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In a 60-game season, where each game essentially counts as a series, slumps will be devastating. While the Twins have the softest schedule in baseball, there are still a few spots that loom as potential traps.

“What’s the worst that could happen,” asked one club official. “We laugh in the face of danger.”

They say hindsight is 20/20, but no one could have predicted 2020. Although the offseason and spring training felt like centuries ago, there were numerous free agent signings that the Twins had hoped for that, much like the 2020 season, didn’t exactly go as planned.

For the first time since March 11 we have a live Twins baseball game. While it’s still just an intrasquad exhibition, that’s not much less than what Spring Training contests boil down to. At this point we’re calling it Summer Camp, and with the season quickly approaching, Minnesota is dealing with a whole new set of circumstances.

The Twins 2020 schedule was only released last week and now MLB has released the 2021 schedule with the thought that teams will be able to play 162-games. This might be a big assumption on the part of MLB because it will like only happen, if there is a widely available COVID-19 vaccine. The current season is in jeopardy because of the current state of our nation. However, let’s take a dive into the 2021 season and see what it could mean for your potential 2020 World Series Champions and their chances for a repeat.

Mitch Garver put up some incredible statistics in 2019. He greatly improved his defensive abilities through a ton of hard and focused work. He also kept working on his offensive approach, and for it, he was named the American League’s Silver Slugger Award as the league’s top hitting catcher. What might we expect from the backstop in 2020?

The last two months of 2019 saw Trevor May emerge as a dominant set-up man in the Twins’ bullpen. From August 1 through the end of the season, May not only had a 1.38 ERA, but held opponents to a pathetic .125/.181/.273 batting line. He fanned 34 of the 94 batters he faced, and walked just six. Of the 333 pitchers who threw at least 300 pitches during that span, May allowed the fourth-lowest weighted on-base average.

Up to this point, Byron Buxton has shown he can catch anything. Except a break.

A major-league career that's been characterized by setbacks and shutdowns was on track to open with another one in 2020, as the center fielder had been expected to miss the start of the season, but now fortune has finally turned in Buxton's favor.

Jose Berrios rattled off an exhaustive list of mechanical issues to reporters after a particularly disappointing outing late last year.

He told them he wasn’t staying in his heel long enough. He wasn’t rotating his chest quick enough. His front shoulder was flying open. It was a lot of cues to think about each night on the rubber.

While most of the Twins action and video that we will see in 2020 will come from Target Field, don’t forget that there is another group of Twins players working at CHS Field in St. Paul, keeping ready.

Attending MLB games has been a summer ritual for baseball fans, but the 2020 season could mark the first year where no fans will be able to attend games. The sights, sounds and smells of the ballpark are an integral part of the baseball experience. Twins fans have been lucky to spend the last 10 years roaming Target Field, one of the best ballparks in all of baseball.

Ben Clemens of FanGraphs took a look at how a more compressed schedule will affect MLB teams’ starting rotations and how depth could become even more important in 2020. While the effect isn’t huge, it is significant enough to provide another edge for the Minnesota Twins.