Monday Morning Minnesota: Almost there!

• Every spring is the spring of “Will this be Byron Buxton’s breakout year?” This spring is no different. Neil Paine of FiveThirtyEight looks at Buxton’s spring results and notes that despite the small sample size some of the gains might be real! Will this be Byron Buxton’s breakout year? Maybe! (Unless you are a Facebook commentator in which case the answer is “No! Please don’t yell at me!”)
• Our friends over at Twins Daily point out that Fernando Romero’s recent demotion “exposes” a flaw in the front offices plans. I agree, if by “exposes” they mean “reminds us that hey, yeah, maybe they should have done anything real to address that bullpen situation.”
• Said pen of bulls may be helped initially by the fact that Martin Perez is poised to start the year in the pen thanks to their weird schedule over the first few weeks. Betsy Helfland outlines that and some other roster moves this situation might allow the Twins to make.
• About that opening day roster. Declan Goff over at Bring Me The News takes a (now somewhat outdated) look at which players are in danger of not making it to opening day in Minnesota. Don’t worry, Willians Astudillo is not part of this list.
• Fangraph’s Sunday Notes column is headlined by old-friend Brian Duensing, who is somehow still a Major League pitcher. (assuming someone wants him, if not, the Cubs will try to send him to triple-A) There is an interesting bit in there where Duensing talks about how playing for 5 consecutive shit-tier Twins teams started breaking his spirit.

Today’s soundtrack is every single version of Vampire Killer from Castlevania, on the off chance one of you needs to get psyched up to kill a vampire, nosferatu, dhampir, lich, or other undead. I know I am!

I wonder if I can find a site that would pay me to just write about Castlevania all day every day.