Twinkie Town, a Minnesota Twins community

The Fort Myers Miracle fall in season opener as Scott Baker rehab start goes only 11 pitches.

First time coming across Twinkie Town surprisingly, but a huge passion of mine is photographing Twins games. I've attended 135 out of the 166 total Twins games played at Target Field and I've photographed probably nearly 100 of them in one way or another. You can either click the link above to go to my Flickr sets or use this link below to go to my website: http://benckphotos.com/ Photos are not for sale. They are simply for viewing. I hope to photograph many more games again this season. Thanks for looking.

I thought a lot about the 2011 Minnesota Twins this week, and I just can’t consider them a failure. Maybe I’m a "stadium half-full" kind of guy. One thing I did learn about the Twins last year is that when they aren’t in playoff contention they can disappear off the face of the earth. I think Casey Anthony was more popular in Minnesota last summer. They posted the worst record in the American League (63-99), and second worst in the majors. Thirty-two games out of first, just one year after winning the central division by six games. So why wasn’t this a failure? Injuries to the middle of their lineup led to Justin Morneau (69 games), and Joe Mauer (82 games) each playing about half a season. In fact, only three players appeared in more than 100 games, Danny Valencia, Michael Cuddyer, and Ben Revere.

This would spell certain doom for the Twins franchise if Morneau indeed decides that the ailment is too much for him to keep playing. Obviously, you hopes for the best of health for him, but on the business side they would be losing a ton of production for a team that doesn’t produce a ton of offense. Over the course of his nine-year career, Morneau has hit .281/.353/.499 and was the AL MVP in 2006 when he hit .321 with 34 home runs and 130 RBI.