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Why would we say things so controversial, yet so brave? We're just built different. Image courtesy of © Jonah Hinebaugh/The News-Press/USA Today Network-Florida / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images In the runup to Opening Day, we asked Twins Daily writers to come up with bold predictions for the 2025 season. These aren't hot takes, though. The assignment was clear: bring us something you earnestly believe. Be able to cogently defend it. As they always do, the team came through. Get ready to have your world rocked by the truth and temerity of these bits of soothsaying. @Peter Labuza: Derek Falvey will trade for Vladimir Guerrero Jr. at the trade deadline. @Lou Hennessy: The Twins will have three All-Star pitchers—and none of them will be Pablo López. @Eric Blonigen: Zebby Matthews supplants multiple healthy starters and forces his way into the playoff rotation. @Matthew Trueblood: Carlos Correa will lead the team in innings at third base, and he'll never go back to shortstop on a full-time basis. Short-form bold predictions from other authors: @Greggory Masterson: Ty France will lead the team in both plate appearances and hits. He's going to play every day, rather than being platooned at first, and he's played a ton for most of his career to date. @Sherry Cerny: Amid Lewis's latest spate of injuries, this will wind up being Austin Martin's breakout season. @Seth Stohs: For the first time since the 2019 Bomba Squad, the Twins will have two different hitters drive in 100 or more runs: Trevor Larnach, and Matt Wallner. @Cody Pirkl: Larnach will outhomer Wallner, with at least 35 dingers. @Steven Trefz: The Twins will stop pinch-hitting (before the 8th innings of games), and their offense will improve by 1.8 runs per game. We want to hear your bold predictions, too. Let us know who went too crazy, and whose takes were too mild—and enjoy Opening Day! View full article

Gather round, read it here first. The season will go like this, see. Image courtesy of © Jonathan Dyer-Imagn Images Ok, soothsayers we (probably) aren't, but 33 writers across the DiamondCentric family of sites tried their hands at predicting the season to come. Here's how it shook out. The Standings AL East There's no question that the Red Sox won the winter, among the teams vying for supremacy in the league's traditional powerhouse division. They traded for Garrett Crochet to raise the ceiling on their starting rotation, then signed Walker Buehler to fortify the back end of the same group. The coup, though, came when they won a multi-team bidding war for Alex Bregman. With Bregman and Rafael Devers as the anchors of the lineup, the team is more well-rounded than it's been in the past. They also have three of the best prospects in baseball. That said, this remains an intensely competitive group. The Sox won the plurality of votes from our writers, but every team except the Rays garnered at least one vote. Even after losing the Juan Soto sweepstakes, the Yankees had an active winter. Without Gerrit Cole, they're not the favorites, but New York remains dangerous. It's the Orioles, though, whom our group collectively views as the greatest threat to the Sox. Their young hitters will have to make up for an underwhelming pitching staff, but Baltimore gets Félix Bautista back as the anchor of their bullpen. AL Central We have a lot of Twins familiars in our sample, but in this case, there's no detectable bias in the predictions. Maybe that's the result of many Minnesotans being frustrated by the team's lack of high-visibility additions and uncertainty about the sale of the club, but it's also about the shifting power dynamic throughout the division. Everyone but the White Sox has a chance to win this division, and everyone but the White Sox got some support. The Tigers got nearly as much support as Minnesota, thanks (presumably) to defending AL Cy Young Award winner Tarik Skubal and reunited partner in crime Jack Flaherty. Their offense remains high-variance (to put it mildly, and perhaps too nicely), but Detroit proved they have lots of ways to beat you. The Royals, too, have a superstar at the center of their success, but a bit less depth and a bit more risk of regression than Detroit. Undersold here, perhaps, are the defending champion Guardians. AL West Somewhat stunningly, this is the one division where all five teams earned at least one vote in the survey. I wouldn't have guessed that even the Angels' mothers love them that much, by now, but someone who works here loves them enough to believe they'll shock the world and get back to October. If they do, DIsney should make Angels in the Outfield 2, and every deadbeat dad should be required to relinquish his parental rights to a golden-hearted stranger who really loves their kid. In fairness, though, if there's been any division in the history of baseball the 2025 Angels could actually win, it might be the 2025 AL West. The Astros aren't intentionally leaning into a rebuild, but they might end up in one by the All-Star break. The Rangers seek a rebound after a disappointing defense of their first-ever World Series title. Some major offseason investments have turned the West Sacramento Athletics into a more competent version of themselves, and they're a relocated version of themselves, but they're still very much themselves. The Mariners, meanwhile, did nothing this winter to supplement their roster, but it's a good roster; there's a reason they've won 353 games over the last four years. NL East Juan Soto defines the Mets' offseason, but it's Clay Holmes who might define them as a team and a project. He was fairly expensive, by any standard this side of New York, but he's also unproven in his new role. He's indispensable to the New York starting rotation, and they're a smart and well-equipped outfit. They might very well turn him into the frontline starter they envision, even though his success to date has come as a late-game reliever. The Mets are a very high-upside, very modern, slightly strange outfit. At least that last thing reassures us that some things never change. They're not the favorites in this group, though, at least by the reckoning of our pundits. Instead, the defending champion Phillies and the Atlanta club that backed into (and then fizzled out in) the playoffs last year are more or less the co-favorites. Both of those semi-dynastic teams are getting a little harder to hold together, but each currently has enough youth coming up to reinforce their veteran cores. NL Central Nationally, the Cubs are considered obvious favorites, but it's the Brewers who have had the run of the place in recent years. That could certainly change, but it's not guaranteed to be a change in favor of the Cubs. The Reds hired Terry Francona last fall to increase the viability of their own designs on the division, and will have the benefit of dynamic infielder Matt McLain back after he missed 2024 with various injuries. Even the Pirates have support in some corners, presumably because Paul Skenes is Paul Skenes. He won't be enough to get that anemic offense over the hump this year, but the division just gets more chaotic by the year. Our group still feels the Cubs are most likely to win, but the voting reflects the unpredictability of the whole network. NL West So many of the divisions yielded fascinating vote distributions. So many of the divisions offer at least some degree of fascination. This one is the exception. I can't even bring myself to show you this chart. It's just a circle. All 33 writers voted for the Dodgers, which is really the only rational prediction. The defending World Series champions added the defending NL Cy Young Award winner, re-signed their slugging corner outfielder and brought in another. They won the non-monetary bidding war for Roki Sasaki and the very monetary bidding war for both Tanner Scott and Kirby Yates. There's no other team in the league who can match them for pure talent. That doesn't mean they'll win it all, but expecting anyone else to win—at least in the division, over 162 games—would be foolish. AL Wild Card Berths With the Rangers, the Red Sox, and the Twins as our projected division winners on the junior circuit, the competition for the other three places in the American League playoff bracket still looks intense. The AL is such a muddle that only the barely-lovable Angels and the White Sox failed to secure at least one vote as a playoff hopeful. My biggest takeaways are: Collective confidence in the Rays is surprisingly low. After not getting any votes as division champions, they also only received five tallies as a Wild Card contender. They're always easy to underrate, but this also seems fair. It's hard to argue that they're better than any of the Orioles, Red Sox, and Yankees, and once you're fourth in your division, there's zero margin for error on the path to the postseason. Our writers see the Rangers either as a boom or as a bust. Unlike the Twins (7) and Red Sox (9), Texas only got four votes as a Wild Card team. If they don't win the division, our staff seems to think, they're out altogether. NL Wild Card Berths As a group, we're much more confident about who will take the remaining spots after the division winners in the NL. New York, Philadelphia and Arizona are the kinds of teams you're used to seeing win division crowns, and although none of them are technically likely to do so this year, we still view them as having a very strong chance to make the tournament. That's bad news for our writers and fans of the Cubs and Brewers, since the lane for either of them to make it seems narrow—but by the same token, that raises the stakes of the showdown between those two teams for the NL Central title. We largely view the league as follows: Locks for October: Dodgers, Atlanta, Mets, Phillies Very Likely, But Frozen Out from Certitude by Dodgers: Diamondbacks Others in the Mix: Cubs, Brewers, Padres, Reds If it's just one playoff spot to divide between those last four teams, it'll have to be the winner of the Central, which is bad news for the Padres. Pennant Winners We asked our writers to predict who will play in the World Series, and as you'd expect, it was a true free-for-all in the wide-open American League. In the NL, by contrast, chalk prevails—although several brave souls dared pick against the Dodgers. Since the legend doesn't quite show all the teams who got support, here's how voting broke down on the AL side: Red Sox/Orioles: 9 votes each Yankees/Rangers: 5 votes each Royals/Tigers: 2 votes each Twins: 1 vote This chart is absolutely screaming for the first Mariners pennant ever, or the Guardians to sneak through somehow. It's the most logical distribution, though, based on the makeup of this weird, wild circuit. Maybe it's best to just think of the AL Central collectively as a wedge the same size as those of the Yankees and Rangers. This captures the difference between the two league dynamics nicely, doesn't it? No chaos here. The Dodgers got 25 of the 33 votes; the Phillies took half of the remainder; and the Brewers, Mets, Diamondbacks and Atlanta claimed just one vote apiece. It's the Dodgers' world. We're all just living in it. Can the Dodgers Repeat? Next, naturally, we asked who will win the Series. Given that our voting shows a lack of profound faith in any particular American League team, it's probably not a surprise that writers also showed a strong belief that (should they get that far) the Dodgers will finish the job in the Fall Classic. Of the 25 voters who said they;ll win the pennant, 19 see Los Angeles taking home the piece of metal at the end of the season. If they don't, things get more interesting. Somehow, the Phillies got more support (five votes) as Series champs than as pennant winners (4). I'd say we'll have a stern talk with the writer who chose them to do the former without the latter, but who knows? Maybe they're projecting some kind of vacated championship situation. It's that, or Google Forms is a frightfully limited piece of software. You decide. Also receiving support as predicted champions: Red Sox - 3 Orioles - 2 Yankees, Blue Jays, Mets, Brewers - 1 As was true with the Twins, I'll remark that our heavy representation of Cubs knowers didn't seem to engender undue confidence in them. No one selected Chicago to win the pennant, let alone the Series. Awards We got a wide variety of answers on who will win each MVP award, including a whopping 12 different players in the American League. Only three players got three or more votes, though, and one lapped the field: Bobby Witt Jr.: 13 votes Aaron Judge: 4 Gunnar Henderson: 3 Julio Rodríguez, Mike Trout, Corey Seager: 2 Adley Rutschman, Alex Bregman, Brent Rooker, José Ramírez, Rafael Devers, Vladimir Guerrero Jr.: 1 In the NL, the field was more limited, because it was even more dominated by the favorite: Shohei Ohtani: 19 votes Juan Soto: 4 Bryce Harper, Kyle Tucker, William Contreras: 2 Elly De La Cruz, Francisco Lindor, Ketel Marte: 1 Since Ohtani is (ostensibly) going to pitch again this year, he really is hard to pick against. That Witt gained such a commanding upper hand (in our estimation) over Judge is a mild surprise, but then, Judge will turn 33 years old in April. It might be about time for age to lend Witt the edge. Another 12 different people received votes for each Cy Young Award, and again, there was a much more even mix of opinions in the AL than in the NL. American League Garrett Crochet: 7 votes Logan Gilbert, Tarik Skubal: 6 Cole Ragans: 4 Eight others: 1 each National League Paul Skenes: 14 votes Zack Wheeler: 5 Shota Imanaga, Corbin Burnes, Spencer Strider: 2 Seven others: 1 each Crochet's status as the favorite is in keeping with our group's general confidence about the Red Sox. That Skubal and Ragans got so much support is a good reminder of how tough (if only inconsistently so) the AL Central is. Catch either of those guys, Seth Lugo, Joe Ryan, Pablo López, Bailey Ober, or Tanner Bibee, and you're in for a long 0-4 day. Skenes's phenom status is untarnished, so far. If he can stay healthy, it's not at all unfair to expect that he'll contend for this award. However, he'd be the first player to actually win it in their first full season since TIm Lincecum in 2008. The Rookie of the Year votes were equally interesting and even more varied, but there are too many names to walk through all of them. Let it suffice to say that Jackson Jobe (5 votes), Roman Anthony and Jasson Dominguez (4 each) are the co-favorites in the AL. Roki Sasaki (13 votes) is a relatively prohibitive favorite in the NL, but Matt Shaw (6) and Dylan Crews (5) are both viable candidates, too. Sasaki seems to have some important hurdles to clear en route to becoming the frontline starter the Dodgers expect him to be, but his raw stuff is too good to ignore—not least because we've already seen how well it plays against high-level pros in Japan. Alex Cora (6 votes) has the narrowest possible lead over A.J. Hinch and the Mariners' Dan Wilson (5 apiece) in the voting for the AL Manager of the Year, while Craig Counsell (8 votes) beat out Terry Francona (5) and Torey Lovullo (4) more handily in the NL. No matter what the question, our group is more certain of the answers in the National League—not because we're any less familiar with the American, but because that league is so much more balanced and (therefore) unpredictable right now. When it comes to the Manager of the Year Award, specifically, though, the right answer might be the one one writer gave to both league's questions: "Who cares?" The season ahead will be full of extraordinary performances by talented young players. and with good races in tight divisions. These predictions won't all come true, but trying to guess what's coming is part of the fun of this game. The good news is, starting Thursday, the bigger, more constant fun of the game is on tap: Games. Glorious, everyday, non-hypothetical games. Happy Opening Day. View full article

If you enjoy the community of Twins fans that gather daily at Twins Daily, you might want to check out another community that gathers around the Twins – literally. This week, Delaware North, who provides concession, retail and other services at Twins games, will be having two job fairs at Target Field. If you’re interested in being inside the gameday experience – and getting paid, including a $200 sign-on bonus – you might want to check them out.The events are Tuesday April 17th and Thursday April 19th from 4:00 – 7:00, with doors opening at 3:30. You can enter the ballpark at the street level entrance on the south side of building where 7th St intersects with Twins Way. (Here is the Google Map view of the door to use.) They’re hiring a number of positions, and you can find the whole list right here. There are all kinds of perks, including free meals, paid training, a rewards and recognition program, and team retail store discounts. Plus, for a limited time, there is a $200 sign-on bonus valid for new hires until 4/30, that you can learn more about at this link. You also get to be part of the behind-the-scenes group that is responsible for the Twins game day experience. The job can be especially appealing because of its flexibility. It’s part time. It’s a great second income working in a great place. It is a limited commitment, perfect for students and retirees and the scheduling is flexible. What have you got to lose, other than a few hours of your time? You missed being able to go to Target Field this weekend. Instead, see it in a way that few people do, and you don’t have to miss any Twins games to attend. For more information: Learn about the job fair here.Check out SportServiceTargetField.comOr review all the jobs available and pre-apply here. (Just click through on the position in which you are interested.)You can also email TFHire@DelawareNorth.comOr call 612-659-3984You’re a baseball nut. You love the ballpark. We get it. So why not be part of the actual industry and get paid while you do it? Check out the information above and the job fair and decide for yourself. Click here to view the article

Download attachment: miguel-sano.jpg Update: We're LIVE! (cue sappy Eyes of an Angel music) Every year, dozens of Twins prospect toil away in relative obscurity asking for nothing more than a little recognition. You can make their dream come true. With "Adopt a Prospect" you pick one prospect, and you'll be the only one that can adopt that player. They belong to YOU. [PRBREAK][/PRBREAK] Best of all, it's not going to cost you 80 cents a day. Instead, on a weekly or bi-weekly basis, you check in on them, find out how they're doing, and proclaim their successes to the world on our Adopt a Prospect Forum. Imagine the joy on their face - and those of their parents - when they see that their hard work is recognized. You can make that dream come true. Just stop by the Adopt A Prospect Forum any time after 10:00 on Monday and sign up. Do it for the kids. Click here to view the article

Download attachment: gavel1.jpg Recently, we've had a lot of internal debate about how to handle some challenges in the forum, partly due to increased traffic. As a result, we have updated our Comment Policy. The changes address two areas and are bolded in the updated policy: 1. A more robust definition of trolling, along with some examples and 2. An explanation of why we don't want users to "police" threads themselves. Please stop by HERE and reacquaint yourself with the policy as well as view the new changes. You'll also find a link there where you can provide feedback and thoughts. Thanks as always for your input, participation and cooperation. [PRBREAK][/PRBREAK] Click here to view the article

Download attachment: draftstreet_300x250_MLB_1.jpg Our friends at DraftStreet are giving away more money to TwinsDaily members. $300 to be precise. It's free. It's legal. It's easy. Just draft a team for one night and get paid out as soon as the games end that night. DraftStreet.com is at the forefront of this new trend in the fantasy world and is promoting it by giving us a FREE one-day fantasy league with $300 in prizes. Just click here now to sign up.[PRBREAK][/PRBREAK] I signed up last time - and there's nothing nasty like asking for a credit card. Give them your age, state and pick a password. The game is also pretty easy. Our contest will be Pick 'em style drafting and runs on Friday nigth (the 17th). The way Pick 'Em leagues work is you have 8 tiers of players and each tier will have players to choose from. All you have to do is select 1 player from each tier. You even have your choice of several Twins (or Red Sox, who face the Twins) that night. It really is simple. If the weather changes, you can also adjust your roster up until the contest starts at 7:05 CT. At that time your rosters will lock - but then the Live Scoreboard will be available. The Twins Daily guys will be trying it too, so even if you're not one of our readers that wins their share of $300, you'll get some bragging rights. Unless, of course, you lose to us. In which case you will never hear the end of it. Last chance to try it. CLICK HERE to sign up for free and join the Twins Daily $300 Freeroll on DraftStreet.com. What have you got to lose? The only obstacles are internal. Click here to view the article

Download attachment: draftlogo.jpg Twins Daily will be starting draft player profiles tomorrow, since the Minnesota Twins have the #4 pick in the upcoming MLB draft. However, Thrylos has contributed his own lists - a total of 345 names to know for the upcoming draft: 129 college pitcher names everyone should know for the 2013 MLB Draft. 114 college position player names everyone should know for the 2013 MLB Draft.[PRBREAK][/PRBREAK] 101 high school player names everyone should know before the 2013 MLB draft. Click here to view the article

Download attachment: Thielbar_Caleb_Betsy_Orig.jpg Left-handed relief pitcher Caleb Thielbar, who played in Randolph, Minnesota and pitched for the St. Paul Saints as recently as 2011, will be called up by the Minnesota Twins today. To make room on the roster, the Twins are demoting fifth starter Pedro Hernandez to Rochester. That would open up a spot for Twins starting pitching prospect Kyle Gibson to make his big league debut on Friday. Thielbar was signed by the Twins out of the independent Northern League in 2011 and raced through High-A and AA up to AAA-Rochester in 2012. [PRBREAK][/PRBREAK]He began this year fairly slowly, but, most recently, has had eight straight outings without an earned run. His overall numbers include more strikeouts (34) than innings pitched (26.1) and good control (just 8 BB). (For more on Thielbar, check out his "Adopt-A-Prospect" page on Twins Daily.) The Twins travel to Atlanta this week, a National League city, where they will be unable to use a designated hitter. American League teams often like to add a bullpen arm for such trips. With Hernandez's demotion, the Twins are shorting themselves a fifth starter until Friday, when they next need one. If that's the case, Theilbar's promotion to the big leagues could be short-lived. For Friday's start, the assumption is that Kyle Gibson would be first in line to join the Twins rotation. Gibson, a first-round draft choice who missed most of 2012 coming back from Tommy John surgery, has thrown two complete game shutouts in his last three outings. Gibson is also on the 40-man roster. The only other AAA starter on the 40-man is Cole DeVries, who is also just coming back from an injury. He too pitched on Sunday, so his next turn in the rotation could also fall on Friday. For more photos like the one above, follow @BitzyBetsy on Twitter Click here to view the article

Once again, this year's Offseason Handbook will include a 30+ minute interview with Minnesota Twins General Manager Terry Ryan. It was conducted Tuesday, shortly after it was announced that Paul Molitor would be joining the Twins coaching staff. Ryan talked about the Molitor hire and very candidly about the decision to bring back Ron Gardenhire, how he evaluated the coach of a 90-loss team and how much it reflected on himself. Download attachment: Ryan_Terry_Dugout_US_720.jpg Parker: Switching gears: Ron Gardenhire had a very successful run, followed by three straight very bad years. How do you evaluate a manger’s performance that goes beyond the record? Ryan: If Ron wasn’t coming back, I probably shouldn’t be back. Now, Jim Pohlad and Dave St. Peter invited me back, so I brought Ron back with me. A lot of time you should evaluate a manager on the personnel he has. And unfortunately, we’ve fallen a tad short here as far as productivity. And I take total responsibility on that, so I shouldn’t pass the buck on the manager and the coaching staff. So, you evaluate him on discipline and respect and organizational skills and how the clubhouse sets up and are we prepared – all that stuff that you evaluate anybody’s job on. Same stuff. How does he handle the media? How does he handle a player that doesn’t want to get in line? How does he run spring training? How does he set up strategy? What does he do with his bullpen? Now I’ve never managed. And it’s easy to sit up there about 50 yards from the game and second-guess everything that goes on. I’ve got a lot of respect for him. And he’s an up-front guy. He’s accountable. I think players enjoy this organization. I don’t have any problem ever in luring a guy here if we’re close in the dollars and stuff like that. They never say “I wouldn’t want to play for him.” If I would’ve gone a different direction and somebody would have said “What are you looking for in a manager?”, I’d say “A lot of traits Ron Gardenhire has.” Parker: Speaking of your coaching staff, you just added Paul Molitor to it. What is he going to bring? Ryan: He’s a very good baseball mind Parker. He’s a very smart guy. He looks at the game differently than a lot of people. He and Tom Kelly watch games different than I do. I’ve always respected that, his baserunning intelligence, bunting and he’s going to be responsible too. He’s going to be in the dugout with Gardy and [Terry] Steinbach. He’s been with us for quite a long time. He knows our minor league system and stuff like that. He’s got a lot of knowledge that I think will benefit the organization. That’s why I put him on here. Parker: You guys got seven guys now in the dugout? You going to have to expand the dugout? Ryan: No. Almost all of the clubs – not almost all, but most of the clubs – have seven coaches now. Major League Baseball changed the rule early April, which was funny timing. They allowed teams to go. We didn’t. We chose not to and now we’re going to do it. We’ve got Paul in the system here, so it makes sense. He’s a good baseball man. He’s been our baserunning and infield instructor for the last – I don’t know – eight, nine years. There’s some continuity here with bringing [Miguel] Sano and [byron] Buxton and [Eddie] Rosario and those types of guys. They’re very familiar with him. I don’t think that’s all of a bad thing. Parker: Was that a big factor? Ryan: Not a big factor. It happens to be a convenient factor. No, his baseball IQ is the big factor. You can find a lot more in the Offseason Handbook from this far-ranging interview, and it will be shipped to you on the first day of the World Series if you order it today. TwinsDaily would like to thank Terry Ryan for taking 45 minutes for a very candid interview, as well as the Minnesota Twins for their recent efforts to reach out to and accommodate independent media and bloggers. Click here to view the article

Twitter TwinsDaily Seth Stohs Nick Nelson Parker Hageman John Bonnes TwinsCentric Twins Daily Facebook Page RSS Feeds You can find RSS feeds at the top of most pages in TwinsDaily, just look for this: Download attachment: rss_40b.png Click here to view the article

Download attachment: 101_6142.jpg Aaron and John talk about Miguel Sano's promotion to Double-A, first-round pick Kohl Stewart and the rest of the Twins' draft, John's incredible bus-dancing ability, Mase as a unit of time measurement, Kyle Gibson being trapped in Rochester, turning pro out of high school, Alex Wimmers' comeback, Jamey Carroll nearing the end, and heckling golfers from party decks. Here are: the podcaststhe rss feed if you want to subscribe and the podcast on iTunes. [PRBREAK][/PRBREAK] Or, just click on the link below: <iframe style="border: none" src="http://html5-player.libsyn.com/embed/episode/id/2352814/height/325/width/325/theme/legacy/direction/no/autoplay/no/autonext/no/thumbnail/yes/preload/no/no_addthis/no/" height="325" width="325" scrolling="no"></iframe> Click here to view the article

Download attachment: Arcia_Oswaldo.jpg According to Phil Miller, the Star-Tribune's Minnesota Twins beat reporter, Oswaldo Arcia will be called up on Monday to fill-in for Wilkin Ramirez, who will go on paternity leave. Twins Daily ranks Arcia as the #4 prospect in the Twins system, is only 21 years old and is currently hitting .414 with a .793(!) slugging percentage in Rochester. According to Miller, he will be the youngest player to debut for the Twins since Joe Mauer. How much playing time he'll have remains to be seen. Ramirez is a bench bat, but the Twins are unlikely to be calling up Arcia to sit on the bench. He has played mostly right field for the last two years, but Chris Parmelee is relatively young and healthy and also hits left-handed, like Arcia. The other corner outfield, Josh Willingham is a veteran who hit 35 home runs last year. It seems most likely Arcia will serve in one of those spots or as designated hitter, and the positions will rotate, giving Parmelee, Willingham, Joe Mauer, Ryan Doumit or Justin Morneau some time off. It's also unclear how long he will remain with the team. Ramirez should only be gone for a few games. For Arcia to remain much longer would require an injury, some serious roster re-shuffling or a change in position. Last year in AA-New Britain, Arcia did play 10 games in center field and played their full time in rookie league. His move to a corner spot supposedly had more to do with the organization's depth than his inability to play the position. So the Twins could try for a game in center field. If he can handle the position defensively, it might make things interesting for the Twins. Current center fielder Aaron Hicks has struggled from the left side of the plate in the past and has just two hits and two walks versus 17 strikeouts from that side this year. The Twins could platoon the two as they learn the ropes their rookie years. Click here to view the article