Minnesota Twins Talk

David Ortiz was released by the Twins in December of 2002. The Twins has just been knocked out of the ALCS by the Angels and their Rally Monkey two months earlier. While the Twins did manage to win a game against the Yankees in 2003, they Then proceeded to lose the final three of that series, and then: 3 in 2004 (NY) 3 in 2006 (Oak) 3 in 2010 (NY) 1 in 2017 (NY) 3 in 2019 (NY) 2 in 2020 (Houston) The Red Sox have gone on to win four titles, in 2004, 2007, 2013, and 2018. (Granted, Big Papi only played in the first three.)

It's a tough day to be a Twins fan, but days like today are part of the journey. I dug out the following article I wrote for my college newspaper in 1985, two years before the Twins won their first World Series, and it cheered me up. Thought I'd share, as I think the community needs it. People have often asked me why I love the Twins. They ask as if being a Twins' fan must be an inescapable condition which is ultimately under genetic control, or the result of a traumatic childhood experience. I immediately assure my inquirers that my fanaticism is completely voluntary, but have trouble pinpointing exactly what hooked me. Maybe I simply enjoyed defying parental authority…

Jorge Posada > Jorge Polanco Short goodbyes > long hugs Golden gophers > rally monkeys vasectomy > presidential debates

Certainly doesn't sound like a guy that plans on coming back, or has an offer to come back. However, as we know these things are fluid. He is in line for a nice pay day, and potentially a closing role somewhere in 2021

It just occurred to me, having watched every one of these 17 atrocities called baseball games, that the Twins almost always started stronger than the other team. 17 losses, 11 times the Twins scored first. I'm so effing sick of this team. I'm so effing sick of watching them jump ahead and then lay down to die.

Going into the final weekend of the season, the eight-team AL field is nearly set, though no team is locked into its seed. Here's what I came up with as combinations for the seeds. There's a few spots where I didn't have time (yet) to look back at the final 20 games when used as tiebreaker. And with 2^28 permutations in play, I can't promise I got them all right. But they're pretty close. TAMPA BAY (37-20): • Ends with 37 wins: o No. 1 seed if Minnesota loses once, Chicago loses once, and Oakland loses once (or maybe twice, depending on the next tiebreaker. o No. 2 seed if Minnesota wins out OR Chicago wins out OR Oakland wins out (or maybe loses once, depending on the…

Dust off that antenna, folks: the Twins 2020 postseason debut is over the air on ABC (albeit at 1 PM on a Tuesday, pre-empting some soap opera, presumably?): Twins-Astros: Game 1: 1 p.m. Tuesday, ABC Game 2: Noon Wednesday, ESPN2 Game 3: TBA Thursday

First of all, congratulations to the entire Twins organization, fans and friends for winning the AL Central! This was a tough division in 2020, and the final standings prove that point. Before the final day of regular season games today, all we knew was that the Twins were headed for the post season, but we had no clue who we would be playing in the first round. We know now that it will be the Houston Astros, starting Tuesday at Target Field, best of 3 after losing today, 5-3, vs. the Reds. I always enjoy listening to the post game interviews, win or lose, but they are usually filled with cliches. Not Tyler Duffey tonight however. He was fun to listen to, and he mad…

Using my Cards as an example: The only major miss of the Cards trading young developed starters since trading both Jerry Reuss and Steve Carlton before the 1972 season was Mark Mulder for Dan Haren. Mulder though winning 16 and losing 8 in 2005, but, lost 2 games against the Astros was a shell of himself as Haren had some good success in the big leagues. The Cards last had a starter, Bob Forsch, start 30 games 5 years in a row in the late 1970's. That is a long time. We couldn't trade Lance Lynn with two more years on his contract because he needed TJ surgery by the end of season 4. Season 5 was rehab, 6 was recovery with a bad second half and 7 was worse than …

With three teams fighting for the division title, it seems quite possible there will be a tie for the division winner this year in the AL Central. With new tiebreaker rules this year, I thought it might be interesting to start tracking the tiebreakers. As a reminder, here are how ties will be broken this year per ESPN: "Tiebreaker games will be eliminated, with ties broken by head-to-head record, followed by better record within a team's division and record in the last 20 games within the division. If there is still a tie, the standard would be last 21 games within a division, then 22, etc." Here's how things currently stand in the AL Central. Twins vs CLE: 4-3 (3 games…

After the games of 9/22: TB over Min: 2 CWS over Min: 4 Oak over Min: 5 Min over Cle: 2 Min over NYY: 4

This crazy year of 2020 has introduced another new term to MLB playoffs, "seeding". I don't pretend to understand all of it but I do know that the higher seeded teams get a home field advantage and a better draw so winning the Central with the best record possible makes a huge difference with a 23-5 home record and a mediocre road record.. Might as well pretend that this year is like any other and going deep into playoffs or even the Texas World Series is a big deal. What I am getting at is that winning, if not sweeping this unusual season ending series with Cincy does mean something. Or maybe, who cares?

I’m glad to see Ex-Twins in 2020 thread is back up and running. This is also one of my favorite threads over the last 5 years. The Twins have never been undefeated this late into the calendar year (July 25, 2020).

Listened to Gleeman&Geek podcast. They agreed on Maeda, Berrios & Pineda as the 1st round rotation I'm fine with that. My question is who (knock on wood) is the starter for Game 1 of whatever the second round is called? I say Oddo if healthy, Hill scares me. Dobnak possibly having to revisit Yankee Stadium doesn't sit well with me either. Or does it matter if we win The Central and get the 1-3 seed or we fail and are 7 or 8 seed? Sorry for The Nervous Nelly post, but I was just just thinking (before drinking)

I saw the Twins have a 21-5 record at home, and 12-17 on the road. That's 26 home games, 29 road matches. With 5 more at home, are any of them designated as a "home" game for the visitors--the one where the road team takes the field first. I know there was one like that in Detroit, where the Twins were set to play 5 games. At the moment, the Twins and the Tigers have played 4 games each where they took the field first. Nothing on the schedules I've seen have indicated that either of the Tigers games will be a "home game" for Detroit. Have any of you heard? JcS

Catching up on the Twins news this weekend... Sucks to read about Rooker’s season ending injury, and Rosario’s elbow injury. Even before these injuries, the offense needed a spark to get going before the playoffs. I don’t see Cave or Wade Jr. as the answer in the short term, or for the rest of the season if Rosario’s injury is worse than anticipated. That’s why it’s time to call up Kirilloff. He’s rule 5 eligible this December and needs to be added anyway. The Twins are 99.9% playoff bound, and this stretch of games would serve as a good ramp up for AK. Let’s see it happen.

I almost posted this in a front page thread but decided it needed it's own. I know we are in a playoff push with mixtures of optimism and consternation, but Dobnak has been brought up more than once lately and I thought it was time for some evaluation and honest reflection in the guy. There has been so much "story" and early success surrounding him that I think perspective has been lost. I think what gets lost is he is a ROOKIE MLB SP. He pitched a total of 29.1 innings in 2019 which is about what a late fill-in/September audition might be expected to tnrow. And he has all of 49.2 IP in 2020 to the time I post this. These are his current ML numbers: W/L ERA IP …

So I had thought that postseason rosters would work the same this year as in past seasons, just with an eligibility cutoff date of Sep. 15 instead of Aug. 31. Any player in the org on those dates was eligible to be included on a postseason roster (although players added to the 40-man after those dates would technically need to take the place of a corresponding player who served a full IL stint). But reading news around the league, apparently teams are starting to submit something called a "40-man postseason player pool." This is NOT simply the 40-man roster, but any non-40-man players included in the pool would need to be added to the 40-man before they could play in th…

This is nearly a week old, but Joe Mauer was interviewed on Under Center with Kirk Cousins. They talked about his high school athletic career, his commitment to QB at Florida State (and some of the other opportunities that he had), and of course, his Twins career. Was a lot of fun to listen to. https://www.vikings.com/audio/under-center-with-kirk-cousins-twins-legend-joe-mauer-joins-the-show-green-bay-p

So I was perusing the pitching stats today and was looking at WAR leaders for pitchers (on ESPN, which I think is bWAR) Kenta Maeda is at 1.5, which without context seems just fine. Then I look above him. Max Scherzer is at 2.1. Hmmmm... He has and ERA over 4, and a WHIP of 1.4, while pitching the exact same number of innings as Maeda. He's got a decent amount more strikeouts than Maeda but not a TON more, so I chalk up bWAR being focused on K/9 or something. So I look higher. Max Fried 2.8 WAR. Nearly double that of Maeda. K rate is a decent amount lower than Maeda (about the difference between Kenta and Max), but has a lower ERA. That's literally the only sta…

Per a few sources. Bad for the team as a whole but pretty excited to see Rooker.

Left knee tendinitis. Not good new heading into a critical next 7 games... https://www.mlb.com/twins/news/luis-arraez-placed-on-injured-list-by-twins

Out-of-Stater looking at weather for Mpls and want to know how to plan my evening. Thanks

I heard on the minor league report this morning that Lewis has been their best hitter at the alternate site. He bats right handed. He plays up the middle. The Twins need him now. Put him on the roster in place of Vargas. Play him in CF or 2B or 3B against left handed pitching. Bring back Donaldson with him and send back Cave or Wade. Find another right handed bat in Astudillo or Rooker or trade for a corner OF if they aren't a solution.

Instead of the bullpen games, I would like to see them bring up Jhoan Duran for a start. There is nothing to lose, as our pitching lately (outside of Maeda) has been very suspect. Although Pineda is on his way, I am not sure that we would not benefit from another arm. I would like to see Colina and Chalmers, as well. I have seen enough of Thorpe, and am not thrilled with how several of our relievers are pitching this year. Why we marched out Romo last week in multiple games - I will never know. He is not that effective when he logs a lot of appearances and can be timed up by lineups - I do NOT trust him in a big playoff game versus Yankees. Time to see what else we…

Was on Chicago Sports talk radio this morning and was asked what surprised him about The Twins. He said he's never seen them make so many errors and mental mistakes. His second take was "Why does anybody pitch to Nelson Cruz?" Ozzie is great

There's been a fair amount of lament on Twins Daily about Rocco's propensity for using the bullpen game. Let's take a look at how it's gone. First, the context. At the end of last season, the rotation set up as Berrios and unproven starters. "Impact Pitching" was needed. There was lots of conversation on TD about what Impact Pitching meant, with some thinking that it meant get the highest-impact pitcher. Realistically, Gerrit Cole was not going to happen. The next tier was seen as Wheeler, Keuchel, Bumgarner, Ryu and maybe a couple others. None of them happened either. Instead, rather than going for an Impact PitchER, they went for Impact PitchING. They offered a …

Darren Wolfson tweeted this morning that Willians Astudillo will be the 29th man today. Could the stay last longer than one day?

I know we just ended a 6 game losing streak and the sky was falling. However, we are still 94.4 percent chance of making playoffs based on current standings and matchups. Yes, that is not division winning like our goal should be, but that does not change the playoffs for first round will be same a 3 game match. This may be in a bubble. That being said, I am thinking who should be our top 3 pitchers in postseason, then who should be number 4. Of course this may be altered over the coming weeks depending on injury, and performance. To this point, Menada should be 1 in my opinion. He has been best starter all year. Number 2 is much harder to decide. Dobnak has be…

Jake Odorizzi gets activated today to face the Royals, filling out the 28-man active roster which will include 16 (!) pitchers. The way the Twins are playing it, they need all or almost all of those pitching slots because they have had a grand total of four six-inning starts at this point in the season. Further, more length won't be expected soon from Rich Hill or Odorizzi as they come off the IL, nor from Thorpe or Smeltzer as they fill in until the rotation has some semblance of stability. With the activation of Odorizzi, the Twins will have starters Hill and Bailey and reliever Zack Littell on the IL. Josh Donaldson was put on the IL yesterday and has to be on the s…