to some extent

17:31

or at least capped in terms of how the

17:33

level to which you Can change it because it's

17:35

like well, you saw it last year with like

17:37

Joey Gallo you could tell Joey Gallo Permanent

17:42

earpiece in his in his ear where even

17:44

when he's sleeping someone is just whispering put

17:46

the ball in play put the ball And

17:49

it's still not gonna matter cuz he that's not the

17:52

type of players. So that's kind of be they're aware

17:54

of it But that we spoke on it yesterday and

17:57

he said we we have to make better

17:59

adjustments to this And I think that's all

18:01

true. I mean, he's only actually echoing what any

18:03

fan group would be saying But

18:05

I think it's a lot guys in

18:07

the locker room. We're probably I just think

18:10

it's potentially trickier than just saying Oh, let's

18:12

do this, right? Okay But

18:14

they do need to do it And we'll

18:17

be talking a little bit more about you know, other

18:19

things that can impact the offense like losing your best

18:21

player Yes Before

18:24

do that let's go cover quick a couple quick

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Raycon I actually used them

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21:54

So as you mentioned as

21:56

we sit here another thing this is the

21:58

lineup struggling. They're also you

22:00

know, without their best player. So

22:03

it's funny, baseball is really the only sport,

22:05

I would guess, that you can lose your

22:07

best player and people will, people like us,

22:09

will go, like, if the Wolves didn't have

22:12

Anthony Edwards, we wouldn't do like 15 minutes

22:14

about how the offense is struggling, and then

22:16

go, oh, by the way, Anthony Edwards hasn't

22:18

been playing. Well, yeah, you wouldn't see like,

22:21

but the Chiefs are really struggling, and then 20

22:23

minutes later, by the way, my home's hasn't played

22:25

in five weeks. Baseball's

22:28

different though, because I think that's why

22:30

baseball's awesome, which is, every

22:34

lineup spot basically counts the same, you can have

22:36

guys at the top get a few more at bats and all that,

22:39

but they're without Royce Lewis for

22:41

all but three innings so far. Now,

22:43

you made a pretty big impact in those three

22:46

innings. She hit 33% of all their home runs

22:48

on the season in the first

22:50

inning that you played. They

22:53

only have two homers now, Ed Julian's home reaction to

22:55

the opposite field was only their third homer of the

22:57

whole season. So that's

22:59

part of the problem, obviously. The

23:02

news on Royce Lewis, we talked to him a little bit yesterday.

23:06

The first thing I said to Royce Lewis yesterday, my

23:09

first chat with him was, hey,

23:12

I saw a picture of you sitting

23:14

in the upper deck at the Wolves game two nights

23:17

ago or last night. I

23:20

saw it was getting passed around Wolves Twitter, of which I

23:23

am a lurker. I'm afraid

23:25

to jump in with two feet of Wolves Twitter.

23:27

But for fear that

23:29

it's anything like twins Twitter. I can't take two

23:31

of those. But people were passed around.

23:33

There was a photo of him, I think his fiancee

23:36

posted on Instagram or something, a picture of

23:38

him. They were clearly in the 300 level or

23:40

whatever at the and

23:46

he was eating nachos. And people just thought it was so

23:48

funny that he had horrible seats and he was just sitting

23:50

there. I walked in the couples and I see Royce Lewis

23:52

and everyone's asking about his quadriceps and everything. And I say,

23:54

man, you gotta get

23:57

either the Wolves or the twins to hook you up with

23:59

better tickets. He was like, what do you mean? And

24:01

I said, I saw a picture of you sitting

24:04

in the nosebleeds. And

24:06

he goes, yeah, those were great seats, though, because I

24:08

could see the whole court. I could see that we

24:10

had a great time. It was a great game. The

24:12

wolves are so fun. I said, yeah, that's all true.

24:14

But it would be truer if you were on court

24:16

class. And then I'm like, I'm going to let

24:18

you know a secret. Bally would like

24:20

to show you on camera, and then Marnie would

24:22

probably come over and interview you. And he's like,

24:24

oh. And then he said to me, yeah, you're

24:26

probably right. Let me tell you something. Alex

24:28

Kirilloff bought the ticket. Like,

24:32

I'm just frozen under the bus. Because I

24:34

will say, Royce has a reputation, which he

24:37

will joke about, of being cheap. So

24:40

that was his way of saying, yeah, I

24:42

didn't mind sitting in the nosebleeds, but also

24:44

playing my Kirilloff. I didn't get

24:46

a chance to say to Kirilloff, what's the deal, man? Those

24:49

are your courts, man. Come on. Like,

24:51

Nick Gordon, who was a big basketball fan, who

24:54

was on the wall, other twins for three

24:56

years or whatever, would often get hooked up

24:58

with wolfsick. That's part of the

25:01

benefit of being a major league baseball player, right?

25:03

You see Vikings go there all the time. So

25:05

anyway, that was my initial conversation with Royce Lewis.

25:08

Then after we got that important matter to discuss. How

25:10

did you find time to talk to him with Seth,

25:13

hogging him a little time? Yes. Seth's

25:15

phone was from when my twins daily was there. And

25:19

I always forget, with the guys

25:21

who come up through the farm system, Seth's

25:23

been talking to these guys, and their whole family, because they

25:25

were like 14. So

25:28

that's like an uncle to a lot of these guys. He's

25:30

talking to Cody Funderberg for 20 minutes. I'm like, boy, are

25:32

you really? But after

25:34

we'd settled that whole wolf situation, which I thought was

25:36

key to talk to Royce Lewis, I

25:38

needed him to realize he's Royce Lewis. You know

25:40

what I mean? Sure. Everyone

25:43

was like, oh, by the way, how's your

25:46

severely strained, right, quadrant stuff?

25:48

And he's still in,

25:50

he's about a week into a month long shutdown,

25:52

so he's not doing much. He's

25:55

not going through any real baseball activities or workouts

25:58

or anything. He's basically just shut down. He

26:00

said he got a PRP platelet-rich plasma

26:02

injection, which is meant to sort of

26:05

stimulate the initial healing process and all that.

26:08

But, you know, he's usually with

26:11

almost any injury and unfortunately we've seen

26:14

him react to a lot of injuries so far. He's

26:16

always one of these guys who's like, oh, they told me

26:18

it's gonna be a month, I want it back in three

26:21

weeks. That's his, which is, that's fine. He

26:23

didn't really take that approach and it's very early in

26:25

the process and maybe the idea of announcing he's gonna

26:27

be shut down for a month was almost for him,

26:29

his benefit. It could be to be like, buddy, you're

26:31

gonna be shut down for a month. Do not attempt

26:34

to be, we don't want to see you out there

26:36

trying to run in the outfield or anything like that.

26:39

But the general idea is

26:43

he'll be shut down completely for a month. So that's

26:45

about three more weeks, let's say, at

26:47

which point there's no chance of him

26:50

returning at that point. That's only the point

26:52

at which they'll basically reassess, how

26:54

are you physically? Are you able to

26:56

then kind of start rehabbing or start

26:58

the true process? Because the problem

27:00

with a leg injury is there's just not that much you

27:02

can do either

27:04

when it's feeling that poor or that

27:06

doesn't risk making it worse. And so

27:09

the month game

27:11

plan, I think, is let this thing heal up

27:13

a little bit and calm down enough that we

27:15

can then figure out, okay, is it gonna be

27:17

another six weeks? Is it gonna be another two

27:19

months? Is it gonna be... Their expectation seems to

27:21

be, and this is not from Royce, this is

27:23

from the Twins, a

27:25

two-month total goal of,

27:28

not that he's gonna be back in the lineup

27:31

exactly two months from the injury or anything, but

27:33

their hope is or a positive outcome, I think,

27:35

would be at the

27:37

two-month point, which would be late

27:41

May, I guess, he's

27:44

perhaps on a rehab assignment

27:47

or close to the point that they maybe can

27:49

say, he's 10 days away or something like that.

27:52

Now, a lot can go on good or bad

27:54

before that timeline, but that's,

27:57

I think, what happens. And so, yeah, being

27:59

without Royce Lewis. I mean,

28:01

he's their number three hitter. He's their,

28:04

you know, I would have probably

28:06

picked him. I think I did pick him when we did

28:08

our MVP picks. Yeah, I'm going to lose that bet for

28:11

preseason. I picked him for team MVP. I

28:13

just think he's, you know, the

28:15

injuries are obviously a mass effective. They're a bigger factor

28:17

today than they were a month ago and they were

28:19

a huge factor a month ago. But

28:22

the talent and the production and

28:24

even yesterday Baldelli pregame, somebody asked

28:26

them, you know, how

28:28

many guys in the, on this team in your

28:31

head are like capable of being like a number three

28:33

or a number four hitter. Okay. Now it's

28:35

an interesting question because I don't think Baldelli views those

28:38

as the two most important spots in the lineup. Okay.

28:40

I think most teams now at this point, including the

28:42

twins view the two spot as more important, but the

28:44

concept of an RBI spot and all that. It

28:47

was an older school person last night. It

28:50

was one of the 17 strip

28:52

people who were at the opening

28:54

day, man. Yeah, it's amazing. Uh,

28:57

but Baldelli kind of, he thought about it and

28:59

he was like, well, Royce,

29:02

it was the first name, which

29:04

is interesting because he's injured and he's only played 70

29:07

games in the majors, but I don't disagree with him.

29:09

And you know, Correa and Buxton and there's some other

29:11

guys in that mix too who have done it

29:13

and could do it. But when

29:16

the guy that immediately comes to everyone's mind

29:18

as the, the bat around whom the lineup

29:20

can revolve is out, that definitely has an

29:23

impact. We, we, we talked on

29:25

the Patreon the day after the

29:27

injury about the

29:30

different ways in which they could literally replace

29:32

him on the roster, which ended up being

29:34

Austin Martin. It might've

29:36

been Brooks Lee except Brooks Lee is

29:38

out for three to four weeks with

29:41

the back spasms that he had at the end

29:43

of spring training. Uh, and then from there we

29:45

were like, well, how, how are

29:48

they actually going to fill third base? And it

29:50

could also affect second base because you might want

29:52

to take farmer out of the platoon with Julian

29:54

at second base to either use them at third

29:56

base or platoon use them at third base. We

29:59

haven't really got. in a good sense of that

30:01

just because they don't face that many lefties. What

30:04

we've seen so far, post-Lewis, is

30:07

against righties, it looks

30:09

like it's going to be primarily Willie

30:11

Castro at third base, which makes sense

30:13

because he's a switch-hanger, so he offers

30:15

you the left-handed platoon side,

30:18

basically. My question, though, is if

30:20

you do face a couple of lefties, is

30:23

it going to be Martin in there

30:25

and Farmer in there, which would probably

30:27

be Martin at second, Farmer at third,

30:29

or are they going

30:31

to keep Farmer attached to Julian

30:33

at second base as a platoon and just

30:35

make Willie Castro the primary nearly every day?

30:37

We haven't seen Martin play second base yet.

30:39

We haven't seen Martin do much other than

30:42

pinch run and play a little

30:44

outfield. It's possible they view

30:46

Martin as more of a placeholder, as more

30:48

of a let him fill in the

30:51

blanks, let's let him run a little bit, let's

30:54

let him play defense, as opposed to we're going

30:56

to slot him into even a platoon, more

30:58

of a cemented role. I think that would kind of be

31:00

a mistake because I think he's capable of doing that role.

31:03

On the other hand, Willie Castro is

31:05

a switch-hater, so he doesn't necessarily need

31:07

to be platooned. So

31:10

yeah, I'm curious to see, we might not find this out

31:12

ever. They

31:14

might not face that many lefties to

31:16

really get a firm grasp of what their plan

31:19

is against these, which that's fine because I actually

31:21

think they're probably better off. And

31:23

the plan right now might not be the plan

31:25

two or three weeks from now. For

31:28

starters, Brooks Lee could be healthy, who's also a

31:30

switch-hater, and you know, had a

31:33

nice spring, and you know, I'm sure they'd

31:35

like to have him some more time, get him some more

31:37

time at AAA. Or

31:41

we just saw Juan Miranda, or

31:43

Jose Miranda, play third

31:45

base for the first time. Yeah, for eight innings. I played

31:47

third, it was his first time at third base, he was

31:49

at AAA two games ago. Last

31:51

night he was at DH again. How was he?

31:53

I didn't get people all worked up as much as I

31:56

played third base. We had

31:58

that morning on the Patreon, we did a mailbag

32:00

and somebody asked about whether the twins still view him as

32:02

a third baseman and I was like not really. I will

32:04

stand by what I said by the way. I think if

32:09

you track the triple-a lineups just in

32:12

general you will see guys

32:14

play positions like nobody knows who

32:16

this is but Alex Isolla who's

32:18

a catcher slash first baseman has

32:21

played a couple games in left field for the Saints. I

32:23

don't think that's because the twins think he's a viable left

32:25

fielder I think it's just they got a bunch of guys

32:27

they want to play in St. Paul and you know

32:30

why not play everybody everywhere. But yeah I mean if

32:33

Miranda if his shoulder is fine

32:35

now which that was a huge issue last year ended

32:37

up having surgery on it. Well that was part of

32:40

why he was kind of ruled out as a third

32:42

baseman is that you know he was never gonna be

32:44

a great third baseman but if he's

32:46

not able to throw or throw well or throw without

32:48

pain we has no shot of playing third baseman in

32:50

the majors. But if he's back to throwing okay and

32:53

I saw a couple clips from him at St. Paul

32:55

in the game he played at third base he made

32:57

a couple decent plays then yeah

32:59

I mean he certainly offers a different

33:01

dimension offensively than someone

33:04

like Austin Martin. Right. And even then

33:07

someone like Brooks Lee in that he's

33:09

just a right-handed bat theoretically with power.

33:11

Right. So yeah you could

33:13

platoon him with Castro at third

33:15

and you could platoon Farmer with Julian

33:18

at second and you kind of have two ideal-ish

33:21

lefty-righty platoons that obviously would

33:23

push out Austin Martin. I'm

33:26

of the belief with a guy like

33:28

Austin Martin and just any kind of decent

33:30

prospect in general that

33:32

unless it's truly like a two-day

33:34

call-up or it's something

33:36

like a playoff roster edition where

33:39

the guy understands like I'm just here to be icing

33:41

on the cake. Right. I want

33:43

to play a guy. I agree. Like and

33:45

I'm surprised they haven't. Yeah. We haven't faced

33:49

that many lefties and that was where he would

33:51

primarily play but yeah I agree. I mean we

33:53

basically what we thought would happen was that he

33:56

would become Margot and Margot would be in the

33:58

role that we're seeing Martin. You know

34:00

what I mean? That we thought Margaux would be

34:02

relegated to much more sort of spot stuff and

34:04

Martin would end up getting a lot of, a

34:06

lot of the, you know, starts or so on

34:08

that you would normally put into the center. But

34:10

yes, there was literally a situation on the road

34:12

trip where Martin came in to run, played

34:15

I think an inning defensively in the outfield,

34:17

and then when that spot in the lineup

34:19

came up again, Margaux pinched it for him.

34:22

And my thing was like, first of all,

34:24

I'm not sure Margaux is a better hitter than Austin

34:26

Martin. I get that there's no track, less track record,

34:28

so. But if you

34:30

were, if you did view Margaux as that

34:32

significantly better an option to hit in that

34:34

spot, why not just pinch run Margaux and

34:36

let, now he's slightly slower than Austin Martin,

34:38

but he's still fast. So yeah,

34:40

I don't, I'm curious to see their usage. My

34:43

thought on Austin Martin, and again, I'm probably a

34:45

little higher than most on Austin Martin still. I

34:48

just believe he does, I'm not saying he's

34:50

going to be a star or anything, and I'm not even certain he's

34:52

going to be a quality regular. I think he might end up being

34:54

more of a super utility type. But the things

34:57

he does well, which is control the

34:59

strike zone, put the ball in play, slash the

35:01

ball around, run well, and play

35:03

some up the middle positions, that's stuff that

35:05

should transfer to the majors, but you need

35:07

an opportunity. And it's stuff that this team

35:09

could use. Well, that was. But we just

35:11

spent the first 20 minutes talking about exactly

35:13

that kind of skill set on this team.

35:16

So yeah, I agree. I mean,

35:18

I don't have a huge problem playing Willie Castro for a while

35:20

and seeing if last year's production's for real. I'm with you. He's

35:23

fine defensively, you know, that

35:26

leaves Farmer mostly at second base. I have no problem

35:28

with any of that. But yeah, Miranda could reenter the

35:30

mix. I mean, honestly, Miranda could,

35:33

if they, if they're, if it's a week and

35:35

a half from now and Austin Martin has six

35:37

total at bats, they may just decide we

35:39

might have more use for Miranda, not necessarily

35:41

at third base, but the first

35:44

base DH against lefties. But again,

35:46

if they're not facing that many lefties, it

35:49

changes what your needs are. There's the theoretical, Oh, it'd

35:51

be nice to have this guy. And, but

35:53

then if you call them up and you face one lefty in

35:55

10 games, it's like, well, we didn't really get that much value

35:57

out of them. But yeah, in

35:59

the meantime, they. certainly miss Royce Lewis, they're

36:02

going to need Willie Castro to

36:04

step up, which

36:06

would be a good thing just on all fronts. But, you

36:09

know, we talked during the

36:11

spring how last

36:14

year, three days before camp

36:16

broke, Willie Castro wasn't even gonna

36:18

be on the opening day roster. And

36:20

he ended up fourth on the team in the

36:22

Juan Miranda. Jose Miranda was gonna be one of

36:24

the middle order of the order presidents. I don't

36:26

know. I keep saying all the time.

36:28

I'm usually with you. We both

36:30

grew up in it. Was there not a Juan

36:33

Miranda someplace? I don't know. There's

36:35

a... Oh, there's a... Well,

36:38

man, well Miranda, that's his cousin. Yeah,

36:41

I don't... Well, whatever. At

36:44

least you said Margot, not Gobert. I did. That was

36:46

a good one. That's a running joke. Juan

36:48

Miranda, 2008 to 2011, first baseman and pinch hitter. For

36:52

the twins? No, Diamondbacks.

36:54

Yeah, I'm sure you were big on

36:56

the Diamond. You watch a lot of

36:59

Diamondbacks games that time, John? I must

37:01

have been playing fantasy baseball that point. Oh, you

37:03

were just huge factor on the fantasy baseball. Yeah.

37:07

He does have a Roto Wire

37:09

page, probably. Oh, for sure he does. Yeah. So

37:13

they're gonna have to get by without Royce

37:15

Lewis. Look, Royce Lewis is great,

37:17

but as I said earlier, the beauty of baseball

37:19

is no matter the Jenga

37:21

piece you remove from the stack in

37:23

baseball, it should not cause the

37:25

entire thing to crumble down. You know what I

37:27

mean? Like, okay. You remove enough of them. You

37:29

remove... But who's removed? Right. No, yeah. Royce

37:32

Lewis is a huge Jenga piece to remove. Is

37:34

Jenga even still a thing? Would anybody under 40

37:36

know what I'm even talking about? Okay. They

37:38

played at bars now. Well, yeah. There's

37:40

a life-size-wanted up-down that I've played before,

37:42

drunkenly, which is really the only way

37:44

to play a life-size Jenga. I don't

37:46

want to play that sober, but... So

37:48

yeah, they're gonna need Castro to step

37:51

up. If that doesn't happen, they're

37:53

gonna need to deploy Martin at second and

37:55

Farmer at third a little bit more. And

37:57

if those things also don't click or aren't

37:59

a fit... for them, Miranda

38:01

could reenter the picture, Jose Miranda, not Juan Miranda. Although

38:03

I don't know what he's doing. Maybe he's still in

38:05

good shape. Call his ass up. I'm going

38:07

to try. So

38:10

that's where the offense is. And then

38:12

in the meantime, Royce told me,

38:14

he's hoping to go to some playoff games at

38:17

Target Center. But he also said, I

38:19

got a, yeah, that's what I said. I

38:22

said, I'm not, if you are sitting in nosebleeds for a playoff

38:24

game at Target Center, I might be mad. But

38:27

also he said, well, I got to figure out what one they play

38:29

versus our schedule. And I thought in the back of my head, do

38:31

you? Because you're on the aisle. But

38:35

I don't think he wants to be seen

38:37

at a playoff game while the twins are playing or

38:39

whatever. He's very, very team first. But

38:41

when Miranda was left handed hitter, he's not going to be able to help

38:43

this team right now. I

38:45

like you now know more about this guy. 40 year old Juan

38:47

Miranda. He's 40 years old. Yeah. Listen,

38:50

he's right in there prime. I'm 41. I'm ready

38:52

to go here. I barely get over

38:54

here because my hip. So I'm ready

38:56

at 41. Okay. So that's the Royce

38:58

Lewis and the infield situation. Well, the other thing that

39:01

the other person that has somewhat replaced Royce

39:03

Lewis, I think, is Kirilloff

39:06

at the top of the order. I

39:08

mean, it was, you know, originally we

39:10

saw Kirilloff batting number two and we're like,

39:13

well, A, they need to bet somebody up

39:16

there now, right? Because Lewis is out. You

39:18

need to add some bets up there. And

39:20

second of all, what Kepler's out? He would

39:22

miss the first couple of games there. They

39:25

need to have some left handed presence up

39:27

there. But now Kepler's back. Now Kepler's back

39:29

batting fourth and Kirilloff is

39:31

still sitting there at the number two and

39:33

He's looked amazing. Yes. Yeah.

39:36

He's went great. I mean, he's hitting,

39:38

I don't know, 440 with power.

39:41

I think in the same podcast where we talked about

39:43

how the, you know, Jose Miranda was probably never going

39:45

to play third base again. And then he did. I

39:48

think we also talked about how Kirilloff looks like he's

39:50

kind of hitting the ball a little bit. He

39:52

went out and hit four for four. We're

39:54

always so cautious with Kirilloff because we've

39:57

seen this before. I mean, one thing you can say.

40:00

about Kirilov is if he

40:02

can get any sort of health. There's

40:05

very rarely even not sustained even when he's

40:08

healthy for two weeks, he hits.

40:10

And that's what's so frustrating about his injury

40:12

issues is that there's no

40:15

question the talent and there's

40:17

no question the upside and the ability

40:19

to hit. I mean, you look at

40:21

his overall numbers, this

40:23

is his fourth season but obviously he's been hurt for

40:26

a lot of it but he's played, I don't know,

40:28

200 games in the majors. He's got like a 110

40:30

OPS plus and that's with

40:32

either wrist or shoulder problems that required surgery,

40:34

I would say probably 75% of those are

40:37

bats. He's

40:39

been at less than 100% and probably a

40:41

third of those are bats have been him

40:43

playing through an injury that had

40:46

surgery a month later. And

40:48

so the fact that he's been an above

40:50

average hitter throughout that is amazing given the

40:52

context of it and then within that, whenever

40:54

he's been healthy and even there's been stints

40:56

at AAA, he won international league player of

40:58

the year, I remember a year ago, when

41:00

he was healthy and he just destroyed AAA pitching.

41:04

It's such a good swing and he has such

41:06

an ability to wait

41:09

back on pitches and drive them to

41:11

the opposite field, left and

41:14

left center, which we've seen. And even some of the outs

41:16

he's made on the road

41:18

trip were well struck fly balls that were,

41:20

you know, they weren't like amazing catches but

41:22

they were into the gaps and near the

41:24

walls to where you say, this is what

41:26

a healthy kid... The ball was flying just

41:28

a little bit further in the summer. That's

41:30

a good point. Might be a different story.

41:33

So yeah, and the giveaway with

41:35

him always is when

41:37

that changes to ground

41:39

balls, to second

41:42

base usually or to first base, that's

41:44

often when you can say, uh-oh, something

41:46

might be wrong with him physically. So it's going to be one

41:48

of those situations where, I mean, he could play 15 years of

41:50

a Hall of Fame

41:52

career and in the 14th year of that, we'll

41:54

still be sitting here going, well,

41:56

hopefully he stays healthy. And that's just how it is. It's

41:58

the same with Buxton on... It's probably

42:00

gonna be the same with Royce Lewis, but

42:02

right now this is why you're seeing the

42:04

version of Alex Kirilloff right now That

42:08

is why people like us and the

42:10

twins and prospect Collins and all that

42:12

have have continued to sort of ride

42:14

that bandwagon despite a Ridiculous

42:16

number of injuries because the talent

42:19

is always there From

42:21

the eye test or the numbers and these

42:23

little glimpses and hopefully this will be a

42:25

long glimpse right now But these little glimpses

42:28

where you go and this guy just takes

42:30

great at bats He can rip

42:32

the ball down the right field line. He could spray

42:34

the ball in the air to left and left center

42:36

I mean, it's just quality and so

42:38

it doesn't in that sense It doesn't

42:40

surprise me that without Royce Lewis and

42:43

especially Kepler's look terrible That

42:46

Baudelie is just like who are my best at

42:48

bats here? Like with a just the quality of

42:50

that bat and Julian hasn't looked great, but certainly

42:52

big picture he's gonna give you a good at

42:55

bat at the top and You

42:57

know, maybe I would put Kray a second

43:00

or something. He's mostly been bet in fifth, which is

43:02

a little weird He's also we should say been

43:04

great offensively. Yes, he's hitting 400. He's

43:06

drawn a bunch of walks. He looks

43:08

much faster. He made a Uncharacteristic

43:12

error yesterday, which he was a

43:14

very upset about which cost the team

43:16

a run. Yes, but also they got the out Actually,

43:20

he made a bad uncharacteristic error and then

43:22

made a high IQ play that's row behind

43:24

the runner and get the out but He's

43:27

been great offensively too. So you could certainly move

43:29

him up a little bit Buxton went over for

43:32

yesterday, but prior to that had looked good offensively

43:34

this by the way these type of this guy's

43:36

looked good until yesterday These

43:38

are why it's tough to make this big Analysis

43:41

of six games because it's like well if you

43:43

take out this and only focus on that I

43:46

will say this what you're left He's been playing every

43:48

day. Yeah, I mean even in you know, they've juggled

43:50

around the lineup a few times Essentially

43:52

mostly to give Buxton time at DH. So

43:54

he's not playing center field every day, right?

43:57

He's playing that

44:00

out. Like he's been playing centerfield what

44:02

four out of the six games now? Well and

44:04

he's played every day. He's been in life every day

44:06

too. Yeah he's been in Korea. That's right. But when

44:09

they put him at DH and

44:11

Kirilloff can't be there, Kirilloff's been

44:13

in left field. Walner's been the guy

44:15

odd man out. Sometimes it's been because

44:17

Kepler was hurt. You know so Walner's just moved our

44:19

sleet over to right field. That's one of the reasons

44:22

we've seen Kirilloff in left I think three times so

44:24

far. You know two of those

44:26

was probably because Kepler was hurt. But Kirilloff

44:28

has yet to play an inning at first

44:30

base. Yeah. Which is where he played primarily

44:32

last year. That's all Santana at

44:35

this point. Yeah. Another guy who's been

44:37

in the lineup all six days. Correct.

44:39

He made a good play defensively yesterday.

44:41

Get a runner. They threw out three runners at

44:43

home yesterday and still lost which is strange.

44:48

So and then I would say another guy who if

44:51

we're trying to find bright spots especially in the

44:53

lineup there are not it's kind of few and

44:55

far between. But certainly Kirilloff and Korea have been

44:57

really good. Buxton has shown the

44:59

flashes of a healthy Buxton which is always great

45:02

to see. Other

45:04

than that it's been kind of hard to find production

45:06

and even this guy I'm about to say you look

45:08

at his numbers and I think he's only hitting like

45:10

200. But I thought the

45:12

quality of Christian Vasquez at bats

45:15

have been really good. He had a sac fly that

45:17

scored a run on the road trip that could have

45:20

easily been shot into the gap. He

45:22

had one yesterday that was really hard hit but

45:24

right at an outfielder. And you

45:26

know these are small things. These

45:28

are really small silver linings. But when you

45:30

have the type of season that he had

45:33

last year he just didn't hit the ball

45:35

hard last year ever. And so

45:37

when there's two or three balls that he hits hard

45:39

in the air that get caught you

45:41

can at least take away from that. All right.

45:43

Well the quality of contact here is better than

45:45

it was last year. So much of the time

45:47

last year he seemed to be it was almost

45:49

like the end of Mike Redmond's career where like

45:52

the goal was just to flip a single over

45:54

first base. And it's like that's no way

45:56

to make a living. And I'll also give Vasquez credit.

45:58

He's done a great job. throwing

46:00

from behind the plate. Nailed a

46:02

couple of runners including Bobby Witt

46:04

at one point in a big

46:06

spot. So Vasquez has been playing

46:08

better and based

46:11

on what we kind of thought the catching

46:13

situation they've basically just alternated. Yes that's right.

46:15

Which Jeffers has struggled except for the

46:18

three-run homer he hit which won then

46:20

the game essentially in Milwaukee so that

46:22

was good to see. I

46:26

guess we can talk a little bit about pitching but

46:29

before that let's read our last couple of

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Harry's razors, you know, I Going

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to Japan and I am going to bring a

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couple of Harry's razors to shave while

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I am in Japan. I It's

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one of those things right in the past I

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might not have been

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as diligent about shaving as I

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have other times because razors

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would get old right, but these are easy this

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they come in a package They show up their

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half price half the price of the usual razors

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and it's gonna be just yeah I always say

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you don't have to go to a store and

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try to talk some Person into angrily

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48:51

to be doing it. I find myself shaving against

48:53

the grain I shave myself both with the grain

48:56

and it gets the grain now because Yeah,

48:59

it gets me a closer shave and I'm not

49:01

afraid of the razor anymore because it's always sharp

49:03

because when it's not sharp I just throw it

49:05

away and grab another one. Yes, German engineer

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blades made in their factory So they kind of

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cut out the middleman delivered right to your door

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they have a Trial

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it a try and you like it. You can put

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it your travel case. I love when John does the

49:47

little bows on the ads Always

49:51

funny So

49:55

John's like the advertising

49:57

version of like hey get on I

50:01

got a party when someone's like to close their car

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door Long goodbye,

50:05

John's head. He's like that'll help him get home I

50:11

won't feel better. Otherwise they won't feel too bad.

50:13

They won't be dangerous going home now. They'll be

50:15

there we say yeah See you next time like

50:17

okay, buddy. I hope that

50:19

wasn't super loud and I started to step back from the

50:21

microphone But I have a bad sense. Yeah, I've got the

50:23

headphones on you're alright. Okay Chantiers

50:25

are bleeding that might just be from something

50:27

else overall

50:32

Okay, so I'll see

50:34

there anything else with the lineup. I mean

50:37

Buxton, but he's looked good playing every day Bob

50:40

Delhi said to us yesterday There's

50:42

no real kind of mapped out plan

50:44

for how often he's gonna play center

50:47

versus DH I

50:49

think it's like he sits been a four to or

50:51

two. I think they're mostly one for series He gets

50:53

a yeah, and they've had a lot of days off

50:55

here, too Which is part of a thing I would

50:57

say you know two on one off not off but

50:59

two on One on DH

51:01

makes sense and then you're gonna have some off

51:04

days mixed in there, too We just haven't taken

51:06

it yet, but Bob Delhi basically said it's gonna

51:08

be more reactive than proactive at this point, which

51:10

means Which is probably

51:13

I would say good news. I just generally they

51:15

don't feel the need to write a screen And

51:17

now we'll see in a month if that's the

51:19

case, but what he really meant was you know

51:21

when you're playing center field There

51:24

are gonna be days when he's got a layout

51:26

for two balls or even just for sure sprint

51:28

after a few balls But there's also gonna be

51:30

days in center field where you don't have a

51:32

single thing to do you just go out and

51:35

stand That's sure on those days He might be

51:37

able to play center field more likely the next

51:39

day the days when he's going all out for

51:41

six different plays Maybe the next

51:43

day's a DH day or a day off there something like that.

51:45

It all seems fairly reasonable to me So we'll see on that

51:49

Alright, let's talk a little bit about pitching. So

51:51

we mentioned I

51:53

mean the twins have a better than average

51:55

ERA overall. Yep, and that is

51:57

with one horrendous game against the

52:00

Royals real stinker and their

52:02

rotation has like a you

52:04

know three something era even with that obviously

52:06

you start to remove Bailey over I think

52:08

what he goes one and two thirds and

52:10

he allowed eight or around or something like

52:12

that then the numbers look really good I'm

52:14

not gonna push that narrative that

52:17

much because it's so early but we

52:20

although he was asked yesterday about Bailey over and

52:23

because not only did the

52:25

Royals knock him around like genuinely knock

52:27

him around with I think three homers

52:29

and a well-struck doubles and

52:31

stuff like that even some of the outs were up

52:34

against the wall they've he's

52:37

made like I don't know 60 starts in the majors

52:39

something like that career 50 or 60 starts and there's

52:42

really only been like three or four

52:44

that have been genuinely bad like you

52:47

know he said somewhere he goes for innings he allows

52:49

three runs or something like that or they're not great

52:51

but he's pretty rarely I mean one of the kind

52:53

of positives to

52:55

Bailey over versus like Joe Ryan

52:59

even if you think Joren has more upside

53:01

and is just maybe a better pitcher like

53:03

for this season sure he's been more

53:05

prone to blowups like where he just gives

53:07

up for homers and he really over has

53:09

avoided that for the most part better than

53:12

almost any pitcher of his caliber except

53:15

the Royals got to him obviously in his first started

53:17

this year and I think going back

53:19

a couple years they had back-to-back starts where they kind

53:22

of knocked him around a little bit so

53:24

Baudelio was asked yesterday the Royals

53:27

have something on Bailey over and he

53:29

said yeah we think so and people

53:33

always react to that I think more

53:35

harshly than those

53:38

within baseball would intend it because

53:40

there's a it's really a spectrum I mean

53:42

at the far end of the spectrum is

53:45

what the Astros were doing like literally

53:47

not only stealing signs but then communicating

53:49

them electronically and all that had a

53:51

system in place electronics I think everyone

53:54

can probably agree that that's out of

53:56

line right but there's a lot between

53:59

just going up there and swinging

54:01

and that. And there's kind

54:03

of a murky middle where we

54:05

always- His arm slots a little different this one,

54:08

so here comes the change. Like if you notice

54:10

a lot of pitchers who throw a split finger

54:12

fastball will every

54:14

single pitch in

54:16

their glove before the pitch, they will

54:19

position their hand to throw a splitter.

54:22

And then as they're going

54:24

through their motion to throw the pitch, if they're

54:27

not gonna throw the splitter, they just switch it

54:29

to a regular grip. Because if you do the

54:31

opposite, if you set up in a normal grip,

54:33

and then as you're going through and try to

54:35

get into a splitter grip, it's

54:38

noticeable. And so people can figure out that

54:40

you're throwing a splitter. Paul Mollodor famously was

54:42

throughout his career as a player, as a

54:44

coach, as a manager, people talked about him

54:46

as a baseball savant, which he is, but

54:48

they would always give him credit for, he

54:50

would just stand at the top of the

54:52

dugout, and he would just stare at the

54:54

pitcher, and he would stare at the third

54:56

base coach giving signs, and he would stare at the

54:58

catcher, and by the fourth inning, he would say, okay,

55:01

here's their steal sign, here's their bunt

55:03

sign, I can tell this guy when

55:05

he's throwing change up because he's got a slightly lower

55:07

arm slot, and people were like, well, this is amazing.

55:10

He helped countless teams win

55:12

countless games, including the twins, because

55:14

of that. But that's

55:16

really just a version of what Baldelli is

55:18

saying the Royals are doing. There's no sort

55:21

of villainous behavior here, it's just he

55:23

pointed out yesterday, he being

55:26

Baldelli, that all the damage

55:28

was done on fastballs and change ups. Not

55:30

on the change up, the change ups in

55:32

particular were hammered, the

55:35

idea there could be, as if they knew a change

55:37

up was coming. Or if you can just sort of

55:39

A-B it, fastball or change up, and you don't have

55:41

to worry about sliders, or you don't have to worry

55:43

about whatever because you sort of X that out of

55:45

the equation because of some factor, then that can help

55:47

you too. His point

55:50

wasn't to say, we're launching an

55:52

investigation against the Royals, it was more

55:54

like good on them, they

55:56

seem to have some on Bayley going back years, we're

55:59

spending this week. trying to figure out from our

56:01

point of view what that is. And

56:03

that's not just Bailey, they're basically sort of doing

56:07

opposition research on themselves, which

56:09

is all their analytics guys and all

56:11

their scouting and video coordinator guys are

56:13

really pounding the pavement, crunching the numbers

56:15

on Bailey over to try to figure

56:17

out like if we were the Royals,

56:20

what are we noticing here that then he

56:22

can correct? So he starts Sunday, not against

56:24

the Royals. So

56:26

I'll be very curious to see what his

56:29

pitch mix is, if there's any sort of

56:31

noticeable mechanical differences and then just also the

56:33

overall performance. I'll also point out, you know,

56:35

when he... Last

56:38

year when he wasn't with the Twins, his

56:41

first two starts with the Saints were not very good.

56:44

Both of them, he went like three innings and

56:46

that was not partly the... I would caution that

56:49

there may have been a... mentally...

56:52

No, no, no... He was mad. We

56:55

talked about that, right? We said at the time,

56:58

you know, he said all the right things. He

57:01

was clearly motivated in spring training. He wasn't throwing

57:03

a fit, but it's just a hard thing to

57:05

take that demotion. Exactly, yes. He's not that guy

57:07

at all. But yeah, you can

57:09

see where he would be. And we kind of... Boy, you know,

57:13

maybe he's feeling it a little more than he

57:15

wishes he could feel it. And he looked great

57:17

for the next three months. Exactly, right. And

57:19

he looked pretty good in spring training. The other thing

57:22

about getting knocked around by the Royals, which

57:24

I don't think that's going to happen to a lot of

57:26

pitchers this year. It

57:29

didn't happen in the other two games against the Royals, certainly. But

57:32

velocity-wise, he was

57:35

actually up slightly over kind of baseline what

57:37

you would expect from Bayley-Ober. And

57:40

so that, you know, when you see a guy...

57:43

There's been Joe Ryan starts to use him as an

57:46

example again, where you go, ooh, he's only throwing 91

57:48

today. Right. Well, then you're not shocked

57:50

if he gets knocked around a little because the quality of the stuff

57:52

that he's throwing at these guys is a little bit less than you

57:54

would like to see. There are just some days when

57:56

a guy's not feeling great or whatever. He's fatigued

57:58

or just off that day. But when

58:01

you see a pitcher just get shelled and

58:04

the stuff is there, the

58:06

velocity is there, then yeah, it's

58:08

natural to be like, okay, well what else is going

58:10

on here? And he said he felt fine physically. He

58:13

had a pretty good spring training. It's not like he struggled really in

58:15

spring training. So I'll be very

58:17

curious to see. I would say in general with

58:20

the starting pitchers, everyone's

58:24

velocity is up, which

58:26

you don't often or always see early

58:29

in the season. I mean, there have

58:31

been times you might see a pitcher throwing

58:34

92, 93 and go, where's the 95, 96? It's

58:37

been the opposite with the twins. I mean, Pablo Lopez is pumping

58:39

96, 97 in both starts. Louis

58:42

Varlin, who wasn't great but was throwing 96, 97,

58:44

98 as

58:46

a starter in multiple innings. Chris

58:49

Paddock was 95 coming off Tommy John.

58:52

And then Joe Ryan was pumping 95, 96 instead of 92, 93. All

58:57

these guys are throwing harder than

58:59

you would expect. But

59:01

I felt like the command

59:03

or the control, and Ober, same example, like

59:05

the command just wasn't there and

59:09

they just didn't, there were a lot of foul

59:11

balls instead of swings and misses. They

59:14

seemed to have trouble even yesterday. Lopez seemed to

59:16

have a little bit of trouble. Now partly it's because

59:18

Cleveland's lineup is built to be passed. But

59:20

kind of finishing as many at bats as you'd

59:23

want with two strikes, that leads

59:25

to balls being put in play instead of

59:27

being strikeouts. It leads to some

59:29

walks because you get deeper in counts. And so I think

59:31

that's, you look at some of the starts and other

59:34

than the one, first

59:36

Lopez start was really impressive on opening day,

59:38

opening day. They've been

59:40

a lot of just sort of battling through, getting through

59:42

four, having looked that great and having

59:44

gotten shelled other than Ober, but not great.

59:46

And I think a lot of that, it's not because the stuff isn't there.

59:49

It seems to be more the feel hasn't quite been there. And

59:52

that's not shocking, I guess, first time through. I Think it's

59:54

also worth calling out for those of you who haven't paid

59:56

that much attention to this or in the past or... No,

1:00:00

Just. Haven't noticed it. Your

1:00:03

first start for starting pitchers is

1:00:06

often. Pretty. Short he overseeing allow

1:00:08

for inning starts. I'll take that as

1:00:10

a precursor to I hope it's not

1:00:12

a precursor to, you know, You

1:00:16

know, having shorter starts this year than we

1:00:18

would like to see at a is mostly

1:00:20

about know they like to keep him in

1:00:22

about the eighties on their first year of

1:00:24

timer bodies to one hundred pitches in spring

1:00:26

training right? and so. But all I would

1:00:28

also say I grew that the goal is

1:00:30

five innings in settlements a six and sure

1:00:32

what am I being a month. But.

1:00:35

I don't. I can't really point to any.

1:00:38

Like the opening day when. The.

1:00:40

Ball, they want to talk to Lopez

1:00:42

in the Cfl right? right? And Lopez

1:00:44

talk themselves into the game. Now I

1:00:46

would argue. May. Stumble those comments.

1:00:49

But. I wanted Lopez to talk science

1:00:51

and game. That was the gold error.

1:00:53

But other than that, there hasn't really

1:00:55

been the case that. Anybody's.

1:00:57

Been removed from a start when things were

1:01:00

clicking. With violin with

1:01:02

paddocks obviously Seeley over arguably was left

1:01:04

in too long. Now it's of we

1:01:06

understand about said I recorded five hours

1:01:08

rights are they tried to leave him

1:01:10

and they tried to get three of

1:01:12

warning from him and he just didn't

1:01:14

take but with. You. Know Joe

1:01:16

Ryan. Maybe you could try to get him through

1:01:19

the sixth inning or whatever, but you know he

1:01:21

was get up there pitches and he wasn't quite

1:01:23

as sharp with the the paddock environment. Starts: They

1:01:25

were lucky to get four innings on rails and

1:01:27

as for that's a rough patch up. There were

1:01:29

some real long innings and battling sly you these

1:01:32

are. They ended up. You. Know reaching eighty

1:01:34

nine pitches or something And for in Excel?

1:01:36

See, I don't I don't think you can

1:01:38

blame. Quick hook for

1:01:40

lack of a better sense and on that

1:01:42

so far it's more performance space but yeah

1:01:44

would expect to see. I mean look around

1:01:47

the league in general. There's.

1:01:49

only been like three starts of seven innings

1:01:51

so far across a major league baseball and

1:01:54

lopez as one of them are maybe there's

1:01:56

a few more now the last couple days

1:01:58

but so yeah i think Know

1:02:00

the the oh, I mean they need Bailey over

1:02:02

to be good, right? And so it's worrisome when

1:02:04

a guy who doesn't get shelled ever

1:02:07

get shelled by a not very good lineup But

1:02:10

you know, he's smart enough and they're smart enough if

1:02:12

there is something going on to figure

1:02:14

it out and make an adjustment from it Let's

1:02:18

see a couple other pitching things Anthony

1:02:21

D'scafani Yeah done for

1:02:23

the year probably done for his twins career before

1:02:25

it even started He's had or will

1:02:28

have I don't he's had it yet Flexor

1:02:30

tendon surgery, which isn't Tommy John surgery, but

1:02:32

might as well be for their purposes. He's

1:02:35

done We'll end up never throwing a pitch

1:02:37

for the twins On

1:02:43

the patreon PAT REO and patreon.com we're

1:02:46

doing two episodes a week on patreon Yeah, if you like

1:02:48

this show you should listen to the patrons You

1:02:52

know that trade Or

1:02:55

the him being in the Polanco trade

1:02:59

It wasn't about him and if anything

1:03:03

He was either viewed as just a

1:03:05

completely neutral value like do you want

1:03:07

him for four million? We'll eat four

1:03:09

million the Giants had already eight in

1:03:11

four million So only a third of

1:03:13

his twelve million dollar salary was the

1:03:15

twins responsibility, right? There's some thought from

1:03:17

I've tried to ask around on this

1:03:19

that the Mariners basically said you've got

1:03:21

to take you have to take him

1:03:24

We get the other three players. We think it's a

1:03:26

little lopsided this trade in your favor Well, or we

1:03:28

just have a budget and we're trying to get

1:03:30

underneath and Polanco puts us over We need you to

1:03:33

take me four million dollars worth of salary

1:03:35

for somebody now That doesn't all

1:03:37

that can be true as we often like to say in

1:03:39

the show multiple things can be true That

1:03:42

can be true, but it can also be true

1:03:44

that they didn't bring in any other Enforce

1:03:46

reinforcements, right? And so they were counting

1:03:48

on disco funny to be the fifth

1:03:51

starter for a while Because

1:03:54

They wanted Varlin to be waiting in the

1:03:56

wings. They didn't want to dip into their

1:03:58

minor league depth Now, obviously that's all. The

1:04:00

window you take these go Funny how the

1:04:02

picture immediately viral and steps in. They now

1:04:04

need him to up and then the questions

1:04:06

gonna be how long can they go until

1:04:08

they need a six starter And it is

1:04:10

because that six starters no longer violence as

1:04:13

is the fifth starter. Now the six starter

1:04:15

is seeming was Richardson may be or David

1:04:17

fastest some young guy who they were hoping

1:04:19

not to need until June or July or

1:04:21

August. They're almost certainly at some point going

1:04:23

to need I'm so stats the big question

1:04:25

be a disco funny. He's

1:04:28

gonna join the list of. Items

1:04:31

General. Remember who's the last guy?

1:04:34

He would almost have to be a pitcher. That.

1:04:36

They acquired. And. Then.

1:04:39

Never. Pitched for them like they've

1:04:41

acquired pitchers. Clearly this is a huge

1:04:43

talking point. Like Tyler married for Sam

1:04:45

die worse et cetera, they've acquired Guys

1:04:47

were very quickly gotten hurt for a

1:04:49

penny. Second time amounts to made it

1:04:51

doesn't starts for them. Sam Dyson unfortunately

1:04:53

made. That doesn't appear a set of

1:04:56

emphasis and on and I can't remember a guy

1:04:58

and I'm sure people are screaming at their. Phones

1:05:01

right now trying to tell us the

1:05:04

at Yes piece. Ah, Whose

1:05:06

Am sure there are examples, but to acquire

1:05:08

a pitcher and have him get hurt before

1:05:11

even throws a fit shares? His

1:05:13

is tricky would have to be an off

1:05:16

season acquisition cause any ensues and acquisitions can

1:05:18

fits within days but at can think of

1:05:20

as unfortunately it takes a chunk out of

1:05:22

their deaths but again it's was he was

1:05:24

only being relied on as depths. To

1:05:27

make that Mariners deal worth. Emphasis.

1:05:31

On. Supplies peril is ownership doesn't/payroll you

1:05:33

just go sign that says Lugo

1:05:35

are you go trade for somebody

1:05:37

who makes. The. Full twelve million

1:05:39

and doesn't say those guys can get

1:05:42

injured either. But. I'll give you.

1:05:44

More. Of a fighting chance than the skull. Funny

1:05:46

it turned out also on the pitching front. Sounds.

1:05:50

A kill of steel bars. Pretty close

1:05:53

to going on on a rehab assignment.

1:05:55

She's been out since early on in

1:05:57

spring train with a hamstring strain as.

1:05:59

That. That would help. I mean, certainly. To

1:06:02

see what move that ends up leading to. My assumption is it would

1:06:04

be Funderburg. I don't think it's.

1:06:06

That is the default assumption. I

1:06:08

think Funder, I think Theobars injury

1:06:11

is why Funderburg is on the roster. Right?

1:06:14

Yeah. But I'm not sure that necessarily means he's

1:06:16

going to be the one to go down either. Well, yeah,

1:06:18

nothing says, you know, Funderburg would not have made

1:06:21

the opening day roster. It might be Duarte. If

1:06:23

Theobar were not injured. But

1:06:26

that doesn't mean he's forever connected to

1:06:28

Theobar. Right. You can connect yourself

1:06:30

by pitching well. That's right. And, you know,

1:06:32

somebody else gets sent down. Although Duarte's look fine too. Yep.

1:06:35

By the way. That was real good. When I

1:06:37

said Theobars close to going

1:06:40

on a rehab, I think they're going to

1:06:42

ask him to make, because essentially he's going to have

1:06:44

to have a shortened version of

1:06:46

spring training build up because he never pitched in a

1:06:48

game during spring training. Right. And he's a reliever, so

1:06:50

it's not the same as a starting pitcher needs to

1:06:52

get to 75, 80 pitches.

1:06:54

But he's got to get to 20 pitches. He's

1:06:56

got to pitch back to back games or two

1:06:59

out of three. He's got to pitch

1:07:01

one night and then come in the next day and

1:07:03

see how his hamstring feels and how his arm feels.

1:07:05

So, you know, even if he goes on a rehab

1:07:07

assignment in the next several days, probably

1:07:09

to St. Paul, although maybe not, because now

1:07:12

all the season, they might send him to Fort Myers

1:07:14

because it's warmer. Yeah, maybe. I don't

1:07:16

know that a guy with a 36 year old guy with a

1:07:18

hamstring problem needs to be going to St. Paul right now. Yeah,

1:07:20

sure point. As a 41 year old guy with a hip problem.

1:07:23

Right. I don't want to even know. Right.

1:07:25

I don't expect him to make multiple appearances,

1:07:27

but maybe a week or two from now,

1:07:29

who knows what the bullpen

1:07:31

looks like by then. I mean, I don't

1:07:34

know. He got Cole Sands. I mean, Funderberg

1:07:36

and Cole Sands finished the game yesterday. Right.

1:07:38

Saved them some arms. Although it's always interesting to me when

1:07:41

that's the priority before an off day. Right.

1:07:44

When it was four to two, they were down four

1:07:46

to two. So it's not a high likelihood you're going

1:07:48

to win the game. But if you're down four to

1:07:50

two in the eighth inning and

1:07:52

the next day is an off day, is Cole

1:07:55

Sands the choice there? No, he pitched fine. He

1:07:57

didn't give up any runs. Right. Potentially

1:08:00

a higher leverage spot because you don't need to save guys

1:08:02

because they're gonna give a day off anyway the next day

1:08:05

So feel bar will be the first guy back there hasn't

1:08:07

really been a meaningful update on like Topa

1:08:09

Duran is out long enough that he's not gonna

1:08:11

have I mean he was there and everything he

1:08:13

seemed he was mobile But

1:08:15

there's not it's similar to Lewis and that there's not gonna

1:08:17

be a minute a meaningful update for a little while at

1:08:19

least The

1:08:21

last couple of things I want to talk about Oh

1:08:26

bullpen speaking of The

1:08:30

Reliable section of the bullpen or the trustworthy section

1:08:32

although the bull pie leverage Yeah, the highlights better

1:08:34

because the bullpen's been the best part of the

1:08:36

team so far Even without Duran even

1:08:38

without the Obar even the back end

1:08:40

of it. Yes. Yeah, so once

1:08:42

Duran goes down It's

1:08:45

clear that Brock Stewart and Griffin Jacks In

1:08:48

some order are gonna be closer primary

1:08:50

setup guy and we saw

1:08:53

that in the Kansas City series They basically did

1:08:55

one where Stewart was in a closing spot and

1:08:57

one where Jack's was not, you know, sort of

1:08:59

ordering But then we saw an interesting

1:09:01

thing in Milwaukee which

1:09:03

is they used Stewart in the

1:09:05

seventh inning and Then

1:09:08

Jack's in the eighth inning and

1:09:10

then they got to the ninth inning No, they happen to

1:09:12

tack on a run right to make

1:09:14

it a four-run lead instead of a three-run lead Which

1:09:16

means it wasn't technically a save that's right But it

1:09:18

was looking like it was going to be a 6-3

1:09:20

game And

1:09:23

I could tell you the beat writer group chat was

1:09:25

we were putting in guesses as to who was gonna

1:09:27

pitch the ninth inning I won

1:09:29

because I brilliantly looked at the lineup

1:09:32

and saw there were two lefties And

1:09:34

I said, I think it's we ochre but

1:09:37

there were all kinds of theories Joe Dace

1:09:39

had got suggested I think somebody said Rick

1:09:41

Aguilera But and so it's

1:09:43

interesting it's a I think that's sort of the natural

1:09:45

next step of how they've handled bullpens a lot of

1:09:48

the time And

1:09:50

this isn't how you would do things if you had a

1:09:53

great closer like they're on you would just say he pitches

1:09:55

the Knife whatever you don't have to get cutesy with it.

1:09:57

Try to squeeze extra value out, but

1:09:59

you don't have him now, and neither Brock Stewart

1:10:01

nor Griffin Jax have this great, you know,

1:10:03

they're not proven closers or whatever. And

1:10:06

also games can be won and lost in the seventh and eighth

1:10:08

inning. And we saw that. Those were

1:10:11

higher leverage spots. The

1:10:13

seventh inning of the Milwaukee game and the

1:10:15

eighth inning of the Milwaukee game were more

1:10:17

important, higher leverage spots with more, you know,

1:10:20

the swing of wins and losses rode more heavily

1:10:22

on that than ended up being the case in

1:10:24

the ninth inning. Because the ninth inning was a

1:10:26

four-run lead. And so, they didn't

1:10:29

know that was going to happen, obviously. But

1:10:31

the idea is, can we

1:10:33

deploy these two most proven relievers

1:10:35

we have in spots that

1:10:37

we know for certain have a big leverage

1:10:39

impact on the game? And sometimes that's going

1:10:42

to leave a situation where you just go,

1:10:44

hey, Oker can get close things out

1:10:46

here with a four-run lead. Now there are going to be

1:10:48

situations where it leaves you in a spot where now

1:10:50

it's a one-run lead or a tie game. That's right. And

1:10:53

now you don't have your two best relievers, and that's going to look

1:10:56

ugly. I don't hate that

1:10:58

overall approach that then wilds around.

1:11:00

We saw this early in the season last year, though,

1:11:02

too, where we would take a look at it and

1:11:04

think, is

1:11:08

he saving his best pitcher for

1:11:10

their best hitters? Yes. And

1:11:13

as I recall, we were

1:11:16

at the top of the lineup versus the Brewers.

1:11:18

Hoskins, who was the first guy Oker pitched

1:11:20

to, was batting fifth. Right.

1:11:23

So you were going fifth, sixth, seventh. Yeah. And then you

1:11:25

were going ninth or something like that, which means you've gotten

1:11:27

through the top of

1:11:29

that brilliant Hoskins. It's exactly the guy you

1:11:32

don't want to see facing, Oker facing in

1:11:34

that big, great-handed player. But he

1:11:36

ended up facing left. But you've got a three-run lead. That's

1:11:38

definitely part of it. And yes, you're right. We've seen that

1:11:40

with Deron. Now last year, by the end- We saw it

1:11:42

early in the season, and then it kind of disappeared. And

1:11:44

he just became sort of a traditional closer, which inevitably is

1:11:46

what happened to great relievers. They

1:11:49

end up being used more creatively

1:11:51

early in their careers than they did. But I

1:11:53

think that's definitely it. But I also wonder

1:11:55

if that's just something that Baldelli tends to do early in the

1:11:57

season, and then as everybody kind of gets used to a role.

1:11:59

goal, they stick with it. But yeah,

1:12:02

so I think the leverage in the inning lended

1:12:06

itself to that. But more than that, it's

1:12:08

like, even if we

1:12:10

think this is just going to be a three-run game in

1:12:12

all three of these innings, do

1:12:15

we want our best pitching

1:12:18

option facing their most dangerous hitters?

1:12:21

Well, obviously, yeah. I mean, it's funny

1:12:23

that people don't assume that logically

1:12:25

because it's been so warped by saves and

1:12:27

closers and all that stuff, the whole concept

1:12:29

of late inning. But if you can do

1:12:32

it, if you think you

1:12:34

have a reliever who's better than all your other

1:12:36

relievers, you want them to face the

1:12:38

other team's best hitters. You don't want to just go,

1:12:40

well, this guy pitches the seven, this guy pitches the

1:12:42

eighth. The guy

1:12:44

who pitches the seventh might face the best part of

1:12:46

the lineup. And the guy who pitches the ninth might

1:12:48

face, you know, seven, eight, nine. And

1:12:50

so what kind of sense does that make? So

1:12:53

I think that's a good way to manage it, particularly when you're

1:12:55

missing your best pitcher. But

1:12:58

you are going to get into spots doing that

1:13:00

where you're going to put yourself up for a

1:13:03

lot of criticism, where things turn

1:13:05

a little bit and all of a sudden then, you know,

1:13:07

it's a one-run game and Ochre's

1:13:09

facing Hoskins leading off the diabetic and you

1:13:11

go, well, this wasn't what we wanted. Well,

1:13:14

I mean, I would say also, like a

1:13:16

month ago, right, if you

1:13:18

were suggesting that Ochre was going to

1:13:20

be closing games, you know, it

1:13:22

wasn't to close because it was a lot

1:13:24

of things. Finishing

1:13:27

a game like that where, you know, it's kind

1:13:29

of close versus a game you want to win.

1:13:32

I mean, he warmed up well. It was a safe

1:13:34

situation. I mean, they just tapped down a run. We're

1:13:36

treating, we've seen Ochre. Ochre's looked good so far, right?

1:13:40

We're treating him as a high-leverage reliever

1:13:42

in part because he's the third best

1:13:44

pitcher we have standing at this point.

1:13:46

Yes, but also he's the number one

1:13:49

lefty. Yes, right. It wouldn't have been

1:13:51

as surprising to see field bar, a

1:13:53

healthy field bar in years past in

1:13:55

that ninth inning. It just so happens field bars

1:13:57

hurt, so who's your next lefty? It's Ochre. But,

1:14:00

you know, when they traded for Oakert, let's... I mean,

1:14:03

the idea of trading for Oakert was similar to trading

1:14:05

away Nick Gordon, which is, not sure he's good enough

1:14:07

to make the roster, but he's out of options, so

1:14:09

we're going to have him on the team. So

1:14:11

we might as well send him to somebody who needs him.

1:14:14

Yeah, from the Marlon standpoint. Yeah, from the Marlon standpoint, he's

1:14:16

like, yeah, we're not sure he's going to be good enough

1:14:18

to make this bullpen, but he's out of

1:14:20

options, so we might as well find something to do with

1:14:22

him, similar to what the twins did with Gordon, which tells

1:14:24

you where Oakert kind of ranked in terms of... I mean,

1:14:26

he ranked towards the bottom of that bullpen too. He

1:14:29

was supposed to be kind of the middle inning,

1:14:32

lower leveraged lefty. Exactly. Now that's the

1:14:34

role Funderburg is pitching. So yeah,

1:14:36

I think... So to see him elevated from,

1:14:38

you know, maybe not

1:14:40

even making Marlon's roster to closing

1:14:44

a team here... He wouldn't, I mean, because he makes a million

1:14:46

and a half arbitrary... By the way, tough

1:14:48

roster to crack in Miami. They're only

1:14:50

0-8 right now. Oh no, really? Yeah.

1:14:53

Poor Luis Arraez and poor Nick Gordon, although he's

1:14:55

playing on a decent amount. Yeah,

1:14:58

I mean, I wouldn't be surprised to see

1:15:00

Alkala pitching the ninth inning in that type

1:15:02

of situation, depending on the match, with Jay

1:15:05

Jackson. Yeah, right. I mean, the point is

1:15:07

that I know we've been so conditioned as

1:15:09

baseball fans since the 80s, basically,

1:15:11

to view the ninth inning as different. And it's

1:15:13

sort of like our conversation with strikeouts. There are

1:15:15

some situations where the ninth inning is different, but

1:15:17

there are a lot of situations where it's just

1:15:19

the last three outs. And

1:15:22

a lot of guys, when you have

1:15:24

a three or four-run lead or a

1:15:26

five-run lead, can get three outs before

1:15:28

giving up the lead. And so why

1:15:30

hold back your legitimately best, most reliable

1:15:32

relievers for a situation that may not

1:15:35

arrive at all and may not be all that crucial?

1:15:38

And why put, for instance, Ochre into

1:15:40

a spot in the seventh inning where the game could

1:15:42

be on the line and then you never get to

1:15:44

the ninth inning with the lead? So I think it's

1:15:46

interesting. I also just think there's going to be spots

1:15:49

where it doesn't go smoothly and you're just ripe for

1:15:51

ripping. But I don't really think Baldelli cares about

1:15:54

that. I also think we

1:15:56

saw, yeah, it was the

1:15:58

second game where we saw... Alcalah

1:16:00

come in as Oker and Alcalah be basically

1:16:02

be the seventh inning high leverage guys Which

1:16:04

that makes sense we that we sort of

1:16:07

it's either gonna be it's gonna be Oker and either

1:16:10

Jackson or Alco Right that's right are gonna be the

1:16:12

you know taking the spots that normally when it's a

1:16:14

guy who we weren't sure was he gonna Be on

1:16:16

the roster and now he's yeah But

1:16:19

okay sure after about two weeks he's gonna

1:16:21

be on the roster certainly once the injuries

1:16:23

happens fall-mount was I mean once the injuries

1:16:25

happened. Yes, we were pretty sure but most

1:16:27

was retraining wonder Well, who's gonna get that

1:16:29

last spot is it gonna be Alcalah is it gonna be? No,

1:16:32

I'm not gonna be in spring training And

1:16:35

then one of them was throwing 98 and one

1:16:37

of them was throwing 92 there and that's how

1:16:39

it went but last couple

1:16:41

things here They

1:16:44

dick Braemer was back at the ballpark and

1:16:47

they did a he threw out the first pitch and there was

1:16:49

a little ceremony On the field mower was

1:16:51

there to catch the first pitch, which

1:16:53

was nice But then before that up in

1:16:56

the press box The television

1:16:58

booth for the twins So

1:17:00

there's a visiting television booth and a

1:17:02

home television booth the home television booth

1:17:04

was named after dick Braemer They put

1:17:07

a little plaque up with his

1:17:09

picture It's similar the home radio booth is

1:17:11

named after John Gordon in a similar way And

1:17:14

so there was a little ceremony Dave st.

1:17:16

Peter talked Justin Morneau talked Dick

1:17:19

Braemer they give him a couple little an award and

1:17:21

a you know gift they made a

1:17:23

donation to his School

1:17:26

in Dumont, Minnesota It's

1:17:29

some town was like negative six people living there or something

1:17:31

the way they talk about it And they

1:17:33

were all at the game like his his

1:17:35

grade school teacher was there and you know

1:17:37

dick Braemer Is right off

1:17:40

this job after 40 years you can think here do

1:17:42

you do the math there on how old his grade

1:17:44

school? but anyway He

1:17:47

was classy as always teared up a

1:17:49

little bit a couple points and

1:17:51

then right after he teared up Like

1:17:54

he was talking about how he's been doing this since

1:17:56

1983 and 40 years and How

1:18:00

much it took for the team to get

1:18:02

to target field and he mentioned, North Carolina

1:18:04

It almost didn't happen and blah blah blah

1:18:06

and he says so the fact that the

1:18:09

team got here and now this will always

1:18:11

be here Outside the door of

1:18:13

the the press bar the booth here

1:18:15

means a lot to me and he was tearing up He was tearing

1:18:17

up and then clearly he

1:18:19

thought to himself. All right. I can't cry here

1:18:21

this much. Let me make a joke so

1:18:24

then he says You know

1:18:26

now that my name's outside the door. I Kind

1:18:29

of view myself as the landlord of the

1:18:32

TV booth and st. Peter's like, okay Where's

1:18:35

this going and he says and

1:18:37

you know, I got a few rules I'll tell

1:18:39

I'll tell Dave what the my full list of

1:18:41

rules is the landlord of that room But

1:18:44

I'll share one with you now and he says, you

1:18:46

know my one rule

1:18:48

is Whether you're doing the game

1:18:50

whether you're producing the game whether you just guessed whether

1:18:52

you just stick your head in If

1:18:55

you're in that room if you're in that TV booth

1:18:57

that's named after me And a foul ball

1:18:59

gets hit in there. You have to catch

1:19:01

the fall ball Because he's

1:19:03

big on People

1:19:06

laughed and he paused he turned to his left and

1:19:08

he said so, you know for

1:19:11

Dan Hayes Maybe that means

1:19:13

don't go into the booth After

1:19:17

I'm happy Nice

1:19:23

little touch Yeah, it was

1:19:25

good to see Dick Brimmer We

1:19:27

talked about this more on the patreon side, but I

1:19:29

I didn't hear the broadcast yesterday because I

1:19:31

was at the game But

1:19:34

the I listened to a lot of the

1:19:36

broader watched a lot of the TV broadcasts for

1:19:38

the first road trip I thought

1:19:40

Cory Provis was excellent and I

1:19:42

thought specifically the pairing with

1:19:45

Morneau Was excellent in

1:19:47

ways that we've never heard a

1:19:49

twins broadcast be in my lifetime

1:19:52

in that it was More

1:19:54

conversational more free-flowing and this

1:19:56

is not criticism Brimmer. We did a great

1:19:58

job for 40 years And

1:20:01

they've also clearly kind

1:20:03

of leaned into

1:20:06

analytics data stat presentation

1:20:09

from a production side and from

1:20:11

a graphic standpoint. In part

1:20:13

because I think that suits Provis and

1:20:15

Morneau really well and that allowed them,

1:20:17

you know, you put hard hit rate

1:20:20

up on the screen and then they

1:20:22

can spend 30 seconds saying to people,

1:20:24

here's what hard hit rate is, here's

1:20:26

the league average, here's the twins leaders,

1:20:28

here's Morneau saying why I think as

1:20:30

an MVP hitter, why this is important,

1:20:32

why it's meaningful, what I view it

1:20:34

as. And I just thought, man,

1:20:38

if you just, this was your first twins game

1:20:40

you ever watched on TV, you

1:20:42

would have no sense of how different this is than last

1:20:44

year or 10 years ago or 20

1:20:46

years ago and certainly- Back when we started a podcast.

1:20:48

Yes. There were a lot

1:20:50

of moments, please do not take this

1:20:52

as criticism, but there were a lot of moments listening to

1:20:55

the first four or five games on the road where it

1:20:57

seemed to me like a podcast for

1:20:59

stretches. And I mean that as

1:21:01

the highest possible content even though

1:21:03

I'd be self-deprecating about our podcast.

1:21:06

But like they so often were like a

1:21:08

stat would get shown up on the screen of,

1:21:11

you know, with rate or exit velocity

1:21:13

or something and they just did such

1:21:15

a good job, I thought, of contextualizing

1:21:18

why that's meaningful, what

1:21:20

it means, what this number for this guy

1:21:23

means relative to average or good or everything.

1:21:25

Or even something as simple as when they

1:21:28

show the lineup to open the game, they

1:21:30

don't show batting average anymore, they show OPS.

1:21:33

That's a minor change, but

1:21:36

hugely more meaningful in

1:21:38

terms of actually educating your audience or showing

1:21:41

them information that matters. So I give

1:21:43

credit to Morneau and Provis, who

1:21:46

that's much more up their alley. That's

1:21:48

how they talk. I can tell you, that's how they talk

1:21:51

in the hallways. That's how they talk at lunch. That's

1:21:54

how they talk. But I also give credit

1:21:56

to the production side of Bally's Boards North.

1:22:00

choosing that stat package. You don't have to choose

1:22:02

that stat package. They give you options. You can

1:22:04

do the old school one, you can do the

1:22:06

new school one, and all that. So I thought

1:22:08

it was a breath of fresh air, and I,

1:22:10

you know... I'm

1:22:12

looking forward to listening to a broadcast. I have not seen a broadcast

1:22:15

yet. John's going to text me

1:22:17

and go, you're stupid. This is horrible. That's really

1:22:19

funny. Because I'm opening that I was at four

1:22:22

days since I was in Philadelphia, so I'm

1:22:24

watching the game, but I've got the sounds

1:22:26

down. You know, so we get to the

1:22:28

graphic and

1:22:48

John and Chrissy are not at home sitting

1:22:50

on their coach watching television. Where

1:22:53

there's never three days to go by when

1:22:55

I'm not doing that. And so John watches

1:22:57

every twins games. He's at most of the

1:23:00

twins games at home, and he watches

1:23:02

most of the road games. But a lot of times John is

1:23:04

watching them from a bar stool

1:23:06

or from somebody's house. On my

1:23:09

phone with the sound off. He

1:23:11

doesn't have a great time. Well,

1:23:15

I appreciate you mentioning that and kind

1:23:17

of saying that it moved towards the podcasting, in part

1:23:19

because I've been thinking about

1:23:21

this a little bit since we are talking with some reporters

1:23:24

at some point here in the next 24

1:23:26

hours about sort of podcasting and

1:23:28

how it works. I'm going to finally stop it and you're

1:23:30

15 to interview. But

1:23:34

it has been making me kind of think back to

1:23:36

like when we started this, it was not

1:23:39

because we were like, oh, we would be

1:23:41

really good on a podcast. It was because

1:23:43

we were like, we really wish there was

1:23:45

better coverage of different type of coverage of

1:23:47

baseball. We

1:23:50

started doing it that way from

1:23:52

a writing standpoint in 2001. And about 2011, we

1:23:55

said, it feels like we could do this, get a

1:23:57

better discussions about baseball. The

1:24:00

level of like you said in 2002, the type of writing

1:24:02

was so limited in style for baseball coverage.

1:24:12

It was old school, it was game recaps,

1:24:14

it was kind of more – any kind

1:24:16

of attempt at opinion wasn't really analysis, it

1:24:18

was more just kind of cliches, they got

1:24:20

to play harder and that frustrated us.

1:24:23

And then a decade later

1:24:25

basically, we felt like TV

1:24:27

coverage or even radio coverage had gotten the same

1:24:29

way which is like there's plenty of it. Like

1:24:31

if you just want to hear and watch people

1:24:33

talking about the twins even in 2011, there were

1:24:36

places you could find that, not enough I would argue but

1:24:39

certainly more now. But the

1:24:41

discussions were so limited in scope.

1:24:43

They were so specifically one angle.

1:24:48

And it was like well what if you talked about it a

1:24:50

little differently? What if you talked about it now? But

1:24:54

I think now – And

1:24:57

just as we saw writing kind of

1:24:59

come that way, the mainstream writing kind

1:25:01

of moved that direction. We're

1:25:03

now seeing I feel like the audio and video coverage

1:25:06

is moving that direction. That's how

1:25:08

it should be really. I mean and I

1:25:10

joke with like Phil Miller and Bobby

1:25:12

now, Nightingale from the Strib. The

1:25:15

stuff they put in the Strib, I think they

1:25:17

do an excellent job and I am their direct

1:25:19

competitor so I'm saying that. I think they do

1:25:21

an awesome job with the Strib. I am a

1:25:23

subscriber. I read their stuff. The stuff

1:25:25

they put into just random articles in the

1:25:27

Strib, a random game recap in

1:25:29

terms of stats used and stories

1:25:33

told, just even citing

1:25:35

OPS or something like that. We

1:25:38

would get legit excited about that in 2000. Somebody

1:25:41

actually slipped that into one thing. Yeah reading that

1:25:43

in the newspaper 20 years ago when we first

1:25:46

started doing that. And so that

1:25:48

I think is a good thing. I think on

1:25:50

the broadcast side it's a good thing. Now you

1:25:52

still need to do certain things old school as

1:25:54

a baseball broadcaster. I think Provis is quite good

1:25:56

at that. Pramer was the best at that. Obviously.

1:26:00

Anybody better as an old school big

1:26:02

voice traditional, you know baseball broadcaster with

1:26:04

a dick framers It's like you built

1:26:06

them in a lab for that But

1:26:08

I think Cory Provis brings enough of

1:26:10

that but also a new dimension particularly

1:26:12

when paired with Morneau who's

1:26:14

super smart and new school or even like Glenn

1:26:16

Perkins later in the season who we know as

1:26:18

he's been on our show Before it and so

1:26:20

I think there's an opportunity there for them to

1:26:22

be really good All

1:26:25

right Thank you

1:26:27

to Harry's razors the game time app

1:26:29

Raycon and rotor wire. Look

1:26:32

at that memory Very good. I'm

1:26:34

good. I'm losing it physically Physically

1:26:40

mentally no, that's it virtually I never

1:26:42

had it We

1:26:48

will be back with our patreons next

1:26:50

week next free show will be two

1:26:52

weeks from now probably we'll see With

1:26:55

the pens John's going to Japan. Yes

1:26:58

I'm gonna pay in Japan for like three and a half

1:27:01

weeks So we're gonna try and get you might

1:27:03

never come back to get possible. You guys just

1:27:05

like it there and never come back We don't

1:27:07

say I don't think that's okay. Even with me

1:27:09

waiting here. What's good where you go, you know,

1:27:11

Chris Maybe I can send you to Japan. Yeah

1:27:15

I Get

1:27:17

to Japan you guys got Chinese food. We are gonna

1:27:20

we're gonna check out some baseball parks in Japan See

1:27:23

the I'm and in Seoul Korea hopefully

1:27:25

to catch an LG twins game That's

1:27:27

right Seoul Korea and the where the

1:27:30

Yuri Murray Giants play is the Tokyo Dome.

1:27:32

That's the exact duplicate of the Metro Dome

1:27:34

Oh, yeah, like literally me what exactly that dome

1:27:37

is an exact duplicate. So we're gonna check that

1:27:39

out So yes, but if you would like the

1:27:41

maximum amount of gleaming in the geek in your

1:27:43

ears, right? God

1:27:48

we're a mate. No, I Forgot

1:27:51

to the patreon dollar an episode. Yeah, we'll never

1:27:53

do more than nine episodes in a month Yeah,

1:27:55

we do a week basically cut two bucks a

1:27:57

week. Usually it's eight. Right and if we don't

1:28:00

Don't put an episode out for a few days. You're

1:28:02

not charged. You're only charged when we

1:28:04

put the new episodes out. We're

1:28:07

at an all-time high for subscribers to that.

1:28:09

So if you say to yourself, I'm

1:28:12

kind into that, but I don't want

1:28:14

to be like one of 50 people in that little club.

1:28:16

Well, it's like 4,000. So come join it. Get

1:28:20

midweek episodes. Keep up to speed. A lot

1:28:23

of episodes after games or will react to

1:28:25

news and stuff. It's

1:28:28

patreon.com. patreon.com. If

1:28:30

not, we'll see you back on the free side. Eventually

1:28:32

two weeks. It

1:28:35

depends how much John goes

1:28:38

into Japan and just decides I'm

1:28:40

in a Japanese baseball now. He

1:28:43

might have to find a new home. Maybe. I

1:28:45

don't know that much about Japanese.