Monday Morning Minnesota: Let’s talk about Cleveland, because Minnesota is being boring Edition

Hey team! Hope everyone’s week was good and nothing untoward happened. Anyway, I’ve got some actually good links for you this week to make up for every other week. So pour yourself a cup of any liquid safe for human ingestion, and enjoy.

Previously on Spider Sphere Twinkie Town:

• Francisco Lindor and Carlos Carrasco are no longer part of the Unnamed Cleveland Baseball Project™©® ,and are now Mets. I guess Cleveland forgot winning was fun. Big Oopsie-Whoopsie to them.
• Our very own Jonathan Gamble examined what this trade means for the Twins, and while its a very well written article, I can’t help but feel like it should have just been a 10 minute video of Twins pitchers dancing in celebration.
• The very same JonGam asked us, the people, if we feel bad for Cleveland and/or their fans for their team straight giving up. I kinda do, but also I’m from Minnesota where being tortured by sports teams is roughly 70% of our local identity.
• Brandon’s 12th volume of Rival Roundup also contains plenty about the Lindor trade, and also those other teams in the AL Central who also apparently still exist.
• Honestly I can’t remember the last time I actively thought about the Kansas City Royals.
• Wait Zach wrote about something that wasn’t Cleveland? What is this? Did we fire him for it?
• (It is actually a really good piece about 2020’s 7 inning games. Read it if you haven’t yet!)

Elsewhere in Twins Territory:

• Everyone loves LaTroy Hawkins. He pitched for roughly 3,000 years, seems like a good dude, and is a great TV announcer who calls Dick Bremer “Richard’ which is adorable. Jay Jaffe at Fangraphs takes a deep look at LaTroy’s journey from bad starter to 10th on the all time games pitched list.
• MLBTR dives into the Twins “negotiations” with Nelson Cruz, and are really starting to sour on the chances he returns as a Twin. The comments of the page introduced me the the nightmare scenario of the White Sox signing Cruz, who then leads them to overtake the Twins atop the AL Central and a WS win. Please just sign him, you dorks.
• Twins Daily’s community had a discussion about how they plan to follow along with games this year, and I’m just wholesale stealing this question (Thanks Tom!) because I’m interested in what you guys are doing. Might be buying a radio this year because MLB and the Twins seem dead set on giving me 0 viable ways to stream the T.V broadcasts without also paying out the ass for like 7 infomercial channels, 3 true crime channels, and a movie channel that always seems to be playing the Jumanji remake.
• Do-Hyoung Park’s inbox this week covers some interesting questions like some dark horse candidates for call-ups, what to do with their wealth of Catchers, and the chances of signing a new shortstop.
• 2021’s minor league season has already been officially delayed, but the Twins are planning around a normal schedule this year. Remember physically going to games? Remember physically going anywhere? Remember physically existing at all and not just being a brain uploaded to a computer by an evil scientist for the weirdly specific purpose of writing link dumps about baseball?

Around the World in Bases and Balls:

• Chicago Magazine tells the story of a local baseball date nerd whose research uncovering once-lost Negro League stats is now being used by the MLB.
• DRay’s Bay’s Ashely MacLennan remembers the worst baseball movies of all time, and it is hilarious. Remember Ed? We already have Air Bud and its 13 sequels, Ed, we don’t need more animals playing sports.
• That wasn’t a joke, there are actually 14 movies in the Air Bud series, which proves that capitalism is great for The Arts.
• I’m going to have to watch all 14 Air Buds for a satire piece now, aren’t I? Fuck.

Anyway here’s the Smash Bros version of the music from Duck Hunt because a dog is in that game, I guess.