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The last couple decades of this matchup have been hard to watch if you’re a Minnesota fan. Even though the Twins won 101 games this season, they enter this series decided underdogs once again. You need a reason to buy in to this year being different. Here are five of them. 1987. That Twins team was the fourth best out of four teams. They had no business beating Detroit. They had no business beating St. Louis. The third starter was Les Straker. Al Michaels made fun of the Metrodome the entirety of the World Series. Whitey Herzog’s haircut was dumb as hell. Tom Kelly was 17. They won anyway.This can’t keep happening. If ever a team was due to beat another team, it’s the Minnesota Twins versus the New York Yankees. The math is just ridiculous at this point. You are more likely to get hit by spooky lightning while winning the Powerball than to have New York’s record vs. the Twins the last 20 years (don’t look this up). This dominance is unsustainable.We’re good people who deserve nice things. We volunteer in the community. We maintain healthy relationships with our family. We donate to charity. We stay off our phones in restaurants and have meaningful conversations with the rest of the table. The ROI on common decency should frankly be better than what Twins fans have gotten. “You do the right thing because it’s the right thing, not because of some potential reward,” some might say. Some might blow it out their ass, no disrespect.The Yankees pitching is different now. Remember when the Yankees had Mike Mussina and Andy Pettitte and they shut out the Twins every game from 1999-2018? Even though they were retired for many of those years, and they just kept doing it anyway? I’ve checked New York’s playoff roster. Neither Mussina nor Pettitte is on it. This is the most positive development for the Twins since they got $50,000 and Johan Santana from the Marlins for Jared Camp. This is not a joke and I am not kidding.DOBNAK. He’s probably going to start Game 2 or 3. He and Devin Smeltzer are the best stories in a season of great stories for the Minnesota Twins. The national media loves guys like this, and they thirst to tell these kinds of tales. I’m not saying Fox or ESPN will lean on MLB to give the Twins a break. I’m also not saying that’s the reason Phil Cuzzi is not a part of this series’ playoff crew. I’m just a man who notices things is all. Nothing more than that. DOBNAK.That weight off your shoulders? That lightness in your step? That’s optimism. Embrace it. Click here to view the article

Debating the resumes of Hall candidates has become contentious in recent years. The steroid era clouded the results of this hallowed ground. Two players, Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens, might have been the all-time best hitter and pitcher. Neither has gotten the call from Cooperstown. This year’s class is shaping up to be one of the biggest in history. Two players, Lee Smith and Harold Baines, have already been elected by the 16-member electorate of the Today’s Game Era ballot. If I was lucky enough to have a ballot, this is how I would vote.Class of 2019 Roy Halladay: Tragically, Halladay won’t be in Cooperstown to give an acceptance speech. He crashed his plane into the Gulf of Mexico in November 2017. Halladay might be the last pitcher of a former era. He compiled 67 complete games in his career and he needed fewer than 100 pitches in 14 of those complete games. Halladay won two Cy Young awards (2003, 2010) and he finished in the top-five another five times. There may not be another pitcher like Halladay. Edgar Martinez: With the recent election of Baines, it makes no sense to keep Martinez out of the hall. He is one of the best designated hitters of all-time and he is in his final year on the ballot. Paul Molitor spend 44% of his career playing DH and Frank Thomas spend 57% of his career at DH. Both have been elected to the Hall. He received over 70% of the vote in 2018 so he should easily break the 75% threshold in the current election cycle. Mariano Rivera: Rivera utilized one of the best pitches, a cut fastball, in baseball history to become one of the best pitchers in baseball history. He set the all-time record for saves (652) but he might be most remembered for his dominance during postseason play. He was part of five World Series winners and he collected the final outs in four of those championship seasons. Rivera was also a great influence off the field and he could end up with one of the highest voting percentages in Hall of Fame history. Future Inductions Mike Mussina: Mussina’s long career stacks up well, especially when compared to the era that he pitched in. Other pitchers from the era have garnered more recognition but Mussina was strong throughout his career. In one 10-year stretch, he received Cy Young votes in eight different seasons. After finishing at 63.5% in 2018, he’s going to be borderline this year to get in. I think he has to wait one more year and he will be part of the Class of 2020. Omar Vizquel: Vizquel follows the mold of Ozzie Smith in the fact that nearly all of his value came on the defensive side of the ball. Think of him as the anti-Edgar Martinez, whose value came completely on the offensive side. His 11 Gold Gloves at shortstop are second most all-time behind Smith. Smith was a first ballot Hall of Famer. Every shortstop ahead of him on the all-time hits lists is enshrined in Cooperstown or on their way. He should get in, but he will need to gain more support in the years to come. May Never Get In (But Still On My Ballot) Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Larry Walker, Andrew Jones, Todd Helton Bonds and Clemens are two of the greatest players of all time but their connection to the steroid era has kept them out of Cooperstown. Walker continues to gain ground, but recent crowded ballots have kept him from getting elected. He is in his ninth year of eligibility, which means 2020 will be his last opportunity on the writer’s ballot. Jones is a long way from being elected in his second year on the ballot. He is one of the best defensive players of all-time and I think he will can some traction in the years ahead. Helton gets little support due to playing his entire career in Colorado. Still his offensive accolades put him on the borderline for enshrinement. To be transparent, some things have changed on my ballot from last year to this year. I correctly predicted the four players who would be elected last year (Vladimir Guerrero, Trevor Hoffman, Chipper Jones, and Jim Thome). I have replaced those four players on this year’s ballot with two first time candidates (Halladay, Rivera), while adding three new candidates (Walker, Jones, and Helton). Johan Santana fell off the ballot in his first year of eligibility, but I tried to make his case in a series of posts last year. If you missed any of the series on Johan Santana’s Cooperstown Case, there were three parts to the series. The first post looked at the Kirby Puckett Clause and how it can be applied to Santana. The second article touched on the similarities in careers between Santana and the great Sandy Koufax. The third and final piece touched on his missing third Cy Young. Here is the official list of players available to be voted for by the BBWAA. Who makes your list? Leave a COMMENT and start the discussion. Click here to view the article

Last week, I wrote about Butch Huskey and his dubious tenure in a Twins uniform. There have been plenty of other players to struggle during their time in Minnesota. For a team considered small market and owners that have been cautious with their money, there have been some rough moves made to save a dollar or two. This week's candidate might fit into that category. He played parts of two seasons with the Twins at the end of a 15-year career. He did hit a postseason home run for the club but it wasn't enough to take him away from making this list.Rondell White began his career with plenty of promise. The power-hitting outfielder was taken 24th overall in the first round of the 1990 amateur draft by the Montreal Expos, a pick from the Angels as compensation for free agent Mark Langston. Out of the first round picks that year, White has the fourth highest career WAR behind Chipper Jones (1st overall pick), Mike Mussina (20th overall pick), and Alex Fernandez (4th overall pick). White was ranked as a top 15 prospect by Baseball America in all four years in the minors (1991-94). He averaged double digits in home runs in each of his full minor league seasons and he showed the ability to draw walks by getting on base almost 37% of the time. He did this while being multiple years younger than the competition in each full season league. At age 21, White made his professional debut as a September call-up. In his first taste of the big leagues, he showed a little bit of power and continued to get on base over 32% of the time. The next season saw White go back and forth between Triple-A and the big leagues before finally sticking as a regular in 1995. There were multiple stops on the Rondell White Express before he ended up as a Minnesota Twin. On the trade deadline in 2000, he was dealt from the Expos to the Cubs for Scott Downs. He would sign as a free agent with the Yankees in 2001 and a couple years later be dealt to the Padres. His last two stops before Minnesota were in Kansas City and Detroit. Up to that point in his career, he was a .289/.343/.472 hitter and he'd been selected to the 2003 All-Star team. White had suffered multiple injuries during his career so when the Twins came calling prior to the 2006 season, the idea of becoming an everyday designated hitter sounded good. "I'm really, really excited about [being] in a DH role," said White. Jacque Jones had just left the Twins to sign with the Cubs so the Twins needed to replace his bat in the line-up. The Twins also considered signing Mike Piazza and Frank Thomas. During his first season in Minnesota, White played in 99 games and collected over 350 plate appearances. He posted the second worst batting average of his career to that point (.246) and got on base less than 28% of the time. For his career, he averaged a .799 OPS but this year he'd be held to a .641 OPS. Even though he'd been signed to play as DH, he played over 280 innings in the outfield in 2006. FanGraphs calculated his Total Zone rating (TZ) to be 2 runs below average. He saw 161 fewer innings in the outfield in 2007 but he posted the same TZ rating of -2. Over those two seasons he combined for a -1.0 defensive WAR. White finished the 2006 season strong as he batted .417 with a .750 slugging percentage in the team's ALDS match-up with the Oakland A's. This might have been enough to bring him back for a second trip with the club. The 2007 season was disastrous as he was limited to 38 games and hit .174/.235/.321. White's time in Minnesota was far from stellar but he wouldn't have made it 15 years in the big leagues without some positive play on the field. Baseball Reference gives him a 28.1 career WAR while FanGraphs is a little less at 24.1. His three best seasons were 1995, 1997, 1998 with WAR marks above 3.0 in all three seasons. In December 2007 after retiring, White's name came out in the Mitchell Report. It claimed that he used performance-enhancing drugs to try to overcome injuries and stay in the game. He was the only member of the Twins mentioned in the report who had played on the team in 2007. The allegations in the report regarding White all involve conduct before he played in Minnesota. What memories do you have about Mr. White? Who should be next in the All-Time Worst Twins series? Leave a COMMENT and start the discussion. Click here to view the article