Twin Stretches

The Twins started the season 8-20, and after trying to improve, went 8-20 over their next 28 games:

In some ways, Pohlad should be lauded for the admission that he doesn’t know. What we tend to think of as weakness — saying we don’t know why something is wrong or how to fix it instead of offering empty assurances or meaningless threats — takes a certain type of strength that is uncommon.

The problem lies more with this fact: the Twins have actually tried a lot of things, mostly since that first month. They’ve brought up young players. They’ve signed reclamation projects like Robbie Grossman who have actually contributed. Molitor has trotted out a billion lineup combinations. They have demoted underperforming pitchers and benched underachieving veterans. Short of a mid-year blood-letting of coaches or front office staff … or a meaningful trade (the latter being an avenue they likely will and should explore as the summer lurches forward), they’ve actually probably done about all they can do since “Total system failure” entered our lexicon.

If the first month of the season was defined by a wait-and-see approach, the second month has been a more frantic search for anything that might get them out of this mess. And all it has done is proven Pohlad correct on two fronts: this is a total system failure, and there’s no easy way out of it because an answer has not presented itself.

I would have guessed that with Joe Mauer hitting better than in 2015, the team would have improved. There are a lot of poor OBPs on offense, an a lot of high home run rates among the pitchers. It’s a disappointing season for a team that looked headed in the right direction.

Maybe the right move is to replace Kurt Suzuki. He’s calling the pitches that are getting hit for home runs and not doing much offensively. It might be possible to kill two birds with one stone at catcher.

from baseballmusings.com http://ift.tt/24umh7m