Month: March 2016

Looking forward to Opening Day 2016

Play BallWhen the umpires call “Play Ball” for the Twins/Orioles game on Monday it will Twins opening day number 56. No I have not attended all the openers but I usually watch them on TV or listen to them on the radio, this time I will be listening or watching on my computer in Cape Coral, Florida.

So who will be in the Twins opening day line-up this year? You can never know for sure until they run on the field but I think that it is a safe assumption that only four players that were in the 2015 season opening loss in Detroit will be in Paul Molitor‘s starting line-up for the start the 2016 season for Minnesota in Baltimore. Those player’s being Kurt Suzuki catching, Joe Mauer at 1B, Brian Dozier at 2B and Trevor Plouffe at 3B. You probably can’t even remember the Twins 2015 opening day line-up, can you?

Here is a chance for you to look back to the last 10 years worth of Twins opening day line-ups. Some players are obviously familiar and others you probably have forgotten even played for Minnesota and some younger fans may have never even heard of some of these guys. For me it is interesting to see how much baseball teams turn-over from year to year and what positions the Twins seem to have trouble with.

C1B2B3BSSLFCFRFDHSPYEAR
2015Kurt
Suzuki		Joe
Mauer		Brian
Dozier		Trevor
Plouffe		Danny
Santana		Oswaldo
Arcia		Jordan
Schafer		Torii
Hunter		Kennys
Vargas		Phil
Hughes		2015
2014Kurt
Suzuki		Joe
Mauer		Brian
Dozier		Trevor
Plouffe		Pedro
Florimon		Josh
Willingham		Aaron
Hicks		Oswaldo
Arcia		Chris
Colabello		Ricky
Nolasco		2014
2013Joe
Mauer		Justin
Morneau		Brian
Dozier		Trevor
Plouffe		Pedro
Florimon		Josh
Willingham		Aaron
Hicks		Chris
Parmelee		Ryan
Doumit		Vance
Worley		2013
2012Joe
Mauer		Chris
Parmelee		Alexi
Casilla		Danny
Valencia		Jamie
Carroll		Josh
Willingham		Denard
Span		Ryan
Doumit		Justin
Morneau		Carl
Pavano		2012
2011Joe
Mauer		Justin
Morneau		Tsuyoshi
Nishioka		Danny
Valencia		Alexi
Casilla		Delmon
Young		Denard
Span		Mike
Cuddyer		Jason
Kubel		Carl
Pavano		2011
2010Joe
Mauer		Justin
Morneau		Orlando
Hudson		Nick
Punto		J.J.
Hardy		Delmon
Young		Denard
Span		Mike
Cuddyer		Jason
Kubel		Scott
Baker		2010
2009Mike
Redmond		Justin
Morneau		Alexi
Casilla		Joe
Crede		Nick
Punto		Denard
Span		Carlos
Gomez		Mike
Cuddyer		Jason
Kubel		Francisco
Liriano		2009
2008Joe
Mauer		Justin
Morneau		Brendan
Harris		Mike
Lamb		Adam
Everett		Delmon
Young		Carlos
Gomez		Mike
Cuddyer		Craig
Monroe		Livan
Hernandez		2008
2007Joe
Mauer		Justin
Morneau		Luis
Castillo		Nick
Punto		Jason
Bartlett		Rondell
White		Torii
Hunter		Mike
Cuddyer		Jeff
Cirillo		Johan
Santana		2007
2006Joe
Mauer		Justin
Morneau		Luis
Castillo		Tony
Batista		Juan
Castro		Shannon
Stewart		Torii
Hunter		Jason
Kubel		Rondell
White		Johan
Santana		2006
C!B2B3BSSLFCFRFDHSP

I am writing this from the Norwegian Pearl as we cruise in the Caribbean Sea on our way to dock in Roatan, Honduras tomorrow morning after leaving Costa Rica last night. Then on to Belize City, Belize and Costa Maya, Mexico before returning to Miami and Cape Coral Florida on Monday. Hot and humid here, I hope you have the same where ever you are when you attend a 2016 baseball season opener. I can’t wait for REAL baseball again.

I almost forgot to mention that while I am in the Caribbean stopping in places like Columbia, Panama, Costa Rica, Honduras, Belize, and Mexico I have and will continue to be on the lookout for some potential ace pitchers that the Minnesota Twins can sign. But sadly, I must report that like most of the Twins scouts that have looked for good pitching for the last 56 years I too have struck out.

Cuba Béisbol

CaribbeanThe Tampa Rays played (and defeated) the Cuban National team yesterday in Havana and President Barak Obama and his family were in attendance along with Raul Castro and a host of other dignitaries. The game marks the second time since 1959 that an American team has played in Cuba — the Baltimore Orioles defeated the national team, 3-2, in Havana in 1999. It will be interesting to see how the baseball relationship between these two baseball loving countries takes shape in the next few years.

The Minnesota Twins and the island of Cuba have a long history and it goes back to the 1960’s prior to the Washington Senators becoming the Minnesota Twins in 1961. The relationship between Calvin Griffith and Joe “Papa Joe” Cambria was an interesting one. The Senators/Twins had a nice Cuban pipeline going for a number of years.

Players born in Cuba that have pitched for the Twins

Rk Player Year From To Age G SHO W L SV IP SO ERA
1 Livan Hernandez 2008 2008 2008 33-33 23 0 10 8 0 139.2 54 5.48 Villa Clara, Cuba
2 Luis Tiant 1970 1970 1970 29-29 18 1 7 3 0 92.2 50 3.40 Marianao, Cuba
3 Camilo Pascual 1966 1961 1966 27-32 184 18 88 57 0 1284.2 994 3.31 La Habana, Cuba
4 Mike Fornieles 1963 1963 1963 31-31 11 0 1 1 0 22.2 7 4.76 La Habana, Cuba
5 Julio Becquer 1961 1961 1961 29-29 1 0 0 0 0 1.1 0 20.25 La Habana, Cuba
6 Bert Cueto 1961 1961 1961 23-23 7 0 1 3 0 21.1 5 7.17 San Luis, Cuba
7 Pedro Ramos 1961 1961 1961 26-26 42 3 11 20 2 264.1 174 3.95 Pinar del Rio, Cuba
Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Play Index Tool Used
Generated 3/23/2016.

Cuban players with at least on plate appearance for the Twins (includes pitchers)

Rk Player Year From To Age G PA R H HR RBI BA
1 Kendrys Morales 2014 2014 2014 31-31 39 162 12 36 1 18 .234 Fomento, Cuba
2 Livan Hernandez 2008 2008 2008 33-33 23 3 0 1 0 1 .500 Villa Clara, Cuba
3 Tony Oliva 1976 1962 1976 23-37 1676 6880 870 1917 220 947 .304 Pinar del Rio, Cuba
4 Leo Cardenas 1971 1969 1971 30-32 473 1938 193 453 39 210 .263 Matanzas, Cuba
5 Minnie Mendoza 1970 1970 1970 36-36 16 16 2 3 0 2 .188 Ceiba del Agua, Cuba
6 Luis Tiant 1970 1970 1970 29-29 18 36 7 13 0 4 .406 Marianao, Cuba
7 Jackie Hernandez 1968 1967 1968 26-27 112 247 14 39 2 20 .172 Central Tinguaro, Cuba
8 Hank Izquierdo 1967 1967 1967 36-36 16 28 4 7 0 2 .269 Matanzas, Cuba
9 Sandy Valdespino 1967 1965 1967 26-28 259 491 58 99 4 34 .220 San Jose de las Lajas, Cuba
10 Zoilo Versalles 1967 1961 1967 21-27 1065 4500 564 1046 86 401 .252 La Habana, Cuba
11 Camilo Pascual 1966 1961 1966 27-32 186 509 35 100 4 52 .215 La Habana, Cuba
12 Julio Becquer 1963 1961 1963 29-31 58 87 14 20 5 18 .238 La Habana, Cuba
13 Mike Fornieles 1963 1963 1963 31-31 11 6 1 1 0 1 .167 La Habana, Cuba
14 Marty Martinez 1962 1962 1962 20-20 37 24 13 3 0 3 .167 La Habana, Cuba
15 Bert Cueto 1961 1961 1961 23-23 7 8 1 0 0 0 .000 San Luis, Cuba
16 Pedro Ramos 1961 1961 1961 26-26 53 100 8 16 3 11 .172 Pinar del Rio, Cuba
17 Jose Valdivielso 1961 1961 1961 27-27 76 158 15 29 1 9 .195 Matanzas, Cuba
Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Play Index Tool Used
Generated 3/23/2016.

Tony OlivaI think it is interesting to note that in the 60’s the Twins had a rich pipeline to Cuban players but the last Cuban player to play in a Twins uniform that was actually signed as an amateur free agent by the club was Tony Oliva in 1976, that is a long dry spell.

Fidel Castro
Fidel Castro

Did Fidel Castro really have a big league tryout with the Washington Senators?

Cuba Baseball Hall of Fame

This Day in Twins History – March 22, 2010 – you have to be careful what you wish for

Joe MauerCatcher Joe Mauer officially signed his eight-year, $184 million contract extension (2011 – 2018) in a press conference at the Lee County Sports Complex. The contract is the 4th highest contract ever signed in MLB as of that date.

Since his eight-year extension started in 2011 which is five years ago Mauer has the following stats (and look for the box that has Mauer’s batting stats for 2011-2015). Sometimes you have to be careful what you wish for but I also remember how upset I would have been had the Minnesota Twins not signed Joe Mauer to an extension.

The reality is that long-term deals seldom work out as planned and most of the time favor the player. But in spite of what appears to be a distinctive advantage in these long-term deals for the players, their agents still found a way to swing the advantage in their favor even more by inventing opt-outs in the contracts. What’s next? Doubling a players salary if he is injured and out for the season? Sometimes I wonder if baseball GM’s and their players aren’t in cahoots. Baseball owners are wealthy but you have to wonder how they got that way because they don’t seem to be the brightest bulb on the tree. Then I wonder what that says about me, the baseball fan lifer who keeps buying tickets and follows the game day in and day out.

Why not bat Joe Mauer first?

The season opener is not far away and in my mind (such as it is) the Twins line-up is pretty well set short of any last-minute injuries. But before spring training ends I would like to see manager Paul Molitor tinker with a few different batting orders to see what might work best.

Mauer, Joe 2016Personally I would like to see the Twins move Joe Mauer to the lead-off spot in the batting order. Mauer has hit in the three hole 1,145 times during his career and he has knocked in less than 53 runs a year from that position if you average it out. You have to be honest, that is a pathetic number, some guys have the knack for getting the runners in, Mauer does not posses that skill. I know that the three hole is usually the teams best hitter but Mauer is not the teams best hitter at this point in his career. Mauer however; has shown a skill for getting on base although his OBP has been dropping the last few years, never the less at this time and with an inexperienced Byron Buxton the time has come to slip Mauer in to the lead-off position. Here is the line-up I would try if I was the Twins manager for a day, I know it is not perfect but I think it is worth a try.

  1. Joe Mauer (L) at 1B
  2. Brian Dozier (R) 2B
  3. Eddie Rosario (L) LF
  4. Miguel Sano (R) RF
  5. Trevor Plouffe (R) 3B
  6. Byung Ho Park (R) DH
  7. Eduardo Escobar (S) SS
  8. Kurt Suzuki (R) C
  9. Byron Buxton (R) CF

I know I am asking a lot of Eddie Rosario to hit third but I think he has the skills and the patience to hit there. You could swap Dozier and Rosario in the order and have Rosario bat second but the Twins are heavy from the right-side and I like to see the lefty-righty thing for at least the top of the order. Mauer is going to probably be around for several more years, the Twins have to find a way to maximize his skills.

Joe Mauer’s OBP has been dropping but it is still better than most of the Twins hitters so until someone better comes along, why not put Mauer at the top of the batting order? What have you got to lose by at least giving it a shot for a couple of weeks?

Looking back to the spring of 1961

The-Sporting-News-The-Game-We-LoveWhen I was growing up on the Minnesota side of the St. Croix River about 70 miles north of the Twin Cities and just starting to follow baseball in the late 1950’s we had no TV at home so my sources of information about baseball were the radio, the Minneapolis and St. Paul newspapers and eventually The Sporting News. My parents were not sports fans and they pretty much felt that my interest in baseball was a waste of time that could be put to better use by doing more tasks around the dairy farm that we lived on.

For those of you that were raised on a dairy farm you know how hard the work can be. You started and finished each and every day in the barn milking the cows. You probably got up about 5 AM and went to bed between 10 PM and 11 PM before you started the process all over again the next day. There is no such thing as an eight-hour day, a sick day, a holiday or a week-end, every day is the same, work on a dairy farm is relentless.

We had a radio in the barn that was always tuned to just one station, 830 on the AM dial, the “Good Neighbor”, WCCO radio. Back  then WCCO was one of the premier and most powerful radio stations in the country and in 1961 it became the flag-ship station for the Minnesota Twins. There might as well have been no dial on that old tube radio because the station was never changed, it was our source for news, weather and of course the farm reports but my favorite things on the radio were the Twins games and school closings.

The Minneapolis and St. Paul papers were not delivered out to farm country and we couldn’t afford it even if they did, fortunately our school library subscribed to the morning papers and every chance I had I would go to the library and check out the sports pages. One day I ran across a Sporting News at our local dime store magazine rack, Ben Franklin if my memory serves me correctly and I thought I had died and gone to heaven, page after page of baseball news that was published weekly. It took some time but I finally saved up enough money to get a subscription and I was hooked. Out where we lived there was no mail delivery so we had a PO box in out local community and when my parents went grocery shopping on Saturday’s they would stop off at the post office and pick up the mail and hopefully my copy of the Sporting News, my reading material for the next few days. I would read every single article on every single page, sometimes more than once and during baseball season I would spend hours studying the box scores. I continued to get the Sporting News until I graduated from high school and joined the US Navy. The Navy of the mid 1960’s didn’t share my love of baseball and we had no such thing back then as the internet so baseball and I parted ways for the couple of years that I spent on board the USS Shangri-La (CVA-38).

After my naval career came to an end I returned to Minnesota and started to follow baseball once again but I found that the Sporting News was now writing about other sports than just baseball and I didn’t like that at all and I have not subscribed to the Sporting news since 1965 but I still have some great memories of what has often been described as the Baseball Bible.

Now as the Minnesota Twins prepare for their 56th season I thought it might be interesting to look back in the archives of the Sporting News and see what they had to say about the Minnesota Twins back in 1961 as the former Washington Senators prepared for their first season of baseball as the Minnesota Twins.

When you look back on baseball history some things never change, the players want to be rewarded for their efforts with more money and the owners want to put what they can in their pockets. The process has obviously changed with “holdouts” a term long forgotten and arbitration, free agency, long-term contracts, and opt-outs are the terms we hear and read about every day. The Sporting News page I have for you talks about Jim Lemon‘s holdout, a rhubarb between the Twins and Dodgers, the expansion and new features at Met Stadium and booming Twins ticket sales. I hope you enjoy this trip down memory lane.

Sporting News 03291961

Twins bonus baseball – long extra inning games

extra inningsStarting with the 1961 season the Minnesota Twins have been scheduled to play about 8,912 games give or take a couple and only 33 of those games went 15 or more innings, a pretty small (less than 4 tenths of 1 percent) percentage. So if you attended one of these games you were a lucky son of gun. The Twins record in these games is 17-16 and as it turns out 17 games were at home and 16 on the road. Seven took place at Met Stadium, 9 took place at the Metrodome and 1 has taken place at Target Field. If you enjoy baseball you can’t help but enjoy bonus baseball, here is a chance to relive those games. Those pesky Cleveland Indians participated in their share of these games.

Rk Date Tm Opp Rslt IP H R SO HR Pit BF # Attendance GmLen
1 1993-08-31 MIN CLE W 5-4 22.0 16 4 8 0 288 85 7 17,968 377
2 1972-05-12 MIN MIL L 3-4 22.0 13 4 13 0 86 7 8,628 347
3 1967-08-09 MIN WSA L 7-9 20.0 14 9 16 2 79 5 16,901 340
4 1976-08-25 MIN NYY L 4-5 18.2 16 5 5 1 73 4 24,351 326
5 2004-08-08 MIN OAK L 5-6 18.0 16 6 13 0 251 71 7 25,976 297
6 1969-09-06 MIN OAK W 8-6 18.0 16 6 12 1 78 4 17,599 317
7 1969-07-19 MIN SEP W 11-7 18.0 20 7 9 1 82 5 12,069 341
8 1967-07-26 (2) MIN NYY W 3-2 18.0 10 2 7 0 65 4 21,927 264
9 1976-08-28 MIN CLE L 3-4 16.2 13 4 6 0 62 6 6,071 295
10 1969-04-09 MIN KCR L 3-4 16.2 11 4 8 0 64 5 13,731 272
11 1995-05-07 MIN CLE L 9-10 16.1 26 10 9 3 322 82 9 39,431 396
12 2009-07-03 MIN DET L 9-11 16.0 17 11 12 2 218 69 7 33,368 307
13 2005-08-16 MIN CHW W 9-4 16.0 12 4 12 1 204 63 6 34,533 309
14 1986-06-11 MIN TEX L 2-6 16.0 16 6 7 1 66 5 11,506 272
15 1977-09-17 MIN TEX L 4-5 16.0 12 5 10 2 65 5 13,163 312
16 1969-07-25 MIN CLE W 4-2 16.0 8 2 14 1 57 3 8,959 266
17 1982-04-20 MIN OAK L 3-4 15.2 14 4 10 0 66 3 12,488 303
18 1975-07-12 MIN NYY L 7-8 15.2 18 8 7 1 70 5 13,573 311
19 2012-06-17 MIN MIL W 5-4 15.0 15 4 7 1 250 66 7 39,206 290
20 2004-06-10 MIN NYM W 3-2 15.0 8 2 13 1 231 59 6 16,706 246
21 2004-05-04 MIN SEA L 3-4 15.0 13 4 14 1 245 65 8 32,727 288
22 2004-04-06 MIN CLE W 7-6 15.0 12 6 10 1 223 59 8 19,832 300
23 2002-06-10 MIN ATL W 6-5 15.0 11 5 6 1 209 58 5 24,534 263
24 1999-05-21 MIN OAK W 2-1 15.0 8 1 9 0 225 59 5 14,433 295
25 1992-07-04 MIN BAL W 3-2 15.0 12 2 8 0 250 64 6 48,028 280
26 1980-08-28 MIN TOR W 7-5 15.0 13 5 9 1 60 4 14,035 264
27 1980-06-20 MIN CLE L 3-4 15.0 14 4 6 1 63 6 7,668 268
28 1974-09-10 MIN CHW W 8-7 15.0 19 7 9 1 62 4 3,285 247
29 1973-06-06 (1) MIN CLE W 7-3 15.0 10 3 8 1 66 3 254
30 1972-06-06 MIN BAL W 5-4 15.0 11 4 14 0 63 4 6,203 265
31 1972-05-13 MIN MIL W 5-4 15.0 10 4 12 2 54 3 7,871 216
32 1964-09-29 MIN KCA L 6-7 15.0 10 7 13 3 61 8 2,999 290
33 1961-05-22 MIN CLE L 5-7 15.0 17 7 7 2 63 4 5,425 248
Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Play Index Tool Used
Generated 3/9/2016.

 

According to Wikipedia

The longest game by innings in Major League Baseball was a 1-1 tie in the National League between the Boston Braves and the Brooklyn Dodgers in 26 innings, at Braves Field in Boston on May 1, 1920. It had become too dark to see the ball (fields did not have lights yet and the sun was setting), and the game was considered a draw. Played rapidly by modern standards, those 26 innings were completed in 3 hours and 50 minutes.

The longest American League game, and tied for the longest major league game by innings which ended with one team winning, was a 7-6 victory by the Chicago White Sox over the Milwaukee Brewers in 25 innings, at Comiskey Park in Chicago in 1984. The game began at 7:30 p.m. on the evening of May 8, 1984, and after scoring early runs both teams scored twice in the 8th inning; but the game was suspended after 17 innings with the score tied 3-3 due to a league curfew rule prohibiting an inning from beginning after 12:59 a.m. The game was continued the following evening, May 9, 1984, and both teams scored three times in the 21st inning to make the score 6-6; finally, in the bottom of the 25th, the White Sox’ Harold Baines hit a home run to end the contest. Tom Seaver was the winning pitcher in relief.[5] A regularly scheduled game followed, meaning both nights saw 17 innings played; Seaver also started, and won, the second game. The official time of the entire 25-inning game was 8 hours, 6 minutes, also a major league record

Twins have always been looking for pitching – even back in 1966

David Lowery - photo credit to Historic Images
David Lowery – photo credit to Historic Images

Some thing never change with the Minnesota Twins. Even back in 1966 the Twins were scouting all over the world and looking for baseball players and in this case they thought they had found a real diamond in the rough in Johannesburg, South Africa.

The 23 year-old David Lowery was 6’5″ and tipped the scales about 208 and signed a minor league deal with the Orlando Twins for a $1,000 bonus and round trip transportation for him and his family to give baseball in the United States a try as a right-handed pitcher.

Lowery started 31 games for the 1966 Orlando Twins (Class A) and was second on the team with 12 wins. Lowery only gave up 154 hits in 181 innings while striking out 88 and had a nice 1.20 WHIP with a very good 2.64 ERA. Those kind of numbers would have made Lowery a hot prospect now days but for reasons I have not been able to determine, Dave Lowery returned to South Africa after his one season in pro ball. The PDF below is an interesting read as he talks about how it was in South Africa in 1966.

Dave Lowery1

Miguel Sano too big to fail

Miguel Sano
Miguel Sano

I have told you all before that my glass is half empty and it is leaking. You can say that it is a negative attitude or what ever you want but this type of thinking has served me well during my life time and it helped me immensely in my 38 year career in IT.

I hope like hell that Miguel Sano has finally found a position he can call home but I can’t help but wonder what would happen if for some reason it does not pan out. It is unlikely that a decision like that would be made quickly because the Twins want and need Miguel Sano to play right field, if Sano isn’t an outfielder all kinds of poop hits the fan.

Let’s look at worst case here for a moment and see what you do with Sano if that should happen. He was signed as a shortstop and the Twins said for several years that he might have to be moved to third base and eventually they did move him to the hot corner. Now with Trevor Plouffe finally playing well at 3B and hitting in the middle of the line-up the Twins aren’t excited about moving him to another position or trading him. Sano has shown (albeit in the minor leagues) he is far from a gold glover at 3B anyway so why take Plouffe off 3B? Last year Sano played a little 3B and DH but you really don’t want to waste an athletic young player like Sano at DH. If he is so athletic why can’t he play outfield or anywhere else for that matter? I think the answer is simply his size, the man is a brute, I didn’t say fat, he is huge for a baseball player. Maybe he eventually settles in at 1B but not for the time being, we have Joe Mauer there, Byung-ho Park was signed as a first baseman, and Kennys Vargas wants to play there too.

Norwood, WillieI have actually spent a lot of time thinking about this situation with Sano so that shows you how my mind works these days. With the way the Twins team is structured there is no way that Sano is not the right fielder for the Twins in 2016 short of a serious injury. Think about it, the Twins have used Harmon Killebrew as an outfielder and even Willie Norwood played outfield for the Twins and he couldn’t catch a cold at your local urgent care center filled with kindergartners.

I can live with Eddie Rosario and Byron Buxton covering left and center and Sano camping out in right field because I am not buying a ticket to watch Sano play in the outfield, I am there to watch Miguel Sano hit. Sano has more power that Harmon Killebrew and people will indeed stop whatever they are doing to watch Sano hit, just like they did for Hall of Famer Harmon Killebrew. Say what you want, but Miguel Sano is indeed too big to fail no matter how you slice and dice it.

So now what do we do with Max Kepler and Adam Walker? An embarrassment of riches? OH BOY! This going to be fun.