Brock Beauchamp

Bobby Nightengale of the Minnesota Star-Tribune wrote up a nice piece on Derek Falvey at the Winter Meetings. In it, he revealed that Falvey has received multiple calls about a potential Carlos Correa trade. Yep, it's that time of year. The Twins are already over their projected 2025 payroll of $130 million. They will need to shed somewhere in the vicinity of $10-15 million before the season begins. While they can trade players like Chris Paddack and Christian Vazquez, neither has excess value and will have to be something close to a pure salary dump. On the other hand, Correa is due to make $36 million in 2025. Dumping his salary will put the Twins well under budget and allow them to chase multiple, high-octane, $4 million role-players in free agency. Carlos Correa has a full no-trade clause. Twins fans can only hope he refuses to waive it.

Alex Speier of The Boston Globe wrote a throwaway line near the bottom of his recent piece about the Red Sox pursuing pitching help this offseason, saying the Twins have "shown little appetite for dealing righthander Pablo Lopez." In an offseason completely devoid of Twins rumors, this is good news. Speier is a highly-respected Red Sox beat reporter and is tuned into the Sox's pursuit of high-end starting pitching, which has been active with news since the completion of the 2024 season. And the Sox are engaged with almost everybody right now. They've met with every pitcher expected to receive a nine-figure deal. They were runner-up on Juan Soto. They're in on Alex Bregman. They kicked the tires on Willy Adames. They've been circling Garrett Crochet for weeks. Long story short, if anybody is keenly aware of who is available on the current market and where they're wasting their time, it's the Boston Red Sox.

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. Create your favorite player today! Junior Ortiz was a role player for the Twins in only two seasons: 1990 and 1991. He was also a bit of a lunatic. Read about his mid-season name change and weird antics in this great write-up from @Al from SoDak. Now that I'm thinking of it, I should probably make note of the swipe Scott Erickson took at Ortiz at our very own Winter Meltdown about ten years ago (probably the most famous Winter Meltdown in Twins Daily history). Yours truly added Big Papi to the Players Project a week ago. Once a promising slugger, the position-less David Ortiz bounced between the minors and Metrodome for several years before breaking out in 2002. Whatever happened to him, anyway? One of baseball's great mysteries. Billy Martin wasn't much of a ballplayer but was quite the manager. The problem is that he was also one of the great red-asses in baseball history and was fired by George Steinbrenner so many times both of them lost track of the number. Read about his role as both Twins player and manager in this fantastic retrospective on the man. Thanks again to all who contributed this week, please stop by the Players Project by hitting the button below! 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!

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.

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!

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.