Brock Beauchamp

David Ortiz (aka. "Big Papi" & "David Arias") was born in the Dominican Republic in 1975. Ortiz was originally signed by the Seattle Mariners as a 17-year-old. He spent a couple of years in the Mariners system before being traded to the Twins as a PTBNL (Player To Be Named Later) in the Dave Hollins trade. Never considered anything but a position-less masher of the baseball, Ortiz spent most of his minor-league career wearing a first baseman's mitt. In his first season with the Twins organization (1997), he progressed three levels in the farm system, jumping from High-A ball all the way to the major league roster in Minnesota as a 21-year-old. 1998 and 1999 saw Ortiz on the Minnesota-to-Salt Lake shuttle, mixing major league time with stints in the minor leagues. From 1997 through the end of 1999, Ortiz had a 102 OPS+ over 111 games yet couldn't stick on a Twins roster that lost 94, 92, and 97 games, respectively. The 2000 season saw Ortiz break out with the Twins, posting an .810 OPS in 130 games while carrying a .358 on-base percentage. His 478 plate appearances that season were the most he accumulated in a Twins uniform. No matter how much Ortiz hit, there were always suggestions the Twins organization wasn't happy with his pull-happy nature, constantly trying to remake Ortiz into a more "well-rounded" hitter. 2001 came and Ortiz battled injuries, only playing in 89 games but posting a 107 OPS+ as he continued to refine his plate discipline and elite power. The 2002 season was Ortiz's last with the Twins. He broke out again, posting a 120 OPS+, far and away the best of his career to that point. After the season, Ortiz entered arbitration due to his accumulation of over three years of service time. Twins General Manager Terry Ryan attempted to trade Ortiz but found little or no takers. The perpetually cash-strapped Twins put Ortiz on waivers to avoid paying him an arbitration salary. And here ends the story of David Ortiz. Once a promising young slugger, no one is really sure what happened after this point as he faded into the annals of baseball history. View full player

Ah, that's quite an oversight from Bluesky. We changed our username to our domain name, which Bluesky should automatically redirect because username changes, especially of that kind, are not uncommon. @twinsdaily.com on Bluesky BSKY.APP The top destination for independent Minnesota Twins content and conversation on the web.

Good catch, fixed it. But remember... if you see something wrong, fix it! Everyone has access to the edit player button at the top of every player page, just pop in and change it.

Larnach seems like a good fit at first. I agree there. I may be in the minority but I don't want Santana back in 2025. I think the Twins got the best out of him and it's time to move on to someone else.

Out of curiosity, why trade both Miranda and Julien? Both of their value is rather low and you're gonna need someone to back up first base this year and play there next year. I could see an argument for trading either one of them but probably not both.

The Minnesota Players Project continues to grow, as we're now well over 75 players in the database. Let's look at some of the newest additions. What is the Players Project? It's a community-driven, wiki-style project that focuses on Twins players of all stripes. It's open to all Twins Daily users and we've had contributions for current players, past players, and players who never even made the major leagues but played in the Twins farm system. The project is open to all Twins Daily users so create your favorite player today! We saw several more players added to The Minnesota Twins Players Project this week, including one new ex-Twin and a key player from the 1991 championship squad. It feels right to start this week off with the page for Max Kepler. Kepler is unlikely to be a Minnesota Twin again. The newly-minted free agent spent his entire career in the Twins organization, signing as a teenager as an international free agent. I know many of you have stories and recollections of Max's time in Minnesota so please log in and share some of them in the link above! Let's take a look at one of the most under-rated Twins of their championship era. Brian Harper quietly put together half a dozen pretty good seasons with the Twins. Sure, he maybe wasn't a great defensive receiver but as the Twins rolled to their 1991 championship season, he batted .311 while taking the majority of reps behind the dish. Get up to speed on this complementary role player on the '91 squad! Most of us remember Don Cooper as the guy who led the White Sox pitching staff for much of this century. But did you know that much of his short playing career was here in Minnesota? Hit the link above and look back at the man who coached so many of those Godless White Sox pitching staffs to division titles over your Minnesota Twins. Our goal with the Twins Players Project is to create the ultimate repository of information on Twins players of the past and present. Take a few minutes to see if your favorite player has been created and if they haven't, go ahead and get started on creating them today! If your favorite player already has a page, add images, video links, or your own personal experiences to his page! The Minnesota Twins Players Project is open to all Twins Daily users. If you're a Twins history buff or just want to dive into the background of your favorite player, come on board! View full article

Kudos to having one of the most fun blueprints I've read across any of the four sites thus far.

I literally thought about adding a "**** this place, I quit" checkbox to the blueprint, but only here on TD. None of the other sites have GMs who might want to flee.

I don't want to be too critical but... I ****ing hate this trade! How dare you!

Teel would be an amazing get but it's going to take a lot more to pry him away from Boston. The Sox currently have Connor Wong but his defense is pretty awful, at least this year it was. With Breslow at the helm now, it wouldn't surprise me to see Boston move away from him at some point. Maybe not this offseason, as Teel isn't ready yet, but I think the front office views Kyle as the future behind the plate.

I'm not entirely against Goldschmidt. I don't think I'd personally pursue him but he's a good steady veteran hand to have in the clubhouse and leading the team on a one-year deal.

Whew, trading for a lot of prospects here. An unusual route to take compared to most other blueprints.

As with any trades, these might be unrealistic because we don't know which teams value what. But all of this seems pretty reasonable, at least on paper. The one trade that I'm questioning is Soderstrom. Why would the A's trade him?

Pat Meares seemed like a capable player in the post-1991 World Series era. He came up and performed admirably with the Twins for six seasons, and when he became too expensive, he signed with…the Pittsburgh Pirates. Patrick James Meares was born September 6, 1968, in Salina, Kansas. He grew up in Salina and graduated from Salina Sacred Heart High School, which did not have a baseball team. However, Meares was a three-sport high school athlete who played football, basketball, and golf. Meares’ strong play in American Legion ball was enough to get the attention of coach Gene Stephenson at Wichita State University, so after graduation, he made the short 90-mile trek to attend college and play baseball at Wichita State. The Wichita State Shockers were an absolute powerhouse in NCAA baseball from 1980-2009. In those 30 years, they failed to make the postseason only three times. In 15 years, from 1982-1996, Wichita State went to the College World Series seven times. Meares played on College World Series teams in 1988 and 1989. In 1989, he batted .429 and hit a home run in the championship game won by Wichita State. Meares was selected to the all-tournament team. 1989 is the only championship won by the Shockers to date. Pat Meares was selected to the Kansas Baseball Hall of Fame for his distinguished college and pro careers in 2012. The Minnesota Twins drafted the shortstop in the 12th round of the 1990 Major League Amateur Draft. In four years in the minor leagues, Meares played at each of the four minor league levels, showing an ability to play shortstop and hit for a decent average. In 1993, he started the season with AAA Portland and hit .296/.345/.389 in only 18 games. In the previous offseason, Greg Gagne had vacated the shortstop position, leaving after 1992 to sign a three-year contract for $10 million with the Kansas City Royals. The Twins had prioritized resigning Kirby Puckett after the 1992 season, and as we all know, spending money has never been a forte of the Twins, and the 1990s were no exception. Therefore, there was no room in the budget for Gagne. The Twins’ answer to replacing Gagne was awarded the opening-day shortstop assignment to Scott Leius. Unfortunately, the 1991 World Series hero tore his rotator cuff and was done after only ten games. Utility man Jeff Reboulet started at shortstop for the next two weeks. Meares finally debuted on May 5, 1993, with his first start coming on May 9. From that point forward, Meares essentially replaced Gagne for the remainder of the season and became the primary shortstop for the following five seasons. That’s no small feat. How many shortstops have played that long for the Twins? Off the top of my head, my guesses are Zoilo, Smalley, Gagne, Meares, Guzman, and hopefully Correa. During his time with the Twins, Meares batted .265/.301/.386. He had 41 home runs and 303 RBI. In his tenure, the Twins were the victims of Yankees’ pitcher David Wells throwing the 15th perfect game in Major League history. The lineup that day was not particularly inspiring, with only three batters, including Meares, with an OPS over .700. It was a Sunday afternoon game, so Tom Kelly emptied the bench as he tended to do. Brent Gates batted second. Jon Shave batted seventh. Both had batting averages of sub-.150. But it was Meares who, unfortunately, was the final out with a fly to right. The Twins have always been frugal, but the mid to late 1990s seemed especially so. In line with their thinking at the time, and with the newly acquired Cristian Guzman (from the Chuck Knoblauch trade) waiting in the wings, although not necessarily ready, the Twins declined to resign Meares after the 1998 season. He signed a one-year $1.5 million contract just before spring training in 1999. Then, in April of 1999, the Pirates hastily offered a 4-year contract extension for $15 million, to which Meares agreed. That contract did not age well. Meares injured his left hand in 2000 and rarely played after that. Meares also had a grievance against the Pirates, which he later dropped. After a settlement, he retired without playing out the full term of the contract. A few Pirates blogs rate his contract as terrible and one of the worst in Pirates' history. I wish I could remember or cite an interesting Pat Meares anecdote. I just thought he was a talented player on bad teams, but I don’t remember and can’t find any interesting stories about him. If I had a word to describe his personality – and this is my judgment from extremely far away – I would say stoic. He just seemed like a good player without a lot of flash who was there to play baseball. Worse things can be said about a ballplayer. View full player

I believe it is "blue sky".

This all makes sense but damn, I cannot see the Twins spending that much on a single player. It would be nice to be wrong about that but it's the vibe I'm getting.

Jesse Winker may be a good on-field decision but damn, I cannot stand the guy.

Every offseason, we offer our You’re The GM! tool (formerly the Payroll Blueprint) to build your ideal Twins roster. This year, we’ve updated and streamlined the tool a bit to improve the experience. The idea behind this feature is to give fans a chance to play the role of General Manager (or CBO or PoBO… you get the idea) for their favorite team, the Minnesota Twins. It’s meant to give fans the opportunity to discuss (and, let’s be honest, argue) how they would approach the long, dark MLB offseason. This tool is intended to be informal and fun, so we’ve left it as open as possible. There is a payroll “budget” that loosely resembles the Twins' 2024 payroll, but there is no penalty for going over that number. It’s a guideline, nothing more. Second, you can submit as many blueprints as you like throughout the offseason. As the offseason landscape changes, users often return multiple times over the winter and create new blueprints. Before we get into the breakdown of the tool, you can save your blueprint and come back to it at any time. The only restriction is that you must register an account on the site to create a blueprint (so we can save a draft for you and also post the blueprint for others to discuss). Let’s get into the tool itself. It has four quadrants that work best if addressed in a counter-clockwise order (this tool works much better on desktops due to its complexity but will work on mobile devices if need be). Top Left: The 26-man Roster We have created a rough guideline of what the Twins 26-man roster looks like today. The roster is flexible; any player can be added or removed as you see fit. We’ve also included either guaranteed salaries or, in the case of arbitration and contract options, the recommendations of MLB Trade Rumors. This section is where you build your roster and make changes based on the following two sections. As you make changes to players and salaries, the total payroll number (right side of the screen) will change, allowing you to track your budget on the fly. The bottom field in both columns is for any dead money you assume during the course of your offseason. Acquiring dead money should be rather uncommon but we want to present users the opportunity to take on dead salary if it suits their purposes. Bottom Left: Arbitration & Trade Decisions Here, you will find a selection of arbitration options and internal options (usually from the 40-man roster or minor leagues) to assist in building your offseason roster. On the right-hand side of this column, you will see Trade Candidates, a list of the 35 players most likely to be traded this offseason, per MLB Trade Rumors. To help you get up to speed with these candidates, we offer a direct link to the MLBTR write-up on trade candidates. Bottom Right: Free Agents Here, you will find the top 50 free agents, again per MLB Trade Rumors. These are sorted by position to facilitate quickly finding your desired free agent and include the recommended salary for that player. Because this is a blueprint for a single year, we only include their projected salary for the coming season, not the number of years or anything else. To help you get up to speed with these free agents, we offer a direct link to the MLBTR write-up on the best 50 free agents available this winter. Top Right: Dead Money, Your Total Payroll, & Commentary The only unalterable field on the page is Dead Money; it is players to which the team has committed money but has no reasonable way to get out of the contract. Below that, you will see the recommended budget, your current total, and the percentage you are over or under that budget. Again, keep in mind the budget is only a guideline, and you can go above it as much as you like… But defend your choices, coward! The following field is Title, which gives other users an idea of what to expect with your blueprint (e.g. Sign Juan Soto, Damn the Consequences). When your blueprint posts for other users, it will read “Your Username’s 2025 Payroll Blueprint: Sign Juan Soto, Damn the Consequences”. The following field is Your Comments & Explanation, a long-form field meant to type out the rationale behind your decisions. Here is the place to fully explain your trades (including which players are leaving the Twins to bring in new players), why you targeted specific free agents, and, any promotions from the minors you advocate or any options you declined to extend to a specific player. This is often multiple paragraphs, you can write up as much detail as you desire. That’s it, you’re done! At this point, you can either publish your blueprint to the forums or save it for later if you feel it’s incomplete. Thank you for joining us at Twins Daily. I hope you enjoy playing the role of general manager, at least for a moment! Start Your Payroll Blueprint Now

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Because people seem to be transitioning away from X/Twitter, at least in some capacity, I was asked to expand the default embed options for other social media sites. The following sites will now embed natively on the site just as Twitter has since forever. 1. Instagram 2. Facebook 3. TikTok 4. BlueSky 5. Threads 6. Twitter/X

I won't put anything past the Pohlads at this point. I'm soooooooo ready to move on from them.

What app download? I've never seen anything asking me to download and neither should anyone else.