Twins

And so it ends. We saw the 2017 Minnesota Twins put together the greatest bounce-back season in team history, but just because this team would never say die didn’t mean it could live forever. As a way to look back on what was an unforgettable season, here is every game recap published at Twins Daily this season all in one place. I’ve also highlighted my personal top-10 moments and added some brief notes.

If you're freaking out about the Twins rotation right now, that's understandable.

The past week has brought a couple of seemingly grave developments. Ervin Santana will probably miss the first month of the season, and Minnesota has officially lost out in the Yu Darvish sweepstakes. No one could deny that the present layout of the rotation looks grim.

But there are some silver linings at play here.

The Twins were haunted by a couple of their old friends this weekend. Denard Span wore out the Twins all weekend, and Carlos Gomez finished the sweep with a walk-off home run on Sunday afternoon. Phil Hughes made his first start of the season and gave up a two-run homer in the first inning. The Twins kept coming back, but the bullpen kept letting this one slip away. Addison Reed is human after all.

Entering this game, the Twins hadn’t given up more than six runs all month and the pitching staff had a 3.17 ERA, good for sixth best in the league. The bullpen had been particularly strong in June, ranking fourth in all of baseball with a 2.60 ERA.

Kyle Gibson did his part, delivering another quality start, but all those pretty numbers listed above look a lot more bloated after the bullpen had a bad day against Boston.

Oh, and all the Eds are broken.

This is the third in a four-part series ranking the top 20 player assets in the Minnesota Twins organization. The idea is to think solely in terms of commodity valuation, factoring in things like age, cost, control, and risk management in answering the question: which players are most essential to this team's vision?

Already we've looked at Nos. 20 through 16 and Nos. 15 through 11. Today we dive into the top ten.

Continuing down the path of searching out relief help for the Minnesota Twins, a host of closers and high-leverage arms can all be explored. The latest target is a guy who once tormented the hometown nine from the opposing bullpen. No longer the fireballer from the Kansas City Royals pen, he's still a serviceable arm that's carved out a pretty solid career.

The Minnesota Twins charged toward 300 home runs and became the sixth-winningest team in franchise history during a milestone-filled week that saw them carve their magic number down to three.

As the Twins close in on a champagne-popping celebration and their first division title in nine years, here's a rundown of where things stand.

As the Twins survey the open market, there are three gut-wrenching players who may have them losing their appetite. The Twins should consider signing them to avoid further damage.

Today we received the highly anticipated PECOTA projections from Baseball Prospectus. Put out around this time each year, they are the gold standard among projection systems when it comes to putting a number to teams' win totals. Often there’s an organization or two that feels scorned, but Minnesota is sitting pretty heading into 2020.

Metrodome Magic was on full display today, as Dan Gladden’s walk-off single finished off a 3-run comeback for the Twins in the 9th inning to complete an opening-series sweep of the Oakland Athletics. The Twins are now off to a 3-0 start, their best start to a season since 1973.

Rob Manfred and Tony Clark met face-to-face earlier this week and appear to have made major progress on getting a season rolling in the ballpark of 60 games. A season so short will hardly resemble a real baseball season, but it might just be the most exciting season we’ve ever seen.

Offense is down. The ball isn’t flying like it was last season. Nobody hits for power in their 40s. These are things somebody forgot to tell Nelson Cruz.