The main story from the Twins’ Opening Day 4-1 win over Kansas City was, simply, the injury to potential superstar Royce Lewis, who pulled up lame with a quad injury as he rounded second base. It’s not that a sustained injury, if it proves as serious as it looked, will hurt the Twins’ prospects this […]
As the Minnesota Twins’ 2024 season opener approaches I am more doubtful than sanguine. While the national prognosticators uniformly pick the Twins to win their division, I read this more as a referendum on the weakness of their rivals than an endorsement of the Twins’ strength. And given their success last year–winning the division plus […]
While baseball has a stupid rule or two–one less next year, as I’ll discuss later–football has a doozy that has more actual impact on the game: the fumble-out-of-the-end-zone-for-a-touchback rule. When this rule was invoked against the Vikings in mid-season it may have cost them a win and led to general speculation that the rule would […]
Even when there are no new birds to be seen or locales to visit, birding can give me great satisfaction, as two days this weekend demonstrated. On Friday, December 29, the day before Santa Barbara’s annual Christmas Bird Count (CBC), I took the noon-to-two Snowy Plover docent shift at Coal Oil Point. The beach had […]
A quick note on Game 2 of the Rangers-Diamondbacks series: yesterday the Diamondbacks bounced back from a heartbreaking extra-inning loss in Dallas to whump the Rangers, 9-1. Arizona struck out only two times the whole game. With 16 hits. I wonder if the Twins were watching. Post mortem: I was part of why this was […]
Much of the reporting on the USWNT’s overtime loss concentrated on Sweden’s winning penalty kick, which crossed the goal line by one, or maybe two, millimeters after being largely saved by US goalie Alyssa Naeher. Had it been saved, however, there was no guarantee the result would have been any different. The US would still […]
On Sunday (7/11) the Twins blew a game, 7-6, to the Blue Jays when Emilio Pagan gave up two singles and a home run in the 8th inning, but the loss equally belonged to Carlos Correa, whose throw in the dirt on the back end of a sure double play allowed the Jays’ three previous […]
October 12: I can’t complain or feel surprised that the Twins’ season ended last night with a 3-2 loss to the Astros. For one thing, the Twins won three playoff games and lost three, a .500 record that reflects the way they played most of the year. And when you see that both the Orioles […]
In last week’s games, in which the Twins went 2-6, these relievers gave up runs while pitching an inning or less: Lopez, Jax, Pagan, DeLeon, Stewart, Alcala, Moran. Sands was asked to pitch multiple innings, so I’ve left him off the list. The only reliever without a bad outing was Duran, and he barely pitched […]
The Twins’ relatively hot start in 2023 makes my end-of-year preview already look unduly gloomy. Their off-season additions have pleasantly surprised: while Byron Buxton has yet to play an inning in centerfield, newcomer Michael Taylor has been more than adequate defensively and an asset in the number nine hole. For one thing, he’s the only […]
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