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This offseason was always going to be incredibly weird. Coming off a pandemic shortened season, with no fans, and an unprecedented amount of uncertainty still ahead, how teams would tackle preparations for 2021 is a mystery. The Twins are good though, and despite a few holes they want to get better. What if they go all in? This morning at ESPN Jeff Passan penned a piece regarding some rumblings he’s heard around the league. One of them was a note on the Minnesota Twins circling like a shark in
With all the talk about FA and DFAs I got thinking about who the prospects behind each position are – not the top prospects in the system – but the ones that are there for each position on the club. Call it the next line of defense: C – Jeffers is obvious, but he might be the starting C so who is next – Ben Rortvedt would be the next in line. He is age 23 which surprised me, because it seems like we have been looking at him for the last decade (I exaggerate). He has four minor league season
This will be my 6th annual top 15 Twins prospect update. As was the case with the midseason edition back in June, we’re dealing with an unprecedented scenario here. Having not played any minor league baseball action in 2020, movement is based more on what I heard out of the alternate site and what took place from prospects appearing at Target Field. The hope would be that a level of normalcy is restored in 2021. While I’m optimistic we see something closer to what we’ve come accustomed to, cha
The question is – should we sign Cruz or just let a number of players DH? I thought I would look back at the Twins DH history. I ignore any DWAR since I am only interested in the DH. Tony Oliva was the first DH. In 1973 he was in 146 games. He hit 291/345/410 and his WAR was 0.7. The next year he was in 127 games with a line of 285/326/414 and 0.4 WAR. 1975 he played 131 games with a line of 270/344/378 and WAR of 0.5. 1976 saw Craig Kusick as the DH – 259/344/432 – 1.5 WAR. In 77 his l
It's Friday afternoon, and I'm counting the minutes until the weekend. Let's make a plan. For this exercise, I started with Matthew Taylor's spreadsheet on Twinspayroll.com, and used $125 million as the top spending level. My goal is to fall $5-10 million under that to reflect closer to a 15% payroll discount. When I started the exercise, I wondered how we could best allocate the budget if we elected not to re-sign Nelson Cruz. Let's get started... The spreadsheet shows these roster slot
Welcome to a new era of Minnesota Twins baseball. This isn’t the Terry Ryan regime anymore, and it hasn’t been for quite some time. What was ushered in with Derek Falvey represented a more progressive way of thinking. Unfortunately, the downside to that is having other organizations looking to play copycat. Now that is beginning to come full circle. Last offseason the Twins lost their hitting coach. James Rowson was the architect behind a lineup that hit the most home runs in Major League Base
Now that the Eddie Rosario Experience is almost certainly over, let's take a look back at some of his contributions to Twins history. This is just what appears in my Twins Almanac spreadsheet. Please contribute your own Eddie trivia, fun facts, or cool stories in the comments section. And if you're into this kind of stuff, follow me on Twitter at @TwinsAlmanac. May 6, 2015 Major League Debut Leading off the bottom of the third against Oakland's Scott Kazmir, the 23-year-old Puerto Rico na
Seventy five for a seventy five year old Okay, it is my birthday and I love life and all my ex-students, friends, participants in the guided tours, neighbors and family. So I am reflective and that means I have to think of 75 memories – there are many more. But here are 75 Twin memories. 1. Ushering during season one 2. Mudcat Grant – you want colorful – this is it. 3. Vic Power taking over first base in a way I have never seen anywhere else. 4. Jim Kaat just delivering and delivering and deli
On Wednesday, the Minnesota Twins will need to decide whether or not they’ll tender a contract to left fielder Eddie Rosario for the 2021 Major League Baseball season. He's already been placed on outright waivers, so they would be negotiating for less than his projected arbitration value. A 4th round pick in 2010, he’s been in the organization for a decade since he was a 19-year-old. A changing of the guard could be coming involving a core player, and it’s worth looking back on the impact he’s h
As has been the expectation now for week, the St. Paul Saints will officially join the Minnesota Twins organization in 2021 per reports from the Star Tribune. Previously playing in the American Association as an Independent Baseball team, they’ll now assume the role of the Twins Triple-A affiliate. For years there has been talk about the convenience having an affiliate just down I-94 would provide the Twins. Then during the pandemic shortened season, CHS Field acted as the alternate site for t
As I said in my previous blog posting I am watching to see where the current Twins rank in ratings outside the Twin Cities. It is always suggestive to read a less biased - less connected view of our own team. So here is the ESPN Roto rankings for 2021 - https://www.espn.com/fantasy/baseball/story/_/id/28285423/fantasy-baseball-2021-rankings-roto-rotisserie Catcher Garver is rated #7 (between Will Smith and Gary Sanchez) Jeffers 34 (between Romine and Torrens Avila is 47 between Trevino and Kna
In 1986 the Twins had one of the worst records in baseball (71-91) but in 1987 the Twins turned it around, becoming a Cinderella story that won the World Series. A story which inspired movies. 1986 team was basically the same team as the 1987 w/ players Kirby Puckett, Kent Hrbek, Gary Gaetti, Frank Viola, Bert Byleven, Tom Brunaski, Roy Smalley, to name a few. So what changed? They brought back the pin-stripes & added the M insignia. The change was a immediate success & continued w/ succ
I am always looking for outsider opinions on the Twins since it is too easy to have hometown bias. All of us who root for the Twins follow them with much more emotion and fan hopefulness that allows them to rise higher in our opinions than an outsider might see them. So, I was interested in the Athletic’s fantasy baseball rankings. I know fantasy and reality are not the same, but it is one way of comparing players. Derek Van Riper just posted his fantasy ratings of players https://theathletic.co
Minor League Baseball is going to see massive changes in 2021, and the Twins have already signaled that they will be among the teams seeing the biggest shakeups. There has been plenty of speculation that St. Paul will become their new AAA home, but it's my belief that whether or not that happens, the Twins will end up with a Minor League Team in Wichita, Kansas one way or another. As a quick recap, Minor League Baseball is expected to undergo a massive reorganization starting next season as it
Since the main TD articles keep talking about Eddie Rosario being traded, cut, cursed or whatever you want to call it I thought it might be instructive to do a comparison of all the six year players on the roster. In a move that we all thought would make the future of the Twins we had Eddie, Byron, Miguel, and Max arrive the same year and it did not take long before they were part of a home run hitting behemoth and twice got to the playoffs where they, like their predecessors failed. (I chose no
In my follow-up to the 5 “Under the Radar” Free Agent Pitching Targets blog, I thought it would be fitting to also describe a few key free agent utility players that should come at a bargain. One of the top priorities of the Twins offseason is to find replacements for utilitymen, Marwin Gonzalez and Ehire Adrianza - both now free agents. In 2020, Marwin and Ehire combined to produce .1 fWAR while costing just north of $10.5M in salary, if it were a normal 162 game season. Injuries to the T
The baseball owners through their lackey – Rob Manfred – have declared that they lost substantial and unsubstantiated amounts of money in 2020. A May 2020 CNBC report said, “Under the MLB’s plan, the highest-paid players could lose about 80% of their salaries, while players making the least amount could keep up to 90% of their pay. The plan calls for players to retain their salary via a tier system. In short, the more a player is scheduled to earn for the 2020 season, the less he retains under t
What's up everyone? You may know me from the forums as I have created and introduced multiple game threads throughout my time spent at TwinsDaily, and have also created offseason blueprints in the past. This year is the hardest one I will have done, because of the COVID-19 pandemic and it's affect on spending both on the Minnesota Twins, as well as baseball as a whole. The Twins spent what would have been 135M on their payroll in 2020, before being prorated. I am going to assume that that num
ESPN had a gold glove preview which I enjoy because it lists the three finalists and not just the winner https://www.espn.com/mlb/insider/story/_/id/30246554/mlb-gold-gloves-preview-which-stars-elite-field so we get 27 candidates to think about for each league. The weakness of the Twins is really apparent - there were two Twins listed. Byron Buxton of course and Kenta Maeda. As usual there is a caveat about Buxton - "Buxton would be a good choice, but he played in only 39 games." In addition
Recently I was on Twins Daily’s Offseason Live with John Bonnes and Ted Schwerzler and discussed the Minnesota Twins payroll outlook for 2021. Most years it has been relatively easy to make an estimation on the team’s payroll but a year of COVID-19 has made it anything but easy. While having payroll conversations, it became a quick reality that if the Twins need to at all cut payroll from a 2020 payroll just shy of 140 million, the dollars will be spent quickly. As that realization hit, I bega
Today is the official first day of the offseason! Annnnd nobody knows what to expect. What we almost assuredly can count on is that the Twins payroll will be reduced from what it was in 2020. With that in mind, the front office will have to be smarter about how they spend their money. Here are a few “under the radar” pitching signings that could prove valuable in 2021. The way I am looking at this is that the Twins have at least one spot open in their rotation. Ideally, I would like to see the
Going into the 2019 Major League Baseball season the Twins had few question marks more glaring than what their bullpen would look like. Fast forward to season’s end and it was among the best units in baseball. That happened largely because of internal development, and Zack Littell was part of that. Acquired from the New York Yankees, Littell had pitched a brief 20.1 innings during the 2018 season. Working as both a starter and reliever in his debut year, he moved completely to the pen in 2019.
I had an idea. What if someone got a hit, stole second - maybe third and someone else got a hit and they scored? In new school does that not count? What if someone got a hit, someone bunted and then a single brought them home? Does that not mean that the run scores? Do I have to wait for a HR? Should I look for a K instead of a sacrifice? Do I have to fire up the computer. What to do? No HR? We cannot score that way. We need HRs without runners on base because analytics say that is reall
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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