Recent News

Let’s just say Brian Dozier has had a slow start to his 2013 season.

Repping a less than stellar.189/.279/.243 batting line through his first 44 plate appearances, the Twins’ second baseman has been extremely inoffensive and has statistically continued where he left off during following his demotion in August of last year. Despite this slow beginning, there is reasons to not lose hope that Dozier’s career will fall into a no-hit middle infielder that has plagued the Twins for the better part of the new millennium. ...

Over the course of the last week or so, a lot of news regarding the International Signing Period has come out.

Up until July of 2012, International Free Agency has been a free-for-all. In the 2010-11 period, the Mariners spent $6.47 million. Four teams spent $5 million or more. Five teams spent less than a million dollars. The Twins, middle-of-the-pack spenders, spent $2.54 million.
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Despite the Minnesota Twins' up and down start this year, it is most likely that the team will be sellers at the trade deadline. There will be plenty of talk about Justin Morneau being dealt in the coming months since his contract is up at the end of the year. Another name which will draw much speculation is Josh Willingham.

Willingham is coming off his best season and there might be more than one team looking to add a powerful corner bat for the stretch run. In a story published this weekend, the Boston Globe talked about the possibility of a Willingham trade. ...

The Minnesota Twins weren't the only team impacted by the weather on Wednesday evening. Minnesota's affiliate's game in Cedar Rapids was also postponed due to inclement weather. But three other affiliates took the field for Wednesday action. The Miracle were going for lucky win 13 to start their season. Rochester has been struggling and the call-up of Oswaldo Arcia is going to hurt their offense. New Britain played an afternoon game and they found themselves in another tight contest.

Let's see how the teams and players fared in "Wednesday's Minor League Wrap-Up."
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Catcher framing is extremely popular in baseball research circles right now. Go over to Fangraphs.com or BaseballProspectus.com and you will find several studies and articles on the subject. It’s Hansel hot right now.

While we can determine which catchers are better at getting more out-of-zone pitches called strikes than others, we still do not have a full grasp on what it means to a team’s bottom line. ...

During spring training, I observed a trend. It seemed that, all too frequently, a Twins starting pitcher would get knocked around in an outing and then remark after the game that he felt good about his performance. He executed his pitches and just didn't get results. I asked a beat reporter in Ft. Myers about this and he mentioned that he'd noticed the same pattern.
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