Luke Hughes

The Twins Almanac for Sunday, April 28th features Pedro Ramos, Ron Washington, John Gaub, Mickey Hatcher, Kent Hrbek, Jack Morris, Luke Hughes, and Byron Buxton, with special guest appearances by Tony Oliva, Todd Walker, Rick Renick, Dave McKay, Gary Gaetti, Andre David, Eddie Rosario, Boileryard Clarke, and Jacque Jones.

Aaron Whitefield didn't play baseball until he was 17. He's now a key contributor to the winningest team in the 2021 Twins' organization and has no plans of stopping there.

And here is the Twins Almanac for the week of April 24th through April 30th. This week in Twins history Paul Molitor and Greg Myers each collected 5 RBI sas the Twins scored a team record 24 runs. Scott Erickson pitched the third no-hitter in Twins history. Camilo Pascual hit his second career grand slam. Harmon Killebrew hit both his first home run as a Twin and his 400th career home run this week in history. Mickey Hatcher tied Tony Oliva’s club record for consecutive hits. And Luke Hughes became the fifth Twin to homer in his first career at-bat.

Yesterday, Seth wrote more than 1700 words about spring training (1735; I counted), God bless him. I’m glad he has the patience for that stuff, because I sure don’t. We focus on spring training because there’s nothing else to focus on that matters. But, really, when we pretend that the outcomes matter even a little, we’re generally kidding ourselves.

Kidding ourselves like I was last week when I speculated that Ryan Sweeney might have a shot to make this team. In retrospect, of course he doesn’t. I was (and presumably remain) an idiot who was hoping that there was at least a little drama this spring. But, in reality, 24 of the 25 roster spots were essentially preordained coming into camp, with eleventy billion pitchers fighting it out for the last spot in the bullpen. A spot that probably won’t be worth more than a win above replacement over the course of 2016.

It’s just two weeks from the start of spring training in Florida and Arizona. However, if you like watching baseball, there is a WBC Qualifier tournament that started on Thursday in Australia (Wednesday night in the States). There are 14 players with Minnesota Twins ties in this tournament (11 from Australia, 3 from South Africa).

As you recall, the first World Baseball Classic was in 2006. Japan topped Cuba for that championship. In 2009, Japan won again. In 2013, it was the Dominican Republic that claimed the title. Team USA has finished fourth place once, their only trip to the Final Four.