Minnesota Twins Math Problems

This year, KARE 11 and the Twins have teamed up again to bring "Classroom in the Ballpark" days to the students of Minnesota. This allows students of weather, physics, math, or Spanish to attend a game and then do some further directed studies. One assumes that on Physics Day, students had to complete problems about how far the home runs of opposing teams traveled, and that sort of thing.

We here at Twinkie Town are nothing if not educators, and so we've put together our own set of problems. It's been awhile for most of us since our last math class, but we still encourage you to follow along and try the problems yourself. See how you do!

1. If Manager A has 10 Triple-A players on the roster, and Manager B has 15 Triple-A players on the roster, which one of them is the Twins manager and which one is the Rochester Red Wings manager? (You must show your work to receive full credit.)

2. Drew Butera, Rene Rivera, and Steve Holm have combined to hit .110 this year. Select the most appropriate explanation:
a) Butera, Rivera, and Holm are the three worst hitters in all of major league baseball, including National League pitchers.
b) Butera, Rivera, and Holm are bats, flying mammals from the order Chiroptera, and are attempting to hit using echolocation.
c) Butera, Rivera, and Holm are being paid by Wilson Ramos and Jose Morales to make Bill Smith look like an idiot.

3) If Justin Morneau is six feet four inches tall, and he stands in the batter's box with his left foot on the back line of the box, how much farther does he have to bail out of his swing before his right foot begins landing in the home dugout?

4) Expressed in hundreds of miles per hour, how much wind would have to be blowing from behind home plate to allow Alexi Casilla to hit the ball all the way to second base?

5) Assuming a rate of three defensive screwups and three strikeouts per game, how many more games can Delmon Young play before the Twins are allowed to prosecute him for stealing money?

6) Michael Cuddyer can produce four outs and three tough-talking newspaper quotes per day. Find the maximum number of outs and quotes that Cuddyer can produce before even a quote-starved media turns on him and points out that his slugging percentage is worse than Carlos Zambrano's.

7) At how many Twins positions would Nick Punto and his .745 OPS and reasonable defense be an upgrade?
a) All four infield positions
b) All four infield positions plus two outfield positions
c) Assuming you could teach him to catch, Punto would be easily the second-best player on the team behind Jason Kubel, no matter where you put him

8) How much of a difference will Phil Dumatrait and Anthony Swarzak make to the Twins pitching staff? Express your answer in terms of fractions of one-tenth of one percent.

9) Tonight's game in Seattle begins at 9:05 Pacific time. A train traveling west at 45 miles per hour leaves Minneapolis at 8 am Central Time. Will the train arrive early enough for any fans on the train to get to the ballpark early enough to be embarrassed of the team on the field?

10) There are 39,054 seats at Target Field. Assume that 10% of these seats are on an aisle. What is the minimum number of ticketholders that must skip the game before the park begins looking like the Metrodome circa 1999?