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This afternoon, we kick off the new playoff format, featuring the 2 Wild Card play in games. But, before we do that. We are going to hand out some hardware for the regular season. We will cover Twins awards and MLB awards.

Twins Awards

Twins MVP-Josh Willingham: This came down to Hammer and Mauer. But ultimately, we gave the nod to Willingham. Willingham was signed last offseason over the incumbent OF and team leader, Michael Cuddyer, and he did not disappoint

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Updated 10-05-2012 at 04:04 PM by gilesferrell

Tags: de vries, diamond, revere, willingham

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I decided that I could predict the playoffs just like everyone else in the World. Or, I could ask my wife Liz, what she thinks. Liz knows a lot about baseball, way more than most. She also has a lot of crazy ideas and a bit of attention-deficit disorder. She is self-proclaimed to be "eccentric." Anyway, I decided to get her opinion on the series and write her thoughts. She gets off topic in an extremely effective manner and some of her thoughts are often completely unrelated to anything ...

Tags: weekly feature

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Features

Joe Mauer hit just one infield fly ball all year making his 1.0% infield fly rate the second lowest in all of baseball. That’s a significant increase over his totals last year when he did not hit a single fly ball to anyone in the infield. See, there is still plenty of reason to boo him.

Mauer is often credited with having the perfect swing, and the fact that he is not popping pitches up to the second baseman is telling how square he hits the ball. That said ...

Tags: denard span, joe mauer, justin morneau, scott diamond

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It's playoff baseball time and for the first time in the history of the game there will be a play-in game between the two wild card teams in each league. The Twins missed out on postseason play for the second year in a row but there are plenty of other story lines to watch in the coming weeks.

Can the Oakland A's continue their magical run?
Will former Twins slugger Jim Thome be able to capture his first title?
Are the Texas Rangers going to be able to recover after their ...

Tags: adam greenberg, bryce harper, craig kimbrel, curt schilling, eddie rosario, jim thome, kris medlen, lou gehrig, miguel sano, mike schmidt, nick blackburn, pat neshek, ryan doumit, trevor plouffe, tsuyoshi nishioka

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Twins , Minor Leagues , Other Baseball

Who were the best pitchers in the Twins minor league system in 2012?

Earlier this week I took a look at my predictions from this spring for who I thought would be the best minor league hitters in 2012 and who actually was. Today I'll look into the pitchers. See the predictions made by some of the other Twins bloggers here (position players) or here (pitchers).

Twins related news and notes from

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Updated 10-05-2012 at 03:01 AM by Paul Pleiss

Tags: milb, minnesota twins, prospects

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This post originally appeared at www.puckettspond.com

Episode 7 of the Twins baseball podcast, Talk To Contact, is now available for download via iTunes or by clicking here.

New Glarus Moon Man, one of the best Wisconsin has to offer

In Episode 7 my brother Eric and I discuss who we believe are the Twins deserving of the Talk To Contact awards for rookie of the year, starting pitcher, reliever, position player ...

Updated 10-05-2012 at 07:03 PM by Paul Pleiss

Tags: baseball, milb, minnesota twins, prospects

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Prospects

After approaching 100 losses in back-to-back seasons, the Twins clearly needed to make some changes. As we put it when introducing our Offseason Handbook yesterday, complacency was not going to be an option this winter.

They wasted little time shaking things up, parting with their entire coaching staff – save for pitching coach Rick Anderson and manager Ron Gardenhire – in the very first day after the season came to an end.

Bullpen coach Rick ...

Tags: coaching staff, gardenhire

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Here is my last blog about the playoffs series', at least until the 1-game wild cards are done tomorrow.

The Rangers, who looked like the strongest team in the West (and probably in the AL) for most of the season, got a rude awakening when the Oakland A's slipped by them to claim the AL West Championship, which leaves them to deal with the Orioles, who are a Cinderella team in their own right. Playing in one of the stronger divisions in the AL, and one of the strongest in the Majors, ...

Now, to the AL. The final day of the AL was quite a wild one, with all the scenarios that could have played out, but it never really turned into an epic turn-everything-on-its head Day 162 as last year.

The day left the A's (what the heck?) on top of the AL West, the Rangers falling to the one-game playoff between the Wild Cards, the Yankees obliterating the Red Sox in Bobby V's last game there to clinch the East, and the Orioles going VERY quietly against the Rays to claim the second ...

Yesterday, I started my awards season by naming Denard Span as the Defensive Player of the Year for the Twins. This was a first time I have looked at giving out that award and it was fun to dive into some of the defensive metrics to try and pick out a winner. Today I will hand out the rest of my awards for the Twins organization including MVP, Pitcher of the Year, Relief Pitcher of the Year, and Rookie of the Year.

A few of the categories were close races and some of the battles were ...

Tags: brian dozier, chris parmelee, francisco liriano, glen perkins, jared burton, joe mauer, josh willingham, liam hendriks, scott diamond

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Twins

With all the craziness that has surrounded the final day of regular season baseball this year, I thought it would be smart to wait to post the rest of these until I was sure of the matchups.

I will now begin a rapid-fire posting over the next day to cover all of the first playoff matchups, and doing new ones when the series advances to the next round.

In this my second post, I will continue with the NL and look at the match-up between the Cardinals and Braves in the NL ...

Originally posted at k-bro's baseball blog

As the Twins wrap up another disappointing season, it would be easy to just throw up my hands in a snit and curse them all. But Twins baseball is still better than no baseball. For all the complaining I've done about pitching and leaving men on base, I want to spend a blog post focusing on the good things these players did this season. So, ...

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The fact that the Twins were awful for a second straight season admittedly diminished the amount of baseball that I watched this year, and I found it somewhat difficult to write about the Twins as the season dragged on, which is probably one of the reasons why I enjoyed covering the Rock Cats -- a winning baseball team. Still, though, it's always disappointing when the season ...