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The TwinsCentric GM Offseason Handbook listed 23 right-handed relievers, sorted in descending order by what we thought they would receive on the open market. The 23rd was Joel Zumaya. He was listed last because of the obvious injury risk he represented. But Zumaya wasn't the 23rd one signed. Twins General Manager Terry Ryan was aggressive, like he had been all offseason, and Zumaya signed relatively early given his status. That signing was almost universally praised because Zumaya has such
One of my fantasy leagues started its draft this past week, so I thought it might be a good time to start writing a little about fantasy baseball. I will likely participate in three or four leagues this year, and each is a little bit different. One of my leagues is a keeper league with major and minor league rosters. It is a 5x5 roto league. Another league is a weekly head-to-head, points league. Another league is only on the weekend. I’m in one ten team league and two 14-team leagues. There are
I just read the news about Joel Zumaya. I suppose none of us should be surprised Zumaya could be injured. Some will use this as an opportunity to say that the twins should have signed more help for the bullpen. While that may be true, I think it ignores the bigger picture. The Twins need to improve their teaching staff as a whole and two thirds of the innings of a pitching staff come from starters. Now I've heard it said that the Twins have five number four starters. I think this is a litt
Not that it matters right now, but… It’s always nice to know what you’re going to be dealing with going into next offseason. And although teams might say the service clock doesn’t matter… we all know that it does. The Twins have 5 pending Free Agents: C Ryan Doumit, SP Carl Pavano, LSP Francisco Liriano, SP Jason Marquis and recently injured RP Joel Zumaya. The Twins have options on 2 players next offseason: SP Scott Baker ($9.25m team option or free agency) and RP Matt Capps ($6m team o
I constantly ask myself what does our organization need to differently in the draft to become dangerous in October. Well, in my opinion, we need to draft three types of players. Player type 1: No contact power starting pitchers. The Twins have proven that a staff completely made of "pitch to contact pitchers" will get you to the first round of the playoffs and then lose badly. The Twins need to have a slight change in philosophy regarding their pitching staff. Draft strikeout pitchers-
I've played Fantasy Baseball for a number of years in a number of formats, and while it's nice to be "steady" and "compete" in the Twin's way of thinking, it's still nice to know that you've got some players (in real life) that are good enough to make Fantasy Rosters in a 12 or even 14 team league. That said, outside of Mauer, and Capps (simply for the "saves" category that everyone tries to load up on closers for--but for no other reason), who do you see on the roster that makes the cut? I t
This was first posted at The Tenth Inning Stretch and reposted here. The original post can be found here By now we all know that Zumaya left yesterday's bullpen session with pain/discomfort on "the inside of his elbow" after he threw 15 pitches to Chris Herrmann. According to the observers he was throwing very hard. Terry Ryan announced that there will be an MRI today and the results will be announced either late today or tomorrow. Of course, the reaction of the Twins' Territory, especiall
The Twins are coming off one of the worst seasons in franchise history and the hope for 2012 is things will improve. I was excited in November when the quiet genius Terry Ryan returned as GM for an organization desperate for leadership. I believe he will transform this organization into a winner again, but it won’t be without some speed bumps along the way. It also will be done without the help of large payrolls. Ryan will rebuild this club through solid drafts, wise spending, player account
If you're at all looking forward to the June Rule IV baseball draft as a Twins fans, there is no doubt that you're already familiar with a handful of names: Appel, Giolito, Buxton, Zunino, and most recently, Zimmer. If you're a fan of following the Twins draft at all, there are some terms you're probably familiar with: "strike-thrower", "long and lean", "wiry/athletic" or (my personal favorite Gardyism) "a grinder". You're always going to find draft picks that are breaks from the normal "tha
Also posted at www.ontheroadwithshawn.blogspot.com As spring training rolls along, I have been counting down their top 50 prospects. Already looked at 50-46, 45-41, 40-36, 35-31 & 30-26. 25. Tyler Robertson Left-Handed Reliever 12/23/1987. Robertson was drafted by the Twins in the 3rd round of the 2006 draft out of Bella Vista High School in Fair Oaks, California. He went 10-3 with 16 saves and a 3.61 ERA in 55 appearances for AA New Britain. He struck out 88 and walked 29 in 89.2 inni
This was first published at The Tenth Inning Stretch earlier this month. I know it is kind of old, but I think that the topic might be interesting for the Twins Daily readers, so I am republishing it here... February is African American/Black History Month so I wanted to contribute by looking at the integration of the Twins franchise. And it did happen at the Senators' years. The Washington Senators, even though they were one of the first Major League teams to break the ethnicity barrier, in 191
This post is simply a post to tell the founders of this site what i think of it. Its nice. But I very much dislike the fact that there is a "per page" comment limit. If an article has a lot of comments, I want to see them all to load on one page. It doesn't feel like a conversation when you can't see all the comments. The site seams hard to navigate for some reason. Its almost as if you are trying to make it a conglomeration of a SN nation site and a newspaper site. So the home page is very
Read the original post at http://twinsfocus.areavoices.com *************************************************************** Earlier today, newly acquired relieverJoel Zumaya was throwing batting practice to Twins hitters. Members of the media seemed to be impressed saying he was “throwing quite hard”. Not long after that a flood of tweets came in saying Zumaya cut the session short and walked off the field with Twins head trainer Rick McWane. Neither Zumaya or the Twins commented, but early r
Within the last half-hour, Joel Zumaya impressed local media and then he abruptly ended his session, walking off the mound with trainer Rick McWane. Zumaya said he was OK but with his injury history, this does become a story. Star Tribune's Jim Souhan tweeted "Never draw conclusions from BP but Zumaya is throwing quite hard. It seems." Three minutes later, the scribe tweeted, "Zumaya ends session early. Walks off with trainer. Says he's ok but..." The Twins signed Zumaya in January to a on
It's easy to be down on the Twins' prospects for this year. 2011 was in many ways their worst season ever, and the offseason moves by Terry Ryan didn't do much more than maintain the talent level they started with last April. So we must be headed for another dreadful season, right? Not so fast. The Twins allowed 804 runs last year. Their pitching staff was last in the Majors in K/9, 29th in ERA and 29th in WHIP. But they were also last in BABIP, suggesting that things might bounce better for
Original post from Twins Rubes. Newcomers are always a little intriguing around this time of the year - especially after a disappointing season like 2011. This year Josh Willingham, Joel Zumaya, Ryan Doumit, Jason Marquis, and Jamey Carroll bear the newcomer flag into Target Field. With the shortstop position being such a desperate need after the fail that was Tsuyoshi Nishioka last season, Carroll is the one the Twins chose to jump out of the free agent pile and save the day this spring. N
I’m going to get this out of the way immediately. I think Ryan Braun is still guilty. I also think that he was lucky, and he and his representatives brilliantly found a way to argue that the chain of custody was broken when it came to the handling of his sample. But most of all, I don’t even care. That’s right, I think Braun is guilty, but I also don’t even care. What I care about is the reactions to Braun’s appeal being upheld. There are many people out there that feel that Braun get
One of my fondest memories as a child is the time my dad taught me how to score a baseball game. I was 10 years old and I became obsessed with "keeping the book" while watching the Twins on television (I believe those were the Midwest Sports Channel days). My scorebook had about a dozen or so games in it before the postseason came along. I kept score for every ALCS game without a problem. Then it was the World Series. I started keeping score for every game of that series . . . and I stopped s
Originally posted at The Tenth Inning Stretch Every new season there are a lot of old faces who are not any longer with a team and a lot of new faces who are replacing them. Usually a new player is assigned one of the departed players' uniform numbers. Here are the matches between the old and the new uniform numbers. Three of them are unassigned and Chris Parmelee switched his number from 2011. Joel Zumaya and Darin Mastoianni have not been formally assigned numbers yet. Left the team: 5
Original post from http://twinsrubes.blogspot.com. Two of my favorite current Minnesota Twins are Denard Span and Ben Revere. I've been a huge fan of Span since the day he stepped onto that Metrodome turf, and what's not to like about Revere? With the departures of Delmon Young, Michael Cuddyer, Jason Kubel, and Jason Repko; the addition of Josh Willingham; and the seemingly complete return to health of Denard Span this spring; there has obviously been an enormous shake-up across the entire ou
“There comes a point when you can only torture yourself so long.” Those are the words of Justin Morneau (courtesy Phil Mackey on Twitter), uttered just this morning while speaking to reporters for the first time since reporting yesterday to Hammond Stadium in Ft. Myers. Today the Twins will hold their first full squad workout of spring training. Mackey tweeted Morneau’s quotes, “I don’t know if I can be a full, 100 percent go, but I’m going to go out there and participate in everything and
The following post is also available at www.knuckleballsblog.com. I'm not an idiot (most of the time). I know the Detroit Tigers are consensus favorites to win the AL Central Division title again... probably by double digit games again. I know the Twins are not widely viewed as the most likely team to challenge the Tigers if such a challenger does emerge. But as I mentioned a few days ago, Spring Training is my Mardi Gras! I'll deal with reality on Opening Day. For now, I'm going to enjoy th
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Winning the Cedar Rapids Kernel prize from TD is far better than winning the FIFA World Peace Prize. Thanks.· 0 replies
