A 5 Word Guide to Every Draft Pick

Sure we're a couple weeks late, and several hundreds of posts short...but we couldn't resist the temptation to continue our annual tradition of giving a run down of every single Twins draft pick for the busy fan. So keep your detailed scouting reports, don't bother worrying over their ETAs in the big leagues, just appreciate the simplicity of five words for every player. (As always, numbers and punctuation don't count)

Right Handed Pitchers

Get the pitchers, Terry. All the pitchers!

Nicholas Burdi (Round 2)--College reliever of the year

Michael Cederoth (Round 3)--Twins like right-handed relievers

Jake Reed (Round 5)--Really, they're great.

John Curtiss (Round 6)--You can always use them

Andro Cutura (Round 7)--Good thing our pen is big.

Keaton Steele (Round 8)--Holy cow...another one? Really?

Randy LeBlanc (Round 10)--Alright, we get it...Righties = Good

Zach Tillery (Round 13)--Stop. Just stop.

Trevor Hildenberger (Round 22)--Hilden Burgers served with Gorgonzola 

Miles Nordgren (Round 23)--Long way to north green.

Orynn Veillon (Round 32)--Fun names > Right-handed relievers

Mike Bauman (Round 34)--Hey, a Mahtomedi product!

Left Handed Pitchers

Samuel Clay (Round 4)--Never give up on Lefties.

One of the best stories from the draft

Mat Batts (Round 17)--Pitchers deserve less ominous names

Onas Farfan (Round 21)--First RBI alum Twins drafted

Taylor Heam (Round 25)--Lefties + Give Up? NO!

Cameron Avila-Leeper (Round 29)--Fortunately, not Avila-Leper.

Theo Theofanopoulos (Round 30)--Ποτέ μην εγκαταλείπεις στις Αριστεροί

Sam Hillard (Round 31)--Strong sinker...cross-fingers

Infielders/Catchers

Nick Gordon (SS, Round 1)--Flash's kid could be great

Patrick Kelly (2B, Round 12)--Red Wing native, Cornhusker alum

Tyler Mautner (3B, Round 14)--Not Lautner, sorry Twilight fans.

NOT coming to a ballpark near you

Tyler Kuresa (1B, Round 16)--Communications major! Baseball better work...

TJ White (3B, Round 18)--From Las Vegas to....Elizabethton?

Jarrard Poteete (C, Round 19)--You say PO-TEEEEE-TAY, I say...?

McCarthy Tatum (3B, Round 20)--Not Channing, sorry ladies.

Erwin Real (C, Round 24)--Could be MLB's 1st Erwin since 1913.

Blake Schmit (SS, Round 26)--Part of Maryland Shortstop pipeline

Gabriel Ojeda (C, Round 27)--Estudiante a Colegio Hector Udaneta!!

Trey Vavra (1B, Round 33)--Coach Joe's Kid, so sweet...

Brad Mathiowetz (C, Round 35)--Hope Meintkeiwitcz coaches pronunciation

Kirvin Moesquit (SS, Round 36)--Played with Mathiowetz = SCRABBLE WIN

Brett Doe (C, Round 38)--Likely to toil in anonymity

John Jones (C, Round 39)--Finally, a bland name

Dalton Guthrie (SS, Round 40)--Mark Guthrie's boy, again, sweet.

Please, please let him stay healthy

Outfielders

Max Murphy (CF, Round 9)--Local boy comes home, hopefully...

Tanner English (CF, Round 11)--Speedy center-fielder...god I hope so.

Roberto Gonzalez (RF, Round 15)--Lots of potential

Austin Diemer (CF, Round 28)--Proudly tweeting about us...awww....

Tyree Davis (CF, Round 37)--Straight outta Compton...had to be said.

A Twins Fan's Guide to World Cup Teams

Want to balance cheering for baseball with cheering for soccer? Not sure who to back other than the good ol' US of A? We've got you covered with a Twins Fan's Guide to World Cup Teams. Click along and see which players match with which nations, then cheer both baseball and soccer simultaneously.

A Twins Fan's Guide to World Cup Teams

Cliff Notes Guide to the 2014 Twins: "Rough Winds Will Shake"

We know how it is. Life is busy: with work and family and social engagements, there are a lot of demands on your time. So, if you tune out for a while during the long season, you're perfectly normal. Missing baseball games is not unlike missing reading assignments for school, so we're happy to provide this series of Cliff Notes to summarize, explain and analyze the story that is the 2014 Twins Season.

"Chapter II: May"

Summary: Boosted to a .500 record by the promising performances of a few "youthfully exuberant" protagonists, the Twins are forced to acknowledge the strains and challenges that accompany any growth spurt.

The initial tokens of optimism are cashed in or squandered like an arcade push game. The patience, increased on base percentage, boosted power numbers all dissipated in a flurry of National League fire-ballers from Los Angeles and San Francisco. The seemingly stable squad suddenly slipped and staggered, revealing that those who believed the team had undergone a total shift of character to be holding mere fools' gold.

But those who foresaw wreck and ruin have been similarly debunked, as the team made the most of the opportunities they did have, besting dangerous teams from Detroit, Boston and Baltimore. While offensive improvement and pitching performances might be temporary, gone for good are the days of apathetic and self-defeated baseball. 

At this stage in the story we know the truth about our setting and characters--they are not unstoppable forces for goodness and light, but neither are they morally bankrupt derelicts, squatting in dugouts and pocketing their paychecks regardless of their performance. That complexity encourages the audience to read on, curious to find how this newly complex cast of characters changes (if at all) over the season.

Notable Character Developments:

Kyle Gibson, Chris Colabello--Symbols of both the team's initial success April, and their slow decline in May.

Brian Dozier--After coming into his own in the first chapter of the season, Dozier very much savors the attention that surrounds him in the second. Heads turn when he goes by, channel surfers stop to watch him, and the internet bursts with mutterings of "extension"--an ugly slump near the end of the month shows he must beware overconfidence.

Phil...will you accept our rose?

Phil Hughes--The newest IT pitcher, for a group that falls in love with briefly-successful starters like contestants on "The Bachelorette" fall in love with being on TV. Yet he boasts signs of sincerity, including the fact that he walked no one for the entire month. (As walks are a symbol of ghostly, haunting presences, he seems poised to vanquish the ghosts of previous It pitchers--Scott Diamond, Francisco Liriano and Nick Blackburn)
Joe Mauer--Mauer continues to be a presence in name more than in production, posing the question of whether or not the offense is trapped in an absurdist play: "Waiting for Mauer". Perhaps it's poor luck, perhaps it's great defensive positioning, perhaps it's a sign of the apocalypse--fans and critics debate this matter fiercely.

Aaron Hicks--With Mike Pelfry nursing his groin (and all the Freudian meaning associated with that) the Twins' latest lost man in centerfield has taken on the mantle of ominous chasm where hope goes to die. The lowest Slugging and OPS on the team last month (save for the historically popular Jason Kubel), and questions about his work ethic, defense and engagement have soured his once bright future.

Key Quotes Explained:

Team Walks Percentage: April 12%; May 7%--A lot of the success of the team in the first month rested on their ability to coax walks from opponents, the drop in runs and the drop in walk rates have an impressive correlation...impressively bad that is.

Pitching Staff's Strike out to Walk Ratio: April 1.67; May 2.71--This is a major boost, especially given that we're talking about the Twins starting pitching, and sure a lot of it has to do with Phil Hughes, but Glen Perkins was similarly walk-less, and Kevin Correia, Ricky Nolasco and Jared Burton all improved their rates by 1 run or more. The tide turned because of everyone, not just one.

Twins fan mid-loss

A Literary Device to Impress Your Teacher/attractive English Major Friends:

Pathetic Fallacy--This term summarizes any time an author takes a lazy, cliched route to story telling and setting. Ever notice how when someone's in love there's sunshine and blue skies? Pathetic Fallacy. How it's always raining, when a character is in tears, depressed, isolated or alone? Pathetic Fallacy. Maybe they feel the way they do because of the weather, maybe the weather is blatantly reflecting their mood, but obviously, when the Dodgers crushed the Twins after a week of miserable weather...it was the pathetic fallacy. When we fought off one last frost warning and the team stank in San Francisco--pathetic fallacy. If this keeps up, here's rooting for 72 and sunny every day this summer. (Wait it's Minnesota...we're screwed).

You Wouldn't Like Me When I'm Optimistic

As busy and occasionally frantic as I am at this point of the school year, I always make time to track the Twins' scores. Sometimes it's a quick peek at last night's result, sometimes it's a giddy highlight reel review, sometimes it's a flipping through radio channels hoping to hear details and analyses. Even in the depths of the team's worst crap-itude, it's nice to have that brief check in as part of the day.

But of course, I prefer it when they're winning. Probably too much so. And it has not escaped my attention that the Twins are at .500 right now, nor that they are one game behind the 2nd Wild Card spot. This, while nice, is also dangerous. Unless the Twins I expected at the start of the year (you know, the woeful-pitching, incompetent-hitting, bad-luck-bedeviled, please-god-let-us-only-lose-89-games-this-year Twins we were all expecting) turn up soon, I may actually become optimistic.

So I try to keep myself calm by slowly negating all the positives of the team so far this year:

1. We're more patient! With a .335 OBP that has us ranked 2nd in the AL. Yeah, but...a lot of that has to do with the pitching the team is facing. And the more pitchers realize that they're pitching to Aaron Hicks and Eduardo Escobar rather than Denard Span and JJ Hardy, they're more likely to attack, so that will drop and soon.
2. The pitching doesn't totally suck this year! Yeah, but...it would be kind of amazing if they were worse than they had been lately. The starters are the third worst in the league at allowing runs, and the bull pen has the second most lost leads in the whole league. So hold on hard to Phil Hughes while he lasts, it won't stick around.
3. They don't quit, and we actually have some clutch hitting this year! Yeah, but...clutch play isn't a real thing, just like "grit", and "stick-to-it-iveness" aren't things. Besides they are below average at driving in or advancing runners in scoring position with less than 2 outs...if you can't do that, and you get lucky enough with two outs, then whoop-de-dang-doo.
4. We've made do despite a bunch of injuries! Yeah, but...only for six weeks. It's real nice that Jason Kubel hasn't been a disaster, and Chris Colabello's been heart warming, and Casey Fien/Brian Duensing have effectively shut down others, and Kurt Suzuki has been strangely effective. But none of them have a track record that bodes well for the long term; worse still, the minor league calvary (Misters Buxton, Sano, Arcia, Rosario et al) are in varying degrees of pain and unlikely to save the day any time soon.
5. We've held tough against the best teams in the league! Yeah, but...uh, wait, really? Yeah we have a winning record against the AL East and the Tigers. But umm, interleague... Yankees...oh screw it...

Cliff Notes to the 2014 Twins: "The Cruelest Month"

We know how it is. Life is busy: with work and family and social engagements, there are a lot of demands on your time. So, if you've missed some developments in the first month of the season, you're perfectly normal. Missing baseball games is not unlike missing reading assignments for school, so we're happy to provide this series of Cliff Notes to summarize, explain and analyze the story that is the 2014 Twins Season.

"Chapter I: April"

Summary: At the beginning of the season, the Twins are a team in the doldrums of an interminable struggle for meaning and purpose, like the Joads on the road to California, the Crachit's on December 23rd, or the Kardashians...anytime. As they take the field for the first time in a cold and forbidding Chicago, there are few notes of spring (a symbol of hope) to be found. 

While an initial flurry of subpar performances and predictable defeats confirm that perception, there are some causes for optimism. One impressive pitcher and three solid hitters offer the sense that younger, less experienced players possess a kind of indefatigable patience and ethic that renews the spirits of weary souls. Soon, jaded on lookers are speaking in positive tones, and the initially laughable albatross of the manager's "1,000 Victory" humidor is forgotten.

Yet uncertainty pervades the atmosphere, will these younger talents maintain their performance or flame out like those common symbols of youthful exuberance in literature: foolhardy soldiers and mid-90s boy-bands? Will older veterans act on the model set by their juniors, or lapse into old habits?

Notable Characters:

Kyle Gibson--long standing Twins prospect, recovered from initial struggles in the previous year to post the best season of the major league starters

Brian Dozier--Southern gentleman second baseman with inexplicable, and heretofore unknown strength.

Chris Colabello--a journeyman, young by world standards, old within the context of his career, leading a charmed existence.

Josmil Pinto--The third potent hitter, very much in the "quiet giant" genre of characters.

Ron Gardenhire--The wise teacher/sensei/jedi master trope, only with less inventive nicknames

Joe Mauer, Glen Perkins--Two of the wearily-souled veterans, capable but worn by the past. They do not perform much in this chapter, but are likely to factor more prominently as the book progresses

Mike Pelfry--While the novel lacks an antagonist, Pelfry serves as its foil and counterpoint. Every strong outing from Gibson, every hit from the sluggers is balanced by his ongoing collapse, balancing the new life of the season and players with a "memento mori"--or death omen.

Key Quotes Explained:

Team On Base Percentage .353 (#1 in the American League)--The statistic combining both hits (traditionally a Twins strength) and walks (a new focus) demonstrates the growth and development of the team as they grow into a more patient, mature team.

Team ERA for Starters: 6.08 (#15 in American League)--Despite one pitcher's success, the team continues to flounder in this particular area--the ominous presence of Pelfry has particular relevance here.

A Literary Device to Impress Your Teacher/attractive English Major Friends:

Bildungsroman--This is the term for a novel that covers the moral or mental growth of its main character (in this case the Twins), or as people less fond of German might say it "a-coming-of-age-story". At this point in the season, the Twins of 2014 very much resemble a bildungsroman, both in the development and maturation of younger players (Gibson, Dozier, Josmil), inexperienced players (Colabello), and in team philosophy (increasing the walk rate and on base percentage). However, it is notable that the bildungsroman motif must be maintained for an extended time period--and a single chapter may be a little early to make that decision.

Why I'll Always Come Back

Copyright Betsy Bissen

It hasn't been easy being a Twins fan the last few years (though if you're committed enough to the team to find my little corner of the blogosphere, I hardly need tell you that).

It's been even less easy to be a positive Twins blogger, to dedicate time and energy to finding the silver linings in a team that often looks outmatched in almost every facet of the game. My writing life would be easier, and probably more pleasant, if I could just sign off from the blog, let it wither and dry up like the husk of so many other abandoned websites in internet ghost towns, and find something else to occupy my time.

But I keep coming back. I can't seem to stop. No matter how long I go between posts, I keep turning up to write something. Just like I keep turning up at Target Field to see something, anything that resembles baseball.

My father-in-law, the Gouger, had tickets for last night, and I was, as ever, excited to go. But with Mrs. Peanut off in Los Angeles studying to become a yoga teacher, my Parental Units (Mr. No-Ass and The Knitting Queen) in a jet lag stupor after a 40th anniversary trip to Barcelona, my little brother exploiting his fraternity, and my best dude friend on a date, it was just the pair of us. Weaving our way through a packed downtown, we were both grimly aware that the Twins, these Twins, were as likely to provide an evening's entertainment as the stand-up comedy stylings of Joe Mauer. ("Hey, have you ever noticed how things are...you know...things?")

Heading down to Target Field plaza, we saw a mother shepherding a pair of logo-bedecked boys into an elevator. The boys were glowing with excitement, all smiles and bouncing knees. Gouger asked "are the Twins going to win tonight?" The littlest boy replied "YEAH!!" with the kind of absolute certainty that you only hear in children and religious fundamentalists. We could have shaken our heads, or muttered something, but instead we high-fived, and cheered and headed on to the gates.

Tasty

Since we arrived an hour early (preemptive parking before the Wolves and Twins fans descended en masse), I actually had time to peruse the clubhouse store, and all the food offerings I wanted. Part of me always thinks that, as fun as baseball can be, working in baseball (or at least in a baseball stadium) could leave you tired and dismissive. And yet I found myself hearing cheery recommendations from the beer vendor (Day Tripper APA: solid and satisfying after a long week), getting sincere service from the food vendors and sharing jokes and memories with clubhouse store cashiers. Everyone had a smile on their face, everyone seemed excited to see you, and more than willing to pause their work to appreciate a little sunshine and the promise of baseball ahead.

So hopeful...so, very hopeful...

And while the top of the first put me in mind of a long, bumpy road ahead (Pedro Florimon's sudden apathy had something do with that), it was easy to push that aside and appreciate the little things: Jason Kubel chugging as only Jason Kubel can on a triple, Josmil Pinto's big screen photo looking like nothing so much as a forlorn Teddy Bear, Joe Mauer's robotic RBI delivery system and awkward 1st base chatter, Kyle Gibson finishing a fine performance with a strike out and a standing O, Brian Duensing dropping the hammer, Kurt Suzuki joining a long list of players whose early performance pauses any cranky critique I could make.

It was a beautiful night, feeling warm and welcomed, watching a solid game of baseball and finding, five seats down, a likeminded fan in our old pal Betsy Bissen (her photo graces the top of this post...unless she tells me not to use it, in which case, I'll delete this sentence). Seeing her and talking (in person) for the first time in years, I got to hear all about her life as a photographer in the well, her stories about cupcakes and curveballs, pranks and--above all--positivity: why she always stays optimistic about the players, why the only people who drive her nuts are the people who can't stop complaining (and occasionally those who use ipads to take pictures), and why I should keep on keeping on with quirky little photoshops and random observations.

The whole night was a long, joyful reminder of why I come back to baseball and blogging again and again. It's easy to get sucked into my own private world: my house, my Netflix queue, my scotch bottles. But baseball makes sure I remember everyone around me: the little kids abuzz with excitement; the random strangers who have a smile, handshake and piece of advice; the players who become constants in your life; the other writers, photographers and talkers who share in the silliness with me; and the family who are always there.

Gouger said it at the start of the night. There's no where else in sports where you can feel as tied into the community as you do you do at a baseball game. There's no where else I feel like my writing has as much chance to connect with like minded readers and thinkers as in this baseball blog.

It's not easy to be a Twins fan right now. It's not easy to be a Twins writer right now. But no matter how hard it gets, it's worth it, to be tied in to a community of the excited, the kind, the constant, the silly and the family that makes baseball great.

Early Days: Using A Made Up Stat to Make Silly Predictions

So there's a down side to the start of the baseball season, as fun and exciting and thrilling as it is to watch baseball games be played, live and in your home town and with actual meaning associated with their outcome, it's also a reminder that you have a long, looong way to go until the season ends.

And as a Twins fan who has to expect mathematical elimination from the playoffs around the same time your tax returns are being mailed in, it's a very, very loooong time.

So, you'll forgive me if I spend a little bit of this time doing something silly. Instead of breaking down failures with runners in scoring position, or obsessing over arm slot, I prefer to just be an idiot. Baseball is there to entertain us, and when the product is a little less than riveting you have to make your own entertainment.

That's why I introduced a totally made up and completely subjective statistic: Amusement Above Replacement Player or AARP. This is a statistic of my own invention quantifying several unquantifiable things about players: performance, nickname, physical/personality traits, attitude/demeanor, and oddities.

AARP is fundamentally a way of quantifying just how much fun I personally feel while watching players or teams. You can certainly disagree with them, but good luck proving that I'm wrong because--as I mentioned before--it's all made up.

They could probably still beat the T-Wolves

Since this is the time of year for baseball bloggers to make rash and unfounded predictions prior to any kind of justifiable proof, it seems like an ideal opportunity to use a fictitious stat to make facetious predictions!


But how? After all the most amusing players are not always the best performers, nor are the teams with the most entertaining teams the eventual World Champions (sorry Harlem Globetrotters). So how can I use a stat about amusement to predict anything (even sarcastically)?

Like this, dear reader, like this: say that an average contending team would have a host of average AARP performers (.5-2.0) and a few players who are closer to transcendent talents who can capture the public interest/media spotlight (5.0 or better). I'll identify a few likely candidates in my next post and from that pool pick a preferred winner (again totally subjectively)

Meanwhile for individual players it's instructive to look at those who are either high on the performance metric, but low on experience (meaning they're about to get attention and grow into an interesting personality); or those who are high on the attitude/demeanor but low on talent (meaning that a good run of performance can make them more interesting). I'll take a look at some Twins players and assess how likely they are to curry public favor in the last post.