Twins

The NHL announced expansion to Las Vegas last week. With that came news of an Expansion Draft. You may have seen AJ Mansour’s article at Vikings Journal where he asked What Would Happen If The NFL Held An Expansion Draft? It was a very interesting article, and of course, it got me thinking about what the Twins would do in the event of further expansion.

The last time MLB held an expansion draft was in November of 1997 when the league expanded to 30 teams. The Tampa Bay Devil Rays and the Arizona Diamondbacks joined the league the next year. Both teams were able to pick 35 guys from other organizations. The draft went three rounds:

• Round 1 - the 28 current MLB teams were able to protect 15 players from the entire organization (40-man or not). Each team could only lose one player in the round. (14 players drafted by each of the expansion teams)
  
• Round 2 - each team can protect three more players and then the same guidelines apply. (14 players drafted by each of the expansion teams.
  
• Round 3 - each team makes seven more selections.
  

In that November, 1997 draft, the Twins lost Outfielder Brent Brede in the first round. In the 2nd round, Damian Miller was the selection of the Diamondbacks. Of course, he went on to a terrific career catching the likes of Curt Schilling and Randy Johnson to a World Series championship.

There is no denying that the 2021 offseason for the Minnesota Twins went about as poorly as possible. Knowing what we know now, though, what would the ideal offseason have looked like for the Twins?

The Minnesota Twins’ 2018-2019 offseason had been fairly mundane as far as player acquisition goes.

Sure, they said goodbye to Joe Mauer. Hired a shiny new manager. Landed a reclamation project for second base. All well and good. However the Twins had not made a maneuver to inspire the fan base, not sending any kind of signal that they cared about improving more than incrementally in 2019.

On Thursday, they finally gave fans something to talk about by signing 38-year-old Nelson Cruz.

I made my first trip of the year to Target Field last Friday, and had a fantastic time. It was a beautiful evening and the Twins played a very crisp ballgame, winning 1-0 behind a tremendous start from Kyle Gibson.

Yet, as I looked around the park from my seats down the first base line, I couldn't help but feel a sense of disappointment with the sparsity of the crowd. The announced attendance of 22,794 -- their second-largest since Opening Day -- seemed overstated, with empty seats littering the lower deck.

The Twins moved within a game of .500 that night, and by the end of the weekend they had a winning record. In the wake of a dreadful start, this team has been playing good ball, positioning itself for relevancy in the AL Central at least early on.

But the fans, mired in apathy following a fourth straight 90-loss season, haven't responded by filling the stadium. Already the Twins have drawn fewer than 20,000 on five occasions; last year that happened once, in September.

Continuing to win games at a solid clip will help bring back some wayward fans, but what this team needs is a spark plug that generates real excitement and gets the entire baseball world buzzing.

They'll have one soon in Byron Buxton. But how soon?

Luis Arraez has had a tremendous season, likely earning the title of Twins MVP so far. He looked to be on track for a career year through the end of July, but then came a confusing August. What went wrong for the Twins leadoff man in the dog days of summer?

It’s been a rough start for the Twins’ erstwhile finisher. After a rapid ascent to the top of the bullpen hierarchy, sometime relief ace Taylor Rogers has been much more hittable in 2020. The issue lies in his release point, but fixing the problem might be much harder than identifying it.

Well, believe it or not, we're almost halfway through this strange season. The Twins have performed at about the same level as most people expected but how about the rest of the AL Central? It's very difficult to keep track of a number of teams at once, so allow me to walk you through what else is going on in the AL Central

Yet againm Jorge Polanco is off to a slow start in 2022, something that has gone largely unnoticed until the Twins recent difficult stretch. With multiple staples of the lineup missing, it’s worth asking whether the Twins struggling second baseman can pick up the slack.

One certainty this season was supposed to be Cy Young runner up Kenta Maeda leading the rotation. So far however things just haven’t looked quite right, even before his blow up in Oakland on Wednesday. So what’s going on with King Kenta?