Twins Fans Excited for Head Start on Disappointing Off-Season

The St. Louis Cardinals' inability to push the Boston Red Sox to a World Series Game 7 may have disappointed their diehard followers, but for fans of the Minnesota Twins, it gave them a jump start on being completely dumbfounded by their favorite team's off-season maneuvers.

"Every true baseball fan loves a Game 7, don't get me wrong," said Todd Kurtz, 35, of Maple Grove. "But now we've got an extra day to watch the Twins front office go to work and try to figure out what in the living fuck they are doing. 24 hours may not be much in the long run, but even one extra day helps."

"I compare Minnesota's hot stove league to a TV show like Lost, or the X-Files," said Gertrude Ambroz, 46, of Montgomery. "Something happens, and you try to figure out why it did and see if it's part of a bigger pattern that can solve this seemingly unsolvable puzzle. They needed to overhaul their starting pitching last year, and their big move was Kevin Correia for two years and $10 million. I'm still working on that one, but my best guess is that it was aliens." Ambroz then pointed to a white board that was cluttered with equations, theorems and what appeared to be a VHS copy of E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial in a sexual position with Scott Aldred's rookie card. "I think it's pretty self-explanatory."

While Kurtz doesn't echo the science-fiction angle, he does agree that understanding what the Twins do in the long winter months means having an open mind.

"Everyone knows they have no starting pitching. Everyone knows they have the money to spend on it. And the general manager (Terry Ryan) gives interviews where he says he's leery of getting pitching on the free-agent market. I mean, holy shit. Is he talking in code? What's he really trying to say here? If you play the interview backwards, does he say 'We had our eyes on Lincecum, now we're looking elsewhere, Phil Hughes for sure' or something? Nobody knows!"

While neither one is certain what moves the Twins will make this off-season or the decision-making that will lead up to them, they both agree on one thing: it will be entirely unsatisfying.

"Oh, yes, I expect them to underwhelm completely," said Ambroz. "They'll sign some 35-year-old free agent to an incentive-laden deal to play third base and call the winter meetings a success."

Kurtz agreed, adding that he expected to be talking himself into the club giving Nick Blackburn another shot sometime between Thanksgiving and Christmas. "They'll say, 'We expect him to compete, he's in the best shape of his career, he's been working with Andy, etc.' In the back of my mind, I know it's doomed and everything is terrible, but, hey, All-Star Game 2014!"