Matthew Trueblood

Image courtesy of © Matt Marton-Imagn Images No player in the Twins clubhouse looks less like a big-leaguer when they walk through the door, but Danny Coulombe carries himself so much like one that any doubt gets pulverized quickly. Certainly, whenever he took the mound, he left no doubt—across multiple tenures with the Twins. Now, he'll bring that swagger and that brilliance—with a hefty dose of matchup value to boot—to a playoff hunt. The Texas Rangers looked like sellers for much of this month, but the muddle of the American League and a well-timed charge had them hunting for ways to get a bit better without spending any more money. Jeff Passan was first with this news. Coulombe, 35, ends his second stint with the Twins having somehow managed to pitch even better than he did in his first. He's made 40 appearances on the year, totaling 31 innings. Using the loophole in the three-batter minimum rule whereby a pitcher isn’t required to return to the mound the next inning if they finish the one they enter, Rocco Baldelli frequently brought in Coulombe to face a dangerous left-handed batter in a middle-innings jam. Coulombe had eight appearances in which he faced just one batter, and three more in which he faced just two. Across those 11 outings, he inherited 15 runners and didn’t allow any to score. In fact, he’s only allowed four of 24 inherited runners to score all year. With a very high arm slot from his very short stature, the southpaw gives opponents an exceptionally difficult look. That elevated his trade value, almost as much as his superb performance and his affordable contract. He signed a one-year deal worth $3 million in early February, which will end up being roughly $3.2 million as he hits incentives based on games pitched. That leaves only about $1 million to be paid for the balance of the year. Coulombe has not allowed a home run this year. Left-handed relievers are always in demand at the deadline, and Coulombe is no exception. The Rangers, much in need of bullpen help and with no extra money to spend as they flirt with the competitive-balance tax threshold, were a perfect fit for him, and the two sides found each other with about 100 minutes left before the deadline. In exchange, the Twins will receive Texas's 6th-round pick from last year's MLB Draft, Garrett Horn. Mark Feinsand broke that news. Horn was recovering from Tommy John surgery when selected last summer, and has made just nine starts in Low A this year. He's moderately promising. One might have dared hope for a player with either more upside or more proximity to the major leagues, but he's not entirely without merit. It's unfortunate that the Twins couldn't dervie more value from having been so right to reinvest in Coulombe, but that's the nature of one-year deals with middle relievers. The way to derive big value from it would have been to win this year and have Coulombe keep getting big outs into October. View full article

Image courtesy of © Jesse Johnson-Imagn Images The Minnesota Twins are trading Carlos Correa back to the Houston Astros, according to multiple reports. The deal will involve, principally, the cash-strapped Minnesota front office getting out from under most of the contract to which they re-signed Correa after his star-crossed free agency in the winter of 2022-23. Brian McTaggart of MLB.com had the news first. Correa is in the third of six guaranteed years on the complicated, team-friendly deal the Twins struck with him in January 2023. He’s making $36 million this year, which means there’s $12 million left for 2025 alone. After that, though, his pay gradually decreases. He’ll earn $31.5 million in 2026, $30.5 million in 2027 and $30 million in 2028, all guaranteed—then, there are four club options, with the value stepping downward in $5-million increments each year. Those options can vest based on playing time, but the Astros can manage his playing time in whichever of those seasons they’d like. This trade is, effectively, a salary dump—and, as such, a sad and embittering end to a once-promising Twins tenure for a player who joined the team when he was on a Hall of Fame career trajectory. Plantar fasciitis and other injuries have eroded his skills and curtailed his production, but as much as anything, this divorce became necessary because Correa’s deal was struck by a team anticipating a steadily increasing payroll, which then had the rug pulled out from under it by an ownership group now running for the door. Correa, for his part, has done whatever he could to foster a winning atmosphere, and will continue to do so as he returns to the organization that took him first overall in 2012. He's sliding to third base for the Astros. The full extent of the deal is still far from clear, but while the Twins are eating a portion of the nine-figure sum still owed to Correa, they've offloaded the lion's share of it. There will be a prospect coming back to the Twins. That's not really a surprise. It's unlikely to be an especially high-echelon talent, though—and that leaves more questions to answer, too. As it turns out, though, "prospect" is rather a strong word. The hurler the team will receive is Matt Mikulski, a 26-year-old organizational arm who had been pitching at High A in the Houston system. Meanwhile, according to multiple reports, the Twins will eat $33 million of the remaining money owed to Correa, so they're getting off the hook for about twice that much. In theory, the upside of a trade like this is to open space for young players and to free up money to make it easier to retain up-and-coming pieces who look like the foundations of a new core. In practice, at this moment, it looks as though the benefits of this deal redound mostly to the Pohlad family. Reinvestment of the money saved seems unlikely, in the short term, and the team certainly didn't acquire an impactful player to balance the one they're losing. On the other hand, Correa's age and recent performance remind us that the uglier half of this contract is likely ahead, not behind. The greatest source of frustration, perhaps, is that the situation arose where this measure was even considered. Once it did, making this trade was logical. Most baseball fans just don't follow the game for the logic of it. View full article

Image courtesy of © Jesse Johnson-Imagn Images Brock Stewart was drafted by the Los Angeles Dodgers and made his big-league debut for them. Now, he returns whence he came, with plenty of team control for his new, old team to play with. Stewart, 33, has a 2.38 ERA in 39 appearances and 34 innings pitched this season, his third with the Twins. Injuries have marred his professional career and long delayed his emergence as a successful reliever, but he’s tapped into some nasty stuff since coming to the Twins and dedicating himself to the bullpen. This year, enjoying the longest stretch of good health he's had in years, he's striking out 29.5% of opposing batters and walking just 7.9%. Opponents have a meager ,612 OPS against the man Twins fans came to know, affectionately, as Beef Stew. Though out of options (and therefore always in some danger of hitting the waiver wire, should his performance wobble), Stewart is under team control through 2027 via arbitration. He's making just $870,000 in 2025, scarcely over the league-minimum salary. Between the control years and the low financial cost, the trade value on Stewart should be significant. He was one bellwether, coming into this week, of how far the Twins would go in reshaping and restocking their system. Under Derek Falvey, the Minnesota front office has (correctly, for the most part) treated even highly effective relievers as essentially replaceable. Though Stewart has been great, the team suffers from a dearth of leads for him to help protect, rather than from an inability to protect the leads they do get. Trading him to a bullpen-needy team highly adept at creating leads, like the Dodgers, is the club's way of trying to find more durable and scarce assets. For Los Angeles, though, a sturdy middle reliever is a godsend—and so much the better that he's a familiar and friendly face. Ravaged by their annual spate of injuries, the Dodgers have spent much of this week stalking the relief market. They were in on Jhoan Duran before the Twins found a match with the Philadelphia Phillies on him; Stewart figures to help stabilize a pen that will be without erstwhile relief ace Evan Phillips all year (elbow surgery) and that has had to make do without big-money offseason signing Tanner Scott for a chunk of this summer. In return for Stewart, the Twins acquired outfielder James Outman, as first reported by ESPN's Alden Gonzalez. Outman, 28, still has (theoretically) four years of team control remaining after this one—but he's spent the majority of this season in Triple A, and has a .487 OPS in the majors. Outman is a lefty batter with a great glove, even in center field, and he had 23 home runs in a very impressive rookie season in 2023. He has plus speed and plus power. He's been such a wreck at the plate, though, that it's a bit odd to hear that this is a 1-for-1 deal. Outman was a late bloomer, so the career setback he's gone through over the last year and a half has him rushing toward 30 without having proved he can consistently handle the best pitching in the world. His tools—especially the power, if he can get to it the way he did two seasons ago—sets him apart from DaShawn Keirsey Jr., but broadly, he offers a similar profile. The Twins are rolling the dice on their own player development and betting that they can turn around the struggling ex-slugger. View full article

Image courtesy of © Ed Szczepanski-Imagn Images The Minnesota Twins continue to spin off impending free agents ahead of the 5 PM Central trade deadline, and they continue to make moves with the highly aggressive Philadelphia Phillies and top executive Dave Dombrowski. This time, it's Harrison Bader joining Jhoan Duran in the City of Bortherly Love. Jeff Passan was first with the report; Twins Daily's @John Bonnes was able to confirm the trade independently. Bader, 31, is a New Yorker by birth but attended the University of Florida. Drafted by the Cardinals, he spent seven years in that organization, before being traded to the Yankees in 2022. Since, he’s bounced to the Reds and Mets, and he signed a one-year deal worth $6.25 million with the Twins just before spring training. Some $1.5 million of that is in the form of a buyout on a mutual option for 2026, so one intriguing question when looking ahead to this deal was whether the Twins would send money to offset some or all of that payment. Bader batted .258/.339/.439 in 307 plate appearances for the Twins, with 12 home runs and 10 stolen bases. After he’d traded some patience to put the ball in play more often over the previous half-decade, Bader has drawn more walks this season and is enjoying his best offensive campaign since 2021. He’s lost a step in center field, but remains elite in either corner. While he was a Twin, he earned high praise from Rocco Baldelli for the unique energy he brought to the clubhouse and the dugout. In return for Bader, the Twins will get outfield prospect Hendry Mendez and right-handed pitcher Geremy Villoria, as reported by Phillies writer Matt Gelb. Mendez, 21, is a tall, lanky, left-hitting outfielder, performing well at Double-A Reading this season. He's batting .290/.374/.434 there, with eight home runs and six stolen bases. (It's worth noting, though, that Reading is a notoriously hitter-friendly environment.) Villoria, who won't even turn 17 until next month, signed with the Phillies via international free agency this winter. Superficially, Mendez looks good, but there are lots of good athletes like him with enough feel for contact to climb this high in the minors. His biggest flaw—too many ground balls—is the one that holds them back at the threshold of the majors, and fixing it is often difficult enough to force changes in a player's game that have negative knock-on effects. Bader didn't command a premium haul, but that's no surprise. He did bring back two pieces who offer upside, giving the Twins four promising ex-Phillies farmhands accumulated in the course of less than one full day. Since Bader was due to hit free agency at the end of the season (and neither side had felt good about the likelihood of a reunion thereafter), this rates as a nice return for a player who will be much more valuable in his new organization for the rest of the summer. View full article

Image courtesy of © Matt Blewett-Imagn Images The Twins are moving on from the mountain of a man, the Autocorrect- (and barrel-)defying splinker., and the electrifying ninth-inning entrance. They're trading Jhoan Duran to the Philadelphia Phillies for a package of high-end prospect talent, according to Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic. Twins Daily has confirmed Rosenthal's report. Minnesota will receive catching prospect Eduardo Tait and rookie pitcher Mick Abel. Duran, 27, is under team control through 2027. The Twins promoted him on Opening Day in 2022, rather than game his service time, and he’s rewarded that faith. His triple-digit fastball was the first thing to open eyes throughout the league, not least because referring to it that way undersells him: Duran often topped 103 miles per hour in his rookie campaign. He rapidly matured into the team’s closer, and even as he’s seen some occasional velocity dips and struggled with an imperfect fastball shape, he’s found ways to thoroughly dominate opposing batters. Much of that is attributable to Duran’s secondary pitches, which are even more valuable (and more indispensable) than the heater. His curveball and splinker are devastating, and this year, he’s added a sweeper to that arsenal. His strikeout rate has eroded slightly each year, but the .553 OPS opponents have managed against Duran in 2025 is the lowest of his career. He’s morphed into an elite ground-ball hurler, and his entrance production for save opportunities has been one of the delightful features of evenings at Target Field over the last two-plus seasons. The lone constraint on Duran’s trade value, perhaps, is the likelihood that he’ll be one of the highest-paid relief pitchers in baseball for the next two seasons. He’s making $4.125 million in 2025, and given the season he’s having, that figure should rise considerably for 2026. Nonetheless, he’s been the trade chip teams have clamored for most in talks with the Twins, so when a move happened, it was sure to be a big one. Tait, 18, is the headliner here. A left-handed batter and catcher, he's played almost the whole season at Low-A Clearwater, where he's hitting .251/.322/.436. He was promoted earlier this month to the Phillies' High-A affiliate, at a very young age. He'll turn 19 next month. His bat is his carrying tool; scouts view him as a hitter who can make enough contact to get to plus power at maturity. What is far less clear is whether he can stick as a catcher, but even without knowing for sure in that regard, Tait ranked third on Baseball America's midseason update of the Phillies' top 30 prospects list. He'll be slightly lower-ranked in the Twins system, but they'll hope to develop him into their catcher of the future. Abel, 23, provides the immediate juice in the deal. He was Philadelphia's top pick in the 2020 MLB Draft, and has already made it to the majors for a brief look as a starter. He profiles as a pitcher who can stay in the rotation, though perhaps more as a third or fourth starter than as the frontliner the team envisioned when they drafted him. He figures to pitch for the big-league Twins for much of the final two months of this season, unless they have specific things they want to tweak with a stopover in St. Paul. Bob Nightengale was first to report that the return will be Tait and Abel. This move signals the degree of aggressiveness the Twins have elected to take at this trade deadline. They sought two high-end potential contributors in any deal for Duran, and they got them here. There's risk associated with both prospects, but the team is ready to shift gears and reshape their core for 2026 and beyond. Tait and Abel begin that process, by moving resources from the bullpen toward the positional core and the starting rotation. View full article

Wednesday has seen a barrage of trades involving relief pitchers, but if reports are to be believed, the Twins might be about to raise the stakes on that substantially. Several reports (some of which we at Twins Daily can independently confirm) indicate that Jhoan Duran is expected to be dealt by the end of the day, and that the Dodgers and Mariners are especially aggressive in pursuit of him. Mark Feinsand of MLB.com has one such report. Joel Sherman has a very similar set of conjectures to share. Our sources suggest that the Dodgers are in the lead for Duran, but there's still time for Seattle to up their offer. The timeline of a deal is not clear, but it does look likely that Duran will be moved before the deadline—and maybe even within the next few hours. View full rumor

Carlos Correa's contract is team-friendly. That's an important thing to keep in mind. The salaries might be too high to accommodate for many teams, but the structure of the deal—front-loaded, with team options of diminishing values beginning in 2029—makes the terms favorable to the team. That's why the Twins were willing to jump back in and sign Correa, after he nearly agreed to deals with the Giants and Mets in the winter of 2022-23. Keep that in mind today, because Bob Nightengale of USA Today has a report this morning that the Astros are pondering a reunion with Correa, via trade. Correa has a full no-trade clause in there, too, but Nightengale says that he would waive it to go back to Houston. The other key detail of the report is that the Astros would demand that the Twins pay a significant portion of the remaining money on Correa's deal. Therein lies the rub, it seems. There's a case to be made for that position, but if the Twins aren't getting either huge savings or a significant prospect in return for Correa, it would seem like a massive mistake to trade him this summer, at a nadir in his value. We'll see what (if anything) comes of this. View full rumor

Image courtesy of © Brad Rempel-Imagn Images You wouldn't guess it at a glance, but the Twins starter with his feet planted deepest in the beloved soil of the game's history—sometimes, even digging in his heels against the sweeping influence of data and technology as it overtakes the art of pitching—might just be Simeon Woods Richardson. Despite Chris Paddack's sheriff persona and Joe Ryan's laconic tenacity, they'll each switch smoothly into talking about themselves in terms of key movement markers, spin rates, or sequences informed by analytically derived game plans. For Pablo López, no switch is even required; that's his default form of self-description. Woods Richardson could speak that language, too, to some extent, but he's not especially interested in trying to. For instance, if you ask him why he adds and subtracts on his fastball within a start more than most pitchers do, the answer will only bounce off the notion of analytics once—and then, more like a wall to push off of, rather than a door to plunge through. "It's just old-school baseball; I call it being a pitcher," Woods Richardson said Sunday. "I know we get lost in modern-day baseball, with numbers, analytics and everything else, [but] the human eye still can't differentiate speed." In other words, as Warren Spahn knew, hitting is timing, and pitching is upsetting that timing. As Greg Maddux knew, hitters can spot differences in trajectory and spin, but not in speeds. Woods Richardson is special, in part, for the way he approaches his own job as a student of its history. Few players in the modern game consider the greats of the previous century to be relevant touchstones, but Woods Richardson does. "That's something that's been going on for 100 years, you know what I mean?" he said. "People have been doing it since way back when. I guess I modeled my game after Nolan Ryan—you know, he had the changeup, but he'd also actually add and subtract. Bob Gibson, with the slider: add and subtract. Satchel Paige: add and subtract." Though it was hardly his most successful outing (it was a tough assignment he drew), Woods Richardson's last start is as good an example as any of his willingness to reach back for a little extra at one moment, but then throttle back into the low 90s at others. Notice the error bars around each point, denoting average velocity for that pitch type within that game. Those error bars are set at one standard deviation from their average for that appearance. In the Dodgers game, there were roughly 3.5 miles per hour separating the ends of that range for Woods Richardson; he's often around 3 mph. Ryan, to choose a teammate at random, has never had that wide a practical range within a start. For some pitchers, that might indicate a mere tendency to misfire occasionally, failing in an honest effort to throw it as hard as they can. For others, it could (at least in abstract theory; it's not something most teams actively implement or recommend) be an analytics-informed, premeditated way to mess with certain hitters based on their swing path or contact point. For Woods Richardson, it's a matter of watching, sensing, and responding, based on feel and varying from pitch to pitch. "Oh, for sure. It's always been that way," he said. "And depending on who is up, game situation, count leverage, all that kind of determines what goes into that." He's sensitive to the situation, and tries to manipulate it in a way that makes rational sense, but it can't all be rational. As a former hitter himself, Woods Richardson can't turn off the part of his brain that used to fight to read pitches—and he doesn't really want to. "Some guys are a little different, but I played two-way, so it was kind of easy for me," he said. "As I'm pitching, I'm kind of multi-tasking. That's just how I operate. Some guys can, some guys can't. Some guys are completely different. But the way I attack it is, I'm analyzing the swing, reading the swing—reading everything that I could have seen in that 15 seconds, to kind of gauge for that next pitch." Making use of what he sees in a hitter's swing (or take, or body language, or anything else) requires Woods Richardson to be adaptable within his own mind and his game plan, and to have great (usually non-verbal) communication with his catcher. That's a challenge he savors. "That's the beauty part about pitching. I believe, for so long, it was a feel thing," he said. "We didn't have computers and numbers to tell us what we were doing; we had to use our eyes. So use your eyes. Trust your eyes." Some of this might make him sound cranky, himself, like one averse to the tools of the modern trade. It's not like that, though. He knows how to use those tools, and listens to his coaches when they make suggestions. It's just not that aspect of the game that fills him with joy and passion. When he talks about being on the mound and making infinitesimal adjustments based on what he sees and senses, it's not defiance in his tone; it's the vociferous joy of a craftsman. He doesn't disdain the way others do it, but he feels an instantly visible conviction in his own methods, perhaps because they run back through the generations. One of the ostensible dangers of not embracing analytics lies in a pitcher missing opportunities to improve and evolve. The craftsman mindset leads one to the same eagerness to improve, though; a great cabinetmaker doesn't make the same, slightly flawed cabinet over and over. Thus, Woods Richardson has switched from a straight changeup to a splitter this season, and lo, even the numbers say the new way to change speeds is now his best pitch. Being a student of the game and a lover of the feel for it means both learning from the masters and experimenting with ways to emulate them. Woods Richardson believes he's found a better way to do so via his change in offspeed offerings. "I think it just goes down to pitching. I think really good pitchers are able to throw every single one of their pitches for strikes—any count, any situation," he said. "So I just work to model my game after that. It's just being able to pound the strike zone consistently with each one of my pitches. That's what all of us are trying to do in the big leagues; that's the main goal. So I guess we'll just keep chopping that tree down." View full article

If you're anything like me, you've found yourself pleasantly surprised a couple of times this year, when Matt Wallner really caught hold of a ball. The first time I noticed it was June 7, when the Blue Jays were in town. Wallner blasted a ball from Toronto starter Kevin Gausman down the right-field line. He's hit balls much harder, but though it was launched 41° upward at less than 100 miles per hour off the bat, it carried out of the park for a homer. It didn't surprise me that the ball cleared the fence. Off the bat, it was clear that he'd gotten enough of it for that, given the cozy dimensions of the corner and the way he barrels the ball when he gets off an 'A' swing. I assumed, though, that the ball would turn foul. It was hit close to the line, but instead of the spin pushing it foul as it traced its steep parabola, it stayed true. In fact, it seemed to drift slightly away from the pole. MTZxbjNfWGw0TUFRPT1fQUFRQ0J3QURBQUFBQ3dNQkFBQUhCZzllQUFOWEFBTUFWZ2RYVXdwWEFGRlFWQWRV.mp4 In this particular case, there's some reason to credit Wallner for keeping it straight enough to get a home run instead of a foul out of a mistake pitch by Gausman. His swing is slightly under the ball, to be sure (hence the very high launch angle), but he keeps his hands in and gets to the ball very directly. It's a 96-mph fastball from Gausman, so far from being early, Wallner is right on time. His steep attack angle gives the ball backspin, but his attack direction at impact is just 6° to the pull side, so he doesn't impart much sidespin on the ball (the way most swings that result in long, pulled flies do). A compact, on-time swing can help keep that ball fair. The Statcast readout of the swing tells that story. He didn't catch the ball quite on the sweet spot, but the arc of his swing and the timing made it easy to maintain true ball flight. Two weeks later, though, Wallner did get a little bit lucky—or did he? More on that later. For now, consider this ball, the first hit Jacob Misiorowski gave up in his big-league career. b0daZDlfWGw0TUFRPT1fRGdnRlZGd0dVd0FBWGxzTEJ3QUhCUVZWQUZsWFYxVUFVVnhUQTFWV0JBRUJWZ3ND.mp4 This is an 0-1 slider, and Wallner is a hair earlier on it. He would have been way early, but because Misiorowski is who he is, the ball was coming in at 93 miles per hour. Thus, Wallner's last-minute adjustment didn't need to be a major deceleration of the bat; he just had to dip slightly to find the lower half of the ball. It's fascinating, in watching this pitch's equivalent of the Statcast visualization above, to see the differences in the swing he got off. Again, he catches it just up the bat from the sweet spot, this time with more hook on it. Reading slider late, you can see him flatten his swing and go straight through the lower half of the ball. Doing that took some sidespin off the ball, too, relative to what we'd normally expect when a ball sails down the line. Because I couldn't see him doing that in real time, though, I was even more certain that this ball would twist foul—and when you see the overhead visualization of the trajectory of the ball, you can see how reasonable that belief was, and how strangely the actual flight of it defied that belief. Almost any ball hit down the lines will spin toward the lines. That's an axiom of baseball, because of the kinds of swings and contact that generate such batted balls. We've now seen two examples of Wallner's swing helping kill that sidespin, but even accounting for that, the ball should have had enough spin to push closer to (or beyond) the pole. Fast-forward another three weeks with me, though, because we're about to find the most extreme example of this phenomenon. In the bottom of the second inning on July 9, Wallner got into a 2-1 slider from Cubs starter Cade Horton. OHl3ajJfWGw0TUFRPT1fQWxVQ0FGY0NCVk1BWGxZRFVRQUhWRklIQUZrTlV3SUFVUU5VVkFWWENBUlNCUVFI.mp4 The swing tells us the most interesting story yet about this one, because unlike Misiorowski, Horton had Wallner sitting on a fastball, and unlike Misiorowski, Horton has a big speed differential between his heater and his breaking ball. Wallner was ready for 96 mph, but he got 85. As a result, you can see him actually throttle back from his maximum bat speed before contact. When baseball people talk about the value of raw strength in generating power, this is the kind of thing they're talking about. Not many hitters are strong enough to slow down their own bat after reaching a speed just under 80 mph, while maintaining enough speed to do damage when they catch the ball flush. Unlike the homer against Gausman (7.2-foot swing length, 6° attack direction) and the one against Misiorowski (7.4 feet, 16°), though, this is a long swing on which Wallner was way out in front (8.1 feet, 20°). He gets the sweet spot here, which is why the ball leaves his bat at 113 miles per hour, but he's way around it and working steeply uphill through it. The 43° launch angle sends the ball soaring. It's right down the line. This ball should go foul. Again, though, it didn't. Again, it moved away from the line. We have to acknowledge that Wallner is capable of unique, freaky contact. His blend of bat speed and swing plane can generate fly balls down the line with less sidespin than most of them have. That's one factor in these (and a few others, which we'll leave out here in the name of brevity) balls going for extra bases. Fascinatingly, though, another factor might be Target Field's architecture itself. Having seen a few of these balls turn improbably toward the plaza, I reached out to Weather Applied Metrics's Ken Arneson. A long-time baseball writer, Arneson now plays in the sandbox of the endlessly complex, idiosyncratic interactions of weather (especially wind) with sports, and baseball is one major subject of study and analysis for the company. "Target Field has a gap between its roof and the top of its upper deck," Arneson wrote. "The top of the upper deck is about 122 feet above the field and the roof is about 150 feet above the field. As the wind tries to squeeze through that 28-foot gap, it will accelerate." That's true; it's the result of the Venturi Effect, which describes the way pressure is reduced when speed increases as a fluid moves from a larger space to a smaller one. "So if you have a southwest wind blowing perpendicular to the first base line ... and you have a fly ball with an apex around that height (122-150 foot apex), you're going to get a kind of perfect storm to push the ball back towards the field, and counteract the spin that wants to hook the ball foul," Arneson continued. "Under those conditions, the wind will push the ball back towards fair territory about 5-6 feet with a 10 mph wind." Batted balls even to right-center will be unaffected by this microatmosphere. The Venturi Effect wears off quickly once any wind passes through the aperture between roof and stands, petering out not far beyond the right-field line. If a player is strong enough to consistently hit the ball up into that space far down the line, though, it can make a substantial difference—especially if that player has an unusual swing that results in balls down that line not having as much sidespin as most hitters' similar shots would. Arneson notes that the wind pattern needed to create this phenomenon is relatively rare, at least as a prevailing wind on a given day. With the right momentary gust or buffet, though, it doesn't have to be blowing that way the whole day. Wallner clearly got some help from the elements on these homers, even if it was neither the sole nor the decisive factor in their staying fair. Baseball is wonderful, because it's so hard to apply any rule too broadly. It's not just the deep right-field corner at Target Field; each batter and pitcher is a microenvironment of their own. Wallner's special skill set begets a special set of batted balls, which can benefit from a special effect of the home park in which many of them are hit. It's a bit of serendipity—a tiny hometown advantage for a Minnesota native who plays for the home team. Next time he hits a long drive down the line, allow yourself to hold onto more hope for the ball to stay fair than you normally would—and if it does, say a little baseball prayer of thanks to the Wallner winds of Target Field. View full article

This is becoming one of my favorite daily edits. :D You have all these interesting anniversaries that start a thread in my brain, and then I can't help but wonder something, so I look it up and add what I find. It's delightful.

Y'all are why so many organizations used to keep a 'Do Not Comp' list. Luis Arraez is not a person you should ever be comparing a prospect to, but you CERTAINLY shouldn't do it with a right-handed batter who's whiffing more in this, his best season by far, than Arraez ever has at a stop of any length anywhere in professional baseball. Get it together.

Image courtesy of © Brett Davis-Imagn Images I find it a bit odd—not only online, but when I talk to people in real life—how much hedging is still happening with regard to the Minnesota Twins and their posture at this year's MLB trade deadline. A lot of people seemed to spend the All-Star break plotting out the final fortnight before the deadline and working out matrices of possibility, both wondering and opining about what the Twins will or should do based on various possible records over their first 10 games out of said break. While I admire the impulse to seize upon any opportunity to reach the postseason, I think any optimism about the 2025 Twins doing so (or even the desire to wait and see if such optimism becomes more viable, this late in the decision-making window) is unfounded. For one thing, not all playoff berths are created equal, and if the Twins do win enough down the stretch to sneak into October, it will be as a second or third Wild Card entrant. That means a series played entirely on the road against a superior team. It's not at all the same thing to chase that as it is to chase a division title, or even to fight for positioning when you have a chance of winning the division, and might fall back into a Wild Card slot as something less than the best-case scenario. In this case, there are a few problems with the idea of buying, and one huge one with the notion of standing pat. Firstly, the Tigers are way, way ahead in the division. They're playing poorly lately, and they still have an 11-game cushion. Nor are the Twins even the team pursuing them most closely. The division is gone, and has been for two months, ever since Minnesota ended its 13-game winning streak and resumed playing sluggish, sub-.500 baseball. That leads to the second problem—and this is actually the first problem, in my opinion, but I'm making allowances for those who prefer to go after the playoffs whenever possible, all other considerations be damned. Here's the thing: This Twins team just is not good. Fundamentally, in the ways that matter and about which we should really care most, they're not good. I don't mean that they play sloppily or uninspired baseball (though, of course, they sometimes do). I don't mean to impugn the work ethic or baseball nous of anyone in the clubhouse or front office. I simply mean that the team isn't good enough that we should even care if they can eke into October. The playoffs should be a reward for a season-long proof of the wisdom and good work of the organization over that year and the ones before it, to acquire and develop good players and for those players to come through in big situations. This team hasn't earned that. Over the last calendar year, the Twins are 85-88. Since the start of 2024, they're 127-131. Hell, since the start of 2021, they're 12 games under .500. Because that 2023 team gave the fans such a cathartic series of moments in the postseason, it's easy to forget that they were only 87-75 even that year. President of business and baseball operations Derek Falvey has stayed extremely committed to the core of this team, but it hasn't rewarded that faith. It's just not a good enough team to be accorded the degree of stability Falvey has chosen. He sees this as a winning operation that just needs more time. He's wrong. I'm not advocating firing Falvey, who does many things well as an executive and in whom many people within baseball believe fervently—including those with whom he works in the Twins front office. He needs to change tack, though, and the hard part is trying to tell whether he realizes that. There have been times in the past when standing pat did make sense, on a hard, rational level. Fans have hated the stagnant trade deadlines and quiet offseasons of the last few years, but of course, one major reason for those was the financial constraints Falvey has faced due to the Pohlads yanking the purse strings shut just after opening them wide enough for him to splurge on four players (Byron Buxton, Pablo López, Christian Vázquez and Carlos Correa) whose salaries suddenly make up about 57% of his budget. Falvey is a smart and deeply respected baseball man. However, other teams find the Twins frustratingly hard to deal with in trade negotiations, because Falvey is so value-focused and reluctant to make any trade that doesn't match his group's player evaluations—which, as we've seen, are not only out of step with the rest of the league, but just plain wrong. That's how you spend half a decade trying to win every year and still run a sub-.500 aggregate record. With Thad Levine (whose influence tended toward more aggressive moves, especially within seasons, and nimbler changes of direction) gone, the Falvey approach is also missing a key counterbalance. The chief executive needs to change his mode of operation, and quickly. To their credit, the front office has let it be known that they're listening more openly than they might have in the past as this deadline approaches. That's why so many scouts have swooped down on their games lately, and (partially) why there will be a significant contingent of them at Joe Ryan's start Sunday in Colorado. There's a very real chance of one of Ryan, Jhoan Duran or Griffin Jax being dealt, and even some chance (although a remote one) that the positional core will finally get its overdue shakeup, according to sources with teams who have talked to the Twins this month. Royce Lewis, Trevor Larnach and (especially) Ryan Jeffers have drawn interest, and while Jeffers would only be traded if the team got an unexpectedly excellent offer, the other two are more available. All of the team's impending free agents (Vázquez, Willi Castro, Danny Coulombe, Harrison Bader and Chris Paddack) are available, sources said, and one or two could be dealt even if the team otherwise stands pat or tries to supplement the roster for the stretch run. The source of consternation, for potential trade partners, is that extracting one of those players from Falvey (especially a Falvey torn on the question of buying or selling at all) might be more trouble than it's worth. That's why it's important that the team break with the idea of a playoff pursuit this summer and get serious about positioning themselves for one next year, or in 2027. Buxton, Correa and López aren't going anywhere. They're the core to build around. Since the sale of the team has gone excruciatingly slowly and a more robust budget this winter isn't guaranteed, though, they need to build frugally around that trio. They also have to be brutally honest with themselves. That means admitting that the complementary pieces aren't currently good enough. It means trading Ryan (because he'll be very expensive over his final two years of arbitration eligibility and because they can get so much for him) or trading Duran (because he'll be very expensive over his final two years of arbitration eligibility, because they can get so much for him, and because he's a reliever). It means maximizing the infusion of young talent into the organization, so that the remaining prime years of Buxton, Correa and López aren't wasted. It doesn't have to mean acquiring teenagers who might be four years away, but it has to mean giving up on a roster that has proved itself insufficient and making space for real change going into next year. The prize for which the team is in serious competition just isn't worth winning, and that's a result of the way ownership's betrayal and the front office's lack of agility have left them playing the same losing hand two years in a row. That cycle needs to be broken. This is not the official editorial position of Twins Daily, or anything. It's just my own. This week, we had a great piece from Hans Birkeland on how the team might be more likely to approach the deadline, based on their most interesting past example. Later today and on Monday, we'll run a two-part series from Eric Blonigen on how the team could approach the deadline as buyers. For my money, though, the team shouldn't be studying playoff odds too closely or trying to make moves to get themselves into the playoffs with this basic core. They should be taking decisive action, by admitting that they need real change and then making it. They had a chance to do all of this last fall, but doubled down on the group they had. I think it was clear then (and is certainly clear now) that that was the wrong call. The question is whether the team has arrived at the same conclusion. View full article

Re: it being best that the Cubs return to being cursed: