Good morning, I’m Dan Gartland. Please don’t watch the NFL Hall of Fame game tonight. I know you think you miss football, but watching a bunch of guys destined to get cut in two weeks play the world’s sloppiest football game is degenerate behavior. 

In today’s SI:AM: 

⚾ Latest MLB trade rumors
🔱 Suárez on the move
🏈 On the ground at Seahawks camp

Awkward times in Minnesota

It’s been a rough season for the Twins, and it got even rougher on Wednesday. 

Minnesota is poised to be a seller at the trade deadline as it falls farther out of playoff contention. The team is currently 51–57, 5 ½ games out of the final wild-card spot, and its players seem to know that the roster is going to look different after today’s 6 p.m. ET trade deadline. That’s what made manager Rocco Baldelli’s moves at the end of Wednesday afternoon’s blowout loss to the Red Sox so baffling. 

When the Twins took the field in the top of the ninth inning, Willi Castro trotted to his usual spot at second base—only to be removed from the game before the first pitch of the inning was thrown. Castro, a pending free agent with outstanding positional versatility, is viewed as a coveted trade target, so it wasn’t much of a leap to assume that he’d been traded. In fact, that’s what Castro himself assumed. 

“Honestly, I don’t know what to say. I don’t know. I just got taken out. They haven’t told me anything yet,” Castro told reporters later. “It took me by surprise. I saw [Baldelli motion] for me to take it in. Like I said, I don’t know anything yet.”

And it wasn’t the only questionable managerial move Baldelli made that inning. Baldelli brought in setup man Griffin Jax to pitch in mop-up duty in the ninth with Minnesota trailing 8–1. It was a questionable decision, considering Jax is one of the team’s best relievers and usually only pitches when the game is close. 

Jax gave up a leadoff double followed by two singles as the Red Sox tacked on another run. With the deficit now at eight runs, Baldelli was allowed by rule to bring in a position player to pitch. Except when he went to the mound to remove Jax from the game, Jax tried to argue with Baldelli to keep him in the game. Jax was later shown in the dugout looking visibly upset with the move. 

Jax became even more frustrated when infielder Kody Clemens gave up a three-run homer to the first batter he faced, charging Jax with two more earned runs and increasing his ERA from 3.91 to 4.50. 

Jax cooled down after the game and went into Baldelli’s office to apologize for how he reacted. 

“It was just a moment of emotion. I let what was going on around me build up a little bit too much. I was just in compete mode,” Jax said. “I wanted the chance to get those outs because those are my runs out there. I’m competing and I wanted that chance.”

Baldelli explained that Jax was called upon because he was the freshest arm in a fatigued bullpen and that he was pulled because the team wanted to save his arm. 

Still, it was a pair of unforced errors by Baldelli, adding to the awkwardness of an already tense time. Baldelli said he was trying to give Castro an opportunity to be appreciated by the fans, although he stopped short of saying that it was a farewell before the trade deadline. The problem was that the motivation wasn’t properly communicated to Castro, who said he was “surprised” to see Baldelli motion for him to come to the bench. Even more stunningly, fellow infielder Ty France said he was aware of the plan to give Castro a moment in the spotlight. France said he was told that if Castro got on base, he would be inserted into the game to run for him. 

“They told me he hadn’t been traded, they just wanted to kind of give him his moment to take it all in,” France said. 

Why, then, was Castro not sure whether he had been traded? Baldelli’s choice to allow fans to salute Castro may have been the right call, but he needed to communicate that plan to Castro. 

The trade speculation wasn’t totally unfounded, either. Hours after the game, the Twins sent star closer Jhoan Durán to the Phillies. Who knows how many of his former teammates will follow him out of town before the deadline passes. 

Eugenio Suárez (28) is taking his 36 home runs back to Seattle.
Eugenio Suárez (28) is taking his 36 home runs back to Seattle. | Rick Scuteri-Imagn Images

The best of Sports Illustrated

  • Shohei Ohtani briefly caused baseball fans to hold their collective breath when he left Wednesday night’s pitching appearance with a trainer, but everything seems to be fine.

The top five…

… web gems from yesterday: 

5. Mike Yastrzemski’s leaping catch into the netting.
4. A very casual home run robbery by Lawrence Butler (thanks to a low fence in Sacramento).
3. A much more difficult home run robbery by Cedric Mullins.
2. An equally impressive home run robbery by Andrew Benintendi.
1. An amazing throw by Marlins third baseman Graham Pauley.


This article was originally published on www.si.com as SI:AM | Twins Players Confused, Frustrated by Manager’s Puzzling Decisions.

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