The Twins decided to "celebrate" Father's Day, the first day of summer and Junior's Half-Birthday with another efficient loss. If you're going to give up 8 runs, you might as well do it on a day you're shut out.
I don't think there's much question that Jake Arrieta had it going on Sunday. He didn't give the Twins much of a chance to score. However, the Twins have scored 3 runs or less in 6 of their last 7 games and 12 of their last 15 games. It's not been pretty.
The good news is the Twins continue to get good starting pitching. Kyle Gibson racked up a lot of pitches due to spotty command, but he managed to give up just 2 runs in 5 innings. This marked the eighth straight game that Twins starters have allowed no more than 3 runs. Also good news is that Gibson has a 38-13 K-BB ratio over his last 42 2/3 innings (7 starts).
More good news was that Byron Buxton finally got his first hit at Target Field. It was just a single with two outs and none one in the eighth inning of an 8-0 game, but hopefully, it will help him relax and start to have better at-bats and leave a better impression with management before Aaron Hicks is ready to come off the DL. Buxton also reached on an error, which mean he reached base four times (including 2 walks) in the last two games, so CF hasn't been a main reason the Twins scored just 2 runs total in these games.
The drop in offense has been so sudden and dramatic, it's difficult to see the Twins waiting much longer to try to help the pitching out. The Twins do have some internal options (Miguel Sano, Oswaldo Arcia, Danny Santana or Max Kepler) but unless the Twins are willing to play Eddie Rosario every day in CF, I'm not sure any of them will have much of an effect right now. Sano did hit a pretty dramatic home run on Sunday and Kepler is batting over .340, but Buxton's first taste of the big league's shows that there are no guarantees no matter how highly rated a prospect is, especially when they've never played in AAA. Arcia had a couple hits on Sunday, but he's still just hitting .200 since recovering from his injury. Santana is batting over .370, but the Twins might want to wait a little longer to make sure that he's ready to come back up.
The other good problem the Twins have is that they have 5 starters pitching well and will most likely will be needing to move 2 of them out of the rotation within a few weeks. Ervin Santana appears to be on track to return from suspension July 5. Ricky Nolasco appears to be avoiding surgery on his ankle for now, but no timetable has been set for him to return. However, when he does, he most likely will be put back in the rotation given his contract and his veteran status.
This will probably not be looked upon favorably by Twins fans, but the end result is the Twins have a logjam that they will need to figure out. After the bullpen meltdown today, my guess would be the temporary solution would be to put Trevor May and Tommy Milone in the bullpen and demote Aaron Thompson and Michael Tonkin. However, the Twins could make a more permanent solution by trading at least one starting pitcher for a left-handed bat. The most likely candidates for trade would by Mike Pelfrey and Milone, given their contract status and age. Milone isn't exactly old, but he doesn't have the upside or the raw stuff of May and Gibson. Pelfrey and Milone also aren't saddled with long-term contracts like Phil Hughes, Santana and Nolasco.
The Twins may wait until they have a better idea of when Nolasco will return before they pull the trigger on a deal. At the very least, I don't think it will be long before Thompson is demoted unless he starts to show dramatically better results. I also hope the Twins will drop the 13th pitcher so they can bolster the bench and allow Molitor more options to squeeze out some more runs from the anemic offense.
Buxton hasn't hit much yet, obviously. However, a) it's only been 25 at-bats, b) he's faced some really good pitchers, and c) as you point out, no one else in the lineup has exactly been tearing up the track lately, either. I don't know what the Twins will do, but I'd like to see Buxton get a lot longer chance to see what he can do.
I'm not worried about Buxton's leash. Remember how long Hicks was left to flounder initially? In the leadoff spot?
When they first brought Hicks up, they really didn't have any other center field options. And I'm not saying sending Buxton back to the minors would be the worst thing in the world. I'm just saying it's not what I'd like them to do.
I do like that he's being put down lower in the order. He's here to learn as well, and hopefully Bruno can help him lay off the breaking stuff so that pitchers have to be more honest with him.
I'd like to see Buxton up longer as well, but it would be hard to justify to Hicks losing his job when Hicks has hit better in the majors than Buxton has and Hicks hit better this year in AAA than Buxton did in AA. Ideally, I would like to see Hicks in left, Buxton in center and Rosario in right with Torii DHing, but I don't see that happening on a regular basis. That would also mean it would affect playing time for Vargas, but you could conceivably rotate 1 day off a week between the 4 outfielders and 2 first basemen, but I just don't see the Twins doing that.
And we're back to the big ii in the room.
Swap Hicks and Rosario and I'm good with that.
If the Twins trade a pitcher, I'm thinking it'll need to be Milone. If they trade Pelf, who has arguably been their best pitcher, that signals that they're giving up on this season, and I don't think that sends a good message. Milone has been good enough to be marketable, but not so good as to be seen as core to the team.
And they got him for essentially nothing, so anything they get in trade is Profit!
It depends on what the Twins get back. If the Twins trade Pelfrey for a veteran hitter that is expected to help the offense right now, it's not giving up the season, it's trading from an area of depth to improve an area of weakness. If they trade for a prospect that's not expected to help this year, that would be seen as giving up on the season somewhat.