Monday,
September 26, 2011
Weekend Notes
Happy Monday, and welcome back to the work week. First things first, I have to send out a huge Thank You to Jamie Ogden and the fine folks at Manitou Station in White Bear Lake. We had a nice turnout at the TwinsCentric event on Saturday afternoon, and it was a lot of fun. It was nice to finally meet Jamie and hear his stories from his playing days through the minor league system, former teammates and coaches, and his thoughts on the current Twins. It was great to see John Bonnes (Twins Geek), Parker Hageman (Over The Baggy), Aaron Gleeman (AaronGleeman.com), Cody Christie (NoDak Twins Fan
), Roger Dehring (Twinkie Town), Brandon Warne (brandonwarne.com, fan graphs), Scott Povolny (Twins Train) and Howard Sinker (A Fan’s View) were all there as well. It was a lot of fun to sit/stand around and talk about the Twins and much more. Thank you to all who were able to be there and for all of your support for TwinsCentric and for me over these 8 ½ years of Twins blogging. Yikes, that’s a long time!Last night on
the SethSpeaks.net
Sunday Night Twins Podcast, Cody Christie and I discussed what we are
seeing from the young players who are up with the Twins, and then we gave our “Percent
Chances” that the Twins looming free agents and several others will be back
with the organization next year.
For those
wondering what my ‘regular’ (as in, “paying”) job is, here is an interesting
article in the New York Times called Housing
Slump Forces Cuts at a Company Town.
I got to listen
to Paul Allen call yesterday’s Twins game on my drive back from the Cities.
After having lunch at the greatest dining establishment (Chipotle) with Josh
Johnson, I tuned in to hear the Lions cut the Vikings lead to 20-7. It was
enjoyable listening to the inevitable happening as the Vikings fell 26-23 in
Overtime. Donovan McNabb appears to be getting the brunt of the criticism, and
deservedly so because in the 2nd halves of these games, he has
missed some throws that could have sustained drives. I get that. However, if he’s
going to be criticized, don’t we also have to be able to say that he provided
the Vikings with some pretty big second half leads too? He’s given his team 17
and 20 point leads in the 2nd half these last two weeks. It’s a team
sport and they all win and lose together, but if a defense is given a 20-point
lead, they have to do their part too. It all works hand in hand. Yes, McNabb
has missed a bunch of passes, but in that second half, Adrian Peterson had a 29
yard run and another 15+ yard run negated by holding penalties. That’s not
McNabb’s fault, and if those plays go, they’re more first downs, and who knows
what happens. So sure, blame McNabb. It’s the cool thing to do and much of it
is deserved, but it’s far bigger than that. It’s kind of like “injuries” or “Joe
Mauer” or “Bill Smith” being the biggest culprit
behind the Twins disappointing 2011 season.
On Saturday,
with the Game 1 loss to Cleveland, the Twins clinched the #2 pick in next year’s
draft. A lot of people are asking about who the Twins should draft next year.
Yes, right now, there is the pitcher from Stanford, the catcher from Florida
and the Shortstop from Arizona State. There is Lance McCullers, the high school
kid who touches 100 on the radar gun. It’s fun to
speculate and start thinking about it, but in reality, so much is going to
change over the next 8 months before the draft, that it probably isn’t worth
putting too much thought into at this point. We’ll get more into that in May.
Twins Florida
Instructional League players are playing games now and will do so for the next
couple of weeks. The Arizona Fall League games start on October 4th,
but players are starting to report to Phoenix now. Also, several Twins minor
leaguers are playing in the World Cup Tournament in Panama which starts soon
too. Tom Stuifbergen (whose birthday it is today) is
on the Netherlands team. James Beresford, Allan de San Miguel and Todd Van Steensel (be sure to follow his Clubhouse Chronicles) are
on the Australia team. Max Kepler and former Twins
farmhand Tim Henkenjohann are on the German team. I’ll
have to look and see if there are more on the rosters.
Here are some
quick links to get you through your day:
·
Aaron Gleeman asked Why Can’t the Twins find any infielders who can hit?
·
Twinkie Town’s Jon Marthaler writes up Eleven
Ways to Make this Season-Ending Series Fun!
·
Roger posted his thoughts and
a ballot for Twins
Minor League Pitcher of the Year.
·
Nick Nelson posts his thoughts on Free
Agent Shortstops.
·
K-Bro posted Part VI of her
2012 Wish List, to Take
the Bullpen Seriously.
·
The Baseball Outsider wrote about Jim
Thome’s Time at 3B on Sunday. I thought it
was a very cool gesture by Manny Acta.
·
Last week, Betsy
from For the Love of the Game, got
to throw out the first pitch at the Twins game at Target Field. She recounts
the moment here.
·
NoDak Twins Fan notes that the Twins are Searching for a 10-game winner.
·
Granny Baseball Ranks
the Twins Rookie Pitchers.
·
Fire Bill Smith discusses The
Top Three Questions The Twins Must Answer.
·
Anyone want to do a Word Search? Twins on Twins posted a Word
Search full of Twins names!
·
Twins Fan From Afar updates us on the HR
Watch between Baby Jesus and Jesus.
·
MILB Prospects is beginning to look at
his top prospects in the various leagues.
·
Last week, my thoughts were mentioned on CRTSIDE’s
Blog titled Why Does SportsCenter
Suck? It’s a very well done article.
I do want to
encourage those of you at all interested in signing up for Twitter to Follow me.
As life is getting more and more busy, Twitter makes
it so easy to post quick notes on Twins notes of interest. I am a notorious ReTweeter, choosing to give some attention to other
bloggers or articles that are very good. When I get newsworthy information on
the Twins, I post it first on Twitter. Even if you don’t want to sign up for
Twitter, I would encourage you to bookmark
my Twitter Feed and check it out to see my thoughts throughout the day. Then
check out who I am
following and see if you want to follow any of them too.
Again, Happy
Monday to everyone!! If you have any
questions or comments or observations on the Twins or anything, please feel free to discuss in the Comments section.
