Thursday Thunder Dump

Miggy Being Miggy

If you haven’t noticed, Miguel Sano is pretty hot right now. He’s leading the Twins in HR and BB (and tied with Byron Buxton for strikeouts, but let’s hold on a bit). So who’s Sano’s slugging role model, Joe Mauer? Justin Morneau? Manny Ramirez? All good guesses, but no. Miggy wants to be like Miguel Cabrera, according to Derek Wetmore at 1500ESPN.

Twins slugger Miguel Sano is not short on confidence, and he’s not shy about sharing the name of the guy he’s trying to model his offensive game after. That would be Miguel Cabrera...

Sano said he’s not going to try to cut down his strike rate to match Cabrera’s but to put the ball into play more. Hmmm...

“My goal is I want to have a great year, be healthy, be in the All-Star [Game],” Sano told me this spring training. “But the biggest goal for me is I can see my team in the playoffs.”

Should We Keep Miggy Longer?

Jeremy Nygaard at Twins Daily has the idea that we should try to get a pre-arbitration extension with Sano. I thought I’d find a “Let’s trade Sano now while his trade value is high” article somewhere on the interwebs for sure.

Pre-arbitration extensions have been pretty popular around the league. [...] Though the Twins, who have a whole nucleus of players that fit in that category, were not one of those teams.

That should change with Sano.

He suggests six years and $35 million. Yeah, but would Sano go for that?

Something’s Rotten In The North Star State

WCCO gives us Four Reasons Minnesota Sports Stink. If you guessed one of those four reasons was the Twins, you were right.

The good news: The Twins have played 19 games, so it’s early. The bad news: It’s too early to tell if this year’s product will be any better than the one that largely embarrassed itself on the field last year.

I guess no one told them we’re going all the way this year.

Twins Walk The Walk

Dave Sessions at mlb.com reports on the Twins increased patience at the plate. The Twins in their first 18 games were averaging 4.4 walks per game, the AL average was 3.4 walks a game. They’re also leading the MLB in walks.

"That was one of the components that we added to what we thought we could be good at [in the offseason], trying to get a little better plate discipline and improve on our strikeout and walk ratios where we could," Molitor said.

The Strib’s LENIII has a question about this:

Reds’ Menace

The Cincinnati Reds trolled bandwagon Cubs fans on the Jumbotron at John Reed Memorial Park recently. I kind of hope the Twins do this the next time the hated yanquis come to Target Field, but even though they’re good again, they don’t seem like the scary, over-paid mercenaries they once were, so who cares? Do we even have a nemesis this year besides Francisco Lindor?

H/t Big League Stew.

When It Purple Rains, It Pours

Song of the day