John Bonnes

Twins Daily is very excited to announce that you will now find our minor league coverage on Pioneer Press' website TwinCities.com. Twins Daily wants to reach as many Twins fans as possible, so we've always shared our content. You may have discovered us through one of our existing agreements with StarTribune.com, KFAN.com and ESPN.com. The Star-Tribune (and particularly Howard Sinker) was one of TwinsCentric’s earliest supporters. KFAN.com posts a story from Twins Daily every week, broadcasts Gleeman and the Geek, and will be broadcasting MLB draft coverage at 9:00 this Thursday night with Seth, Jeremy and myself hosting. And ESPN.com designated Twins Daily as a member of its Sweet Spot Network before Twins Daily even existed. But our agreement with the Pioneer Press will be our most extensive partnership yet. First, it’s going to bring more attention to our independent writers, which hasn’t been an easy option in the past. You’ll see all our minor league stories, including those contributed by other bloggers, on the left side of the TwinCities.com's main Twins page. Second, this is just the start -– there should be even more integration coming. Finally, everyone we’ve met from the Pioneer Press is an enthusiastic partner. They have been very supportive and complimentary of Twins Daily’s content and community, and aggressive in getting this implemented in a hurry. We would like to thank Twins Beat Reporter Mike Berardino, Vice-President of Marketing Lori Swanson and Sports Editor Tad Reeve for their optimism and working hard to make this happen. We’re very excited to see where working together takes us. We will to continue to grow new partnerships and expand existing partnerships with media that are interested in our independent and in-depth Minnesota Twins coverage. We don’t (and will never) believe in charging for our content –- baseball is our religion, and evangelists don’t charge admission. The Pioneer Press gets that, and we’re grateful that they’re willing to share our obsessive minor-league coverage with their audience. We hope we all enjoy the benefits it brings.

Aaron and John talk about Phil Hughes' impressive first two months, beating the new-look Yankees, why Jason Kubel is stealing at-bats from Josmil Pinto, Oswaldo Arcia and Josh Willingham returning, Aaron Hicks giving up switch-hitting, Jon Jay trade rumors, technical difficulties, Joe Mauer's struggles, and Ben Revere's shocking home run. You can listen by downloading us from iTunes, Stitcher or find it at GleemanAndTheGeek.com. Twins beat the Yankees on Sunday, so you win today. Get 50% of a Large or XL pizza at PapaJohns.com when using the promo code 'TWINSWIN'.

Aaron and John talk about Oswaldo Arcia and Josh Willingham being ready to return, what the Twins will do with the No. 5 overall pick in the draft, how much time Aaron Hicks has left to show something, Alex Meyer and Trevor May doing well at Triple-A, biting someone's ear off, Glen Perkins' underrated excellence, Pat Neshek bouncing back in St. Louis, back-to-back Tinder dates, not having good stories any longer, and scouting college and high school players with special guest Jeremy Nygaard. You can listen by downloading us from iTunes, Stitcher or find it at GleemanAndTheGeek.com.

Sponsored by Ticket King We're off by one crummy day. Such is the fickle nature of the baseball gods. Memorial Day has always been a special day for baseball in Minnesota, even before the Twins arrived. When the Minneapolis Millers and St. Paul Saints were the dueling minor league clubs in town, they would schedule home-and-away doubleheaders on Memorial Day, July 4th and Labor Day. Some of those games (and the ensuing brawls) were legendary. Monday's Memorial Day game at Target Field had a chance for that kind of excitement. The kids are off of school, the weekend chores are already done (right?) and they're even giving away 10,000 Kingsford grill tongs at the game. All that was needed was that premier pitching matchup.... And it's happening one day late. Tuesday night the Twins will send out developing ace Phil Hughes to face the Rangers perennial ace Yu Darvish. That, I'm afraid, is this series' hot ticket. If, like me, you're taking the family to see the Memorial Day game today, you might want to opt for bleacher seats in right field for a home run ball; Kevin Correia is squaring off against Rangers pitcher Nick Tepesch. Overview The truth is, you almost can't go wrong this week. Summer is truly here, and other than some chances of a thunderstorm, it looks gorgeous. It also helps that the word most used to describe the Rangers lately is "reeling." Or maybe"decimated." Both describe the recent news that slugging first baseman Prince Fielder will likely miss the rest of the year due to surgery on a herniated disk in his neck. It might not surprise you that the 275-pound Fielder has some spinal issues, and that might explain the significant dip in his stats over the last year-and-a-half. But Fielder has also been the model of durability, playing 547 consecutive games before being sidelined last week. It's rare that one would describe Fielder as a "tip" instead of an "iceberg," but in this case, it's true. His injury just adds to the plethora of injuries the Rangers have been facing. Three starting pitchers are hurt. Most of the infield has been out at one time or another. Four relievers are out, three of them possibly for the rest of the year. It's not hard to see the impact. Texas enters the series ranked 11th in runs scored in the American League and 11th in runs against. Their 25-25 record is still respectable, but it hides that they started the season 14-8, and have been sliding ever since. Even the GM, John Daniels, sounds a little defeated when he says quotes like "I haven’t ever been a part of anything like this — never across the board to this degree. You try to plan all offseason to give yourself depth. ... But there is a limit to how many premium innings you can replace, and how many premium offensive players you can replace. That sort of quote just breeds overconfidence, but the Rangers still stole a series from the Tigers this weekend, scoring a dozen runs in each of the last two games. The Twins have an opportunity to kick the Rangers while they’re down, and before they head to Yankee Stadium for a weekend series. Best take advantage of it. Yu vs Hughes At the very least, Rangers fans can look forward to every fifth day. Like Felix Hernandez last weekend, the Twins will get to face one of the very best pitchers in the American League on Tuesday night. Darvish sits near the top of the AL leaderboard in nearly every pitching category: ERA (2.35 - 3rd), strikeouts (73- 7th), WHIP (1.11 - 7th) and even WAR (2.4 - 2nd). Whether you like it or not,the Twins are getting to face a lot of very good pitchers this year. Let's not forget about Max Scherzer, Justin Verlander, James Shields, Chris Sale and Justin Masterson, all in the AL Central. But even among the best, Darvish can lay claim to being a King of the Hill. An interesting question is whether we're watching a Twins pitcher grow into that elite class. Phil Hughes has been demonstrating the same promise he showed as a minor league prospect now that he has escaped from New York. Hughes started slowly; in his first three starts he only went five innings in each and gave up four earned runs in each. But over his last six starts, check out his stats next to Darvish’s last six: [TABLE=width: 250] [/TD][TD]Hughes Darvish ERA 1.60 3.20 IP 39.1 39.1 WHIP 1.017 1.246 W-L 5-0 3-2 K 30 48 BB 1 15 HR 2 3 [/TABLE] Clearly, this is selective sampling. And Hughes may want to continue this trend for more than a month before we start comparing him to the best in the game. But there is hope that Tuesday night’s game could be close to a competitive affair. That’s not something that we could say too often over the last three years when a pitcher like Darvish came to town. As one might expect, tickets are getting scarce for Target Field now that the weather is heating up. Now is when having a local ticket broker on your side makes a lot of sense. Monday's game still has good lower level seats available, but the cheap seats are gone. Believe it or not, the Darvish/Hughes duel still has some $6 tickets available. Wednesday night's prices look inviting, too. Finally, Thursday's Twins day game tickets are so good you can't afford TO go to work. All are an even better deal if you use the promo code DAILYDOUBLE, which will get you 10% off and supports Twins Daily. Whatever your needs, your local ticket supplier,Ticket King, can help.

Sponsored by Switch My Trip Sometimes it's an overlooked performance that is a game's BigSwitch. Last Tuesday night's back-and-forth win over the Padres contained splashier performances, but believe it or not, the player with the biggest impact wasTwins reliever Jared Burton. That's why he's this week's Big Switch. But since we're still above the preview line, let's talk about the splashy. The headlines and morning radio focused on Kurt Suzuki's inside-the-park home run. In case you missed it, Suzuki hit a home ruin n the eighth inning that barely cleared the wall in left field but bounced back into play. The outfielder thought it was a home run (and you can see him signaling so) but it wasn't ruled that way initially. To Suzuki's credit, he trucked around the bases at full speed making the point moot and scored anyway. Because he did, the play did not need to be reviewed, so Suzuki was credited with an inside-the-park home run instead of a standard home run, making it the first inside-the-park home run for the Twins since 2007 when it was done by another catcher: Joe Mauer. The Twins are looking to switch things around this year. Every week, Metro Transit recognizes a Twins player who successfully switched the outcome of a game for the better.But that run was ultimately not the deciding run. It was important. We've talked about FanGraphs.com's excellent game graphs that track a team's probability of winning a game based on thousands of game logs before. That hit by Suzuki halved the Padres chances of coming back, which is fitting because it doubled the Twins lead from 4-3 to 5-3. But had Burton not been around the half-inning before, there might not have been a lead to double, and FanGraph's charts show that, too. The Twins had grabbed a 4-3 lead the inning before on a sacrifice fly by Josmil Pinto. Brian Duensing started the bottom of the seventh inning, replacing Twins starting pitcher Kevin Correia, who was in line for the "Win." But Duensing immediately put that win - both for the team and Correia - in jeopardy. Jedd Gyorko led off with a single, Duensing walked Yonder Alonso, and the Padres simply had to adopt a "get-em-over, get-em-in" strategy to tie up the game. The FanGraph's play log shows the game slipping away, too. In fact, when Duensing was pulled for Burton, despite trailing, the Padres were statistically favored with a 52% chance to win. Or, more precisely, a home team with runners on first base and second base and no outs, trailing by one run in the bottom of the seventh, have historically won the game 52% of the time. But the tying run didn't score and, in fact, didn't even advance. After retiring Cameron Maybin on a fly ball to center field, Nick Hundley on a pop foul to third and Chris Denorfia on a ground ball, the Padres' chances to win that game were down to 22%. In getting those three crucial outs, Burton increased his team's chances of winning that game by an astounding 30%. No player on either team affected the game more. It was also another step on the road back towards dominance for Burton.He struggled a bit in spring training and his first two weeks of the regular season were a nightmare. After a four-run outing against Toronto, his ERA stood at 14.40. He had given up runs in three of his five appearances and was demoted out of the eighth inning setup role to work lower leverage innings. But the seventh inning on Tuesday was not a lower leverage inning and Burton responded. He mostly has responded ever since the early season issues. Over his last 15 outings he has posted a 1.88 ERA, given up just 10 hits and has struck out 10 batters. But first impressions last. Twins fans may be overlooking that Burton appears to have switched the direction of his season. Just as he switched the direction of Tuesday night's win. Speaking things we might have overlooked, why drive yourself home after a Twins game when it means fighting traffic and paying for parking? Say 'Switch My Trip' for the next Twins game. Metro Transit can provide you and your whole family a train ride to the game. Planning your trip is as easy as clicking on this link.