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The Fourth of July holiday means that the All-Star Break is quickly approaching and the Twins are near a break that might be good for a team that is struggling to find pitchers for their starting staff. There has been a well-worn road from Rochester to Minneapolis as the Twins try to find players to record outs for the big league club. Casey Fien and Sam Deduno will be the latest Red Wings to get called up to play with the Twins.

After putting together five consecutive wins, the Twins ...

Tags: brian dozier, joe mauer, kirby puckett, ozzie guillen, trevor plouffe

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The Twins bats started off hot today and the team got another excellent performance from Scott Diamond. Gardenhire curiously gave the 8^th inning to Alex Burnett, who allowed a hit and a walk before being relieved by Tyler Robertson who promptly served up a 3-run meatball to Prince Fielder. Anthony Swarzak, who also made an appearance despite being the only possible weekend starter on the active roster, gave up a home run to Delmon Young.

After the game it was announced that Chris Parmelee ...

So far this season Justin Morneau has seemed as comfortable facing lefties as Mitt Romney would as the opening act for a Phish concert.

In spite of performing quite well against right-handed pitchers (hitting .310/.386/.561 and smacking 8 of his 10 home runs), among qualified hitters Morneau’s .100 average off of left-handed pitching (8-for-80 as of Wednesday) is the lowest in baseball. This is not simply a fluky situation; the Twins first baseman is completely lost mechanically at ...

Twins Daily hopes that you and your families and friends had a fun and safe Fourth of July holiday. The Twins had the honor of facing reigning AL Cy Young Award and AL MVP Justin Verlander. The righty from Old Dominion dominated the Twins with the exception of a solo home run off the bat of Chris Parmelee. It was one of just four hits the Twins had in the game, and two of them were from Denard Span. Brian Duensing left the game after 4.1 innings. Then Kyle Waldrop and Cole De Vries each gave up ...

Tags: hudson boyd, jairo perez, minnesota twins

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The Big Picture
The Reds are currently 44-37 and one game behind the Pittsburgh Pirates in the NL Central. They are just 1.5 games ahead of the St. Louis Cardinals. The Reds last won a playoff game in 1995 when they beat the LA Dodgers in the Division Series before being swept by the Braves in the NLCS that year. The last time they won a World Series title was a year before the Twins last won one (1990, beating the A’s in 4 games). The Reds have former MVP Joey Votto, who is also the odds-on ...

Tags: billy hamilton, cincinnati reds, daniel corcino, didi gregorius, kyle lotzkar, minnesota twins, tony cingrani

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If the Twins want to sign Francisco Liriano to an extension, it will need to be in the parameters of what Liriano will make on the free agent market this winter. But its hard to know even roughly how much he’ll command. Partly that’s because of his mercurial performance. But that problem is compounded by a free agent class that is unprecedented in pitching depth.

It starts with two 28-year-olds, right-hander Zach Greinke and left-hander Cole Hamels that are both better than anyone ...

Here are a bunch of players who could see a promotion in the second half. I certainly do not think all of them will and there are likely a few others who will be promoted, but it is my intention to point out some strong performances, even in limited time in some cases. A few of them are likely very soon (Rhodes, Roberts, Atherton, Bromberg) and many others are most likely early August moves if they happen at all.

DSL to GCL:

Adonis Pacheco, OF
Ernesto Ciprian, OF ...

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 ...

Tags: daniel ortiz, evan bigley, kyle knudson, minnesota twins, nate roberts, oswaldo arcia

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Here's some mindless fun with stats.

The Twins are 29-29 since starting the season 6-16 and they are 19-12 in their last 31 games including tonights game against Detroit. (question here is can 1 or 2 more starting pitchers push us to the next level as our hitting, defense, and bullpen seem good enough to contend)

Gray has a 4.08 era and most bloggers can't wait to get rid of him, but take out his worst appearance and he has a 2.80 era and 5 vulture wins.

Waldrop ...

A rain delay in Detroit held up the start of the Twins game for an hour and a half. When the game got underway, it turned into a back and forth contest between the Tigers and the Twins. The Twins bash brothers of Josh Willingham and Trevor Plouffe each added another home run to their totals for the season as they continue to try and match each other for the team lead. Even Joe Mauer was able to hit his second home run in the past week with an opposite field home run in the later innings of the game. ...

Tags: adrian salcedo, clete thomas, estarlin de los santos, evan bigley, lance ray

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The Big Picture
The Bronx Bombers have made the playoffs in seven of the past eight years but have reached the World Series only once, when they beat the Phillies in 2009. For most teams, one championship in eight years would be perfectly adequate, but not for the Yankees. This is a franchise that appeared in the Fall Classic six times in nine years prior to their latest "drought."

Now, with a 48-32 record that qualifies as second-best in baseball (behind ...

Tags: trade rumors

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Originally published at The Tenth Inning Stretch
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This is the third version of the 'who is hot in the Twins' minors' series for 2012. The Rookie leagues are in full swing, promotions and cuts have happened and a lot of things have changed from the last "who is hot" list. Lots of new blood, and I have been intentionally delaying this to include the Rookie league players. I am using 25 PA and 9 IP as a cut-off. Again, this is not a particular "fragment in time", ...

Last night, I posted the Twins Minor League Starting Pitchers of June. It was clearly not a strong part of the organization during the month. One area where the Twins minor league system was very strong was in the bullpen. There were plenty of very strong candidates. It was difficult to rank the relievers because there are some very good relievers who have really pitched well into this middle part of the season.

However, here are my choices for the Top 5 Twins Minor League Relief ...

Tags: beloit snappers, bruce pugh, dakota watts, matt hauser, michael tonkin, minnesota twins, tim atherton

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Another week closer to the trade deadline, another week worth of rampant speculation and wild hopes for Twins fans; after several days of heated voting the fans chose to trade Matt Capps rather than keep him, stunning the blog-o-sphere...oh wait! Let's see what the fans picked and what they passed up.


Door #2 netted two votes and provides my personal favorite proof of idiotic trades made for "closers" Capps compares well with Ugueth [namesake of my first child boy OR

...

Tags: justin morneau, let's make a deal, matt capps, terry ryan, trade scenarios

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