It has been slow going in my pursuit of autographed
Minnesota Twins cards since Twinsfest. I did add Paul Powell, Jim Meritt, and
Yohan Pino thru the mail (TTM) to give me signed cards from 521 current or
former Twins. I also received returns from Jim Thome, Michael Restovich, Ricky
Nolasco, Tommy Milone, and Ryan Doumit.
I hope to have more success with the season starting. I will
be buying some of the new 2015 cards and sending them to current players. As
they seem to do every year the Twins put someone on the team I never expected
would make it and those guys never have any real baseball cards. This year it
is Blaine Boyer and Shane Robinson who made the team, and I cannot find any
cards of them, so I created some on my computer. Hopefully they are good
signers.
Predicting how the Twins will do this season is purely guess
work. Unforeseen problems like Ervin Santana 80 game suspension for using
steroids can quickly mess up any prediction. Still I hope that Danny Santana,
Kenny Vargas, and Oswaldo Arcia take the next step in their growth as players
and become young stars. I hope Brian Dozier moves his game to All-Star level,
and that Joe Mauer returns to All-Star level.
I am rooting for Phil Hughes to continue to pitch like he
did last year, and for Tommy Milone to pitch like he did 2012. I also hope Kyle
Gibson has a good year, and that Ricky Nolasco bounces back. I really hope to
see young prospects like Miguel Sano, Byron Buxton, Alex Meyer, Trevor May, and
Michael Tonkin make it up to the big club to stay.
I hope a lot, but I know better. The Twins will have another
tough season where they lose at least 85 games. Hopefully though the young
players grow and become better, and we get some excitement watching the games
this year.
