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Twins minor league player of the week

Tyler Duffey 2015Chattanooga (AA) pitcher Tyler Duffey is the first Twins Minor League Player of the Week in 2015. Duffey made a start for the Lookouts on April 15 versus Birmingham tossing 7 shutout innings with two hits allowed, one walk and eight strikeouts. The 24 year-old Duffey has made two starts this season, tossing 13.2 scoreless innings pitched with six hits, two walks and 18 strikeouts. The right-handed Duffey was recently ranked seventh in minor league baseball on Baseball America’s Prospect Hot Sheet, covering games of April 9-16. Tyler Blinn Duffey was the Twins fifth round pick in the 2012 First-Year Player Draft out of Rice University and reportedly signed for a $267,000 signing bonus. Duffey served as the Rice Owls closer in his final season in college ball.

Duffey who was born in Houston, Texas and is starting this season at Chattanooga (AA) this season pitched at three levels in the Twins minor league system in 2014 starting out in Ft. Myers (High A) where he was 3-0 with a 2.82 ERA before being moved up to New Britain (AA) where he went 8-3 with 3.81 ERA. Duffey then was moved up to Rochester (AAA) where he was 2-0 with a 3.91 ERA and a SO/9 ratio of 9.0 in three starts. That SO/9 ratio at Rochester is a bit deceiving as his career SO/9 ratio is 7.4 but so far this year his SO/9 ratio is 11.9.

Twin minor league report 04192015

Twins have easy travel schedule in 2015

AirplaneUnless something unforeseen happens the Minnesota Twins will not be booking a lot of frequent flyer miles in 2015 as they will only have to fly 23,866 miles this coming season. Only seven teams, the Indians with 23,499, the Brewers with 23,429, the White Sox with 23,180, the Tigers with 22,508, the Cubs with 20,953, the Cardinals with 20,875 and the Reds with 20,612 will fly fewer miles than our home town boys. The Mariners on the other hand will be on the other end of the spectrum and will need to fly 43,281 miles to play out their schedule of games in 2015.

The site I used to look up this information has information going back to 2009. Based on their numbers the 2015 Minnesota Twins will fly fewer miles than any Twins team has flown from 2009 through 2014.

Miles flown by the Minnesota Twins

2014 – 29,532

2013 – 29,043

2012 – 25,546

2011 – 32,199

2010 – 27,398

2009 – 25,315

So when you hear those Minnesota Twins radio and television announcers talk about the teams grueling travel schedule you can say, “what a bunch of BS”, they got it easy.

Thanks for stopping by in 2014

Thank YouI just wanted take a few minutes and thank each of you that stopped by Twinstrivia.com this past year and continue to support the site with your continued interest. This past year we had people from 144 countries visit the site at one time or another. Is that amazing or what?

Our site volume continues to grow, up about 11% from last year and that is always nice to see. We had 195 new blog posting this past year and that is also up from 2013. Sure it would be nice to have new blog content everyday but the ultimate goal of this site is what it always has been and continues to be, a Minnesota Twins historical web site. Even though there is not new blog content published daily you can rest assured that there has been new content of some type added each day to one of the 70+ pages that make up Twinstrivia.com. I look at this site just like we do at our home and yard, always a work in progress and the job will never be totally done.

In 2014 our most popular pages have been Today in Twins History and the Twins Audio and Video Clips page. This past year our most visited blog was Manager ejections by the numbers which was written back in March of 2013 but continues to be updated.

The top referring sites to Twinstrivia.com in 2014 were Twins Daily and Baseball-Reference. We very much appreciate all the traffic that these two sites and others have sent our direction and we too send traffic to other sites with our links, works well for everyone involved.

So thank you all again and we hope you have a wonderful 2015, that the Twins can approach the .500 mark and that you and your friends keep visiting us at twinstrivia.com.

Merry Christmas

MERRY CHRISTMAS

 2014 Merry Christmas 2We at TwinsTrivia.com would like to wish each and every one of you a very Merry Christmas. Enjoy this wonderful holiday with all your family and friends and don’t forget to think about and give thanks to those that are in the military serving and protecting us all over the world and not able to spend this Christmas with their families and friends. Having been there myself once upon a time I remember how lonely that can be. We hope that this Christmas will be the best ever and one that you will never forget!

Miracle win it all!

Miracle are 2014 championsOn Monday, September 8, the Ft. Myers Miracle won the first Florida State League Championship in team history three games to one over the Daytona Cubs. Jason Kanzler‘s two-run homer in the eleventh inning propelled the Fort Myers Miracle to the Florida State League Championship in a 4-2, extra inning win over the Daytona Cubs at Jackie Robinson Ballpark in game four on Monday night. The Miracle under manager Doug Mientkiewicz finished the season with an 87-58 overall record and were 4-1 in the playoffs. Outfielder Adam Walker led the 2014 Miracle with 25 home runs and 94 RBI while hitting .246. The pitching staff was led by Matt Tomshaw, Brett Lee, and Jose Berrios who had a combined 30-14 record.

Minnesota’s longest-running Minor League full season affiliate, the Miracle began an association with the Twins in 1993. The 1993 team finished with a 55-79 record under manager Steve Liddle. Players on that team that went on to play in Minnesota were pitchers Brad Radke, Dan Naulty, Scott Watkins, catcher Damian Miller and outfielder Brent Brede.

The team has drawn nearly 120,000 fans in each of the last seven seasons. The Miracle have been top-four in the Florida State League for individual game average attendance every year since 2005. As expected, the Twins and single-A affiliate Ft. Myers Miracle have agreed to extend their Player Development Contract for four years, through the 2018 season.

This is the first league championship that a Twins minor league team has won since the Elizabethton Twins won the Appalachian League title in 2012 and also the first league championship that a minor league team has won under Brad Steil who became the Twins Farm Director after the 2012 season. The last Twins A-Ball team to win a league championship were the 1987 Kenosha Twins (82-58) who were managed by Don Leppert.

Twins minor league teams finished the 2014 season with a combined record of 409-354 for a .536 winning percentage. Of the Twins seven minor league clubs, only the 23-37 Gulf Coast League Twins posted a losing record. 2014 marked the third consecutive season that Twins farm teams have won more games than they lost.

You can learn more about the Twins minor league teams going back to 1961 on our Twins Minor League History page.

Twins minor league player of the week

Tim Shibuya
Tim Shibuya

Ft. Myers (High-A) pitcher Tim Shibuya is the Twins Minor League Player of the Week. In two starts for the Miracle, he went 1-0 with a 1.29 ERA (14.0 IP, 2 ER) with 11 hits allowed, three walks and 11 strikeouts. The 24-year-old right-hander has appeared in 26 games (8 starts) for the Miracle, going 7-3, 2.98 ERA (81.2 IP, 27 ER) with 10 walks allowed and 54 strikeouts. The 6’1″ Shibuya was drafted in the 23rd round of the 2011 First-Year Player Draft out of the University of California-San Diego.  Tim was a two-time All-American as a Triton in 2010 and 2011, and the program’s all-time leader in wins, innings pitched and strikeouts.

Here are a couple of links about Tim Shibuya that you might enjoy:

Miracle pitcher Tim Shibuya excels at fielding

Q&A with Tim Shibuya

 

Twins Minor League Player of the Week

Reynaldo RodriguezNew Britain (AA-Eastern League) first baseman/outfielder Reynaldo Rodriguez is the Twins Minor League Player of the Week. In six games for the Rock Cats, Rodriguez hit .462 (12-for-26) with three home runs, six RBI, scored seven runs and had one walk. The 27-year-old is hitting .319 (44-for-138) with 11 doubles, seven home runs, 17 RBI and 27 runs scored in 38 games at New Britain.

The Columbian born 6’0′ 195 pound Rodriguez can play the corner outfield positions and some first base and bats and throws right handed. Rodriguez was originally signed by the New York Yankees in 2006 as an undrafted free agent and played in their farm system for just two years before being released. Rodriguez sat out 2008 and played independent ball in 2009 before the Boston Red Sox took a chance on him prior to the 2010 season and he played in the Red Sox system through the 2012 season before becoming a free agent and signing with Minnesota. Although he only hit .231 for New Britain last season, he did hit 21 home runs.

A month to remember for Chris Colabello

Chris Colabello
Chris Colabello

Minnesota Twins 1B and outfielder Chris Colabello had a month to remember in April and now he ranks at the top of the list of some pretty good players that knew how to knock in runs for the Minnesota Twins. Some interesting names on this list of Twins that had 20 or more RBI in the first month of the season.

Rk Player Split Year G RBI PA AB R H 2B 3B HR SB BB SO BA OBP OPS
1 Chris Colabello April/March 2014 24 27 102 95 11 28 9 0 3 0 6 26 .295 .343 .827
2 Kirby Puckett April/March 1994 25 26 116 112 14 39 11 0 2 0 2 10 .348 .371 .871
3 Ron Coomer April/March 2000 22 23 92 83 14 22 4 0 5 0 7 9 .265 .326 .820
4 Brant Alyea April/March 1970 17 23 60 53 7 22 4 0 5 1 7 7 .415 .483 1.257
5 Justin Morneau April/March 2008 27 22 110 97 12 26 4 0 6 0 11 16 .268 .345 .840
6 Kent Hrbek April/March 1982 22 22 100 86 18 27 5 2 8 0 13 15 .314 .404 1.102
7 Dave Hollins April/March 1996 25 22 103 82 19 24 4 0 7 1 19 18 .293 .437 1.034
8 Matt Lawton April/March 2000 26 22 118 102 18 38 9 0 3 5 14 12 .373 .449 .998
9 Paul Molitor April/March 1996 25 21 114 101 24 39 7 1 2 5 11 10 .386 .439 .973
10 Pat Meares April/March 1996 24 21 95 84 16 27 4 3 3 3 6 19 .321 .372 .920
11 Doug Mientkiewicz April/March 2001 23 21 87 79 14 30 6 1 6 0 6 14 .380 .425 1.134
12 Harmon Killebrew April/March 1971 21 21 91 81 7 26 6 0 3 2 10 16 .321 .396 .902
13 Torii Hunter April/March 2002 27 20 115 105 23 39 5 0 9 5 8 21 .371 .409 1.085
Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Play Index Tool Used
Generated 5/2/2014.

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It will be interesting to see how many RBI Colabello will end up with in 2014. Harmon Killebrew wih 119 and Kirby Puckett with 112 ended up leading the league in RBI’s in the season they had 20 or more RBI’s in April. Dave Hollins on the other hand had 22 RBI in April and finished the season with 53. Strangely enough Dave Hollins, Paul Molitor, and Pat Meares all had 20 or more RBI in April of 1996 and yet the team finished the season at 78-84 with Paul Molitor and Marty Cordova ending up with over 100 RBI.

A nice record to have for Chris Colabello but it is a long season so it will be fun to watch to see if Colabello can maintain his RBI pace or if this past month is just an anomaly.

You can check out a nice article written about Colabello and his history by Dan Cook of WCCO Radio here.