Ten Years of TD: The Top 5 Twins Daily Articles from 2012

[Nick Nelson]

On February 19th, Twins Daily will be celebrating its 10-year anniversary. To honor this upcoming milestone, we're looking back at the most-read articles from each year since our site launched. 

Today, we start with 2012, TD's first year and one that proved to portend a rebuild rather than a rebound for the Twins.

Ahh, the 2012 season. Almost as ugly as our website looked back then. I mean look at it! You'd think we launched in the late '90s. 

Meanwhile, the Twins were taking it back to the late '90s with their play on the field, where a 96-loss disaster hammered home a cold reality: 2011's collapse was no blip on the radar. Nevertheless, this season gave us some memorable moments – both good and bad – and several were captured in the five most popular articles of Twins Daily's inaugural year.

5. Twins Trade Denard Span for Nationals' 2011 First Round Pick

By Parker Hageman

Ten years ago, Twins had an abundance of center fielders and a major need for pitching. (Sound familiar?) In an effort to rejuvenate the pitching pipeline, Terry Ryan traded Span for Alex Meyer, a big 6-foot-9 right-hander and highly regarded pitching prospect. 

It was a reasonable move at the time, and Parker noted as much in his writeup, but he also included this excerpt from Baseball America's Aaron Fitt, which proved to be sadly prescient: "There is risk with this guy. He is 6-foot-9 and like many tall pitchers there are a lot of moving parts. There is a lot going on in that delivery. It takes a lot for those guys to put it all together."

So it does, and unfortunately, Meyer never did. All those moving parts led to constant control problems and injuries. He retired in 2019 with a 4.63 career ERA (including 14.21 with the Twins).

4. Correia Signing is a Sad Thing

By Nick Nelson

I remember this well. The signing. My reaction. Mashing out this rant on my keyboard. 

The decision to sign Kevin Correia to a two-year, $10 million contract epitomized my frustration with the Ryan regime. From the very start, it was a zero-upside move. Millions of dollars thrown at an "established innings eater" when they would've been better off giving those innings to young pitchers who couldn't have possibly been much worse. 

(On that note, the money line from this article: "It's not clear that he's a significantly better option than Liam Hendriks or Sam Deduno, particularly if you're building toward a future contender.")

Say what you will about the current front office, but they don't make moves like this, and looking back at signings like Correia (along with Mike Pelfrey, signed the same offseason) reminds me how much I appreciate it.

3. Ben Revere Traded to Philly for RHP Vance Worley & Top Pitching Prospect

By Seth Stohs

The decision to trade Span wasn't all that surprising. Revere getting traded a week later came as a much bigger shock. Still, it made sense, given the impending arrival of Aaron Hicks and the prevailing need for arms. Here, Ryan did much better than in the Span deal.

Vance Worley was a bust, but the additional "top pitching prospect" cited by Seth in the title was Trevor May, who had a nice career with the Twins and was a high-end reliever by the time he left. 

Revere had a few solid years in Philly, but was done as a big-leaguer by age 30. Turns out that's what happens when speed is basically your only standout skill.

2. 2012 Minnesota Twins Draft Picks

By Seth Stohs

Twins Daily was designed to cater to hardcore fans. We wanted to dive deeper into the areas less covered by mainstream media. So we knew things like prospect coverage and the draft were going to be some of our biggest draws. 

Thus it came as no surprise that our running list of selections in the June draft was among our most-viewed articles. In retrospect, the interest in this particular draft class makes even more sense, because it turned out to be one of the best in Twins history.

Among the picks: Byron Buxton (2nd overall), José Berríos (32nd), Tyler Duffey (160th), and Taylor Rogers (340th).

1. Happy Offseason! 2013 TwinsCentric Offseason Handbook Is Released!

By John Bonnes

The Offseason Handbook is an idea that predates Twins Daily. In fact, it basically validated the concept of Twins Daily. 

Before we launched TD, I came together with John, Parker and Seth to talk about ways we could collaborate on content, and create something bigger than our disparate blogs. We collectively produced the first Offseason Handbook, under the "TwinsCentric" banner.

The reception of that product helped convince us there was a community capable of propelling Twins Daily to success. So it feels fitting that the most popular article of the site's first year was the announcement of a new Handbook release. A decade later, both Twins Daily and the Offseason Handbook are still going strong.

MORE FROM TWINS DAILY
— Order the Offseason Handbook
— Latest Twins coverage from our writers
— Recent Twins discussion in our forums
— Follow Twins Daily via Twitter, Facebook or email

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[wsnydes]

Congratulations on the big anniversary!

This will be fun to see what was popular over the years, as well as see how the site has evolved.

[tarheeltwinsfan]

Thank you for TD. A 10 year anniversary celebration is appropriate. Cheers. 

[HrbekRules]

This is such a great site!  Its one of the first things I look at in the morning!  Thanks for all you do!

[ToddlerHarmon]

Congrats on the anniversary! A fun look back.

Howeva, about the Correia signing: "Say what you will about the current front office, but they don't make moves like this"

No, they signed both Happ and Shoemaker to one year deals instead

[PDX Twin]

What did I ever do without TD? It's the first site that I open in the mornings after reading email. Thanks for all the hard work that goes into the production!

[John Bonnes]

I'm really looking forward to this series. I get that it's navel-gazing. I don't care. It's fun to review what we were (or in the case of #4, were not) excited about with the benefit of hindsight. 

[John Bonnes]

Oh, and that home page that you're ripping, Nick? Pretty sure that was my doing. ? (Admittedly, I'm not much of a graphic designer.)

[Nick Nelson]

25 minutes ago, John Bonnes said:

Oh, and that home page that you're ripping, Nick? Pretty sure that was my doing. ? (Admittedly, I'm not much of a graphic designer.)

I remember thinking it looked great back then! Now in retrospect it looks like a Geocities page ?

[bronald3030]

Ten Years ! Unbelievable . I enjoy the site and visit almost everyday. Thank you all for your tireless effort reporting on our favorite team.

[USAFChief]

Congrats and happy anniversary!

[ashbury]

Kudos! I was hooked on day one.