Tell me again about the bullpen

 

The Twins just lost three of four to the Guardians and have now fully blown their advantage in the AL Wild Card race. With current trends, it seems unlikely that the Twins are going to be able to shake it off and get back into position for the postseason. The Twins lost the last two games in extra innings, and saw the Guardians pull ahead in the 8th inning in the other game. There is a lot of grousing about the bullpen.

Fine.

The root of the problem, the A Number One element that is cause of the collapse continues to be the inability to put runs across the plate. They were competitive in 4 games, close enough to blow it late, because they had good starting pitching. On offense, they needed extra innings in order to score more runs in a four game set than Shohei Ohtani drove in in one game. 

In my graciousness for the Twins, and how they are trying to build for the future, I would say that this season is intended to get some of their youth experience. The Twins have a good farm system, and the team undoubtedly hoped that some of those young players would ably serve as depth when injuries emerged. Last season was saved by quality depth., and this season may potentially be sunk by young players running out of gas.

Royce Lewis will be a key cog in the future, but he has been terrible for the last month. Edouard Julien was leaned on as a rookie, but hasn't been able to match that success in his second spin. Jose Miranda, similarly, is coming apart at the seams. A lot is made about the young rotation having inning limits. Position players haven't shown themselves to be capable to play a full season either. 

Last year, depth was augmented by Michael A Taylor, Donovan Solano, Joey Gallo and Kyle Farmer. This season, they are most particularly missing Taylor and Solano, as Manuel Margot doesn't play center to cover for Buxton, and while Carlos Santana has been brilliant, he isn't as flexible as Gallo in the field, or the top of the order threat that Solano is.

I'm finishing this post off as the Twins once again have scored only a run through 8 innings. The team is in this by the grace of David Festa, but if the Twins ultimately drop it, it will be laid at the feet of the pitching staff, who mostly did their part. Everything is magnified in a playoff race, which was wrapped up by this point last year. Just make sure the microscope is on the greatest problem.