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When you ask ballplayers about their outside interests, it’s not unusual for them to express an interest in hunting. In that regard, Kernels’ pitcher Randy LeBlanc fits in with the crowd. It’s when you ask what he hunts that LeBlanc begins to vary from the norm. He’ll tell you he spent most of his offseason fishing and duck hunting, with a little deer hunting thrown in. Although, “my dad does more deer hunting than I do,” he says. After a pause though, he adds the kicker. “I’ve been gato
Brian Dozier put the Minnesota Twins out front 1-0 immediately in the series opener with their cross-state rival Milwaukee Brewers, leading off the game with his fifteenth home run of the season. It was the eleventh time in his career he has led off a game in such fashion. Four of their six minor league teams also jumped out to leads after the first inning, but what happened next for the parent club after Dozier’s home run was telling throughout the MiLB action on the night. To find out how
As we tip toe to July, we know that inevitably Twins fans will start to imagine all manner of favorable scenarios, dream sequences and wishful thinking that leads the GM Terry Ryan to make all the right moves and deliver a winner to Target Field. We Peanuts from Heaven are nothing if not imaginative, but rather than prognosticate any remotely feasible trade scenarios, allow us to write another in our on-going series of creative scenes played against a backdrop of the Twins 2015 season (apologi
You can download the new Talk to Contact (<a href="https://twitter.com/talktocontact">@TalkToContact</a>) episode via <a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/talk-to-contact-podcast-about/id556784825?mt=2">iTunes</a> or by clicking <a href="http://talk2contact.podomatic.com/entry/2015-06-25T19_11_50-07_00" target="_blank">here</a>, and if you want to add the show to your non-iTunes podcast player, <a href="http://talk2contact.podomatic.com/rss2.xml">
The time is now for the Minnesota Twins and Alex Meyer. On the heels of his recent promotion to the big leagues, Minnesota will now get to experience their return for Denard Span. With Meyer set to make his major league debut, there's no doubt that he wants to stick after his long awaited promotion. The good news, he should be expected to do just that. Heading into the season, Baseball Prospectus ranked Alex Meyer as their 14th best prospect. At that time, he was still a starting pitcher, and th
-SHTICKBALL- Twins firstbaseman Joe Mauer had gotten off to a pretty rough start in 2015, and even though there were many theories as to why, Joe thinks he has the problem solved. Joe started a daily milk drinking regiment a few weeks ago, and he believes that it is paying off. “Earlier this season I wasn’t hitting very good, and I wasn’t exactly sure why. Then I realized for whatever reason I hadn’t been drinking nearly as much delicious Kemps milk this year, so I decided to try drinking mor
What a strange season. I didn't think the Twins would be playing decent baseball as the calendar switched to July. I didn't think that Byron Buxton would be up, after his essentially lost 2014 season. I didn't think Trevor May would be (as of late) the team's most dominant starting pitcher. And I sure didn't think this proverbial ragtag bunch of misfits would -- if the season ended today -- be a wild card playoff team. I thought 2015 would be the season where players like Oswaldo Arcia, Aa
The Twins enjoyed an off-day on Thursday and traveled to Milwaukee for a three-game boarder-battle with the Brewers, starting on Friday evening. It was announced on Thursday that the Fort Myers Miracle will host the 2016 Florida State League All-Star Game. RED WINGS REPORT Rochester @ Pawtucket PawSox Box Score Ervin Santana ran his record to 2-0 with a seven inning, 97 pitch, outing. Santana struck out three, walked two, gave up seven hits, including a pair of home runs. Santana was relie
In just a few more days, the Minnesota Twins will have a pitching issue on their hands. This time, it isn't about whether or not Minnesota will have options, but in fact, that they will simply have too many. Although he isn't yet going to come into play, Jose Berrios has made himself the gold standard among minor league options for the Twins, and their pitching depth is all the better for it. After blitzing the Twins system last season, starting at High-A Fort Myers and ending with a start for T
With Tonkin being optioned back to the minor leagues, the Twins have created a hole in the lineup in advance of a 10-game road trip, with the first six of those games in National League ballparks. Some people have suggested that Oswaldo Arcia could return, or a utility player such as Doug Bernier. However, it has appeared to me that the Twins have tried to introduce new prospects during road series, in order to avoid the double-edged nerve-sword of a simultaneous major league and home debut.
The Midwest League’s Eastern Division All-Stars took two hours and forty-four minutes to top their Western Division counterparts 5-0 in Peoria Tuesday night, but any Cedar Rapids fans who made the trip hoping to watch the Kernels’ representatives had to be careful with the timing of any trips to the concession stand. Pitchers Felix Jorge, Jared Wilson, Trevor Hildenberg and Cam Booser spent less than a combined 15 minutes on the mound while throwing a total of two and one-third innings for the
June 14, 2015 a day that will forever go down as one of the most highly anticipated days in all of Minnesota Twins history. Byron Buxton, the Twins second overall pick, joined the big leagues to an exorbitant amount of fanfare. With only three Twins picks ever drafted higher (Tim Belcher, Johnny Ard, and Joe Mauer went first overall), Buxton was seen as the superhero the Twins needed. But what exactly are his superpowers? Now having spent just over a week in the big leagues, there has been mixed
Though the Twins' offense has struggled to generate many runs in the month of June, their tremendous success in May and the method of their outburst against the White Sox yesterday reminds us all of what has worked for the team all year: Hit Clusters. Now, the Twins, along with local business partners in the breakfast cereal industry are out to share the secret of their winning ways with the populace at large in this new advertisement for a special Twins Centric Cereal! [Our first shot is of
While the Minnesota Twins are a homegrown team that relies heavily on players from their farm system to sustain success in the major leagues, reclamation projects are an important part of their team construction. Once-highly-touted prospects or players that have had some big league success and saw a dip in production with their former team for various reasons are often of interest to a team in a mid-sized city looking to get the most value out of their signings. These players are relatively lo
Watching Byron Buxton hit with two strikes on Sunday led me to wonder what the rest of the team is doing with their two-strike opportunities. Not just what kind of batting line they’re putting together — generally bad — but how often are they striking out when the count reaches two strikes? For a little bit of context, the average American League batter is hitting .179/.247/.274 with two strikes, and has struck out 39.5 percent of the time coming into Monday’s action. It’s not terribly surpris
The Twins bullpen has the poorest strike out rate in the majors. This is not a surprise and was projected when the 25 man roster was announced. The Twins may need to trade for bullpen help at the deadline. Before that happens, I hope they look at solutions internally. The Twins need at most one LOOGY as opposed to the two they are using now. These pitchers are possible internal solutions. The split rates are since 2011 unless otherwise specified. That allows a large enough sample in taking a
Um, what needs to be\should be done with Mad Max, he is rippin the snot out of the ball right now. 9 walks and only 3 K's his last ten games. Obviously seeing the ball really well. Time to move him up? Thoughts?
We are now coming up quickly on the halfway point of the 2015 Major League Baseball season, and for the Twins this year, things have been notably different with Paul Molitor at the helm. Ron Gardenhire was given a tough deck of cards to play with the past few years, but Molitor has innovated early, and it's been a welcomed addition to the organization. After being named the next Twins skipper, many suggested that Minnesota was once again going with the easy internal option. Stick to the "Twins W
Happy Father’s Day across Twins Territory!!! While Jake Arrieta was taking it to the Minnesota Twins lineup and Anthony Rizzo continued to bash their pitchers on Sunday Afternoon, three of the four full-season league affiliates were in action in the minors. The organization went 2-2 on the day, but in the minors a come-from behind victory was sparked by a pair of bash-brothers in a single inning, and there were several standout bullpen performances. Read on to find out about all the action
I've been a Twins fan my whole life. About 6 years ago I started paying more attention to the minor league system, and found myself getting excited about the potential of young guys. As I started to pay more attention, I found myself looking further down the pipeline to the Dominican Summer League stats to see who might be the next guys to show up on prospect lists. Of course information is pretty scarce on a majority of these players and scouting reports seems non-existent except for the higher
As Ervin Santana gets ready for his first start in Rochester, I wondered what the impact of his loss has been on the Twins thus far. Mike Pelfrey was his immediate replacement and he has certainly stepped up to the task. He has far outperformed what we might have expected from Santana. It isn't really fair to compare his performance to just Pelfrey though. I looked at the performance of Pelfrey, May and Milone. All three had opportunities that may not have been available had Santana not let do
The calendar has already passed halfway through June and the 2015 Major League Baseball season is starting to take shape. Nearing the halfway point of the season, teams are starting to categorize themselves as contenders or pretenders. Right now, the Twins land somewhere in the middle, and while they may not be buyers at the trade deadline, they can improve from within. The biggest question though, is what they do with their $55 million dollar man. Over the winter, the Twins sought to address th
SHTICKBALL Thursday afternoon after the Minnesota Twins defeated the St. Louis Cardinals at Target Field, Twins GM Terry Ryan found himself having some technical difficulties. It seems Ryan’s America Online account had been compromised in some way, leading to rampant speculation. Ryan claims that he was sure he was putting in the right password, and that he hadn’t recently changed it, or told anyone to change it. He also knew he was spelling his AOL username- BaseballGuy8791- correctly. Wh
On Saturday, Tait went 2-for-4 with a walk and his 17th double. The 19-year-old is hitting .219 with 17 doubles and 15 home runs at High-A Cedar Rapids.
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