Ten Years of TD: The Top 5 Twins Daily Articles from 2014

[Nick Nelson]

On February 19th, Twins Daily will be celebrating its 10-year anniversary. To honor this upcoming milestone, we're looking back at the most-read articles from each year since our site launched. 

Today, we dive into 2014, a year full of transformative change for the Twins. 

Joe Mauer was settling into his new position at first base. New free agent signings Ricky Nolasco and Phil Hughes were trying to help turn around a bottom-tier pitching staff. The All-Star Game came to Target Field. And as it turned out, Ron Gardenhire was reaching the end of his tenure as Twins skipper.

The 2014 season was full of interesting developments and storylines, even if the on-field product continued to languish. Fans weren't particularly drawn to the big-league club by this point, as our top articles of the year illustrate: nearly all of them focused on prospects and futures. 

5. TD Top Prospects: #4 Kohl Stewart

By John Bonnes

Seven months after being selected with the #4 overall draft pick, and coming off a solid pro debut in rookie ball, Stewart appeared near the top of our prospect rankings. Unsurprisingly, his profile was the most-read in the series this year. 

Described by John as "the consensus highest upside arm in the draft," Stewart immediately became a fixture of hope for downtrodden Twins fans. But this writeup also hinted at the hazards of a teenage pitcher fresh out of high school – no matter how highly drafted: "He’s high reward, high risk. The high risk is that he’s an 18-year-old pitcher – and there are lots of risks, both developmental and physical, associated with pitchers that young."

Alas, the risk came to bear. Stewart's stuff and command never really developed. He never showed much with the Twins – cut loose after 60 poor innings in 2018/19 – and hasn't been able to find traction elsewhere, although he's still only 27. 

4. Twins Feel Prospect Eddie Rosario Close to Major League Ready

By Parker Hageman

While Stewart would never end up making much of an impact for the Twins, that certainly wasn't true of Rosario. Parker wrote this in-depth story on the 23-year-old outfield prospect at the end of the 2014 season, and its premise proved correct: Rosario would make his MLB debut just a month into the next season, and wound up placing sixth in Rookie of the Year voting.

It's fun to go back now and read about the view on Eddie at the time. Parker's article featured lots of quotes from Terry Ryan, Mike Radcliff, and prospect analysts. 

3. Hangout and Talk Twins, September 16, Episode 42

By Jeremy Nygaard

Jeremy and Seth used to regularly convene via the Google Hangouts app for interactive chats with readers and fans. It was always a fun time! 

As to what made this particular random mid-September episode compelling enough to become one of the year's top-performing articles? I have no idea. Maybe it's because Adrian Peterson (embroiled in child abuse controversy at the time) was a topic of discussion?

2. Twins Top Ten Prospects (Preliminary)

By Seth Stohs

As another last-place season came to a close, fans were eager to turn the page and look forward. They gravitated toward Seth's updated rankings, published just a couple days after the regular season ended. 

If you're curious how those rankings shook out back then, here's a snapshot:

1. Byron Buxton
2. Miguel Sanó
3. Jose Berríos (or JO Berríos, as he was more commonly known then)
4. Kohl Stewart
5. Alex Meyer
6. Nick Gordon
7. Jorge Polanco
8. Trevor May
9. Taylor Rogers
10. Nick Burdi

1. Get To Know: Gophers RHP Tyler Hanson (And Gophers Notes)

By Seth Stohs

Twins Daily was built to celebrate not just Twins baseball, but Minnesota baseball at large. This has materialized in various ways over the years, including occasional coverage of the Gophers baseball program. (We're still very open to it, if you're reading this and happen to have any interest!)

Here Seth conducts an interview with Hanson, a Burnsville native and one of the Gophers' standouts at the time. 

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[Shaitan]

Are these the top 5 articles for all years since their publish date, or the most read articles during the actual calendar year of 2014?

[Heiny]

Nice top 10 prospects list.  7 of the 10 have have had very successful careers to this point.  Looking forward to the current crop doing the same. (Or Better).

[Nick Nelson]

4 hours ago, Shaitan said:

Are these the top 5 articles for all years since their publish date, or the most read articles during the actual calendar year of 2014?

That's a good question. I assume it's overall traffic since the publish date, but I will defer to @Brock Beauchamp since he pulled the data. 

[Brock Beauchamp]

11 hours ago, Nick Nelson said:

That's a good question. I assume it's overall traffic since the publish date, but I will defer to @Brock Beauchamp since he pulled the data. 

Calendar year of the article. I pulled data from Jan 1-Dec 31 for each year and grabbed the top five.