I wanted to take a look at some points that have been hot topics for the last couple weeks. I wanted to look at the best way to improve the teams performance right now, and as the homer would say right the ship. At this point being 10 games back and being 15 games under .500, I am not giving the Twins much of any chance of doing anything, but I can talk about it. I also want to mention some Joe Mauer topics that have been a non stop thing the last couple weeks. ...
I spent a couple days watching the Beloit Snappers (including Twins Daily's own AJ Pettersen). My write up and picture links are up at Twinkietown.
The Twins had a big victory tonight, 11-7, over the Tigers. Everyone except Erik Komatsu was involved in the hitting, and that's a great sign. It's tough not to be excited about Brian Dozier. True, it's a small sample size, but he has exceeded expectations so far, including a big 3-run home run early in tonight's game. But enough about the current Twins. Tonight's focus is about the Future Twins. All the minor league affiliates were in action tonight, and here's a recap of what transpired. ...
When spring training opened up in late February, I posted an article called Twins Two-Way Planning in which I said that the Twins 2011 roster was probably built perfectly to go one of two directions. In essence, if things went poorly, they had enough one-year, veteran contracts of guys that other teams might have interest in at the trade deadline. The Twins could get prospects to help push forward the rebuilding process. However, the other scenario was, “IF seven or eight of the factors ...
The Day-by-Day's make their glorious return tonight. My apologies as my 9 day streak of working over 100 hours caught up to me. Everything is updated through the games of May 16th. I will continue to update these as frequently as possible. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/...VE&output=html
There is no question that umpires have biases. The question is whether we want them or not. A couple of years ago I reported on a book that I was reading titled Scorecasting by Tobias J Moskowitz and L. Jon Weerthem. This writeup is going to copy a lot of that story. The book is similar to the book Freakonomics, except that it focuses exclusively on sports. If you have an iPad or iPhone, you can download the first chapter for free – and just that much changed forever how I watch ...
For those of you too young to remember the Mick when he played for the Twins, let me take a few minutes to enlighten you: Mickey Hatcher was loved in Minnesota. Not so much because he was a great player (though he was decent enough to be a semi-regular starter), but because he was slightly crazy. Everybody loved him. There are a few stories about him I would like to share. On May 4, 1984, Dave Kingman hit a towering fly ball that went up through one of the drainage holes ...
Because there has to be something positive to talk about, and in part as a lead-in to going through my top 50 prospects heading into the year, there are a number of players of interest to look at instead of looking at Carl Pavano, Jason Marquis, and Nick Blackburn starts. Here are 6 stories at each currently-playing level (and one extra): At Rochester: 1. Ben Revere is hitting well again, and while he is not drawing walks, it is interesting to see that batting average rise above ...
Offseason changed (article in Star Tribune) fall of 2008 You can't expect Mauer, who was 0-for-4 Thursday, to stay as hot as he has been lately. Since hitting the ninth-inning home run against the Red Sox in the first game of the series, the catcher was 1-for-10 with one walk and no RBI, but he is still hitting .407 with 11 home runs and 32 RBI in 26 games. Mauer had surgery last December, and as a result he couldn't do any lifting of weights or any of the normal offseason conditioning until ...
Originally published at The Tenth Inning Stretch --- With the Twins having a severe need for pitching in the organization as well as six picks among the top 100, it is certain that more than one of those picks (and probably the second overall pick) will be used to draft a pitcher. To this respect, I am presenting profiles of the top 22 pitching prospects for the 2012 MLB draft. I will be presenting these alphabetically, and at the end I will rank them. I will ...
Originally published at The Tenth Inning Stretch ---- This is the second version of the 'who is hot in the Twins' minors' series for 2012. About a month and a half into the minor league seasons now, a lot of changes have happened on the pitching leaders from the last "who is hot" list, mainly because of promotions and because PJ Walters and Scott Diamond are now excluded from the list. Nice to see that there are reliable relief corps throughout the organization, including ...
Ben Revere needs to be on the Twins roster and starting in Right Field. Period. There....I said it. I know, Darin Mastroianni had that cute game the other night, and Komatsu is a Rule 5 player, but honestly what do these two players bring to the table that Ben Revere doesn't? Revere has proved capable every time he has been brought up, and has even provided some moments of excitement. Outside of Wilkin Ramirez and Pedro Florimon, Revere has been ...
[Originally published at Twins Fan From Afar] From the confines of his Target Field office this morning, Minnesota Twins President Dave St. Peter issued the following press release: "Twins Fans. It's been a rough start to 2012. We here at the Minnesota Twins are especially disappointed by the way this season has gone, especially after having sat through ...
Once upon a time, in a land far away on the other side of downtown, covered by a beautiful white bubble – where the weather was always a pleasant 72 degrees – there was a starting pitching staff who understood the intrinsic value of working ahead of opponents. In the last decade, from 2000 to 2010, one of the pillars of the Twins Way was to dominate the airspace above the plate. The starters made it their business to pepper the strike zone from the get-go, ...