John Bonnes

John and Aaron are reunited to talk Minnesota Twins. But the podcast starts with the two catching up: John's trip, the death of Aaron's youth, John's Bar Mitzvah adventures, how Aaron picks up waitresses and how cricket teams could use a sabrmetric intervention. Then they move onto the Twins, catching up on the moves John missed, wondering how anyone can justify the Twins payroll and starting rotation, the disappointing Hall of Fame votes and the BBWAA's ongoing (an largely successful) struggle to make itself irrelevant. Here are: the podcasts the rss feed if you want to subscribe and the podcast on iTunes. [PRBREAK][/PRBREAK]

You only have two choices: will he be better or worse in 2013? 2012 Recap Given the clustermess that was 2011, most Minnesota Twins fans would have been happy just to see Joe Mauer on the field last year. They did - kinda. Mauer not only stayed healthy, but set a career high with 647 plate appearances and 147 games played. However, exactly half of his starts were at catcher (72 games), with the rest happening at designated hitter (42 games) and first base (30 games). I'll leave you to debate how that impacts his value. What is not debatable is the he returned to being elite offensively. He was in the AL batting race until the last weekend. His .416 on-base percentage led the league. He hit double-digit home runs (albeit barely) for the first time since his MVP campaign. And he posted an 861 OPS, tops for AL catchers. Why He'll Be Worse Don't look now, but like a certain blogger, our boy Joe turns 30 this year. That's even more ominous because he was also remarkably healthy last year. Furthermore, so was Ryan Doumit, which meant Mauer's body had the luxury of rarely being forced into multiple consecutive starts. Finally, there is the whole regression to the mean thing - how long can we expect him to stay at this level? Why He'll Be Better Believe it or not, that 861 OPS he posted is below his career 873 average. So was his .319 batting average. He'll also be a year further away from the injury problems that torpedoed 2011. Finally, both he and the Twins seem to have found (and accepted) a recipe for keeping him healthy by moving him around the diamond a little. So which is it? Click on this link to see our official thread AND take the survey. Then leave us a comment saying why. Get the Poll Creator Pro widget and many other great free widgets at Widgetbox! Not seeing a widget? (More info)

Aaron and John podcast about the Minnesota Twins signing Kevin Correia for $10 million, Jared Burton's contract extension, how the podcast will cope with John halfway across the world, why Aaron wants to get punched in the face every day, Doug Mientkiewicz's return to the organization, more changes in the team's newspaper coverage, Ben Revere's power plan, thinking Nick Punto wasn't so bad after all, and predictable rejection. Here are: the podcasts the rss feed if you want to subscribe and the podcast on iTunes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VAcYNo6YW70 Want to try your own Minnesota Twins (or movie or technology or whatever) podcast? Great. You can start with the video above. John walks Aaron through the same process we've used to record 70+ Gleeman and the Geek episodes, from the hardware through editing and to hosting. It's just a couple minutes long and at a high level, but hopefully it'll give you enough information to try it yourself. [PRBREAK][/PRBREAK] For reference, here are the basics: We record it all on an iPhone, using the FiRe app. On the video, I show how to record it on Aaron's Mac. You could also use any PC with a microphone plug in (and then you don't need the special "plug" I talk about in the video.) We use a special splitter that we plug into it that allows two mics to go into it and (most importantly) turns off the built-in iPhone mic. I bought that on the internet. We used two very basic radio shack mics. We used little foamy covers on them. Both of them also need an adaptor that allows them to plug into a 1/8th inch hole instead of 1/4 inch. There are an array of better mics you could use. You can also use the built-in mic, but that will pick up a lot of background noise and sound a little "cave-ish" in my opinion. You're best of experimenting. After we've recorded, I Download the audio from the iPhone onto my PC. Open it using Audacity (a free program). It works on PC or Mac. You can also use it to record the podcast if you're mic is plugged into your PC. Add the intro music and ender music. You can use Audacity to fade it in and out. I assume there are a ton of tutorials on how to do basic stuff in Audacity. I think it's the most widely used such program (probably because it's free.) Export it as an MP3 to my PC Upload it to libsyn.com, where we have an account that we pay for (though there are also free ones). They host the podcast (and our gleemanandthegeek.com page.) Libsyn gives us our statistics, too. I like libsyn.com, but there are plenty of other options and when people list them, I rarely hear libsyn mentioned. But they've worked great for us. Whoever you pick, once you get subscribers, you'll probably want to stick with them. In the past, we submitted the RSS of that Libsyn feed to iTunes, who approved it in a couple of days. (I don't know what their approval standards are, but I don't think they care if you are getting many downloads.) When someone downloads it (or subscribes) from them, it points to libsyn. There are lots of other ways to do this. If you're not doing it from bars, one of which I mention in the video. Also, if you and your friend need to talk remotely, one can also do it using Skype, though I'm not sure how exactly. There is also BlogTalkRadio.com, which Seth has used in the past. They allow you to essentially call into your show, and you can field calls, etc. (You can also upload files there if you want.) Hopefully, that's enough to get you started. If you have any questions, feel free to ask them below. I'll try to respond as best I can.