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Examining Oswaldo Arcia's recent struggles
Figuring hitters out, a baseball lifer told me recently, is like trying to untangle a giant knot. ...
Twins Minor League Report (5/23): Baxendale, Darnell Shine
I’ve been following the Twins minor league system pretty much daily for the past eight years. I can...
Twins MLB Draft Profile: Clint Frazier, OF
Who IS This Guy? Clint Frazier is a high school center fielder from Georgia. He is widely...
PJ Walters To Fill Minnesota Twins Rotation Spot
Jim Mandalaro of the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle tweeted today that PJ Walters told Mandalaro...
Step Right Up...
It is now late May, and the Twins season is at a crossroads. The team has lost eight straight games...
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Recent News
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A year ago, the Twins went into the regular season with a bench consisting of Drew Butera, Jason Repko, Matt Tolbert and Jim Thome. In other words: three guys who possessed only defensive value, and one who possessed only offensive value. It was a pretty limiting group, and the lack of flexibility caused headaches for Ron Gardenhire with starters shuttling in and out of the lineup all summer.
Repko, Tolbert and Thome won't be back this year, and that's probably no coincidence. Nor is it coincidence that catcher J.R. Towles was signed during the offseason to give Butera some competition for the third catcher spot. The Twins will be hoping to boast a more well rounded bench this year, and that's definitely the right idea.
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Blog Post #1
By: Aaron Bates
Follow my daily Spring Training journey on twitter at: @A33bates
Hey Guys!
I'm very excited that Seth Stohs asked me to do a regular blog throughout spring training. It's truly one of my favorite times of year as I love getting back on the field and seeing my teammates after a long off season. I will be talking about a variety of things through my blogging, but sorry this won't be a place for any inside scoop or gossip. It's more about the game on and off the field, some fun facts and a way to bring you all a little bit closer to the ins and outs of a player's life during Minnesota Twins spring training.
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Hey everybody, Seth Stohs turned me on to this site. I am going to try my hardest to make sure to get on and blog about the daily life of a Minor Leaguer playing in the Twins organization. I will write as much as possible, hopefully once a week.
I’d like to start off my introducing myself and giving you all a little background on me. I’m Dakota Watts. I was born and raised in Oroville, California, the son of Buddy and Brenda Watts, and I'm currently 24 years old.
First, a little baseball background. As a child, I was extremely blessed. Starting at age 5, I was introduced to the game by my father. I was also fortunate enough to grow up in a 2-3 year time frame when there was about a dozen other families as passionate about the game as we were in our community. This made playing baseball super competitive. ...
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There is breaking Twins-related minor league news this afternoon in Central Connecticut, where it has been announced that the New Britain Rock Cats, which had done very well in the community and in terms of attendance, under owners Bill Dowling (former attorney for George Steinbrenner) and Coleman Levy (local attorney), is being sold to an investment group.
[Originally posted at my blog, http://twinsfanfromafar.blogspot.com]
DSF Group, the purchaser, is a real estate and sports investment firm, and also owns the New Hampshire Fisher Cats (same division as the Rock Cats and AA affiliate of the Blue Jays), and the Bowling Green Hot Rods (Class A affiliate of Tampa Bay Rays). Interestingly, John Willi, who left the helm as the Rock Cats' general manager in 2010 to take a position at DSF, will be returning to that post. ...
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Here we are, less than a week into full Twins spring training workouts. Games don’t even start for a couple of days. It’s time to start talking position battles, right? It appears to me that there are actually very few positions that are up for grabs at this stage of camp. Of course, as injuries mount through spring training, more position battles can spring up, but for now, there are a lot of givens on the roster.Hitters: Joe Mauer, Ryan Doumit, Justin Morneau, Alexi Casilla, Danny Valencia, Jamey Carroll, Ben Revere, Denard Span, Josh Willingham, Trevor Plouffe (10 out of 13 positions are accounted for).
Pitchers: Scott Baker, Carl Pavano, Francisco Liriano, Nick Blackburn, Jason Marquis, Matt Capps, Glen Perkins, Anthony Swarzak, Brian Duensing (9 out of 12 positions accounted for).
The biggest debate the last couple of days has been about the bullpen where one more job opened up with the loss of Joel Zumaya for the season. Let’s discuss that tomorrow. Let’s start today with the offensive (as in hitting!) side of the ball.
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Well, I have exactly a week left before spring training, and I’m sure just like many of my teammates, there are plenty of things on my mind.
The Emotions
At one end of the spectrum, spring training brings about feelings of excitement and readiness that I cant really put into words. We’ve all quietly prepared ourselves. We know what we need to do. We can’t get moved up levels while we're at home in the off-season. This is what it's all about. It’s go time. ...by
Aaron and John talk about pitchers and catchers reporting for spring training, Justin Morneau's discouraging quotes about his health status, Sean Burroughs' odds of making the roster, Aaron's ongoing car saga, John's marriage, and a bunch of mailbag questions. Here are:
- the podcasts
- the rss feed if you want to subscribe and
- the podcast on iTunes (where you can also subscribe and leave reviews).
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Tonight at 9, Seth Stohs was joined by Travis Aune for the first episode of the season of Twins Minor League Weekly. Granted, there aren't a lot of minor league topics to discuss, so they talked Twins most of the 45-minute show. As you would guess, topics included the comments of Justin Morneau and JJ Hardy. We talked about the Joel Zumaya injury and what it means for the bullpen. We discussed what the good news on Kyle Gibson meant to the Twins, and much, much more. Listen back to the new episode of Twins Minor League Weekly at http://tobtr.com/s/2940503.
On Tuesday night at 9:00 central time, be sure to listen live to the SethSpeaks.net Weekly Minnesota Twins Podcast. I'll be joined by a couple of guests and it should be a fun-filled show. If you can listen live, the chat room will be open about 10 minutes before the show starts. There is also always a call-in number so you can ask questions or leave your comments.
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In his efforts to augment a bullpen that last year ranked last in the league in ERA, FIP and WHIP, Terry Ryan's moves essentially amounted to re-signing Matt Capps and adding Joel Zumaya to replace the departed Joe Nathan.
That was hardly a recipe for guaranteed substantial improvement, and now with Zumaya's unfortunate yet unsurprising injury news, Ryan's passive approach to addressing this unit in a buyer's market looks all the more irresponsible.
With their sole bullpen pickup gone for the year, the Twins may react by trying to find another outside arm they can plug in. They'll now only have to pay Zumaya $400K, and his contract included incentives that escalated to $1.7M, so you'd have to figure they have $1.3M left in the budget to spend on a replacement.
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On Saturday, Joel Zumaya, the Twins key bullpen addition of the offseason, prepared to throw live batting practice for the first time in the spring.
After 13 pitches, he was headed off the mound and into an MRI machine.
News broke on Sunday that the injury, a snapped UCL, would require Tommy John surgery and that it would end his 2012 Comeback Player of the Year campaign, his time with the Twins and, very likely, his career. Because of his extensive history with injuries, this news did not come as a surprise to anyone. General Manager Terry Ryan seemed a bit perplex that it had happened to his UCL, the one area of his body that he has never had an issue with: ...
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The TwinsCentric GM Offseason Handbook listed 23 right-handed relievers, sorted in descending order by what we thought they would receive on the open market. The 23rd was Joel Zumaya. He was listed last because of the obvious injury risk he represented.
But Zumaya wasn't the 23rd one signed. Twins General Manager Terry Ryan was aggressive, like he had been all offseason, and Zumaya signed relatively early given his status. That signing was almost universally praised because Zumaya has such terrific upside and because the contract was cheap and not guaranteed. It was lauded as the perfect low-risk signing for a team with a limited offseason budget like the Twins.
But it was not low risk, and the one person who knew that was Terry Ryan. ...
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One of my fantasy leagues started its draft this past week, so I thought it might be a good time to start writing a little about fantasy baseball. I will likely participate in three or four leagues this year, and each is a little bit different. One of my leagues is a keeper league with major and minor league rosters. It is a 5x5 roto league. Another league is a weekly head-to-head, points league. Another league is only on the weekend. I’m in one ten team league and two 14-team leagues. There are American or National League only leagues. Fantasy baseball is so much fun, but there are so many formats, so be sure to understand the system before your draft.
One thing that is always interesting to me is to see where Twins players will be drafted in fantasy leagues. In recent years, there have been quite a few Twins players who went high in drafts. This season, there are several Twins players who will be drafted, but fantasy owners will have to consider risk-reward when selecting many of them.
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If you're at all looking forward to the June Rule IV baseball draft as a Twins fans, there is no doubt that you're already familiar with a handful of names: Appel, Giolito, Buxton, Zunino, and most recently, Zimmer.
If you're a fan of following the Twins draft at all, there are some terms you're probably familiar with: "strike-thrower", "long and lean", "wiry/athletic" or (my personal favorite Gardyism) "a grinder".
You're always going to find draft picks that are breaks from the normal "that's-what-I'd-expect-from-the-Twins"-type draft picks. But there is always going to be a lot of draft picks where you read a scouting report and think, "Wow, he sounds like someone the Twins would draft."
Or the one I think the most, "Isn't there enough 'toolsy outfielders' in the system?" The Twins are also bound to draft that guy that "profiles similar to Glen Perkins." Why? Because these are "Twins-type guys". ...by
It's easy to be down on the Twins' prospects for this year. 2011 was in many ways their worst season ever, and the offseason moves by Terry Ryan didn't do much more than maintain the talent level they started with last April. So we must be headed for another dreadful season, right? Not so fast. ...
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Baseball America's "Best Tools" List for 2013 Draft. Pitchers and Hitters.
Thread Starter: InfraRen Last Post By: CharacterGroove Today, 05:51 PM
Article: Twins Daily Wants To Promote Your Blog
Thread Starter: admin Last Post By: MarshalltheIrish Today, 05:49 PM
Is this the worst rotation in the history of baseball?
Thread Starter: SpiritofVodkaDave Last Post By: thrylos98 Today, 05:47 PM
First quarter over...on pace for 89 losses
Thread Starter: greengoblinrulz Last Post By: Willihammer Today, 04:00 PM
Percent confidence in management
Thread Starter: silverslugger Last Post By: TheLeviathan Today, 03:57 PM
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