*Not that you couldn’t have thought about something besides baseball.  I spent one sleepless night earlier this week pondering the loss in lifetime earnings potential that could be created by not receiving an annual raise in salary.  Numbers, combined with time, are scary things.  This has been the first installment of “Things that Keep Me Up at Night”.

Anyways, on with the links:

The Common Man was so taken by the anticipation of seeing Brad Radke at TwinsFest that he wrote the script for a pretty entertaining Twins commercial, in the style of SNL’s Bill Brasky skit.

While I guess this is technically ANOTHER TwinsFest story, this one, even more than the others, really embodies what TwinsFest is all about: making connections with your favorite baseball players, and creating memories that last a lifetime.  Lindsey Seavery from CBS Minnesota reports on a Missing Jersey that was reunited with Twins great Tony Oliva, 25 years after he lost it.

The Twins have expanded their Hall of Fame to 24 members, electing Camilo Pascual.  If there is a man that looks like a MLB pitcher, Pascual is that guy.  (more…)

Burroughs is the most interesting of the three. He was drafted 9th overall by the Padres in 1998 (just three picks after the Twins took Ryan Mills, who is a six time Cy Young winner in an alternative universe). He got to the Majors relatively quickly and enjoyed a solid season in 2003 at the age of 22, hitting .286/.352/.402 for the Friars. But he never became the superstar his draft position would indicate. After a trade to Tampa, Burroughs quit baseball to spend more time with his cocaine, and eventually ended up homeless in Las Vegas. That’s the sad part of the story. The happy part is that he got clean and made a Major League comeback last year with Arizona. Now he’s a Twin.

I don’t think Burroughs has a legitimate shot to challenge Danny Valencia for the starting 3B job, but he’ll be an interesting story to follow in Spring Training. And he inspired me to ask a Twins trivia question:

What does Burroughs have in common with former Twins Jon Rauch, Pat Borders, Doug Mientkiewicz, and Adam Everett? The answer is at the end of this post. (more…)

Peanuts from Heaven had some fun last week and handed out their Most Valuable Peanut award to Michael Cuddyer.  To celebrate, they followed Michael Cuddyers’ baseball card around for a few days and photographed him in some pretty interesting places, like a bowl of green curry.

To much less fanfare than Patrick Reusse, Twins Trivia awarded their own Turkey of the Year award.  Their award winner was Joe Mauer, which seems like an obvious choice, but Twins Trivia looks past the surface and presents a pretty convincing case for Joe Mauer.

A week later there has been a more thorough analysis of the new Collective Bargaining Agreement between Major League Baseball and the Players Association.  Drew Fairservice from Getting Blanked examines how the CBA affects Super 2 players going forward.  Twinkie Town’s Jon Marthaler tackles the CBA from a fictional perspective to find 15 Little-Known Provisions, including the Super 2 status, “All players who are eligible for “Super 2″ arbitration status will have the option of wearing a cape in the field.”  FanGraphs does a great job analyzing the impact that the new CBA will have on player salaries, and argues that increased playoff revenues will drive up player salaries.  Hard to argue with author Matt Swartz’s point of view, but just how big that impact will be is yet to be seen.   (more…)