{"id":129648,"date":"2025-09-09T07:18:11","date_gmt":"2025-09-09T07:18:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/129648\/"},"modified":"2025-09-09T07:18:11","modified_gmt":"2025-09-09T07:18:11","slug":"minnesota-twins-embrace-aggressive-mindset-on-the-bases-in-teamwide-effort","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/129648\/","title":{"rendered":"Minnesota Twins embrace aggressive mindset on the bases in teamwide effort"},"content":{"rendered":"

ANAHEIM, Calif. \u2013 The Twins<\/a> stole 23 bases in August, the most they have swiped in one month since 2014, and they led the American League with 10 in September entering Monday.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s part of a plan that Twins manager Rocco Baldelli<\/a> was skeptical of at first.<\/p>\n

\u201cJayce [Tingler, Baldelli\u2019s bench coach] said: \u2018Let\u2019s give everyone the green light. Every player, every at-bat,\u2019 \u201c Baldelli said of a conversation in August. \u201cI said: \u2018I don\u2019t know. I don\u2019t know about that.\u2019 \u201c<\/p>\n

But he eventually embraced the idea and informed his team later that day. <\/p>\n

\u201cI said I want everyone working the entire day, the entire game, to watch, learn, pick up, anticipate and steal bases, everybody here. I don\u2019t care who you are, I want you to be aggressive,\u201d Baldelli said. \u201cI put it to them: \u2018I want you to pick up cues. I want you prepared when you go out there and work the entire game to get that bag.\u2019 And they have.\u201d<\/p>\n

They have. Austin Martin<\/a> stole six bases in August (in nine attempts, a ratio Baldelli wants to see him improve upon) to lead the team, while Byron Buxton<\/a> went 4-for-4. Nine players stole at least one base \u2014 including 6-foot-4 slugger Matt Wallner, who went 3-for-3 in August.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s something I\u2019ve always been bad at, so it\u2019s a really good learning experience for me. I\u2019m paying a lot more attention to that now,\u201d Wallner said. \u201cIt\u2019s something that I want to learn now, when it doesn\u2019t matter as much, [and] get better at it. And then next year, when hopefully it matters a lot more, I want to be able to do it occasionally to maybe put us in a better position to win.\u201d<\/p>\n

Buxton did some running in the outfield before the Twins took batting practice Monday, and the results were good \u2014 but not good enough.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ANAHEIM, Calif. \u2013 The Twins stole 23 bases in August, the most they have swiped in one month…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":129649,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[558],"tags":[64,63,591,85],"class_list":["post-129648","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-mlb","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129648","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=129648"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129648\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/129649"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=129648"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=129648"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=129648"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}