As everyone who stays caught up on Twins news knows by now, Ryan Doumit was traded to the Braves yesterday for Sean Gilmartin. When I heard about this news, it got me thinking. At the moment, the Twins have a high number pitchers on their 40-man roster. After they added Gilmartin, their 2013 AAA pitching group got even more crowded, and I have a feeling that more moves might be coming to fix that. The Twins' pitching rotation at the Major League level currently includes Phil Hughes, Ricky Nola
It has been a while since I have written a blog on this site, as I have been almost obsessively following the exploits of the Minnesota Vikings over on the Daily Norseman (and if you are a Vikings fan, head over there. The DN writing staff rivals the one here on Twins Daily). I have been popping in here from time to time, but I have found that following a team that has been losing as much as the Twins is hard on my spirit, so I have for the most part stayed away. Now that the season is over, I t
The Twins and Vikings. Both considered down and out for the considerable future after a 3-13 2011/2012 and a 99-loss season in 2011. Unfortunately for the Twins, the Vikings have come storming back after last season and now sit one win away from joining the playoffs. The Twins, on the other hand, again just avoided a 100-loss season. In several ways, this makes the Twins' life much more difficult in several ways. 1. Success of rookies and vets together. Something that the Vikings have going fo
I am a big Colabello fan. When the Twins picked him up from the Independent League, I was intrigued. His IL numbers were very, very solid. When he came to the Twins organization, he did really, really well against competition that in my personal opinion is much tougher than in the IL. And in nearly 40 more games that he was used to playing, he drove in nearly 100 runs with 19 HR's. His BA and OBP were the lowest of his career this year, making me think that he will improve in them next year. He
For too long, the East has been known as the power division in the AL. Everyone knows that the Central is a "weak" division, and has really had a hard time in the playoffs. There were usually two playoff teams to come out of the divison (for the last decade, the Yanks and Sox), and they had a good time of it. Going back to 2000, the AL has won the World Series six times. Of those six times, four of them came from the AL East, and they were the Yanks (twice) and the Sox (twice). This string of su
Here is my last blog about the playoffs series', at least until the 1-game wild cards are done tomorrow. The Rangers, who looked like the strongest team in the West (and probably in the AL) for most of the season, got a rude awakening when the Oakland A's slipped by them to claim the AL West Championship, which leaves them to deal with the Orioles, who are a Cinderella team in their own right. Playing in one of the stronger divisions in the AL, and one of the strongest in the Majors, the Oriol
Now, to the AL. The final day of the AL was quite a wild one, with all the scenarios that could have played out, but it never really turned into an epic turn-everything-on-its head Day 162 as last year. The day left the A's (what the heck?) on top of the AL West, the Rangers falling to the one-game playoff between the Wild Cards, the Yankees obliterating the Red Sox in Bobby V's last game there to clinch the East, and the Orioles going VERY quietly against the Rays to claim the second wild-car
With all the craziness that has surrounded the final day of regular season baseball this year, I thought it would be smart to wait to post the rest of these until I was sure of the matchups. I will now begin a rapid-fire posting over the next day to cover all of the first playoff matchups, and doing new ones when the series advances to the next round. In this my second post, I will continue with the NL and look at the match-up between the Cardinals and Braves in the NL wild-card playoff matc
While the Twins may not be in the Hunt for October legend-status, there are teams around the league that have clinched a playoff spot and are lining up their pitching according to who they will (or might) face in their first game (or series). This will be a series of blogs about the different teams in the postseason, and how they rank up against everyone else (and especially against their first opponent, if that opponent is known yet.) I will start with the National League, because their pla
Here is what I am seeing for the Twins depth chart with the personnel they have now. I will do another one of these after the offseason ends to compare. These rankings are part stats from this year, part me wanting some of the people on this list to succeed. Also, with the pitching rotation, this is not how the Twins (at least, I hope it isn't) will organize their rotation, it is just the people I think should be in their rotation Bullpen: Should be some fairly obvious ones and maybe a few sur
The Twins have several needs this offseason. Pitching is the big one, getting a few MI's who can consistently hit is another. Also, don't expect me to analyze contracts, because that is currently beyond my limited baseball intellect, just FWI. They currently have two-three big trade chips that they are willing to listen on: Willingham, Span, and Morneau. If they are to trade Morneau or Willingham, one team they should focus on is the Rays of Tampa. They have the pitching we need, we have the o
Pitching: Carl Pavano (expect) As consistent as you sometimes were, Carl, this most recent injury-plagued season has probably cost you a position with the Twins, and, most likely, in the Bigs. While you may have been a nice guy and class act personality who worked well with Drew Butera, the Twins, and every other team, should look to go younger at than a 36-ish somewhat injury-plagued pitcher. Matt Capps (expect) Well, it has been an interesting run while you were with us, Cappie. You have mad
So, the Twins have 52 games left in this 2012 season. We can all agree that the first two months of the season were probably the hardest things for us to watch since last year. The ray of light that has us moving up the standings comes from the Twins being 13-12 since the All-Star Break, and at least four of their losses were very close and could have gone either way. So, I am much more of a late-night person than an early morning person, so I decided to look at the Twins' record against the C
The Twins made their game against Boston very interesting, waiting until the last inning to uncork the big hit they had been looking for all game, with the three-run home run from Mauer winning the game for them. ROCHESTER 6, TOLEDO 0 P.J. Walters made a rehab start for AAA Rochester. He lasted 2 innings, giving up no runs, hits, walks or K's. Esmerling Vasquez then tossed the next 4, giving up 2 hits, 1 BB, and struck out three and received the win. The game was ended early due to a rain de
With all the turmoil currently surrounding whether or not pieces that have been on the Twins for many years will be moved, the one piece everybody seems to say has an almost 100% chance of being moved is Francisco Liriano. While Frankie has been a head case for a large part of the season, his raw stuff is enough to make any scout drool over him. However, this has not been the Frankie that has shown up to pitch with the Twins over the last year+. So the question is: "Who will be traded that h
According to MLBTradeRumors, both Kevin Gausman (1,4 Orioles) and Mark Appel (1,8 Pirates) are both leaning against signing with their draft teams, both for different reasons. When teams learned that Appel, a Scott Boras client, wanted a $6 million+ bonus, he fell down all the way to the Pirates at the #8 pick. This means that instead of being able to get that much money for getting picked at #'s 1-3, he dropped to #8, and the most the Pirates can offer him without losing a first round dra
While the All-Star Break is still about a month away, it is usually the best indicator of whether or not teams will be competing for a spot in the postseason and whether teams will be buyers or sellers at the deadline. The Twins, while having gotten out to another abysmal start due (this year, anyway) to horrendous starting pitching and the Twins' complete lack of any kind of hitting, with RISP or otherwise, are again using a weak schedule in the months of May, June, and hopefully July to give u
2013 Roster (not in any particular order): Bullpen: Burton Perkins Duensing Swarzak Guerra Slama Burnett Starting Pitching: Scott Diamond Hendriks Blackburn P.J. Walters (?)/ FA Pitcher FA Pitcher Starting Lineup: Span Revere Mauer Morneau Willingham Doumit Plouffe Dozier Carroll Bench: Wilkin Ramirez Butera Mastroianni Parmelee Valencia could be in this lineup if he figures things out on offense and defense. I am assuming that the Twins trade Liriano and Pavano if they
The Twins have several highly-touted prospects that are currently climbing through their system. The prospect that is most likely to make his debut this year is Brian Dozier, who is a solid middle infielder who took this year in the Minors and turned it into his breakout season. Unfortunately for the Twins, they have several other highly-touted prospects that are all playing the same positions. For Chris Herrmann, this isn't a problem, as he could finally be Drew Butera's nightmare as he is a
With so many options going into Spring Training, and with so few spots left to claim, the Twins seems to have most of their lineup and pitching rotation already set. But with 66 guys in camp, they are clearly being prepared in case the injury bug returns and continues to bite them. There are so many interesting stories in camp, but you have to wonder: How much will each of these guys need to do to consider being taken north with the team? Lets face the truth. In almost all predictions, the Twins
I really hold back what I would like to say about then payroll arguments here. The fact that people don't accept the amount taken in dictates the amount going out requires one of two things. Extreme financial ignorance or fanatical bias that prevents the acceptance of something some basic. I did not change the argument. It's the same idiocy over and over. Do you really want to be on the side that suggests revenues does not determine spending capacity?
At this point in the pre-season, I’m just so happy to be seeing games again, I don’t care about the Twins record in 2023. I think they’ll win it all, unrealistically speaking 🙂
I really hold back what I would like to say about then payroll arguments here. The fact that people don't accept the amount taken in dictates the amount going out requires one of two things. Extreme financial ignorance or fanatical bias that prevents the acceptance of something some basic. I did not change the argument. It's the same idiocy over and over. Do you really want to be on the side that suggests revenues does not determine spending capacity?· 0 replies
