Photo Courtesy of: Jesse Johnson- USA TODAY Sports Article originally published on rantsports.com Since Joe Nathan suffered a season-ending injury prior to the 2010 season, the Twins have seen a vast array of different pitchers to audition to fill the role of closer. Even Nathan himself came back for the 2011 season to nail down a few saves, but the Twins have seen players such as Jon Rauch, Matt Capps, Jared Burton and Glen Perkins try ...
Everything was nice and fuzzy last Friday when the Twins had pulled off some nice wins and they had themselves near the top of the American League. Things have changed in the last week as the club got swept by the Kansas City Royals and the Twins are near the bottom of the AL Central. It is still early in the year so there is plenty of things that could change. Joe Mauer wasn't hitting the ball very good for the first few games of the year but he has started to come around. Josh Willingham ...
Three years ago, the Twins were in an ideal position. The organization was proud to be opening Target Field on a beautiful day in downtown Minneapolis. Minnesota would be on their way to 94 wins, the most for the franchise since the 2006 season. It would be a memorable season for Twins Territory but there were some problems starting to bubble under the surface. The dreaded Yankees were again waiting for the Twins in the first round. It would be another quick exit from the postseason ...
This is the start of a new series available at Peanuts from Heaven! and our partnered site at Twins Daily. While many of the people who check out this website are serious seam-heads, committed to knowing the depth charts from Minnesota through Elizabethton, not everyone knows that much...so in an effort to get new fans committed we offer a quirkier look at the local 9. These are not "your Minnesota Twins," they aren't the guys who run out on to the field to the strains ...
When Twins position players reported to camp at the end of last week, Justin Morneau was one of the first people that the media hunted down. There was good reason to do this since he is in the last year of his contract with the club and his future is unclear at this point. According to Morneau, there haven't been any discussions about an extension between his agent and the club. This means that he is anticipating playing out the rest of his contract and testing the free agent market ...
During the last couple of offseasons, there have been some question marks about the role of Glen Perkins. In 2008 and 2009, Perkins had struggled as a starter so the Twins needed to find some kind of role for him. The 2010 team didn't really have a role for Perkins and he spent most of the year as a starter in Rochester. He finally found his spot in the bullpen in 2011 and things have been on the upswing ever since that point. This offseason there ...
For the first time since before the Joe Nathan era in Minnesota, the team will enter next season with a homegrown pitcher as the closer at the back-end of the bullpen. Glen Perkins exploded onto the scene in 2011 and he continued that success into 2012 by being a dominant relief man for the Twins. All of this came after he failed to be a starter and it looked like he might be out of the system for the Twins. Back in 2009, Perkins and his agent had the players ...
Wednesday marked the end of a sad love affair between the Twins and relief pitcher Matt Capps. The team turned down his multi-million dollar option for next season and instead decided to pay him a $250,000 buyout of his deal. Capps will become a free agent at age 29 and his time with the Twins looks to be over. It was an up-and-down ride for Capps during his stint in Minnesota but it seemed like plenty of more ups than downs. He came to the Twins in the middle ...
The Twins held their organizational meetings last week and there are plenty of decisions for the club to make about the pending offseason. Some of those decisions might have already been revealed as the club announced the new members of their coaching staff and the readjustment of the men that were left after the firing frenzy. Phil Mackey from 1500 ESPN has the complete rundown of some of the items discussed by the organization but one of the most interesting ...
While the Twins have been busy playing decent baseball in the last week, fans have gotten to the point where they are just shrugging their shoulders and saying, "That's nice." The team swept the Indians over the weekend but they have put up some clunkers against the Royals in front of the small crowds gathering at Target Field. Last night's walk-off win felt good but we will see what the rest of the season brings With the White Sox coming to town this weekend, there is a chance for the Twins to ...
Joe Mauer is the Twins lone All Star representative tonight in Kansas City. In over 52 seasons in Minnesota, the Twins have had many All Stars, obviously at least one each year. There are the greats of the game, like Killebrew, Carew and Puckett who went to many All Star games. And there are the Coomer's and Engel's. Below, I'll post all of the Twins All Star representative by years, with some notes to follow. Feel free to discuss the best and the worst, and any other notes you find interesting: ...
Original Post from North Dakota Twins Fan ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The Twins saw their long-time closer Joe Nathan leave the team in free agency this offseason. With his departure to the Texas Rangers, the organization turned to a familiar face to fill the closer role by signing Matt Capps. Before undergoing Tommy John surgery, Nathan had been one of the best closers in the game ...
Updated 03-27-2012 at 08:20 AM by Seth Stohs
One of the downfalls of having an unbalanced schedule in MLB is that teams will end up facing a lot of competition from the other divisions in their league earlier in the year. For the Twins this means a healthy dose of the AL East and AL West to start the 2012 campaign. The AL East has three of the top teams in the entire American League and the AL West has put together two of ...
One year ago the Twins were working with a relief pitcher who wanted to show he had fully recovered from an elbow injury. Joe Nathan had spent the last year trying to recover from Tommy John surgery. He hadn't been on a mound in a major league regular season game since the playoffs in 2009. When pitchers and catchers reported to spring training, he was ready to show the team everything he had and he told the team that he didn't "want to be babied if I don't need it." Fast-forward ...