MORE POSITIVE UPDATES!

First First Pitch: 12:10 pm CDT

TV: Bally Sports North / ~ / Radio: TIBN

Okay, let’s get all of this out of the way quickly, because there’s a lot of baseball to be played today, and the Twins are already 4.5 games back. As the club attempts to stem the bleeding, another injury and another rainout necessitate the following five roster moves:

The heavy hitter here is Carlos Correa, the team’s best hitter not named Alex Kirilloff, who will be missing an undetermined amount of time on the IL after straining an oblique in Friday’s opener with the Detroit Tigers. In lieu of flowers, the Twins have sent up catcher Jair Camargo and 32-year-old righty Matt Bowman, who’s never pitched for the Twins but signed a minor-league deal this January.

Camargo’s never pitched for the Twins either, but that’s because he’s a catcher. What’s more, he’ll be making his major-league debut at age 24, after OPS’ing .826 with 21 homers for the St. Paul Saints last season, and having a similarly-solid first week or so in Triple-A again this April.

It’s been about a hundred years since this trade, so you’ll be forgiven if you don’t remember that Jair Camargo was the other piece that came with Kenta Maeda when the Twins traded Brusdar Graterol to the Los Angeles Dodgers. Today, he’ll provide catching insurance so that Minnesota can keep as many bats in the lineup as possible.

It’s a great time to check out that lineup, which features Carlos Santana hitting second, Manuel Margot hitting cleanup, and feels like it should include Sandy Leon somewhere.

Elsewhere in the never-ending roster update, Simeon Woods Richardson has been tabbed as the 27th man for today’s doubleheader in Detroit. You probably DO remember that he was Austin Martin’s trade-mate when Jose Berrios was shipped to the Toronto Blue Jays. Now, the two are on the major-league roster together for the first time. (Woods Richardson had a 9.64 ERA, 13.5 H/9, and 5.8 BB/9 in 4.2 innings last season, but is still just 23 years old and has never gotten a serious look at the major-league level.)

Finally, we hardly knew you, except for the five years when you were on the team full-time. After being sacrificed to the pitching gods in one of the baseball games of all time, Michael Tonkin has been DFA’d.

Whew.

OK, onto today — after one of the herkiest-jerkiest starts to a schedule in recent memory, the Twins will play twice this afternoon after only playing four times all week. Joe Ryan will get the ball first, facing Detroit for the first time in nearly a calendar year. Ryan is off to a great start, and a much-needed one, as he grows into his role of true #2 starter and Vice Pablo. In two starts this year, he’s thrown 11.1 innings with just four runs allowed, and a 12:1 K/BB ratio — most notably, only allowing a single homer.

And speaking of Kenta Maeda (remember, from earlier?), he’s Minnesota’s first opponent today. The 36-year-old veteran might be running out of time, with 2024 hitters so far not chasing, not whiffing, and lighting up Maeda to the tune of a 9.00 ERA and 8.07 xERA. This will be the second time he’s ever faced the Twins, following a single game on July 25th, 2017. He pitched five innings and got the win; with Max Kepler on the IL, nobody from that game is currently on the Twin roster. Zack Granite hit second. That team made the playoffs.

There are plenty more words to spill, but I’ll leave it up to Twinkie Town’s fearless commentators, and Bally Sports North’s intrepid broadcasting crew — it will be a long day either way, but a sudden reversal of fortune could definitely lift some April spirits.

GO TWINS GO!