Welcome to the third installment of my (fake) Minnesota Twins mailbag. In the past, I have used this space to answer the tough questions that no one seems to want to actually ask me. Today, I have a treat! Actual questions! Well, not all of them. See if you can spot the fakes.

Which flavor ice cream is Anthony Swarzak?
~ @ERolfPleiss on Twitter

Now, this is a question! ...

Yesterday we looked at the top hitters in the Twins system in May and today we’ll be taking a look at the top pitching performances of April. It will be separated into two blog postings, one for the relievers and this one for the starting pitchers.
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It hardly seems like it has been a month; maybe it was the cold weather, some postponements and several doubleheaders. But just because the weather was cold doesn't mean that there weren’t some very hot bats in the Twins farm system. The Twins had the top two teams in the minor leagues in the month of April. The Ft. Myers Miracle went 21-4. The Cedar Rapids Kernels were right behind at 18-5.

Miguel Sano or Byron Buxton?

Byron Buxton or Miguel Sano? ...

Joe Mauer sat out his first Twins game of the season on Wednesday. But even with Mauer out of the line-up, the Twins were able to come away with a win and avoid being swept by the Detroit Tigers. Scott Diamond pitched six strong innings, giving up two earned runs and four hits for his second win of the year. Justin Morneau and Chris Parmelee each had a pair of hits and a couple of RBI.

There were some other impressive performances down on the farm. ...

After a slow start in the season’s opening week, Joe Mauer was once again cracking line drives – right on schedule – but has more recently found himself in one of the worst stretches of offensive baseball of his career and quite possibly the worst since he was a fetus.

Pardon the arbitrary endpoints, but from April 6 to April 20, Mauer had collected 18 hits in 35 at bats (a whopping .514 batting average). In that time, the Twins catcher was blistering the baseball to the opposite field, accumulating five of his seven extra base hits in that direction, including both of his home runs (per the Mauer norm). Then, as quick ...

In a season where he's largely stayed in the good graces of the fan base, Ron Gardenhire finally awakened the critics on Monday night.

With the Twins leading Detroit 3-1 and angling for a big win to kick off their treacherous road trip, Gardenhire sent Mike Pelfrey out to pitch the sixth inning despite the fact that the starter had pretty clearly been surviving on smoke and mirrors all night. ...