Early last week, before all the hubbub about the Winter Meetings, Terry Ryan sat down for a conference call with Twins Season Ticket Holders.  K-Bro has all the details.

And in a complete turnaround, Joe Mauer took some time out of his busy winter conditioning schedule to sit down with the media, discuss his injury plagued 2011 season and what lies ahead for him in the years ahead.  Knuckleballs’ Jim Crikket writes that it is a step in the right direction.

So who is Pedro Florimon Jr.?  The Tenth Inning Stretch has all the info you’ll need about the young Dominican.

The Rookie of the Year award receives all of the press and excitement associated with a trophy awarded by the Baseball Writers Association of America.  The Sophomore of the Year award, long defunct,  is relegated to The Platoon Advantage, for now.  The Common Man has done the research for you, including turning up a SOY award winner among Cooperstown’s newest inductees.

Earlier this week Tim McCarver was awarded the Ford C. Frick award for broadcasting excellence.  Luckily he’s been a pretty solid broadcaster throughout his career, because he certainly isn’t winning any awards for his counting.

Over at FanGraphs Josh Goldman examines the role of September Call-Ups and how they impact the end of the MLB season, including pennant races.  Not something that your normally think about, because if your team is out of it, you don’t mind seeing Minor Leaguers come up and get a shot, and if you’re competing against them to race into a playoff spot, you usually don’t mind seeing a few innings from a Minor League reliever.

It was announced earlier this morning that the New York Yankees had won the posting for Japanese shortstop Hiroyuki Nakajima.  The only problem is that the Yankees don’t really have room for Nakajima.  If he turns out to be anything like Tsuyoshi Nishioka, that won’t be a problem.

This video of a baseball prank isn’t winning the Video of the Week award, but it almost did.  NotGraphs with more baseball prank video gold! (This video of astronaut baseball isn’t the video of the week either, but it’s still pretty neat.)  (more…)

While the Pond didn’t do a great job predicting a 99 loss Minnesota Team, we were still rewarded with a spectacular finish to the 2011 MLB season.  The Twins won their final two games, avoiding a 100 loss season and winning back to back games for the first time July 26/27.  Outside of the AL Central, the rest of the baseball world exploded last night as 4 teams were fighting for the two Wild Card spots in the playoffs, and they didn’t disappoint.  The Phillies won a squeaker over the braves in 13 innings, the Red Sox suffered a walk off defeat to the Baltimore Orioles, and the Tampa Bay Rays came back from a 0-7 deficit to beat the Yankees in 11 innings.  Amazing baseball.

The Friday Links certainly cannot live up to that magic, but they should help you to close the door on the 2011 regular season, and prepare you for some exciting playoff baseball in the weeks ahead.

Enjoy. (more…)

The Twins have a lot of work to do this offseason after this disastrous season. Nearly every position on the field has questions, and some of them are complete black holes. Hopefully, the team’s executives are already at work putting together a strategy and identifying players to target on the free agent market.

Many would argue the first changes that need to be made are in the front office; specifically, people are calling for General Manager Bill Smith and/or Manager Ron Gardenhire to be fired. I am going to save those topics for future articles, though, and limit this one to on-field needs.

Here are the Top Five positions that the Twins needs to upgrade this offseason, ranked from least desperate to most.

5. Outfield

Though the team has made it clear that they want to re-sign Jason Kubel and Michael Cuddyer, the chances are that both will leave. Even if they are willing to stay, it might not make long-term sense to keep them, since they could both command multiyear deals at $10 million or more per season, and the soon-to-be-rebuilding Twins could benefit from the draft picks they’d receive in compensation. Though outfield is one area where the Twins have a lot of interesting minor league prospects, players like Angel Morales, Oswaldo Arcia, Eddie Rosario, and Aaron Hicks are still several years from contributing. Ben Revere and Joe Benson have both seen Major League action this year, but they too could benefit from some time in AAA to work out the kinks. (more…)