On May 30, Lynx rookie Diamond Miller rolled her ankle in an extremely painful-looking way, then left the game. It was a sad injury, but also the Lynx were in the process of running their season record to 0-5, so it kind of got lost in the shuffle a little bit; it was hard to keep track of all the things that were going wrong for Minnesota at that point of the year.

Tuesday night, she returned to the floor for Minnesota. She scored 18 points, played 31 minutes, was a plus-21 for the night, and in the process reminded everyone: oh yeah! The Lynx have the number-2 pick on their roster! There’s actual hope here!

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Baseball is unpredictable. In fact, all of sports are unpredictable. It’s part of the reason why they’re so much fun to watch. If they were predictable, there’d be no point in turning the game on.

So when the Twins matched up against Spencer Strider, the young fireballer from Atlanta that leads the league in strikeouts, that strikes out hitters like he’s a late-inning reliever, that throws 98 on the corners… well, you have to believe in that unpredictability. You have to believe that it’s baseball and anything can happen.

But that all said: you can’t exactly be surprised about Monday’s result, a 4-1 loss for the Twins.

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The Loons returned this weekend, and the Twins played twice more in Detroit, but surely there’s only one news item we can talk about first today: The Timberwolves are re-signing Naz Reid.

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There are a bunch of different things you can lead with, regarding the Twins’ 4-1 win in Detroit on Friday night. Sure, you could talk about Kenta Maeda’s triumphant return, as he struck out eight and held the Tigers scoreless over five innings. Sure, you could talk about Royce Lewis homering in the second inning, or Max Kepler homering two batters later.

The most fun, though, is to talk about home plate umpire Lance Barrett, who had a deadly combination going in this one: he was both doing a terrible job, and also he was grumpy about it.

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(Title Card: An Exasperated Dad Talks To The Minnesota Twins)

I mean, was that so hard?

Really. We’re asking you, the Minnesota Twins. Was that so hard?

After all, you don’t seem to have listened very well this year. This whole season, all we’ve been telling you is that if you just have your starting pitcher throw the game of his life, plus have your best players hit a bunch of home runs, you’re going to win some baseball games!

You want to think about listening to us, for once?

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Minneapolis City SC just hit a milestone: 100 matches as a club.

I was at the team’s original launch in 2016, so I went down to check in on the Crows, and find out what keeps this thing going, seven years later.

It’s not exactly long-form, but it’s long-ish, for Sota Soccer.

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Maybe the best thing about baseball is that it happens every day.

There’s plenty of emotion and plenty of anger and plenty of frustration in baseball, as Twins fans know well, but maybe the best thing is that no matter how poorly things are going, there’s always another game coming, usually the very next day.

Sometimes this feels like a curse and a drudgery, especially in August or September, for teams that are nowhere near the pennant race (or in the case of last year’s Twins, still technically in the pennant race, but only mathematically.)

I note this mostly to make my excuses, to say that even as things have turned sour with the Twins, I still tuned in on Wednesday night, because you never know, and today’s a new day, and all that. And anyone who tuned in along with me was rewarded, as the Twins finally won again, beating Boston 5-4 in ten innings.

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I checked the official Twins website, late in Minnesota’s 10-4 pummeling at the hands of the Boston Red Sox on Tuesday evening.

The big headline was “Buxton puts an end to O-fer,” noting for the whole world that Byron Buxton had finally ended his streak of hitless at-bats. Here’s my question: who is this more insulting towards? Possibilities:

1. Buxton, since him getting a hit was front-page news.
2. The Twins overall, since the most positive news that the team website could find was that somebody actually got a hit.

Buxton did go on to hit a home run as well, as the Twins made things a little more respectable after trailing 10-0; all we can hope now is that his slump is over, like a deluge after a drought.

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When the Twins traded Luis Arraez for Pablo López, I wasn’t happy, but not because I thought it was necessarily a bad trade. Minnesota has been desperate for starting pitching for decades, for as long as I can remember, and so getting a front-line starting pitcher always seems like a good idea.

What made me unhappy was this: I could remember what it was like to be nine years old, and to have a favorite player, and Arraez was the perfect favorite player to have when you were nine, because he was always fun to watch.

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Sunday was Father’s Day, which gave me the chance to watch all the sports in the world, guilt-free. Most of them, I confess, were not Minnesota-related. That said, I’d rather talk about Minnesota sports, as ever. And not because everything went well this weekend.

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