Rocco Baldelli and the Twins need to get mean if they want to be a legitimate contender
Heading into the eighth inning on Sunday afternoon, the Minnesota Twins were on the verge of some much-needed momentum. They had taken the first two games of the series with the Toronto Blue Jays and had scored 15 runs over the past 16 innings after scoring nine runs in the previous seven games.
With a 6-4 lead, everything was trending in the right direction until Emilio Pagán took the mound. The Twins right-hander channeled his inner Bob Wells, allowing two straight singles before serving up a game-winning three-run homer to Cavan Biggio to spoil the Twins' sweep bid.
Suddenly, the Twins' good vibes were replaced by questions. Why do the Twins look lost at the plate? Why aren't they dominating a weak division? And why was Pagán – a reliever who has torpedoed the Twins' hopes since joining the team over a year ago – in a tight game to begin with?
That was Emilio Pagán's majors-leading fifth relief appearance lowering his team's Win Probability by at least 50% since the beginning of last season.
— Aaron Gleeman (@AaronGleeman) June 11, 2023
I don't even know what to say at this point.
Because the Twins aren't mean enough to be a real contender.
There are different types of being mean in the major leagues and not all of them work. Josh Donaldson was added to the Twins to give them an edge in the clubhouse a few years ago, but his brand of "mean" proved more harm than good.
There's a different kind of "mean" that the Twins have refused to employ. It's a kind that keeps players and other people in the organization accountable and it has been replaced by a complacency by those at Twins Way and apathy among the fan base.
The Twins are a flawed team in many ways and no more so than at the plate. With a league-high 678 strikeouts after Sunday's loss to the Blue Jays, the Twins definitely have underachieved offensively, but the job of hitting coach David Popkins seems to be safe.
At the very least, these Twins could use a stern lecture from their manager, but Rocco Baldelli seemed unusually calm while addressing his team's strikeout problem earlier this week.
"I'm not going to sit here and rip our guys because we're not hitting right now," Baldelli said per the Star Tribune's Phil Miller. "[We have to work on] the quality of the at-bats, decision making...things like that. Using the whole field."
Baldelli may be correct that yelling and throwing things around the clubhouse isn't the best way to get through to his team, but establishing some consequences for poor performance might not be a bad idea.
Throughout Baldelli's tenure, he's taken a laid-back approach to managing, allowing the players to police themselves and do what they need to be ready for games. But when the players abuse that trust, that's when things like Max Kepler's failed double steal happen.
The Twins were trailing in a 1-0 game with the Tampa Bay Rays when Kepler was on first base behind Michael A. Taylor. Baldelli called a double steal but Kepler stayed at first base while Taylor stole third base. Royce Lewis later hit a single that drove in Taylor to tie the game but Kepler only made it to third after failing to take the extra base.
The following day, Baldelli told the media that he wasn't pleased with Kepler for failing to steal on the pitch, but he was in the lineup the following afternoon, going 0-for-2 with a strikeout.
Kepler's case becomes even stranger considering he is hitting .197/.268/.387 with seven home runs this season, and .218/.308/.391 with 44 homers in 324 games since his breakout, juiced-ball season in 2019.
With Kepler reportedly being against playing center field as Byron Buxton is relegated to designated hitter, many organizations would have designated him for assignment in the final year of his contract. Yet Kepler remains an everyday fixture in the lineup even as Matt Wallner tears the cover off the ball at Triple-A St. Paul.
The same goes for Pagán who went 4-6 with a 4.43 ERA with the Twins last season but was brought back at $3.5 million this season. Pagán has been used as a low-leverage arm at some points during the season but then there are moments like Sunday where Pagán implodes in a key spot.
If mistakes like the ones from Kepler and Pagán are tolerated, what's the incentive for the rest of the team to change? If the management also refuses to change, it creates an even bigger problem.
The Twins front office has been its own enabler of this issue, refusing to change to build a better team. The team has altered its philosophy to let starters go deeper into the game but the front office still trades for injured commodities such as Chris Paddack and Tyler Mahle and pretends to be shocked when they wind up out for the season.
It also falls on management that every player that leaves Minnesota winds up hitting another level with their new team. Luis Arráez is leading MLB in batting average and on-base percentage while Yennier Cano has become one of baseball's most dominant relievers after being traded to the Baltimore Orioles.
While the Twins can hang their hat on Pablo López reinforcing the starting rotation, Jorge López has been a disaster that would have been sent to the minors if he wasn't out of options. Even then, López still finds his way into one and two-run games even as he stomps his way around the mound with each allowed run.
There's even the superstar duo of Buxton and Carlos Correa, who have come woefully short of their projected production but still are considered the cornerstones of the franchise.
All of this created a team that held onto the American League Central lead for most of last season but cratered in the final month only for everyone except the head trainer to keep their jobs.
Even as the Twins struggle to stay above .500 and take control of the worst division in baseball this season, it doesn't feel like anyone is in danger of being fired, released or even just sent to the bench. Everything is fine – until they reach October.
The Twins don't need to start yelling and screaming to solve their problems but they need some discipline – even if it means bruising someone's ego in the process. If they don't, they risk extending the longest postseason losing streak in the history of North American sports and electing to have history repeat itself.
