Twins

The Twins lost the Wild Card game. The circumstances in which it happened were pretty tough to swallow. This isn’t the kind of thing that’s easy to react to right away. Time is going to heal wounds and the good memories are going to outlast the bad ones, but right now … well, in the wise words of Joe Mauer “This sucks right now.”

This week's Almanac marks the birthdates of Minnesotan major leaguers Paul Castner, Don Arlich, Brian Denman, and Cole De Vries, and former Twins slugger Josh Willingham. And it was this week in history that the Twins announced infielder Danny Thompson's leukemia diagnosis, and Hrbie signed a bigly new contract.

This week in Twins history includes great games by Geoff Zahn, Kevin Tapani, Jack Kralick, Ken Landreaux, Tim Laudner, Paul Molitor, Greg Myers, Jim Kaat, Camilo Pascual, Harmon Killebrew, Scott Erickson, Mickey Hatcher, Luke Hughes, and Billy Beane. This week's Almanac also includes Minnesotan major leaguers Charley Bender, Lou Galvin, Russ Ford, Fred Bruckbauer, and Hack Spencer.

Joe Mauer had been given Wednesday afternoon off in Chicago. On Thursday night, the Twins returned home to Target Field and Mauer was back in the lineup, Mauer singled to tie Rod Carew for second on the Twins all-time hits list. On Friday, he executed a perfect hit-and-run for a single and hit #2,086, passing the great Carew.

On Saturday night, the Minnesota Twins honored Hall of Famer Jim Thome in a pregame ceremony. Joe Mauer caught the ceremonial first pitch from his former teammate and then went out and added two more base knocks on his quest toward catching Kirby Puckett atop the Twins all-time hit list. Or just to end his season strong.

As we all look forward to celebrating the transition from 2018 to 2019 today, it’s fun to look back at the Twins 2018 season and think about all of the rookies that came up. There were 15 rookies who played for the Twins in 2018. Today we are going to focus on the eight players who made their Major League debuts.

The former multi-purpose home of the Minnesota Twins sat down for a wide-ranging, sometimes combative Q&A with Twins Daily's RandBall's Stu. This interview has been edited for clarity and a potentially libelous claim by the stadium about former Twins pitcher John Smiley.

The other day one of my friends, who is a Yankees fan, asked me how the Twins were such a good team with their roster. This wasn’t some attempt to say the Twins aren’t actually good, he just didn’t realize how many good players the Twins actually have, specifically within their lineup. That same thing is probably going through the minds of many other casual baseball fans of other MLB teams. When you look at the lineup, the only guy most people probably recognize as a star is Nelson Cruz, and he hasn’t really been the biggest of factors so far given that he’s only played in a little over half of the Twins games. This is probably why many national media members didn’t peg the Twins to be this good offensively, and why their preseason over/under win total of 84.5 now seems like it would have been an easy money bet.

According to Tommy Birch from the Des Moines Register, the Twins have acquired Giants relief pitcher Sam Dyson from the Giants.

The Twins traded OF Jaylin Davis and right-handed pitchers Kai-Wei Teng and Prelander Berroa.

I know what you are probably thinking: “Whoa whoa whoa, hold on, if there is one thing that is set about the Minnesota Twins starting rotation, it’s Jose Berrios and Jake Odorizzi are their clear cut one and two starters.” This is a sentiment that I completely agree with and is why I think starting Randy Dobnak in game two of the ALDS would be a good idea for the Twins. So, before you go off on why you think this is a terrible idea, just hear me out for a second.

According to Peirre Noujaim from Fox 9 News in Minneapolis, the Minnesota Twins have reached a deal to keep veteran Michael Pineda with the team. His sources tell him that the deal is for two years and $20 million.

Dan Hayes reports that the deal is pending a physical.

The Mookie Betts trade will certainly go down as one of the more memorable trades in recent history. After nearly a five-day delay, the trade was finally completed late Sunday afternoon, with a few changes that were made to the originally agreed upon deal. Now that it is finally complete, we can break down exactly what each of the three teams involved in this trade received and give them a grade.

The 1968 season opened for the Twins back where it all started, in Washington D.C., with a former Twin facing off against a former Senator. It came a few days later than planned due to social unrest in the nation’s capital after the tragic assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., but on April 10^th baseball would resume, albeit with a peculiar twist.