Archive for March, 2011

Our long, gray and snow-filled winter of discontent officially comes to a close today as the 2011 MLB regular season finally gets underway. For the Minnesota Twins and Toronto Blue Jays, the wait is just a bit longer but at least we will have other teams playing real baseball today to help us pass the time. While I follow all of baseball in addition to obsessively following the Royals and Twins, I’m far from an expert when it comes to the Toronto Blue Jays. Fortunately Jared MacDonald, Staff Writer for Jays Journal, agreed to provide a Toronto perspective to this [...]

I want to start by saying thank you to Wally Fish for giving me the opportunity to write here. I’ve been blogging about the Twins for 2 years now, I co-founded a blog some might be familiar with, TheBatShatters, back in April 2009 with a couple of buddies of mine and it’s been a fun ride. I’m excited for this opportunity because it will allow me to do something I already love doing, for a larger audience, which is great. I love feedback, and I’m also open for suggestions so if you agree with me, disagree, hate, love, whatever, please [...]

Minus One: This week – and just on the heels of Erin’s departure – we lost another member of the Puckett’s Pond family. Steve Fetch, who has been a part of our network’s Twins coverage since June of 2009 submitted his resignation earlier this week. I am greatly saddened by Steve’s decision, but honestly, in this case, I figured it was a matter of time. The fact he has carried on for so long balancing a ridiculous amount of class work as well as other responsibilities with the FanSided Network is a testament to his commitment to the MLB team. Further, the [...]

As a Royals fan, I’m used to WTF moments. As a matter of fact Dayton Moore has WTF moves down to a science when it comes to trying to compile a 25-man major league roster. Fortunately for the sanity of Royals fans everywhere, he seems to be pretty adept at building a farm system. But as a Twins fan, I’m not used to seeing WTF moves. At least not of this nature. If you’re a regular reader of Puckett’s Pond content, you know I have been on board with most – perhaps even all – of the moves the Twins front [...]

Today it was revealed that the Baseball Bloggers Alliance has named Joe Posnanski the recipient of the BBA’s first ever Writer of the Year award. Always on point, Joe reacted to the news with his typically wonderful (and humble) style that only reinforces for me that I made the right decision to vote for him on the Puckett’s Pond BBA ballot. Joe Posnanski is nothing short of a national treasure and is one of my writing “heroes.” I say this not only due to the excellence of his writing, but also because he – unlike so many mainstream journalists out [...]

In case you need another reason to love Tsuyoshi Nishioka, I present you with one of his latest quotes: “If I continue to get one hit per game, then I’ll only have 162 hits,” Nishioka said through translator Ryo Shinkawa. “So I’ll try to get more.” I’m sorry but if that doesn’t make you smile then you are dead inside. ~~~~~ I covered Pat Neshek‘s progress with San Diego on Friday night but there is another former Twins reliever on the other coast making a little noise. According to one writer it appeared that Rob Delaney had positioned himself to possibly make [...]

Luke Hughes opened a lot of eyes in the early part of the spring training, but his performance at the plate tailed off quite a bit as the Grapefruit League schedule rolled along. In the end his hot start wasn’t enough to earn him a spot on the Opening Day roster and he has been optioned to Triple-A Rochester. Joining Luke in his trek to Triple-A will be RHP-Anthony Slama and RHP-Jim Hoey. Neither of the two pitchers optioned should come as much of a surprise. Thanks to a “stress reaction” in his elbow, Slama was limited to just one official [...]

Trevor Plouffe was optioned to the Rochester Red Wings – along with Ben Revere and Alex Burnett – on March 19th. But this isn’t as much about the “present” as it is about the past and the future. To that end, Plouffe was the 4th member of the Minnesota Twins to make his major league debut in 2010. But before we get to that, we have to go back several years. Having completed his high school career in Encino, CA the Twins made Plouffe their 1st round pick (20th overall) in the 2004 draft. At the time he was the 14th [...]

Forbes recently unveiled their valuations and related rankings of all 30 major league franchises. The Minnesota Twins, thanks in large part to the opening of the jewel that is Target Field, came in at #12. Clipped from: www.forbes.com (share this clip) When it comes to the rest of the AL Central, only the Chicago White Sox at #10 ranked higher than the Twins, but they continue to be the second class team in Chicago as the Cubs came in at #4. Detroit was a distant 3rd among our division rivals at #21 while the Cleveland Indians and Kansas City Royals ranked [...]

In a game against the Detroit Tigers on March 17th, Pat Neshek took the mound to start the 5th inning. On the positive side of the ledger, he struck out 2 of the batters he faced and didn’t issue a walk. On the negative side of things he gave up 3 hits and two of those were home runs. Three days later, on March 20th, the San Diego Padres claimed him off waivers. A lot of “digital ink” was spent on the topic including this entry from our own Josh Hill. I think much of the general reaction was pretty [...]