You’ll forgive me that the Thursday Links were not out at the crack of dawn when you learn what I was doing instead of blogging the links.  Late last night I was browsing ebay and I found a pair of game worn Rick Renick pants from the 1990 season.  Renick played exclusively for the Minnesota Twins in his short career (parts of all five seasons from 1968-72).  After retiring Renick bounced around as a coach and spent a couple years coaching under Tom Kelly in Minnesota before leaving to coach in the Chicago White Sox organization after the 1990 season.  Clearly, game used pants from Rick Renick are not going to be the centerpiece of anyone’s Twins collection, but they were listed for just 99 CENTS!  Throw in about $8 shipping, and you’re looking at some pretty strange looking Twins merchandise for under $10 bucks!  Upon closer inspection of the pants, I didn’t see any pinstripes and the pants were just plain white, because the Twins home kit in 1990 used pinstriped pants, and the road kit was grey, these were clearly some sort of practice pant.  Still, for less then $10 George Washingtons they could be mine!  Sadly, the bidding spun wildly out of control during the final minutes, as ebay auctions often do, and the pants were priced out of my comfort zone. They sold for $5.  You win some, you lose some, but when you learn about the history of Rick Renick along the way you have to feel good coming out the other end!  If you have a favorite memory of Rick Renick please share it below.

The biggest signing this week, at least for Twins fans (others may be biased towards the signing of Yu Darvish, and there was that blockbuster deal between the Mariners and the Yankees) was the announcement that the Twins had signed right handed flame thrower Joel Zumaya to a Major League deal.  Zumaya actually passed his physical and the Twins made the move official yesterday afternoon, the Tenth Inning Stretch was kind enough to share some lesser known facts on the fastballer.  In less big news, the Twins also signed 16 year-old Venezuelan, Mauricio Silva as an international free agent with a  $370,000 dollar signing bonus.  Silva is already throwing his fastball in the low 90′s and is at least five years away from putting on a Twins uniform.

On with the links:

Jon Swol is rolling the dice on the Twins 2012 season, and wondering if they can bounce back from 99 losses a year ago.  His analysis bounces around the Central and looks at other teams that had significant drop offs in win totals from one season to the next, like the Twins did a year ago, and then looks at how those teams responded.  History doesn’t bode well for the 2012 Twins, but I’m still holding out hope.

The North Dakota Twins fan has managed to collect a few baseballs during his years as a Twins fan, and shared a couple stories about how he snagged his favorite balls.  I have never been lucky enough to catch a foul ball at any type of professional sporting event, so I am a little jealous, but I still hold out hope.  (more…)

(I get this stuff from Fangraphs so you don’t have to)

I would like to blame Michael Cuddyer playing third base for Nick Blackburn’s awfulness, but I don’t think anything was even hit in his direction and those back-to-back homers to Chase Utley and Ryan Howard certainly weren’t his fault. You know, I think I’m starting to change my mind about dealing for Cliff Lee. I don’t know what, if anything is wrong with Nick Blackburn, but I don’t know how much longer the Twins can keep waiting for him to turn things around. Their lead in the division is down to half a game, and though I still think it’s too early to panic (they are still the class of the AL Central), I would hate to see them dig themselves too deep of a hole with their difficult schedule coming up.

Best hitter:

Nick Punto, .019 WPA. There’s something I don’t write every day. Or pretty much ever. Little Nicky hit a two-run homer in what I guess you’d consider the baseball equivalent of garbage time.

Worst hitter:

Technically Orlando Hudson was the worst hitter, with a -.039 WPA, but he’s coming off of a wrist injury so I really hate to pick on him. I’m going to pick on Man Muscles instead, because he also sucked (-.021 WPA) and he’s been sucking a lot lately. Stop sucking, Joe!

Best pitcher:

Jesse Crain, .007 WPA. Since the Twins were already hopelessly behind, Crain naturally had one of his brilliant outings, throwing 2.1 scoreless innings and notching a pair of strikeouts.

Worst pitcher:

Nick Blackburn, and I don’t even need to look at WPA. He allowed eight runs and didn’t even complete two innings.

Most important play of the game:

Ryan Howard’s triple to right in the first inning (.117 WPA), giving the Phillies a 2-0 lead. It was all pretty much downhill from there.

Music t0 make us feel better:

This gem with Neil Young and Bruce Springsteen, please to enjoy.

With the amateur draft now over, I thought it might be fun to dig into the team’s draft history and find out how many of its most useful players came from the draft. After all, the Twins are famous for developing their own players, and I thought it would be interesting to see just how much of the Twins’ historically great talent is actually homegrown. First, let’s look at the first round picks, since those players are the most likely to reach the major leagues; I will devote a later post to gems found in the later rounds (I’m not going to do a breakdown of each round, that would take all year). I’ve decided to go all the way back to 1965, when the amateur draft was first instituted, though I’ll only make note of the more interesting draft picks, and if applicable, who might have been a better choice instead. After the jump, one very big table and a very wordy post (seriously, this thing is almost 1500 words, so don’t say I didn’t warn you). (more…)