r/minnesotatwins

AL Central Standings

Team	W	L	PCT	GB
Guardians	29	22	.569	-
White Sox	25	24	.510	3
Twins	23	27	.460	5.5
Tigers	20	30	.400	8.5
Royals	20	30	.400	8.5

Upcoming Games

Date	Day	Team	Time
May 22	Friday	@	6:10 PM
May 23	Saturday	@	3:10 PM
May 24	Sunday	@	12:35 PM
May 25	Monday	@	1:10 PM
May 26	Tuesday	@	6:40 PM
May 27	Wednesday	@	6:40 PM
May 28	Thursday	@	1:10 PM
May 29	Friday	@	5:45 PM
May 30	Saturday	@	3:05 PM
May 31	Sunday	@	12:35 PM

With Emmanuel Rodriguez's latest injury - and Royce Lewis's recent poor performance and demotion, which may have resulted in part from a buildup of early career injuries - I know I'm not the only one here who's been wondering if there's some type of cosmic curse dogging Twins prospects. For the entire two decades I've been a fan, it seems as if an inordinate amount of our top young players have had significant or career-altering injuries right as they're on the cusp of cracking the big leagues or shortly afterward. Is this actually true? Have the Twins had particularly bad luck with prospect injuries? Or is confirmation bias just clouding our judgement, making us more inclined to remember the prospects who got hurt because it affirms our suspicion that our franchise (and Minnesota sports in general) is jinxed?

Well, at the risk of furthering our collective (and perhaps somewhat warranted) victim complex as Twins fans, I decided to do a quick deep dive into consensus top 50 Twins prospects since 2004 who have suffered significant injuries in the high minors (AA and AAA) or early on in their big league careers. I chose 2004 as the start date because that's the year Joe Mauer famously blew out his knee just a few games into his rookie season. A perfect start to our shared misery.

For each year from 2004 to the present, I looked into the injury history of all consensus top 50 Twins prospects according to national rankings. For the purposes of this study (if you want to call it that), a "consensus top 50 prospect" is any Twins prospect whose average ranking on the three major national prospect lists indexed on baseballreference.com (MLB Pipeline, Baseball Prospectus, and Baseball America) was 50 or higher coming into a given year. As expected, the results are... not good. 12 of the 22 consensus top 50 prospects the Twins have had since 2004 have suffered significant injuries in the high minors or shortly after their debuts. That's more than half, and it doesn't count Justin Morneau, who was having a career year in 2010 when a concussion sustained during a collision at second base ended his season and basically ruined the rest of his career. See below for the list of prospects and injuries I compiled. I'm sure I missed at least one or two small details, so feel free to add your input if you see anything I overlooked.

Obviously, this doesn't definitively mean our organization is cursed or bad at managing players' health. This trend has occurred across multiple front office and coaching regimes, and the next step would be to do the same analysis for the other 29 MLB teams to see how their prospect injuries compare. Maybe this kind of thing is common across MLB (though I doubt it). In any case, it is striking just how consistent our bad luck with prospect injuries has been and how far back it goes. Hopefully a few of you might find this interesting, if also a bit depressing.

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-Joe Mauer - torn meniscus during first week of his rookie season, tried to come back in June but ultimately missed the rest of the season

-Michael Cuddyer

-Jason Kubel - blew out his knee in outfield collision during Arizona Fall League right before his first AA season

-Justin Morneau*

-Francisco Liriano - TJ surgery during breakout rookie season

-Matt Garza

-Ben Revere

-Aaron Hicks

-Kyle Gibson - TJ surgery at AAA

-Miguel Sano -TJ surgery at AA

-Byron Buxton - all of the injuries

-Alex Meyer

-Kohl Stewart

-Jose Berrios

-Max Kepler

-Royce Lewis - two torn ACLs as a rookie, numerous other injuries since then

-Alex Kirilloff - spinal condition, retired at age 26

-Austin Martin

-Brooks Lee - back issues throughout high minors

-Walker Jenkins - hamstring and shoulder injuries throughout minors

-Emmanuel Rodriguez - surgery to repair torn meniscus in both thumbs at AA and AAA

-Luke Keaschall - TJ surgery at AA, fractured arm as a rookie

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*Morneau sustained a concussion in the midst of a career year later in his Twins tenure, missed the rest of the season, and was never the same afterward

EDIT 1: I realized Deolis Guerra was ranked #79 by BP in 2008 (when he was ranked 35 by BA), for an average ranking of 57. That falls outside the top 50, so I removed him from the list.

Was doing some digging for the Buxton Fact of the Day^(TM), and came across something I thought deserved its own post.

Buxton's 402 extra base hits ranks 12th all-time in Twins history.

He'll enter the top 10 with 18 more, as he'll pass Cuddyer (415) and Allison (419).

Among those in the top 12, Buxton's 49% extra base hits per hit percentage (X/H%) leads the pack — higher than Killebrew (46%), Allison (42%), Morneau (40%) and Hunter (39%).

In fact, Buxton is one of 9 players in BASEBALL HISTORY to have a X/H% of 49% or higher (MIN 900 games, equivalent to 5.5 full seasons).

He's accompanied by legends Bonds and McGwire, as well as perennial sluggers Schwarber, Dunn, Duvall and Gallo.

Russell Branyan (?) and Rhys Hoskins (??) round out the list.

It'll be hard to keep that percentage as he ages... but at this current moment in time, few players in baseball history have despised the humble single more than Byron Buxton.

I have a group of 4 who are wanting to go to the June 12th Friday night game vs the Cardinals. I expect prices to be higher given it being a Friday and playing a team who have fans that travels well. But is it worth holding out until closer to the game to pickup tickets? Them seem higher priced vs most of the other games within in the next two months.

Source - Hayes

I'm on a (very slow) journey to try to get to every MLB ballpark (eventually). I'm in Minneapolis for a conference and am planning on attending the game tonight. I'm going to enjoy watching the twins give the Oscar the Grouch team the loss they so richly deserve. Thing is I'm cheap and I like walking around the park. So my question for you all is: Where to get cheap beer before the game, is there anywhere in the stadium with cheaper beer than average, anything in particular I should see or do, and where are the best standing room places to catch an inning or two?

Looking at a seat map, I can’t figure out which section is the one with the yellow seats just behind home plate under the “Welcome to Target Field” sign. My husband and I wanted to try to get tickets near the press box.

So the scorer could have given the win to SWR since rojas didnt go 5 (First bullpen pitcher, no runs allowed). He gave to orze instead. Rarely does it not go to the first guy out and typically only if the first guy wasn't effective. SWR slipped on the bunt and gave up a walk. Hardly ineffective. As someone who doesn't want to see SWR pitch again for the Twins, I thought this seemed like a middle finger to SWR for his performance this season.

I know most people will say who cares about wins, but pitchers definitely care about them and I guarantee SWR thought he was getting his first win tonight from this.

for starters, i'm a met fan in tampa (the rays are great too. fuck the fish and fuck the yankees) and i've always had a strange interest in the twins, whether it be from hilariously bad baseball movies, memories of johan santana, video games, or griffin jax down here! i think i really wanna get into the twins now!

all i currently know is that the twins came from kansas city, played as the sens until '61, have three rings, used to play in the shit-but-awesome hh humphrey metrodome, and hate the yankees with a burning passion like everyone else. the pohlads are also terrorists (i saw that deadline last year... holy shit)

for players, joe mauer, michael cuddyer (wright's friend!), and corey koskie are awesome. kirby puckett is the goat (rest in peace), tony oliva was a demon, and killebrew (rip) was awesome. aalbert blijleven was stupidly underrated and overlooked and should've gotten a cy young or more allstar appearances. oh- and joe nathan is a bullpen demon. joe ryan and bailey ober are also very cool.

is there more i should learn? maybe a discord i can join like metscord or trop defenders? traditions i should know? thanks for your help! let's go twins... i think! :D