Jeff D.

After a long, harsh Minnesota winter, Spring Training offers and a glimpse of green grass and the hope of a successful Twins season. The Twins’ time in Florida is like any trip to the Sunshine State—some visitors leave with a golden tan, others depart with bad sunburn. As the team prepares to head north, here are my winners and losers from the Twins’ Spring Training. Let’s start with the guys who got burned.
Losers
1. Kenta Maeda
Spring Training stats should never weigh heavily in player evaluations, but when a veteran pitcher like Maeda returns from 19 months of Tommy John rehab, his performance will be scrutinized. Despite a solid outing today, Maeda’s spring has been mediocre. He has posted a 4.91 ERA in 14.2 innings, issuing 10 walks, striking out 14 batters, and showing inconsistent fastball velocity. These numbers aren’t awful, yet with Bailey Ober, Louie Varland, and Simeon Woods-Richardson all seeking a spot in the rotation, Maeda’s grasp of the fifth starter role grows looser. King Kenta will need to regain his pre-injury form quickly or risk being relegated to a diminished role.
2. Trevor Megill
Megill’s arm talent is undeniable. His fastball consistently touches 100 MPH and advanced metrics show that his breaking pitches are competent. Unfortunately, the on-field results never seem to match the underlying metrics (much like his bullpen mate Emilio Pagán). Megill entered the spring with a shot at a bullpen role with the Twins, then struggled to a 10.80 ERA and 2.10 WHIP before being demoted to Triple-A on March 19. Twins fans will probably see Megill again this season as he will be one of top relief options available in St. Paul, yet it’s fair to wonder how many second chances Megill will receive.
3. Gilberto Celestino
2023 is the most important season of Gilberto Celestino’s career. That is a strange statement considering Celestino played 122 games with the Twins last season and will likely spend most of 2023 in Triple-A. However, given Celestino’s limited minor league experience (only 75 career games above High-A), this season at Triple-A is critical for his maturation as a player. The thumb injury Celestino suffered early in camp required surgery, putting his development plan on hold while he is out until late April. Missing one month isn’t catastrophic, but finger injuries can linger. If Celestino rushes back or suffers a setback, his long-term development will pay the price.
Winners
1. Edouard Julien
Despite all the praise that top prospect Brooks Lee garnered in Fort Myers, Julien is undoubtedly the Twins prospect whose stock has risen the most this spring. Across seven games with the Twins and four games with Team Canada in the World Baseball Classic, Julien is hitting .394 (13 for 33) with five homeruns and six walks. His advanced approach at the plate looks MLB-ready, mixing patience with power. The Twins’ infield depth and questions about Julien’s defensive home created a roster crunch that resulted in Julien being optioned to Triple-A on March 14, but Julien’s performance this spring shows that he is ready to contribute at Target Field.
2. Kyle Farmer
Farmer’s solid Spring Training—an OPS of 1.052 and four homeruns—has flown under the radar as health questions about Alex Kiriloff, Jorge Polanco, and Jose Miranda have dominated Twins infield storylines. The 31-year-old Farmer is a six-year veteran, so a good month of March doesn’t change his projected upside, but he is a “winner” here because he will leave Fort Myers poised to parlay his hot bat into important at-bats for the Twins. His infield counterparts Polanco and Kirilloff are starting the season on the Injured List, meaning Farmer will play a critical role in the Twins’ early-season success. If Farmer keeps hitting, the Twins offense will get a massive boost and Farmer could become a valuable trade chip to fill an everyday role on another team.
3. The Twins Front Office
There are plenty of valid questions about the Twins’ offseason moves. Will Joey Gallo rebound from his terrible 2022 season? And did the team need another left-handed hitting outfielder? How will the offense replace the bat-to-ball skills of Luis Arraez? etc. Regardless, one thing is clear this spring: this Twins roster is deep. Yes, Jorge Polanco and Alex Kiriloff are starting the season on the IL, however the Twins have starting-caliber replacements in Kyle Farmer, Donovan Solano, and Nick Gordon. Typically, exclusively DH-ing a Platinum Glove winner like Byron Buxton would wreck a team’s defense, but the Twins adding recent Gold Glove winners in Michael A. Taylor and Joey Gallo minimizes the defensive decline. And Bailey Ober, probably the odd man out of the Twins’ early-season starting rotation, has yet to allow a run this spring and continues to look like a fourth starter in a competent MLB rotation. Not to mention the prospect reinforcements waiting at Triple-A. All said, Spring Training has shown that this front office deserves credit for building the deepest Twins roster in recent memory.
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Thanks for reading! I'm interested to hear your thoughts and your winners/losers of the spring.

Some time after the All-Star break, I was pondering how the Twins could fit all of their quality major league position players on the active roster. A few weeks later, baseball immortals Mark Contreras and Caleb Hamilton were on the big club. Fast forward to a crucial five-game series in Cleveland and the Twins were starting Bailey Ober, Josh Winder (both coming off injuries) and having Louie Varland make his second major league start and Jake Cave and Gilberto Celestino were considered regular starters. The season unraveled quickly and now the Twins look likely to finish below .500 and in third place in the weak AL Central. How did it happen? I have several answers--there have been enduring issues all year exacerbated by a rash of injuries, most of them season-ending. 
Offense underperformed almost all year. Going back to the start of the season, after a rocky first couple of weeks, the Twins offense was sufficient to win a lot of game despite never scoring runs commensurate with their underlying numbers. Right now, the Twins are 18th in runs scored despite being 11th in OPS and 12th in homers. They have often been futile with runners in scoring position and they have been a terrible running bases as a team. I have seen many posters state that the team is terrible at fundamentals. I would submit that all teams draw their fans ire for not advancing runners and "beating the shift". Part of these problems is the way the Twins are built. They lack team speed and their is a lot of swing and miss in their collective game. With the changes made to limit homers, the Twins (IMHO) have suffered disproportionately. 
Pitching regressed after overperforming early. The Twins seized first place in late April and held on to the top spot for most of the season bolstered by a pitching staff that performed better than expected. Despite seemingly having at least one and usually two or more guys in their rotation that were locks to go no more than five innings, they won a lot of games and obvious weaknesses at the back end of the bullpen were not evident in the win-loss record. Things unraveled here in slow motion. The failure of anyone but Jhoan Duran in late innings cost games (particularly to Cleveland). The extra innings assigned to the bullpen showed the lack of depth that so many short starts demanded. Back to statistics--the Twins currently are right in the middle of total runs allowed stats. Underlying stats (WHIP, Opponents BA and OPS and BB and K numbers) come out slightly below the mean. I think team defense has been slightly better than average, which has helped keep runs allowed acceptable. 
Injuries (oh my!). The Twins lead the AL in total man-games on the Injured List. They went into the season with one player slated to miss time, so it isn't like there were a bunch of players already on the IL. Some of the injuries could be expected and put on the front office. The Twins obtained several pitchers with injury issues and this season have come up snake eyes with most of them missing significant time. 
There have been plenty of position player injuries as well. Regular players Ryan Jeffers, Miguel Sano, Jorge Polanco, Alex Kirilloff, Trevor Larnach, Byron Buxton and Max Kepler have all missed significant portions of the season. Carlos Correa also missed over 20 games with COVID and a badly bruised finger. We all know Buxton hasn't made it through a season without spending time on the IL. The other guys would figure to be healthier than they have this year. 
Dick Bremer characterized the Twins as developing a "slow leak" from June through August. The leak has been accelerated in the month of September and injuries are a factor in that. That said, even without the injuries, the Twins' flaws probably were too big to win the division. The club exhausted their depth and seeing Jermaine Palacios, Mark Contreras, Caleb Hamilton, Sandy Leon, Aaron Sanchez, and (second half) Devin Smeltzer "perform" in key situations just shows that the Twins have scraped bottom.
I think some roster turnover is necessary. Among the position players, they need more guys who make contact, are better base runners and who have more speed. They need more left-right balance in corner outfielders. The front office needs to adjust their focus and bring in more durable players. It should be noted that the position players they brought in (Urshela, Sanchez and Correa) have been basically healthy. The problem has been with the pitchers. 
I think there is too much talent to tear it down. If the club fails to compete next year, it is probably time to try something else, starting at the top. It won't be easy to win the Central next year, but there needs to be significant progress and better health.
 
 
 

You're the manager, you've run about 20 reports off your computer, had three statisticians, a data geek and a borrowed nun from St. Francis explain esoteric stuff that went right over your head and had you daydreaming like Goldie Hawn and you've now retreated to your manager's office and are debating about throwing darts at the player's roster, wondering who you're going to start at 1st Base. But Fast Frankie, the team's towel guy, has stuck a purple post-it note on your desk that you can't avoid:
Arraez   .346   .420   .499   .869
Miranda  .260   .299   .463   .762
Kirilloff   .269   .319   .407   .726
Sano   .093   . 231   .148   .379
And you wonder why Fast Frankie wants you to know the players' locker combinations.
Who would you start at 1st?

This will be short. Hopefully it will be read by at least one person.
When I was a kid, my buddy and I had an uncountable number of wiffle ball games in his family yard. This greatly upset his mother as there were left and right-handed batters spots where we place home plate that would no longer grow grass. Lawn chairs would be set up for the infielders. Hitting a ball to them would be an out except if really laced and it bounced away as in real ball and would be designated an error or hit. Natural growth would provide boundaries, garages, power lines would provide walls or designate if it was a double or homer and a few other designated spots would be ground rules. We chose lineups from the Big Red Machine or the Boston Red Sox, or Twins. Whatever team we chose, we had to bat in the same left or right or switch as the real player. We had hours of fun and lively debates and did this for years. All for free. Competition was fierce.
I've been a Twins fan from a little tyke when they moved here. I have and will always love the team. Still get that joy when they win and suffer in the losses.
Watching the Twins in the last 3-4 years has been a perseverance exercise. We have one approach to games. Make good bat to ball contact. I think 2019 the Year of the Bomba set in place a bad habit. It was fun during this, but we lost in our small playoff appearance. We continue to swing either early and fail to take looks at pitches or really have great at bats in some games. What seems to be missing is risk. What seems to be missing is small ball. What seems to be missing is imagination or creativity in finding ways to win. We just seem to endure exactly the same game approach every game.
The above is only my opinion. No analytics. No last 10 game stuff. Just a fan reacting to years of watching this lovely game called baseball.
We are slipping right now and hopefully can rebound and put distance between the Guardians and White Sox. Without some flexibility and alterations in our approach we are not even going to make the playoffs. Even though we just won over the Rockies 6-0 with great pitching. Cleveland waits for us.
I believe that my buddy and I had more flexibility in our wiffle ball games than our Twins show today. We don't have Yogi, Dick Williams, Earl Weaver or Sparky Anderson in our dugout. They are long gone, and their style of leadership is as well.
Twins Geezer....out!
 
 

This will be short. Hopefully it will be read by at least one person.
When I was a kid, my buddy and I had an uncountable number of wiffle ball games in his family yard. This greatly upset his mother as there were left and right-handed batters spots where we place home plate that would no longer grow grass. Lawn chairs would be set up for the infielders. Hitting a ball to them would be an out except if really laced and it bounced away as in real ball and would be designated an error or hit. Natural growth would provide boundaries, garages, power lines would provide walls or designate if it was a double or homer and a few other designated spots would be ground rules. We chose lineups from the Big Red Machine or the Boston Red Sox, or Twins. Whatever team we chose, we had to bat in the same left or right or switch as the real player. We had hours of fun and lively debates and did this for years. All for free. Competition was fierce.
I've been a Twins fan from a little tyke when they moved here. I have and will always love the team. Still get that joy when they win and suffer in the losses.
Watching the Twins in the last 3-4 years has been a perseverance exercise. We have one approach to games. Make good bat to ball contact. I think 2019 the Year of the Bomba set in place a bad habit. It was fun during this, but we lost in our small playoff appearance. We continue to swing either early and fail to take looks at pitches or really have great at bats in some games. What seems to be missing is risk. What seems to be missing is small ball. What seems to be missing is imagination or creativity in finding ways to win. We just seem to endure exactly the same game approach every game.
The above is only my opinion. No analytics. No last 10 game stuff. Just a fan reacting to years of watching this lovely game called baseball.
We are slipping right now and hopefully can rebound and put distance between the Guardians and White Sox. Without some flexibility and alterations in our approach we are not even going to make the playoffs. Even though we just won over the Rockies 6-0 with great pitching. Cleveland waits for us.
I believe that my buddy and I had more flexibility in our wiffle ball games than our Twins show today. We don't have Yogi, Dick Williams, Earl Weaver or Sparky Anderson in our dugout. They are long gone, and their style of leadership is as well.
Twins Geezer....out!
 
 

The Guardians took two out of three from the Twins, sending us down to second place. On Wednesday the 22nd, the Twins put up ten runs and still lost. Now it’s time for a three-game series against the Rockies and then a five-game series against the Guardians.
Part of me wants these games to be as feisty and spirited as a parking-lot fist fight.
We need a lot of runs to win games. Everyone needs to contribute, and the elite need to be at their best. Every at bat is personal now. Defensively, it’s time to pitch with a chip on our shoulders. We need to bring our best stuff every time we get on that mound. Cue “Street Fighting Man” by the Rolling Stones. Prep “What’s My Name” by DMX. We’re going to war on the base paths.
That’s what my gut tells me, at least. I want to see the Twins overpower, outmuscle, and subdue their opponents. I haven’t played baseball since elementary school and here I am, fired up about how this team needs an attitude. They’re out there every day, putting in the work with practice, training, and coaches. I think the Twins probably realize these games are important, and I know they’re trying pretty dang hard to get the job done. They probably don’t need a scruffy-haired guy from Iowa telling them to be aggressive, yet here I am. B-E A-G-G R-E-S-S-I-V-E.
What I’m really saying is I think the Twins are better than this. I think they should consider anything less than a divisional championship a wasted opportunity. Is it helpful for the team to look at it this way? Or, like Ted Lasso said, do they need to be goldfish with short memories and stay focused in the present?
Really, I’m a hypocrite. When I did play sports, I never got motivated when the coaches started yelling about “leaving it all on the field” and “playing every down.” I felt like I was already doing that. Of COURSE I was already trying to do that. I didn’t get fired up – I panicked. I played sloppier because I was trying to give more than I had. I didn’t ask questions because I felt like I didn’t need help, I needed to work harder. If I didn’t understand things it didn’t matter. I just needed to do it harder. I quit playing sports in high school and didn’t enjoy them until much later, when I wasn’t in a constant state of fear and panic.
So why hasn’t that kind of unhelpful thinking been worked out of me? Years of sports failure programmed me to buy into a cliché that didn’t work for me at all. Maybe it does for other people, but not for me. I know I don’t want to raise my daughter to push herself past the limit, risking injury and destroying joy. Maybe the first step is letting these Twins play these games as they see fit. Me wanting them to be ready to brawl doesn’t affect the team very much, but it does affect me. It’s time to challenge our motivations.

This will be short. Hopefully it will be read by at least one person.
When I was a kid, my buddy and I had an uncountable number of wiffle ball games in his family yard. This greatly upset his mother as there were left and right-handed batters spots where we place home plate that would no longer grow grass. Lawn chairs would be set up for the infielders. Hitting a ball to them would be an out except if really laced and it bounced away as in real ball and would be designated an error or hit. Natural growth would provide boundaries, garages, power lines would provide walls or designate if it was a double or homer and a few other designated spots would be ground rules. We chose lineups from the Big Red Machine or the Boston Red Sox, or Twins. Whatever team we chose, we had to bat in the same left or right or switch as the real player. We had hours of fun and lively debates and did this for years. All for free. Competition was fierce.
I've been a Twins fan from a little tyke when they moved here. I have and will always love the team. Still get that joy when they win and suffer in the losses.
Watching the Twins in the last 3-4 years has been a perseverance exercise. We have one approach to games. Make good bat to ball contact. I think 2019 the Year of the Bomba set in place a bad habit. It was fun during this, but we lost in our small playoff appearance. We continue to swing either early and fail to take looks at pitches or really have great at bats in some games. What seems to be missing is risk. What seems to be missing is small ball. What seems to be missing is imagination or creativity in finding ways to win. We just seem to endure exactly the same game approach every game.
The above is only my opinion. No analytics. No last 10 game stuff. Just a fan reacting to years of watching this lovely game called baseball.
We are slipping right now and hopefully can rebound and put distance between the Guardians and White Sox. Without some flexibility and alterations in our approach we are not even going to make the playoffs. Even though we just won over the Rockies 6-0 with great pitching. Cleveland waits for us.
I believe that my buddy and I had more flexibility in our wiffle ball games than our Twins show today. We don't have Yogi, Dick Williams, Earl Weaver or Sparky Anderson in our dugout. They are long gone, and their style of leadership is as well.
Twins Geezer....out!
 
 

This will be short. Hopefully it will be read by at least one person.
When I was a kid, my buddy and I had an uncountable number of wiffle ball games in his family yard. This greatly upset his mother as there were left and right-handed batters spots where we place home plate that would no longer grow grass. Lawn chairs would be set up for the infielders. Hitting a ball to them would be an out except if really laced and it bounced away as in real ball and would be designated an error or hit. Natural growth would provide boundaries, garages, power lines would provide walls or designate if it was a double or homer and a few other designated spots would be ground rules. We chose lineups from the Big Red Machine or the Boston Red Sox, or Twins. Whatever team we chose, we had to bat in the same left or right or switch as the real player. We had hours of fun and lively debates and did this for years. All for free. Competition was fierce.
I've been a Twins fan from a little tyke when they moved here. I have and will always love the team. Still get that joy when they win and suffer in the losses.
Watching the Twins in the last 3-4 years has been a perseverance exercise. We have one approach to games. Make good bat to ball contact. I think 2019 the Year of the Bomba set in place a bad habit. It was fun during this, but we lost in our small playoff appearance. We continue to swing either early and fail to take looks at pitches or really have great at bats in some games. What seems to be missing is risk. What seems to be missing is small ball. What seems to be missing is imagination or creativity in finding ways to win. We just seem to endure exactly the same game approach every game.
The above is only my opinion. No analytics. No last 10 game stuff. Just a fan reacting to years of watching this lovely game called baseball.
We are slipping right now and hopefully can rebound and put distance between the Guardians and White Sox. Without some flexibility and alterations in our approach we are not even going to make the playoffs. Even though we just won over the Rockies 6-0 with great pitching. Cleveland waits for us.
I believe that my buddy and I had more flexibility in our wiffle ball games than our Twins show today. We don't have Yogi, Dick Williams, Earl Weaver or Sparky Anderson in our dugout. They are long gone, and their style of leadership is as well.
Twins Geezer....out!
 
 

Well it isn't this! As much as I love the Twins (and bundt cake too), it drives me to frustration when small ball could be used but isn't. With a number of terrible at bats in the losing effort against the dreaded Cleveland team, we proved we can swing and miss, but alas, cannot bunt.
I would agree that when you have your meat of the lineup coming to bat with men on first and second perhaps a bunt may be the last approach to be used. My issue with that would be when we have attempted the Twins way, which seems to be trying the launching pad approach and have very little outcome from it, I continue to see zero variation from our dugout, juice spitting, fearless leader.
Ultimately it is up to the players to earn their pay and unleash their skill sets. However, our leader has made it pretty publicly known that he has a game plan and will generally stick with it.
Ozzie G. called us the "piranha's" and that was worn as a badge of honor all the way into October failure. But it was our badge of honor and a wonderful compliment. I am hearing all the stuff about Professor Baldelli being the fourth winningest manager in baseball. Well Twins fans who may read this, how does this feel? We had a pretty good lead a couple week back, and now we do not. 
I'll be cheering the rest of the way and eat my cake and enjoy it, 
Go Twins!
The Geezer

Twins Geezer here!
Another one of those perplexing games that begins with the Twins tearing the cover off the ball, scoring very little, leaving men stranded, bats going silent and ending with a big L.
Not sure about much, but the Twins continue to have a couple of very bad habits. The first, I have brought up before. About every 7 games, we score no runs and look like we have been hit by a Voodoo curse. The second is mentioned in my opening sentence. This one is very concerning. This is going to keep us from winning the division. As much as I hate to say it and I will cheer for them the rest of the season, the Twins will not win the Central.
This team has the inability to change game strategies during the game. If you watched Arizona last night, they began with power, then added small ball with great effectiveness and used speed to crush the Twins. A couple of different team characteristics on display with skill in the game.
What did the Twins do? Hit the ball very hard, had their starter struggling with very little (seemingly so) engagement by our manager until he looked like he had been pummeled by Mike Tyson in his prime, and left runners in scoring positions with consistency. This was an ugly game by our fearless ball club.
These games happen with some regularity, and I believe, IMHO, that this is going to continue because our dugout leader has this "set game plan" locked in his cranium under that Twins cap perched on his head, while he stares with zero expression while spitting on the field. Another loss of a type we seem to have a habit with. It will keep us from the division title as much as I hate to say it.
Go Twins,
The Geezer