Earlier in the week, I posted the June Twins minor league starting pitcher and relief pitcher of the month of June. The starters were not too terribly impressive, but there were a lot of tremendous bullpen performances in June. So today, let’s take a look at which Twins minor league hitters had the best June performances. I’ll let you be the judge of how impressive the performances were. Here are my selections for the Top 5 Twins Minor League hitters in May: Number 5 ...
Liam Hendriks was again unable to pick up his first career win. Despite being given a five run lead going into the bottom of the 5th against the Tigers, he was unable to get an out. However, the Twins bullpen did what they’ve done all year. Anthony Swarzak came in and maintained the lead. Alex Burnett was tremendous again. And Glen Perkins got the save. All the efforts gave manager Ron Gardenhire his 900th career win. Quite an accomplishment! The Twins have now won four in a row and play the Tigers ...
The Sunday Tweet of the Day comes from yours truly (@SethTweets). Before the game started, I tweeted, “After that pregame and national anthem rendition, is there any questions that @TPlouffe24 is planning to hit a home run or two for #America?” Josh Willingham hit a big three-run home run that tied the game at five. He also tied Trevor Plouffe with 17 home runs. Plouffe came up and knocked the first Bruce Chen pitch he saw in the at bat for his second home run of the day (18th of the ...
The Twins lost the second game of the Target Field series against the Brewers. Be sure to check out the article by Twins Daily’s Parker Hageman who was on the scene and filed a very nice story on the game. Starting on Tuesday, this Twins minor league report will be expanding. On Monday, the Twins Gulf Coast League team will be playing their first game. Will it be the professional debut of first round pick Byron Buxton? Late on Saturday night, the Elizabethton Twins players and coaches ...
In the last twenty-four hours, catcher Dan Rohlfing was promoted from Ft. Myers to New Britain. Former Gopher catcher Kyle Knudson was promoted from Beloit to Ft. Myers. Bart Carter was taken off of the Snappers’ Disabled List. As we are approaching the mid-point of the minor league seasons, the Twins typically make several promotions at each level. Many times, the Twins let players who make their league’s all star teams play in those games. Often, players are promoted following the ...
Jaynesville, WI - The Twins were in Cleveland on Saturday night and won 7-4. They jumped out to a 4-0 lead after one inning thanks to RBI singles by Joe Mauer, Justin Morneau and Trevor Plouffe. Cleveland clawed back with single runs in the first, third, fourth and fifth to tie the game. However, Plouffe’s sixth home run of the season made it 5-4 after six, and Mauer’s third home run, a two-run shot, gave the Twins their 7-4. PJ Walters started and his string of quality starts came to an end. He ...
Earlier this week, I handed out the “awards” for Twins minor league relief pitcher and starting pitcher of the month for May. Today, it’s time to recognize the hitters. You’ll certainly notice that I ranked a top 6 for the two pitching categories and yet, today, I rank just five hitters. I wanted to give six, but there were a lot of guys that were in the same range, and none quite made me say that he had to be added. Miguel Sano, for instance, had an 0-24 stretch and a 1-39 stretch, and yet, he ...
A week ago, we started to take a look at my Top 50 Twins Prospects. Within the last week, we looked at prospects 11-20, prospects 21-30, prospects 31-40, and prospects 41 through 50. The general belief is that the Twins farm system is pretty weak and sadly, from doing this exercise, I find it hard to disagree. However, to say that it is bad and completely void of talent is also not true at all. Within this top ten, there is a lot of talent. There are still plenty of question marks due to age and ...
Scott Diamond actually gave up a few runs on Friday night, but because the Twins hitters brought their big bats to Miller Park, Diamond becomes the Twins first three-game winner. Josh Willingham got the offense started in the first inning with a long two-run homer. The game was 2-2 going into the 5th inning, but Joe Mauer’s two-run double gave the Twins a 4-2 lead. They scored two the following inning on a two-run Denard Span single. They added four runs in the top of the eighth inning to put the ...
Drew Butera is hitting .350 and the Twins just swept the Tigers!! All is good in Twins Territory now, right? Well, maybe not, but there are starting to be some signs of positive. Justin Morneau went opposite field for a home run, one of his two hits. Trevor Plouffe homered for the second straight game. Brian Dozier is inching up on .300. PJ Walters was terrific through four scoreless innings, but between the fifth and sixth innings, he gave up three solo home runs to cut the Twins lead to 4-3. But ...
The Twins lost 6-2 to the Blue Jays. Jason Marquis was able to go just four innings. The game was ugly for Twins fans. There were base running errors. There were several defensive errors. There was bad pitching, and bad hitting. Josh Willingham did home for the second straight night. As Gardenhire told the Twin Cities media following the game, “Things happened out there that really don’t happen in high school.” I guess it’s fair to say that things have to get worse before they get better, but hopefully ...
I was asked to be a guest on KFAN’s Baseball Weekly with Gleeman & The Geek on Sunday. I was on the second segment of the show and shared a Good, a Bad and an “Other” story. It was a fun segment and I encourage you to listen to the podcast, if you haven’t already. It was fun to do some research on each of those topics, and I thought that I would share some of that with you today. Obviously we could talk about Miguel Sano and Eddie Rosario, and that’s good, but we want to make sure ...
The Twins return from a day off. However, they are still in the Pacific time zone, so that means some late games!! For those that didn’t stay up… shame on you (just kidding!), but you missed a good game. With Scott Ullger at the helm, Carl Pavano was caught by Drew Butera, and Pavano responded with six shutout innings. Mariners’ lefty Jason Vargas also held the Twins scoreless through six. The Twins got to the M’s bullpen for three runs in the top of the 7th, thanks to a couple of walks, an error ...
The next time someone says that the Twins (or whichever team) is wasting roster spots by signing minor league free agents and hoping, remind them of Jerome Williams’ performance against the Twins on Tuesday night in LA. Formerly one of baseball’s top prospects (12-13 years ago), Williams has been signed as a minor league free agent several times. He should be proud of his three-hit shutout against the Twins. He had Twins hitters baffled all night (insert joke about how difficult that really is to ...