Howard Sinker Topic Page

The Twins played their first game of the spring, facing off against the Concordia College Golden Bears. It more more or less a fun competition in which Rick Stelmaszek was the home plate umpire and Ron Gardenhire umpired first base.

The response to the 6 player trade centered around Matt Garza and Delmon Young has been mostly positive. Here's what some other Twins bloggers had to say about it:

The Twins offense is now officially in a slump. They haven't managed to exceed three runs scored in the past three games, all three of which came against poor to average pitchers. On Tuesday night the Twins dropped the second game of the 2 game series against Cleveland despite the fact that they had ace Johan Santana on the mind. The Twins rely heavily on the guys in the middle of the lineup, mainly Justin Morneau and Michael Cuddyer. Over the past three games the two have combined to go 4 for 24 with just 2 RBIs. This isn't meant as a knock on Morneau and Cuddyer--everyone is entitled to a slump from time-to-time, it's meant to indicate that with guys like Jason Tyner, Nick Punto, Jason Bartlett and Alexi Casilla batting at the ends of the lineup, the offensive relies almost exclusively on the RBI production of Cuddyer, Morneau and Torii Hunter behind Joe Mauer, who is always on base.

This year the Star Tribune's Twins beat writers, Joe Christensen and Lavelle E. Neal III (LEN III) started their own blogs. It gives them a chance to write from a different perspective than in their newspaper stories and, obviously, it gives readers a chance to comment.