Blogs

The Minnesota Twins are going to have significant moves to make this offseason. Rather than being measured by the number of acquisitions, it is going to be the impact that each players makes to tell the story. The front office has already suggested that impact pitching is going to be the focus, but what about making sure all the grass is covered in the ou...

Why am I seeing shots at Eddie Rosario all over TD? No, he is not our best player, but he is a good player. He gets 1.6 WAR this year according to Baseball Reference. He had a line of .276 /.300/.500/.800 this year and in the little aside on the MVP for this year he sounds like he should be LVP. Last year he was .288/.323/.479/.803 and the same site named...

Fellow Twins Daily contributor Cooper Carlson and I discussed a decision facing the Twins this offseason that I feel has flown a bit under the radar. Jason Castro ended up basically splitting time with Mitch Garver behind the plate, but is set to hit free agency. Among the topics we covered were whether retaining Castro is a priority, if Willians Astudill...

Part of what makes baseball such a special sport is that it, more than any other sport, is almost completely driven by numbers. Numbers will teach us who are the superstars of our sport and will expose players who are not. Because of this, it only seems fitting for my second blog post on Twins Daily to take a look back on the 2019 season and choose one nu...

Overall, it's not hard to be excited about the Twins in 2020 given a 101 win season in 2019. The ending certainly wasn't ideal, but 2019 showed us that our window is open and it should be for a few years. Cleveland remains the only real competition in the central. Chicago is up and coming, but they are likely another year or two away before they can have...

Much of the discussion in the early part of the offseason has understandably been pitching. While the Twins must fill in their rotation, there are still plenty of questions to be answered at the plate. Here is my crack at the 2020 Opening Day lineup:

1. Luis Arraez, 2B

Arraez is the quintessential leadoff hitter. He takes elite at-bats and rarely strike...

Over the off-season there will be PLENTY of chatter about the Twins. They're primed to be BOLD and make a YUGE splash in free agency.

As a seasoned Twins fan I'm here to save you a bunch of time! The off-season is already predetermined, and your friend Vanimal found the transcript for the most DRAMATIC off-season yet...

10/9: Twins exercise Nelson Cruz...

Wondering what fans at Game Three thought of the nightclub atmosphere at the game last night. I thought having a DJ playing "sick beats" and loud, thumping bass for four hours was really grating... but I am an old soul.

Last season I really enjoyed my trip to Wrigley to see the Twins play. The PA guy wasn't shouting, the music wasn't blaring and the fan...

The Twins have stunk it up in the playoffs in real life, but would they do the same in Strat-O-Matic land? Let's find out!
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GAME SUMMARY
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The Twins got a double from Polanco in the first inning, and he moved to 3rd on an error that let Rosario reach, but they failed to knock any runs in. The Yankees had the same fate, as they left the bases loaded in t...

So the playoffs between the Yankees and the Twins is essentially over. And just as it has in years past, the winning team sported (has) the better pitching. The Twins did an amazing job this year on offense. They broke the MLB record for most home runs by a team for a single season, and improved their team's offensive statistics in just about every cat...

On Monday, I wrote a quick hitter on my 2019 Twins Daily Twins Awards . Now, I want to do a quick rundown of my postseason roster.

Catcher: Mitch Garver, Jason Castro

It'll be interesting to see how much they split time in the postseason. Both have been good this year but Garver has been better.

Infielders: CJ Cron, Luis Arraez, Jonathan Schoop, Jorg...

'Tis the season for playoff rosters. I've seen many proposed rosters that have more thought and logic behind them than I can provide. Nevertheless, I have gone through the requisite attempt to settle on my own preferred 25-man squad.

Every time I try, the most interesting Twin in the world, Willians Astudillo is left out. Much to my surprise. I find this...

MLB.com has seasonally done a piece in which they examine each playoff team's likely 25-man roster and examine how each player was acquired. While there are many more similarities than differences, among the teams, you'll find a few striking outliers here and there. I'm not sure it's a terribly instructive exercise myself, but let's see what others pick u...

Division champions

I know we're all excited about the playoffs, but let's take a minute to appreciate the Twins' excellent regular season just concluded. 2016 2017 2018 2019 changeActual wins 59 85 78 101 +23Pythag wins 66 83 77 97 +20
The Twins had their second-best season ever, in term...

I became interested in the Astudillo discussion in the resting players topic and wondered about Astudillo's use. I have been thinking about this since his critical hit against Matt Barnes in the Red Sox series.

Matt Barnes is a right handed pitcher with the highest k/9 rate in the AL and nearly the highest AL k-rate at 38%. The Twins are tied with the Re...

Well, we're down to nail-biting time. This weekend's series can likely determine both Cleveland's and the Twins' fate for the season. A sweep by either team likely spells the end for the losing team. Pretty obvious for Cleveland if they're on the losing end, but almost as obvious for a reeling Twins team headed in the wrong direction. That's just real...

In tonight’s twin over the Cleveland Indians, Yasiel Puig hit a comebacker to Jake Odorrizi in the fourth inning and immediately turned and went back to the dugout. Puig had no chance of reaching first safely on the play and Odorrizi ran the ball to first himself while looking back at Puig with a somewhat surprised expression on his face. The Target Field...

Tonight the Twins were shut out through seven innings. In this year of the #BombaSquad, I began to realize that I couldn't remember the last time the Twins were shut out. As the game advanced, I began to wonder just what kind of unicorn we were experiencing tonight. So I investigated. Obviously, two late runs were scored as the game ended in a 6-2 loss to...

Everyone loves a dinger, and around these parts we've had plenty of them to admire this year. One thing that's pretty interesting is that the Twins are not only leading the league in home runs but also in runs scored per game (the bombas help, of course!).

To better visualize how the Twins run scoring (and runs allowed stack up), this chart shows the per...

When did baseball take hold in counties across Minnesota? What ballpark was located near the present day site of Target Field in 1800’s Minneapolis? If you’re a fan of baseball history, the Halsey Hall Chapter of the Society for American Baseball Research invites you to join us for the 19th Century Baseball Interdisciplinary Symposium, held this year on...