Minnesota Twins Talk

Going into Sunday's game Twins are 4th in MLB for HR's and 29th in SO's. Granted, we've played @3 games less than most teams, That's an interesting split considering the crazy number of Strikeouts in today's game. I take that as a good sign

The Twins announced this morning that the Twins activated RH RP Matt Magill from the Injured List. In other news, the Twins also announced that Chase De Jong had been outrighted to Rochester. That puts the Twins at 39 on their 40-man roster. That would open up a roster spot when needed. Mike Morin makes the most sense to take it ,though Jake Reed would be a fun story too. Interesting note from Jeremy: https://twitter.com/jeremynygaard/status/1121820026850422784

Life Long Twins fan here! How long have you all been a fan? who are your favorite players? Favorite team? Fan since the late 60's Always was partial to Rod Carew 1987 for sure!

The Twins announced this morning that Kohl Stewart and Fernando Romero were being called up today. Stewart ,as we knew, will start tonight against the Astros. Romero is a bit more surprising, ,though they are likely protecting themselves from a short start by Stewart. No surprise that Tyler Duffey was optioned, but with the second pitcher called up, Jake Cave was also optioned.

I know it’s being discussed in the game thread but figured why not give it one of its own. Prety sure there haven’t been any prior threads on this before

Opinions on Gio Gonzalez? My thoughts are a lefty free agent who wouldn't cost a draft choice is something to look into. He wouldn't cost as much Dallas Keuchel and he would be ready to go immediately. The Twins bullpen problems would be alleviated by another starter who routinely pitches six innings. Gonzalez has exceeded 170 innings every year but one since 2010 and got over 200 IP three times in that time period. He's older, but not ancient.

Back on May 23, 2017 in Baltimore, Byron Buxton led off the third inning with a walk off of Dylan Bundy. After a foul bunt pop-up out (come on Dozier, gotta get that bunt down), Robbie Grossman came to the plate, and Byron duly took off for second. Wellington Castillo threw down to second and JJ Hardy received the throw, but Buxton had already reached the bag safely, as he usually does. Unfortunately, Buxton’s momentum - as it sometimes does - carried him past the bag, and Hardy (as he often does) alertly tagged Buxton out. Now, you can debate whether Buxton should be credited with a stolen base for getting to the base ahead of the throw, but the box score - and the r…

In 2017, the Twins used a record number of pitchers, but had relative stability when it came to position players.They used only 17 in the course of the season. To my knowledge, that number of position players tied their all-time low since 1961, the year the team came to Minnesota. This year, the Twins went north with 14 position players and had one, Miguel Sano, on the Injured List. Tyler Austin is gone and will not return. It is unlikely that the team will go as high as 14 position players the rest of the year. The main reasons I see little position player movement are that the team currently has three truly versatile players who don't figure to be plugged into a singl…

"In a 14-season career, he batted .245 with 271 home runs and 919 RBIs in 1800 games. Brunansky averaged 24 home runs per 162 games. He finished his career with 1543 hits in 6289 at bats, 69 stolen bases, and 306 doubles." Wikipedia "Following the 1982 season, Brunansky became a fixture in right field for the Twins starting there through the 1987 season." Wikipedia "He was the Twins sole All-Star representative in 1985 and was a starter for the World Champion 1987 Minnesota Twins during what was arguably his best overall season (hitting .259, with 32 HR, 85 RBI and 83 Runs). Brunansky helped the Twins upset the Detroit Tigers in the American League Championship Series…

After a couple of horrible years, the Twins now have an opening to become a force in the Twin Cities sports market. While we all know this will always be a Vikings town, it has been an abysmal year for Minnesota pro sports, with the Vikings, Wild and Wolves failing to even make the playoffs, the Twins have the opportunity to become a force in the market. The Twins have gotten off to a good start, with young guys, Polanco, Berios, Kepler and Buxton leading the way. While we Twins fans joke, Astudillo could really be the type of player that captures the fascination of the fans. Once the draft is completed, the Twins will have the file to themselves, so a successful sea…

The first roster move occurred today with Tyler Austin being DFAed today. Most of us were happy with keeping Austin and also keeping three catchers. I think reality in 2019 is that a team can't have three catchers and three first basemen/DHs for the long term. the Opening Day roster choices also pivoted around Austin being out of options, and now likely lost to the organization. Before today's game, I was thinking that they will eventually have to do something with the catcher position. Of course, injury could solve the problem or perhaps Willians Astudillo could turn into a pumpkin. If the season proceeds with Castro, Garver and Astudillo being viable options and spli…

So a week or so ago I came across a reference to a study (which I will need to dig up) pointing out one of the only things that you can take away from early season returns: hard hit balls. Specifically, the operating theory was that players who hit balls really hard early in the season were likely to have an increase in their slugging percentage for the entire season. The metric that was focused on was the (in my view, somewhat arbitrary) threshold of 108mph. The site that was linked to was https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/, and on that site there was a way to pull up all of the early season 108mph+ hit balls. The Twins had a few early on when I looked. I was intrigu…

The Twins chose to add a reliever for game 2 as the 26th man. They will start both Berrios and Perez today. That pushes the problem of a starter until Wednesday against the Astros. They had other options. They could have called up Littell to start game 2. He started yesterday for Rochester but the weather was known early enough to use a different pitcher in Rochester They could make game 2 a bullpen game with the extra arm in Romero. The Wednesday game is against the Astros. They could make it a bullpen game without the benefit of the extra arm. They could send out Duffey and call up Littell for that game. They would then return Littell with Magill or Moya possib…

caught this during the A's/Astro's game on mlb network tonight (bob melvin is #53) not about to start a debate or anything, but thought it was noteworthy and gave me a chuckle, so thought i'd share

Duffey up, Vasquez down, no TD topic yet... well here it is. Go

Tonights loss was the third time this season I didn't like what our 3rd. Base coach was doing with runners. I cannot remember all the details but there was a game early in the season where he tried to hold up someone causing Buxton to slow down between 2nd and third leading to an out but the lead runner scored. Another was when Rosario scored running through the stop sign scoring from first Then Tonight

In a not so revealing interview with MLB.com, Buxton tells the interviewer “I’m going to be me” 146 times including the excerpt below. “MLB.com: Speaking of laying off the wall: I’ve seen you get hurt because you hit the wall so many times. Have you thought about laying off the wall? Buxton: There is no point in it. If you are going to come out here and you want to win, you do what you have to do to help your team win. You have but one life. I’m going to make the most of it while I can.” https://www.mlb.com/news/byron-buxton-more-confident-comfortable-in-2019 While we’ve seen a more effective hitter by this new approach, the health is status quo. Will Buxton eve…

With Sano making the trip down to Ft. Myers to start his rehab assignment, the discussion on whose roster spot is vulnerable seems worthy of discussion. With three catchers on the roster, conventional wisdom would suggest that one of those slots would be the first place the front office will look. It is clear that Baldelli is struggling with how to get all three catchers innings behind the plate. Garver's performance both offensively and defensively has been one of the pleasant surprises of the first couple of weeks of the season. I have to believe that Baldelli is going to pencil his name into the lineup more often than your typical backup backstop. At the start of the…

As a 23-year-old, Jorge Polanco finished 2017 with a 723 OPS (.256/.313/.410), but that includes a MONSTER August (1099 OPS) and very good September (768 OPS). It looked like he was ready for the next step.... ... but then came the half-year suspension. He still posted a very good (for a SS) 773 OPS (.288/.345/.427) over the last 80 games. But that suspension also made us wonder just how much of that August 2017 power was legit. It looks legit today. So far this year, in 44 plate appearances, he's hitting .375, with a .432 OBP and a ... .750(!) SLG. That's a 1182 OPS. Obviously, that's not sustainable, but how high can we hope for? A - .270/.330/.420 (750 OPS) B - …

According to his agent, via twitter, LHP Andrew Vasquez will be recalled by the Twins today. Presumably, it will be at the expense of RHP Chase De Jong who needed 46 pitches to complete the ninth inning last night. Vasquez has pitched just once so far for Rochester. He has given up two hits and a walk, but in 1 1/3 innings, he struck out four batters. UPDATED: It appears that De Jong has an option remaining so he can also just be optioned.

LEN III reports that it will be made up as part of a split doubleheader on May 11.

From Royals Review blog It’s hard to find a team more plain, uninteresting, and irrelevant as the Minnesota Twins. You know when you’re trying to name all 30 baseball teams and you’re stuck on 29? That team you can’t remember is the Twins. Bloop hits? That’s so Twins. Changing from one right-handed reliever to another right-handed reliever with two outs and nobody on in the ninth? That’s pretty, pretty Twins. They’re 4-1 on the season, but nobody actually remembers anything they’ve done thus far. So there’s that. When did Royals' fans get so 'uppity' I hope when we win our third World Series we don't become this

Announced an hour ago per mlb trade rumors

Has the highest career BA among players with at least 100 career AB. Ty Cobb, however, still has him beat in on-field brawls.

While we're all crazy over Astudillo, please remember we've got another one almost like him on the 40 man roster, Luis Arraez: Minor League stats: Astudillo Arraez At Bats 2266 1223 Average .306 .330 K's (#) 81 114 K's (ave) .036 .093 Both are not fast and both are not svelt. But wouldn't it be fun to have turtle 1 and turtle 2 batting about .320 never striking out and putting lots of m…

Yes! (Not sure where this thread is going, i just have a strong feeling it needs to exist...)

Interesting article that suggests that the Indians are so confident that they will win the AL Central that they are tanking somewhat to minimize payroll. https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-indians-are-contenders-but-could-they-get-away-with-a-little-tanking/ From the article: "Cleveland has won the Central in each of the past three years, by a comfortable margin of 12.7 games on average. Part of this is not the product of Cleveland’s talent but rather the lack thereof among the rest of the teams in the division. In fact, the rest of the division has done so little to try to close the gap that the Indians were openly shopping some of their veteran stars this wi…

It appears that some of you people online are being less than kind to Twins' catcher Mitch Garver and Garver has had enough.

As of 7/31/2018-1:27 A.M., your Minnesota Twins currently sit 8 games back of the division leading Cleveland Indians. The Twins are in full-sell mode after shipping away Eduardo Escobar, Ryan Pressly, Zach Duke, and Lance Lynn each to contending teams. It seems as the front office has waved the white flag on the 2018 season. Brian Dozier and Joe Mauer have publicly expressed how deflated the moral is inside the clubhouse. However, there is a certain something that always seems to cure strife within a team: Winning during a playoff race. Yes, I know what you're thinking. "Boof, this season is over. The front office is literally trying to make Molitor lose. We're too far …

This is the last Friday without a game until October. I thought folks might need a thread to post this, that, the other thing, and random stuff. You know, like a game thread but without the game. I'll start. In theory, in theory and in practice are the same. But in practice, in theory and in practice are not the same.