This post originally appeared at www.puckettspond.com -------------------- Earlier this week I put together my predictions for the AL Central and Beyond, but today I’ll be taking a look down into the Twins farm system trying to prognosticate and give you my choices for who to watch this year in MiLB. Every year Seth Stohs (@SethTweets) asks a few members of the Twins blog-o-sphere for their minor league predictions/projections and this year I was lucky enough to be asked to provide ...
This post originally appeared at www.puckettspond.com in it's entirety. ----------------- December 16, 2011 Michael Cuddyer signed a 3-year $31.5million dollar deal to play for the Colorado Rockies and for me, as well as for many other Twins fans, this was a sad day. I think the Rockies paid too much and I think the addition of Josh Willingham is an upgrade, but that’s not where I want to go with this. As a fan, the departure of Cuddyer was especially loathsome because Cuddy was my ...
Credit: Derick E. Hingle-US PRESSWIRE This post originally appeared at www.puckettspond.com -------------------------------------- Last week I reported on the origins of the Pleiss brothers' Twins prospect challenge. A year into the process, a year that saw eight Twins make their MLB debuts, Eric and I decided to make a change to the prospect challenge. A quick review of the rules for the prospect challenge, in ...
One of our first challenges in the MLB Fan Cave was to give our personal predictions for the 2012 MLB season. Obviously, I'd like to say the Twins will do well but I am also not naive enough to believe we've figured out the majority of our issues that became apparent last year. There is a lot to figure out with this club and while the Twins will do better than they did last season, I'm hesitant to call them frontrunners in the AL Central especially with such powerhouse competition from team's like ...
Original Post from http://troystwinsdugout.wordpress.co...-two-catchers/ Recently, there's been talk that the Twins will carry only two catchers. Those two catchers would be Joe Mauer and Ryan Doumit. However, I don't think the Twins will keep only two catchers. Let's take a look at the reasons why I don't think this is the case. The original plan for Doumit heading into the season was for him to be the main DH. That plan might be up in the ...
Originally posted at http://troystwinsdugout.wordpress.co...rs-To-Step-Up/ Hello Twins fans and I'm back from Fort Myers where I went to one spring training game. I also listened to a lot of basketball action and went for walks on the beach. Withrecent events that have taken place in the Twins camp I think it's time to revisit the roster picture. First of all, Tsuyoshi Nishioka was sent to the minor league camp early ...
Updated 03-26-2012 at 12:50 PM by Troy Larson
When I was 8 years old, the Twins beat the Braves in the 1991 World Series, and my mom went absolutely nuts. I don't mean nuts in the literal sense – she didn't wind up heavily sedated or institutionalized; I only mean baseball crazy. This kind of crazy doesn't require medical attention or therapy, at least in most cases, but it can still be worrisome. It's the kind that makes you pace and sweat and swear at playoff-overachievers like Mark Lemke on the TV in front of your children. The kind that ...
Originally posted at http://troystwinsdugout.wordpress.com/2012/03/14/When-Do-Fans-Get-Excited-For-A-New-Baseball-Season/ With the unseasonably warm weather we’ve been having, I’ve been pondering on the Question. When Do fans get excited for a baseball season? The answers to this are numerous and I think it depends on the fan. There are those fans that just like to be at a baseball game, but I think more of them get excited when the weather gets warmer or when the players start ...
12 March, 2012. Ft. Myers, Florida. I trust this Letter finds you Well and in Good Health and Spirit. Tell Mother I miss her Hot Dish Casserole every Day. I fear this Baseball Season will be what We feared it would be when this Spring Training Campaign began. It is now mid-March, as you can see, and we are still faced with the same Questions of last Year's horrid and shameful Defeat. The Artillery was splendid yesterday, on 11 March 2012, ...
The first full day of Spring Training was a whirlwind of activities. Being my first March in Fort Myers, I wasn’t completely sure what to expect. Here is how it went: Leave home for the airport. Say goodbye to my fiancé. Check my bags, just under the weight limit. Take my shoes off, walk through a small door, put my shoes back on. Sit and read Hunger Games. Hope they make it out alive. Hangout with Nate Hanson. Board the plane. Watch Cole Nelson try to fit his long legs in a very small ...
Updated 03-07-2012 at 04:23 PM by Seth Stohs
September 1st, 2007. Driving home from a night class at St. Mary's, I turned on the Twins game. Gordo was hinting at something big happening for the guy on the mound. I listened to the game and drove home in a daze. I parked my car and did my best to walk to my back door without running or skipping. Once inside, I turned on the baseball game and called my wife into the living room. "I can't say what's going on, but look at the numbers on the scoreboard when Scott Baker ...
With the Twins coming off one of their worst pitching seasons in over a decade, many fans and analysts are blaming the Twins’ “pitch to contact” philosophy. Critics cite career lows in strikeout rates for pitchers like Francisco Liriano and Matt Capps in 2011 as proof that there needs to be a new approach on the mound. However, if we look back at the Twins’ recent history, we see that the “pitch to contact” strategy has actually played a large ...
Updated 03-06-2012 at 02:56 PM by dave_dw
Hello again, everybody. For those of you who haven't had the opportunity to familiarize yourself with the TwinsTrain operation over the last couple of years, don't feel left out; it's never too late to sync up with our touring outfit and join the excitement this summer. In a nutshell, we package weekend trips to follow the Minnesota Twins on the road, with game tickets, hotel, and premium bus transportation. For more information, you can head over to http://territorytrain.com. ...
Yesterday, a comment on 1500ESPN by "Everyday" Eddie Guardado took Patrick Reusse and Jim Souhan into a brief rant against the quiet, introverted Twins clubhouse. My first instinct was to write it off as being just another "back in my day we were tougher and manlier" speech. Then, I started thinking about the relationship between clubhouse dynamics and communication, like I blogged about earlier this week. It seemed to me Olson's concept of cohesiveness applies to ...