Month: February 2015

If you spend much time reading through the Forum section of sites like TwinsDaily.com, TwinkieTown.com, or any comment section of just about any Twins-related story published anywhere, it doesn’t take long to realize that Twins fans, by and large, don’t necessarily agree with one another on many issues.

We didn’t agree on whom the new Twins manager should be; we don’t agree on our expectations for how the Torii Hunter and Ervin Santana signings will work out; and, just generally, we don’t really agree on whether the Twins will win many more games in 2015 than they have the past four years.

There will never be unanimity on many topics, but I think there’s one thing almost all of us tend to agree on.

The offseason sucks.

The baseball offseason in the upper Midwest is different than in some other parts of the country. We can’t exactly spend our offseason on the golf course, like baseball fans in Florida and Arizona can. Rather, we tend to spend our baseball offseason in two ways: getting ready for winter and enduring winter.

It hasn’t exactly been a brutal winter this year, but I did spend a fair amount of my pre-SuperBowl day on Sunday with a shovel in my hand. I know it’s not at all logical, but in situations like that, I tend to blame my misery on baseball’s offseason.

For all the talk about how elimination of double headers and the expansion of the playoff structure has caused the MLB season to be extended well beyond what it has historically been, the one benefit of that elongation of the season is that it has caused the offseason to shrink. We actually only have to endure less than four full months of offseason.

November is when we most vocally demand changes to fix whatever went wrong in just-finished season. Trade all the players, bring in a new manager, get rid of some coaches, throw out the front office, etc.

In December, we’re well in to free agent season, highlighted by baseball’s winter meetings. Even if we realize our expectations should be tempered, with regard to the Twins pursuit of the best free agent talent available, it doesn’t stop us from engaging in debate on the pros and cons of doing so.

January is the dead zone. Most of the most prominent free agents are locked up (at least those that the Twins are likely to be in play for), spring training is still just a pinprick of light at the end of the offseason tunnel and it is friggin cold outside. The Twins try to generate a little heat for us with Winter Caravan and Twinsfest, but since I seem to end up driving in a blizzard any year I attempt to venture to the Twin Cities for Twinsfest, any heat that’s generated tends to dissipate quickly for me.

And then there’s February.

Sunday, even as I was shoveling a foot of snow out of a driveway that, technically, isn’t even mine, I confess that I found some comfort in the realization that we have reached the point where we can say, “spring training starts THIS MONTH!”

It may be a few degrees below zero outside, but I do feel warmer already.

– JC