Turn on your cruise control

 I want to take a moment to address something that has become a growing scourge. It regularly impacts not only my professional life, but it is a hazard on the open roadways. Ladies and gentlemen, when you are able, turn on your cruise control.

As a part of my job, I regularly need to drive long distances. There is nothing more frustrating than seeing the same car over and over. I pass them, they pass me, I pass them, and on and on for miles. Just turn on your cruise control.

On long distance journeys, it helps both the flow of traffic, and your general comfort. Having your foot constantly hovering over the pedals to try to maintain your speed, or to brake or speed up to try to maintain some sort of equilibrium is much more physically and mentally taxing than a simple trek through the prairies needs to be. Turn on the cruise control.

Maintaining a constant speed, and I don't care if it is fast or slow, gives you a bit of predictability. Faster vehicles know that they should stay in the left lane, and slower vehicles know that they need to stay out of your way. If you have, say, slowed down a bit, and a car you passed 30 seconds ago is passing you again, your inclination would be to speed up again. The car passing you is now hung out to dry in the left lane, you are now probably speeding, and the steady rhythm of traffic flow are disrupted. Having a reliable rate, moving to left lanes when passing and otherwise driving in the right lane on more rural or lower traffic highways makes things predictable, and therefore safer.

And also, it's better for gas mileage, and won't annoy all the other drivers who ARE using cruise control. You get to manage your speed, and you don't have to focus on the speedometer, but rather the road in front of you and respond to the various hazards as they come up. The actual, real hazards like weather, deer, or other drivers that can't maintain their speed.

Turn on your cruise control.

Bring back '87: Just get in.

I noted before the deadline that if you don't think the Twins can win with this bullpen, they should take a look at the 1987 Twins. Famously, the 87 Twins were World Champions, and not so famously, had a terrible bullpen.

I got two responses from random Threads users (the only people on Threads are completely random) that tried to gently push back. One said that this Twins team has no Puckett or Hrbek - simply not as good an offensive team. Fair enough. But on the other hand, even though the 87 Twins scored more runs a game than this Twins team does, they were also the 9th highest scoring team in the American League that year. The Twins this year are the highest scoring team in the AL.

Another user said "who will be this team's Jeff Reardon? referring to the closer for that World Series team. Well, if we are talking about ERA, then Yoendrys Gomez is obviously out, because his ERA is half of Reardon's. In fact, Kody Funderburk and Andrew Morris also have better ERAs than Reardon. If you want to talk about WAR, Morris and Gomez are higher already that Reardon for the whole season. Funderburk is a perfect match. So I guess Kody Funderburk is this team's Jeff Reardon? 

That was before the deadline, and we live in a different era. The Twins of 1987 may have looked to bolster their bullpen if that was how things were done back then. The 2026 Twins had a better pen than the 87 version, and then at the deadline, the Twins made the bullpen better. I'm certainly not saying the Twins this year are better than the '87 Twins, but the bullpen sure is.

Those Twins had Frank Viola and Bert Blyleven. Frank Viola in particular was twice as good as the next best player for the Twins, and one of the best in baseball that year. This year, the Twins are the best offense in the league. so they have a clear strength as well (and extrapolated over 162 games, the overall WAR for the offense is very similar to those 87 Twins). The teams aren't THAT different.

The 1987 Twins were a surprise that took advantage of a weak division, and got hot at the right time. Just having the chance to play in the postseason is valuable. Nobody will turn the 87 rings back in because the regular season was mediocre, or they held on to Blyleven a bit too long. 

The first game after the deadline, Joe Ryan was sent home with a potential injury, and I saw a Twins fan lament that the Twins didn't sell. I was initially frustrated by the optics of acquiring Jeff Hoffman (formerly released from Spring Training by the Twins, acquired after he lost his spot as the closer to the guy the Twins just traded to the same team at the last deadline), but I'm never going to be upset about a team seeing an opportunity and going for it.

Postseason chances are precious, and despite how much we love them, prospects are not. A playoff spot means you are guaranteed to play in the playoffs (duh) and you can get there with your known assets. Prospects are not guarantees. Be good enough to get to the playoffs, just like the 87 Twins.

Deadline thoughts.

 Gaaaa! The trade deadline is here! The Twins have done the unthinkable at the beginning of the season, and have kicked things off by being buyers. In the past couple of weeks, they have now sent away four prospects, bringing in relievers Tommy Nance and A.J. Minter, as well as starter Dean Kremer. And at the beginning of the year, people were wondering why the Twins hadn't traded Joe Ryan yet! 

Before I gleefully get to the Twins pursuit of more arms, I do want to mention the elephant in the room. The Dodgers got Tarik Skubal off the Tigers a full 2 days before the deadline, and many across baseball have taken an attitude that this is once again a sure sign that the game needs a salary cap. First, stop doing the owners' work. The Dodgers are paying for players, but why should they be kept from spending their money, just because other teams don't want to? Furthermore, the teams with the highest payrolls are also the oldest players. A reckoning from Father Time is coming for Los Angeles soon enough.

And also, the Dodgers keep taking these big swings on the trade market because their farm is so robust. They acquire and develop exceptional talent at all levels. You can talk about how good the Dodgers free agents and trade acquisitions are, but they did that with good prospects to trade away in the first place, and are augmented by guys like Andy Pages, Justin Wroblieski and Emmet Sheehan, all drafted and developed by the Dodgers, or Max Muncy, who was an A's washout before excelling in LA.

OK, the Twins. It's an unusual spot to be in this year. All of my typical hang-ups with the Twins at the deadline have gone away in the last couple of years. They are no longer timid under Jeremy Zoll, nor were they last year under Derek Falvey, and they aren't waiting to the last minute to make their moves. I feel a sense of calm that I typically don't feel at the deadline. There are positions of need, but the Twins have addressed them a bit already. I don't need to worry if they are going to act, or if a certain player is no longer available. 

I do think the Twins have a couple moves in them tomorrow. Zoll has already proven himself to be frisky, and has already presented himself as a willing partner in innumerable minor transactions all season. There is word of a last minute scuttling of a trade by the Astros ownership which would have involved Trevor Larnach going to Houston for reliever Bryan Abreu. The Twins are likely to add another right handed reliever, and have the high level prospect capital to absorb a loss to an outfielder like Larnach.

While the Twins have been the highest scoring offense in the American League all season, their pitching has been problematic throughout the year. For what seems like the 10th time in the past two weeks, the Twins were in a tight game right up to the end, thanks to some late scoring by the offense. They erased a 6 run lead from the Mariners before eventually dropping the game. The admirable willingness to rally, even in the face of a lot of early season (and honestly, mid season) negativity makes this team scarier for postseason opponents than I think many people give them credit for. A decent bullpen with this organization would be even more intimidating. 

I'm team "always go for it" if there is a reasonable postseason chance. They don't need to be after the Tarik Skubals of the world, but the Twins have shown they are going for it. Keep it going with a couple of more moves before the deadline passes.