Knuckleballs - JC

This article originally was posted at Knuckleballsblog.com.

I didn’t rush right out to post reactions to the Twins’ coaching changes as the information came out on Thursday, which is probably a good thing.

StarTribune beat reporter LaVelle E. Neal III was obviously wired in to the situation at Target Field and started the ball rolling by announcing that bullpen coach Rick Stelmaszek had been advised his contract was not being renewed. My immediate reaction, via Twitter, ...

The Cedar Rapids Kernels held a press conference Wednesday to introduce their new Major League affiliate, the Minnesota Twins. It was actually more of a public introduction to which the press was invited, but that was certainly the right approach by the Kernels. Affiliation changes are big deals in the local communities and when your organization hasn’t had a change in 20 years, it’s an even bigger deal.

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After weeks of speculation, a press conference has been scheduled for 1:30 Wednesday to announce that the Cedar Rapids Kernels will become the new Class A affiliate of the Minnesota Twins for the next four years. Twins officials toured the Kernels facilities Monday afternoon and met with the CR Board of Directors later that day.

The Twins, who have been sending their Class A prospects to Beloit for the past eight years, had been rumored to be favoring a move to Cedar Rapids for ...

Charley Walters of the Pioneer Press posted a column (click here) with a number of quotes from Twins president Dave St. Peter concerning the possibility of the Twins locating a minor league affiliate in St. Paul, now that the city has funding assured to move forward with building their new stadium. The stadium is being built to Class A standards (which basically deal with things like clubhouse and training facilities and a certain minimum seating capacity).

St. Peter's quotes and summary:

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This article was originally posted at Knuckleballsblog.com.

I’m kind of tired of reading and hearing about Stephen Strasburg and the decision by the Washington Nationals to shut him down for the season. That being the case, I’m not sure why I’m choosing now to actually write about him. But I am.

I suppose the reason is that I’ve been trying to put myself in the shoes of those directly and indirectly involved with the decision to put an end to the hard-throwing phenom’s ...

This article was originally published on Monday, Sept. 10, at Knuckleballsblog.com.

It was with much fanfare that Major League Baseball announced a new, slightly expanded, postseason format as a part of the new Collective Bargaining Agreement. It was reportedly solely due to the will of Commissioner Bud Selig that a way was found to implement the new format for the current season, rather than waiting one more year, when the leagues would be balanced and the spacing of postseason games ...

This article was originally posted at Knuckleballsblog.com.

If Wednesday night’s Beloit Snappers/Clinton LumberKings game does indeed mark the final time I see a baseball game in person this year, it was a heckuva game to end the season on!

I don’t want to bury the lead, so let’s start by saying the Snappers came out on top in game one of their 3-game playoff series with Clinton, by a score of 8-6. But the score doesn’t begin to tell the story.

Clinton scored ...

Originally posted at Knuckleballsblog.com.

These days, it’s not often that I go more than a couple of days without getting asked whether I think the Twins will be the Major League affiliate of my home town Cedar Rapids Kernels in 2013. When I’m not answering that question, I’m the one asking it of pretty much anyone I can think of who might have some insight.



At the beginning ...

Originally published at www.knuckleballsblog.com.

It seemed to me like the first game of this Snappers/Kernels series on Saturday night was a long one… and it was. The game took three hours and twenty minutes to play and since the Snappers pretty much dominated the entire game, on their way to a 13-2 rout of their hosts, there really wasn’t enough excitement to make the game feel like it was moving along.

Fortunately, I was in the “all you can eat and drink” picnic area, ...

“Like butterflies with hiccups” is our tagline at Knuckleballs and today it’s a pretty appropriate heading for the following post.

I seem to find myself in a “very little to say about several unrelated things” situation a lot lately. Maybe I’ll make this a quasi-regular thing here. Or maybe this will be a one-time thing. Anyway, there are a few things I’ve read here and there that I feel inclined to comment about. Most are baseball related, but not all.

The Twins
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This was originally posed at Knuckleballsblog.com.

I’m not sure any sport has spawned more clichés than baseball. Right now, though, even clichés that are applicable to multiple sports seem to make me think of the Twins.



As I’ve been following the the team lately, I keep hearing various clichés in my mind (“look the ball in to your glove, Nishi.” “Make sure of one, Nishi.”). ...

This was originally posted at Knuckleballsblog.com.

Over the past month or more, I’ve alluded a few times to the fact that the Twins’ Player Development Contracts (PDC) with a number of their minor league affiliates were set to expire after the current season. In fact, all four of their PDCs with their “full-season” affiliates (A, Advanced A, AA and AAA) were expiring.

Nobody really expects their Advanced A team, the Ft. Myers Miracle, to shop around for a new affiliation, ...

Originally published at Knuckleballsblog.com

I drove up to Beloit over the weekend to catch a couple of baseball games between the Twins' Class A affiliate, the Snappers, and the Wisconsin Timber Rattlers. The Rattlers and Snappers finished first and second, respectively, in the first-half standings of the Midwest League's Western Division, so I anticipated that they would play some decent baseball. They did.

If you want to read a lot about the games themselves, I'm going ...

This article was originally posted at Knuckleballsblog.com

I’m not one to usually say, “I told you so,” but… yeah… I did tell you so. I told you to prepare to be disappointed at the trade deadline so it comes as no surprise to me that most Twins fans seemed to come away from the July 31 non-waiver deadline disappointed in the lack of moves by the Twins.

Many of us do understand why the roster remained intact, except for the trade of Francisco Liriano. The new ...