Minnesota Twins Talk

You might think this thread is a slam against Shoemaker, it isn't. In 2017 Shoemaker pitched around 77 innings, the next 3 seasons he pitched a little more than the equivalent of 3 complete games each. So he had very little time to build up arm strength. From the beginning of the season, I've advocated that Shoemaker should start out in the BP in long relief until he has sufficient time to build up his arm strength. He has pitched some good games (pitching 5-6 innings) in the beginning but he doesn't have the arm strength to sustain it. Coupled also with the mismanagement of Dobnak and the inefficient BP that caused many ?s through out the ST, IMO helped to create this …

Let’s drink a cold dose of reality as an 11-17 ball club. Unless Falvey and Levine zag compared to past history, it doesn’t look like our favorite team will be in a position to be buyers during the 2021 trading period. Negotiating a new contract with Buxton will always be a tricky situation. Until hopefully this season, he hasn’t shown an ability to play more than 120 games a season. The window for him signing a team friendly extension has closed now that he is playing at an MVP level. The clock is ticking, with him approaching free agency after the 2022 season. If he continues playing at a pace like this, there won’t be a better time for the Twins to capitalize on …

I live in Illinois and make it up once a year to watch a weekend and love going to Cuzzy's. Their breakfast has saved me from the damage I do postgame at the C/W bar that I think has now closed. Met Hrbek there and asked bartender if it was ok to talk to him. He said yeah and I went to talk 91 WS with him. To the disgust of his wife and and daughter. Anywhooo....Phil Cuzzy Sucks

An all-new Twins Daily is coming your way! After (way too many) years, we're finally launching a comprehensive reworking of the entire site. I'm super excited about it and I think you will be, too. On top of the new design being much more mobile-friendly, it's going to offer a slew of new features aimed at enhancing the community aspect of the site. A few things to look forward to: - Clubs: we'll be bringing back more off-topic discussion in semi-private clubs, which are essentially sites-within-a-site - Profile customizations: you'll be able to change a lot more about your profile page and interact with other users outside the forums, posting back and forth on pages …

The reports are that Miguel Sanó is about ready to come off the injured list. Sanó was one of the major disappointments of April, logging a .111 batting average and .555 OPS. The Twins are otherwise as close to full strength as they have been since the first inning of the first game of the season. Among the position players, the club has switched out Ben Rortvedt for the struggling Ryan Jeffers and added Alex Kirilloff to essentially take Sanó's spot. Kirilloff is an outfielder/first baseman. He's logged most of his minor league innings in right field, then first base and lastly left field. The question on many Twins fans' minds is what the team will do next and the fo…

Unfortunately, the article is locked behind a paywall, but thought some of you may be interested in the news anyway: Former Twins' third base coach and Triple-A manager Gene Glynn will be coaching the St. Clair boys basketball team next winter. He retired last fall after a stint with the Marlins. For those who aren't aware, Glynn was the state's first Mr. Basketball in 1975 and played point guard as well as second base during his time at MSU-Mankato in the mid-1970s. https://www.southernminn.com/waseca_county_news/sports/article_01ce144b-84c3-5d6c-9f81-2dfb1f7e6131.html

-Brent Rooker optioned -Ryan Jeffers optioned -Max Kepler activated -Kyle Garlick activated -JT Riddle DFA -Tzu-Wei Lin DFA

I've been on about this for two years now, but Baldelli really needs to get over the idea that his best players need a game off every week. It's unnecessary, and unproductive. It's baseball, for Pete's sake. All it does is intentionally take his best players out of games, which is then of course compounded when the inevitable actual injuries occur. Because players still get injured, whether they play 5 games a week instead of 6, or not. And I suspect it probably leads to a bit of a "soft" team, without much intestinal fortitude, which I admit is speculation on my part.

My Nominees: 1. Josh Donaldson 2. Williams Astudillo 3. Jake Cave And the winner is: Jake Cave. Time for Jake to get the Just for Men for that beard. Just my opinion.

I'm more forgiving than most when it comes to managerial decisions, but there are no excuses for a lack of awareness. Rocco Baldelli embarrassed himself in yesterday's game against Cleveland. I don't think this had an impact on the outcome of the game, thankfully, but it was not a good look regardless.

From MLB.com Regarding Playoff chances. I've watched all but one game this year and had no idea we've already played 5 extra inning games. I need to start monitoring beer intake I guess. Biggest fallers Twins: -31.9 (63.3% to 31.4%) Minnesota’s season hasn’t been without its positives. The Byron Buxton breakout is upon us, Nelson Cruz continues to defy Father Time and José Berríos, Michael Pineda and J.A. Happ have been solid. Overall, though, the Twins have put themselves in a tough spot with their 9-15 start. Kenta Maeda (6.56 ERA) is the biggest concern for Minnesota, followed closely by its bullpen, which has the fifth-worst ERA (4.59) in the Majors and has contri…

Garver's 2019 season is getting further away. He may be the player we have seen the last two years which is not a major league player. He has two options. I would send him down now and give him a week before playing in AAA. Play him at DH and 1B so he can try to find his swing. I don't think his defense has been very helpful and while Astudillo might be a downgrade defensively I don't think it is a big drop. At least Astudillo is likely to put the ball in play in some one is on base. Bring up Garver after a good month. If the good month never occurs at least they know they have a problem to fix at catcher. The Twins could probably send Jeffers down too but I would sta…

Now seems like the time, with a doubleheader, Garlick on the COVID list, Rooker injured, and Cave struggling. I don't know how the service time thing works, though. Is Kirilloff going to get called up tomorrow?

After the ill fated death of Bell, the Twins decided to fore go a bench coach this season. This sad event happened after everyone had their staff cemented in. Thus making it impossible to seek out a replacement in the league. 1st person I thought of was trying to coax Rowland back through an promotion. But he won't be available until next season. Can we wait that long for an replacement? When Baldelli became our rookie manager, he heavily depended on Sheldon and I'm sure he valued Bell's input last year. Being a MLB manager isn't easy especially yet being young at it. Having someone as a sounding board and help to carry the burden, is very valuable. I remember when they…

I don't think so. I'm not really confident with this crew. I've advocated trades during the whole off season and still do to improve the bullpen. One of my favorite teams is the Pirates as far as looking for pitching goes. A couple of months or so ago a TD article "Do the Pirates have any more loot to plunder?" (I'll find the article and post it). The Pirates were unloading any veteran they could. Richard Rodriguez was one who interested me. He has been selected by the Pirates to close some time last season. The Pirates BP has impressed me and they have some excellent prospects like Mears coming up. Rodriguez's stock has gone up considerably. I don't know how dominant he …

I didn't see yesterday's game but here is mlb's video on Buxton's five hits. https://www.mlb.com/gameday/twins-vs-indians/2021/04/28/634371#game_state=final,lock_state=final,game_tab=videos,game=634371 I had wondered how he got a double and Kiriloff only went from second to third. He also had a pretty routine ground out to the shortstop that was an infield single. Man, he's a player.

I know this may not be the most opportune time to watch the Twins, in multiple ways, but today's game with Cleveland will be streamed for free, with no blackouts, on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GIoQc2fFf3U Game time is 12:10 PM CDT. (You should also be able to jump back or "rewind" the YouTube live stream if you join late, and you can also watch the recording after it is over -- hopefully today's game will be worth re-watching!)

With fan frustration at an all-time high here in 2021, I've seen lots of calls for the Twins to fire manager Rocco Baldelli. While I get that some comments are just knee-jerk reactions, this particular idea is so absurd and unrealistic that I think it's time to put it to bed. Rocco Baldelli has two seasons with the Twins. He's won the division both times. In 2019 he was the Manager of the Year in the AL, and he followed up with a first place finish in 2020. He's considered a "players' manager" and by all accounts he's well liked by both the Front Office and everyone in the clubhouse. He's also known as a new-age manager that follows current trends based on stats and pro…

Good to see Simmons activated. Nick Gordon optioned. It does not appear that Buxton will be playing tonight, however.

New Low: Twins Sunk By Pirates (Twins Series Recap)

Spotted last night in The Athletic: "Fans were throwing baseballs onto the field from the Yankee Stadium bleachers to the point where the officials had to stop the game with the Yankees at bat in the bottom of the eighth... It was a display of some baseball fans making an active choice to sever any future sentimentality toward a ball they could display on their office desk, because as the game played out, they didn’t want to remember the experience of watching the Yankees rack up three fielding errors, a total of three hits and allow seven walks to their most annoying division rival. They wanted their ire to be seen, and not just heard." Given the disappointing start …

I like to think I am only slightly below average in intelligence, but I'm finding it hard to find the game threads and thread to piss and moan about this terrible team after the game. Do I have to go to the Front Page to do the latter? Where are game threads? I know some of this has changed over time but I haven't been here often enough to follow each change. For what it's worth I suspect there might be others that don't stick here because those are the more interesting threads.

If you have the stomach for some more discussion around this series at Oakland, here's about 10 minutes of stats, analysis and highlights.

been a full 24 hours now, since the team, mlb, or any of the team's beat writers have shared any news or updates on the Twins Covid-19 situation.

Just announced on KFAN... Blankenhorn recalled. Luke Farrell selected from taxi squad. Rooker reinstated.

I came here to rant but I didn't know there was going to be a DIFFERENT rant. Geez. OK. The schedule. I know this is like point #15000 of why baseball is killing itself. But these early season start times are just so stupid. In the entire first 4 weeks of the season we have 2.... TWO (!) games that start at 6pm or 7pm and one of them was on a Saturday when it doesn't matter. Every other sport relies on the rhythm of it's schedule. Baseball seem to downright relish the randomness of its first month... just when fans should be getting into the rhythm of the season. I know. I know. We can cite a couple reasons... cold weather.... opening day.... blah blah blah. It's…

Tonight's Twins-Angels game postponed due to Covid contact tracing. Had a bad feeling when Simmons was DL'd.

Could Dobnak be an all star? With this terrific infield, I believe he could be. When Donaldson was in the line up Dobnak shined. Now that we have Simmons , Dobnak's stats & record will be very good because he's an excellent ground ball pitcher . Many aren't very excited about Dobnak, even as a 5th starter but I believe he'll surprise a lot of people

I thought he was was really good last year. Maybe I'm on an opening day high (Not high) but he is so good. Who would have thought he would be so good? He and Bremer are a great pair. Coming off last year which I listened to a lot of alternate broadcasts, The Twins are in top 5