You all care about this site. The next step is caring for it. We’re asking you to caretake this site so it can remain the premier Twins community on the internet.
Original post from North Dakota Twins Fan ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ As with most Tuesday's for the rest of the season, I am in charge of writing the minor league update for the Twins Daily website. This means I won't have a very big post here this morning but here are some of the news and notes that have been discussed with the Twins. http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-5ivWOPrdLBw/T7JANCG-HiI/AAAAAAAABRU/E1gYVaQJzCM/s320/Ramosinjury.jpg Casilla gets new role as utility player Anyone who has watched the Twin
I don’t know if these are questions, or thoughts, of forum topics, but after a 13-hour day, I’m pretty much free associating. Let’s see what happens. Because Fourth Place Is Just Five Games Away? Why is Carl Pavano pitching? The Twins long term strategy regarding Pavano needs to be to have him demonstrate enough success to get some value for him at the trade deadline, right? What is the purpose of trotting him out there at 80% to look below average? Get him healthy, let him string a strong mon
Originally published at The Tenth Inning Stretch --- With the Twins having a severe need for pitching in the organization as well as six picks among the top 100, it is certain that more than one of those picks (and probably the second overall pick) will be used to draft a pitcher. To this respect, I am presenting profiles of the top 22pitching prospects for the 2012 MLB draft. I will be presenting these alphabetically, and at the end I will rank them. I will be doing about one a day and I
[TABLE=class: tr-caption-container] http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-nQM4h8sazyM/T7EE54Ig61I/AAAAAAAAAVc/0dAydXE054E/s1600/Wilkin.bmp [TD=class: tr-caption]Wilkin Ramirez is not long for AA if he keeps up his 1.228 OPS [/TD] [/TABLE] [Originally published at Twins Fan From Afar] Like their parent club, the Rock Cats split a 4-game series over the weekend against the Reading Phillies. I attended Thursday night's game, a 10-3 loss. You can find my game recap here. Apparently, I picked the one bad
Original post from North Dakota Twins Fan ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-zw_MlMY_n8g/T7Ds4BCIBCI/AAAAAAAABRI/jscxapm3W00/s320/PavanoThrowing.jpg Word came out over the weekend that Carl Pavano underwent an MRI on his right shoulder to see if there was anything wrong with this important area for his throwing arm. The report came back saying he has a strained interior shoulder capsule and he could need a cortisone shot after his start on Monday night. At this point, he is not expected
Over the Mother's Day weekend all four of the Twins full-season minor league affiliates were in action. The Twins flirted with their first winning streak of the season before losing Saturday evening's 2-1 battle against our neighbors to the North, the Toronto Blue Jays. Twins minor league call-ups have been the story lately for the Twins with stellar pitching performances from both Scott Diamond and P.J. Walters who combined to throw 20.0 innings. Last week Diamond pitched 7.0 innings of shutout
Originally posted at k-bro's baseball blog After a truly awful, embarrassing effort by the Twins on Thursday, they got it together and acted like a big league team the rest of the series. A split of a four-game series against a pretty good team isn't bad, and Saturday's loss was at least somewhat respectable (if there is such a thing as a "respectable loss"). A few notes: Brian Dozier keeps flirting with me. I was happy for him for his first big league homer, and his defense makes m
This post originally appeard in it's entirety at www.puckettspond.com http://puckettspond.com/files/2012/05/down-on-the-pond.1.jpgWhat's been going on with the Twins MiLB affiliates? Sometimes my life gets in the way of my baseball writing, and fortunately while I have been away from the day in and day out happenings of the Twins minor league affiliates, baseball has gone on. I'd like to throw out a very special thank you to my friend Mark Smith (@MarkArtSmith) for creating the Down on the P
The Twins lost 2-1 yesterday, wasting a pretty good season debut by P.J. Walters. From the AP story: The struggling Twins offense couldn't come up with a timely hit. Minnesota went 0 for 9 with runners in scoring position and stranded six runners over the final four innings. "We had plenty of chances, but it just didn't work out for us tonight,'' Twins manager Ron Gardenhire said. Hm. On offense, the Twins had 5 hits total, but 6 walks to go with them. The Jays had 7 hits, and no walks.
Originally Published at The Tenth Inning Stretch --- With the Twins having a severe need for pitching in the organization as well as six picks among the top 100, it is certain that more than one of those picks (and probably the second overall pick) will be used to draft a pitcher. To this respect, I am presenting profiles of the top 22 pitching prospects for the 2012 MLB draft. I will be presenting these alphabetically, and at the end I will rank them. I will be doing about one a day and I
Originally Published at The Tenth Inning Stretch -- With the Twins having a severe need for pitching in the organization as well as six picks among the top 100, it is certain that more than one of those picks (and probably the second overall pick) will be used to draft a pitcher. To this respect, I am presenting profiles of the top 22 pitching prospects for the 2012 MLB draft. I will be presenting these alphabetically, and at the end I will rank them. I will be doing about one a day and I wi
I just listened to Denard Span short circuit a potential rally by trying to steal second base with runners on the corners and one out. He was caught. I wondered if that was an especially stupid decision. It turns out, it's not that risky. Or at least it's not if you accept that a baserunner usually needs to steal bases about 2/3 of the time to be effective. Generally, one studies something like this using Palmer & Thorn's Run Expectancy Matrix. It's a neat grid that shows, given a certai
Thursday night's loss to the Blue Jays was down right humiliating--running into a tag for a double play, pop up falling to the ground while three Twins players watch it from two feet away, another four inning stink-fest from a starting pitcher. Need I continue? Any more memories and I might need to pull out my brown paper bag to keep from hyperventilating. In one of my early blogs, I said that the Twins are giving the term "the Bad News Bears" a whole new meaning. I wish I had saved that for
Simple baseball ineptitude can be explained by a lack of good pitching, fielding and hitting (and maybe even a little bad managing). However, the Twins' current level of ineptitude and misery cannot be explained through tradition baseball analysis. Tom Kelly used to say that a team is certain to win a third of its games and certain to lose a third, but it's how they play in that other third that determines the success of the team. The Twins have not even won that guaranteed one-third. The
At the end of 2011, the Twins had some choices to make on a handful of players. Some they released, others the chose not to sign, others they did resign. Lets take a look at how those decisions have fared out so far, along with the players brought in to replace those that left: Michael Cuddyer - left via free agency Replaced by Josh Willingham [TABLE=width: 844] [TD=class: xl65, width: 117, bgcolor: transparent][/TD] [TD=class: xl66, width: 56, bgcolor: transparent]G[/TD] [TD=cla