The days around baseball’s all-star game tend to be some of the quietest sports days of the whole year. In Minnesota, both the Twins and the Saints have four days off, and it just so happened that the Lynx and Loons don’t play again until Wednesday evening, and so all has been calm since Sunday.

With the benefit of some quiet, it’s hard not to notice how negative everything feels right now. The Twins are immensely frustrating. The Loons are outside the playoff picture. The Lynx are the best of the major-league lot, and even their best-case scenario for this season feels like being somewhere in the middle of the pack.

With that in mind, I thought I’d better sit down and make a list of a few players who’ve given me some hope this year - pleasant surprises, if you will. It’s small, but I think this is important, if for no other reason than just to manage my own attitude for the rest of the summer.

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We’ve hit baseball’s summer break, meaning that there’s not much going on in the sports world for the next two days. That said, there was plenty happening in Minnesota sports over the weekend - and not much of it was good.

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Three days ago, I wrote that I thought that we might all be happier if we just started watching the St. Paul Saints instead of watching the Minnesota Twins.

I can’t help but feel like this was part of some sort of Freaky Friday ancient curse thing, since basically at that moment, the Twins and the Saints switched team personalities entirely.

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Long ago, the concept of a “replacement player” in baseball took on a larger meaning than just something related to labor disagreements. The famed WAR statistic, Wins Above Replacement, has for years attempted to quantify just how valuable any baseball player is, as compared to a mythical replacement player.

An entire team of replacement-level players - the type who are always available, generally making the league-minimum salary - would win about 50 games in a year, according to Baseball Prospectus.

This is, in many ways, viewed as the absolute basement of baseball, a point so low that it should be virtually impossible to go any lower. Which makes it pretty funny, and faintly legendary, when a team manages to win fewer than 50 games: the ‘03 Tigers, that lost 119 games, or the ‘18 Orioles, that lost 115.

I’m not saying that this year’s Kansas City Royals will definitely lose 113 or more games, and get themselves into the historical running as one of these vaunted sub-replacement-level teams. But what I’m saying is that if they were going to do so, their latest series against the Twins is exactly what it would look like.

Pablo López threw one of the best games in Twins history, a four-hit shutout in which he struck out 12, and the Twins kicked dirt on the hapless Royals, 5-0.

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Something weird is going on with the Minnesota Twins this week.

Tuesday afternoon, they put together not one, but two two-out rallies in which they hit singles and ran around the bases. They torched old rival Zack “Zach” Greinke. They struck out sparingly. Donovan Solano had three hits and a homer. Byron Buxton had three hits and a homer.

But what really made me check my pulse was this: Max Kepler not only had two RBI hits, an RBI single in the first inning and a three-run homer in the third inning, and not only were they both with two outs… they both went to the left-field side of second base.

(/Twilight Zone theme plays)

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There was a moment in the eighth inning of Monday’s Twins win against Kansas City when I realized what it seems like Minnesota has been missing all season.

It wasn’t when Edouard Julien led off the inning with a towering homer to right field, one that gave the Twins the lead back, after they’d given it away in the top of the eighth. It wasn’t even when Michael A. Taylor pulled off a safety squeeze, scoring Joey Gallo to make it 5-3.

It was a couple of batters later, when Alex Kirilloff singled. It was, in the box score, the fifth consecutive Twins hit, all singles; it made the game 8-3.

When was the last time the Twins got five consecutive hits, four of them with runners in scoring position?

When was the last time the Twins had an inning like this - an old-fashioned rally?

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TIRED: Emanuel Reynoso needs to be here for the entire MNUFC season.
WIRED: Give Emanuel Reynoso half the season off, then watch him torch the league for the rest of the year.

It worked in 2020, when Reynoso’s midseason arrival was the impetus for the Loons to make the playoffs and go all the way to the conference finals. And it’s working now, especially on Saturday, as Reynoso scored twice on the way to a 4-1 MNUFC victory against Portland.

Reynoso’s first game of the year was June 3. Since June 1, among players that have played at least one game in that span, he’s leading the league in xG + xA, and second in MLS in Goals Added (both of those stats are from American Soccer Analysis).

Effectively, they have added the best player in the league.

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Happy Canada Day! The celebration of the day that Canada became a country! Because, apparently, the British were mostly tired of them? I can’t say I understand; we Americans have spent so much time lionizing the American Revolution that it’s kind of hard to conceive that, a few decades later, the British would just decide that it’d be better for everyone if they left Canada alone.

Also I think that most Americans think of Canada, in general, as part of the United States. Not technically part of the United States, of course, but basically just the same thing with small differences. Like how Wisconsin has sideways stoplights for some reason.

Anyway, you didn’t come here for talk about Canada. You came here for talk about the Twins, who won 8-1 in Baltimore, on the heels of their players-only meeting in Atlanta after they scored three runs in three days in Georgia.

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Stop me if you’ve heard this one before.

First of all, the Lynx scored a bunch of points, led by Napheesa Collier and backed up on the scoresheet by contributions from Diamond Miller and Kayla McBride, and Minnesota outran Seattle.

Throw in that the Minnesota Aurora won again, and that the Saints scored double-digit runs, and Thursday night in Minnesota sports had some real déjà vu going on.

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The Twins have had a number of low points in June. There was the series they got destroyed by Tampa Bay. There was the games they dropped at home to Cleveland. There was the series they lost three out of four to Detroit.

By the sounds of it, though, Wednesday was the lowest point yet. The Twins lost 3-0 at Atlanta, and they got four hits and struck out 14 times, including eight times against Kolby Allard, owner of a 6.07 career ERA.

Before Wednesday, Allard had made 65 appearances in the majors, and 35 starts, and had struck out eight or more hitters exactly twice. And Wednesday, he did it in 4.2 innings.

Postgame, the players held the dreaded players-only meeting - apparently ordered by the manager - where I assume the pitching staff lined up and pelted the hitters with rotten fruit. In another room, Rocco Baldelli unloaded to the media, by which I mean he gave off his angriest vibes of all: those of a soft-spoken fourth-grade teacher who’s unhappy with his class’s behavior.

At least Baldelli’s quotes indicate he’s been watching the games. “What we’re doing right now is frustrating,” he said, “because that’s madness going out there and doing the same stuff over and over and over again.” He feels just like the fans who turn on the game every day!

Cleveland’s in first place in the AL Central this morning. Avert your eyes, America!

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