Each year the Twins put out an extensive media guide at the start of each season. It's always been exorbitantly long, and this year is no different despite coming in at 5 pages shorter than the 2023 guide. Only the A's have a longer media guide than the Twins do this year – for some reason.

This post will be a long compilation of interesting, funny, weird, and otherwise noteworthy tidbits I found from the guide that seemed worth sharing. I've split this into sections corresponding to different pieces of the media guide in hopes of making this at least a little digestible, but this will be a long post, and if you want the TLDR, well, this is the TLDR. I can only do so much when we're starting with 530 pages.

You can find this year's media guide here, and I also found links to some historical media guides here. Enjoy!

Twins employees

• There are 15 different departments that make up the Twins (administration, baseball operations, ballpark operations, brand partnerships, broadcast, business strategy & analytics, clubhouse, community engagement, finance/procurement/office services, HR, marketing/communications, medical/performance, technology, ticket operations, ticket sales/service)
• The Twins have an estimate 17-person research and development team within their Baseball Operations branch (counting job titles with "research" or "analyst" in the title)
• The Twins employ 5 sports psychologists, 2 major league and 3 minor league
• Employee whose name best describes their job title: Micah Tweeten (graphic designer – communications and content)
• Employee whose name worst describes their job title: Colin Carpenter (assistant, owned marketing – brand marketing)

Front office bios

• The father of Meka Morris (executive VP, chief business officer) is in the Basketball Hall of Fame (JoJo White)
• The most prestigious resume from the front office, in my opinion, comes from Jason Lee (senior VP, chief strategy officer), who went to undergrad at Brown, earned a MBA from Harvard, and worked at Amazon and Google prior to joining the Twins
• Eddie Eixenberger (VP, ticket sales and service) is my favorite member of the FO as the final sentence in his bio is "Eddie and his yellow lab, Buster, reside in Minneapolis"
• Thad Levine studied abroad in Cape Town, South Africa in college
• I believe the longest tenured employee in the Twins organization is Paul Froehle (VP, ticket ops), who has been with the Twins since 1985
• Daniel Adler (VP, assistant GM) was hired by the Jacksonville Jaguars in 2012 to create and direct one of the first R&D teams in the NFL
• Perhaps the most unique degree in the front office is owned by Jeremy Zoll (VP, assistant GM), who has a BA in East Asian Studies and a minor in economics
• The front office employee with the best baseball career has a player goes to Alex Hassan, who spent 8 years in them minors for several teams, and played 3 games for the Red Sox in 2014

Coaches and staff bios

Rocco Baldelli

• Rocco is a member of the Rhode Island Italian-American Hall of Fame, and was an All-State athlete in 4 sports in high school (baseball, basketball, track, and volleyball)
• 5 of the 10 highlights listed in Rocco's 2023 season summary are ejections
• Grew up in same town as filmmakers Peter and Bobby Farelly, who worked Baldelli into a de-facto cameo in Fever Pitch – Baldelli is announced by the PA as the next batter while Jimmy Fallon and Drew Barrymore's characters attend a Red Sox game
• Currently holds 3rd highest winning percentage as a Twins manager (min 3 seasons) with .530, behind Sam Mele (.548) and Bill Rigney (.531)

Others

• Hank Conger's Twitter handle is @PandaCrusher35
• Nate Dammann's (quality control coach) job responsibilities include in game replay review, assisting in day to day scheduling and scouting, and coordinating spring training
• Rudy Hernandez is the longest tenured major league Twins coach, as a hitting coach since 2015. Also has been in Twins minor league coaching system since 1996
• Hernandez is very close with Miguel Cabrera, and traveled to Venezuela in 2001 to try to sign Cabrera. Dozens of MLB team officials got upset when Hernandez entered Cabrera's home, thinking they had no shot of signing Cabrera now that Hernandez was ther
• Tony Diaz wrote a manual titled "Practical English for Latin Players" to help Latin baseball players
• Assistant pitching coach Luis Ramirez is noted as often wearing cowboy hats as part of his normal daily attire
• Bullpen coach Colby Suggs had a 1.36 ERA in 3 collegiate seasons for Arkansas from 2011-13
• Tommy Watkins' cousins is NFL wide receiver Sammy Watkins
• Watkins is nicknamed "Mayor" in hometown Fort Myers, and holds a key to the city received in 2019
• Among the job descriptions for Michael Cuddyer and Justin Morneau includes "teaching an understanding of major league expectations, environment and culture"
• Rod McCormick (equipment manager) has been with the Twins since 1994, first joining the organization as a ball boy
• Masamichi “Masa” Abe trained for Team Japan during the 2017 WBC

Player bios

• Byron Buxton grew up playing football against Miami Dolphins wide receiver Tyreek Hill
• Jair Camargo's favorite number is 7 due to sharing a birthday with his grandpa on 7/1. Would like to change jersey number to 17 or 77, but may be a challenge as both are currently taken (Ober and Jenson respectively). Quote from the media guide: "Would wear
  number 7, but would have to make arrangements with Hall of Famer Joe Mauer."
• Matt Canterino was named to NCAA district 7 All-Academic team in 2019 after achieving 3.97 GPA in mechanical engineering
• Canterino's nickname is "Woody", given by Saints pitching coach Virgil Vazquez due to Canterino often greeting people with "howdy"
• Willi Castro's wife Aniana runs dessert shop Lilo’s Handmade Desserts
• Carlos Correa used to write Rotten Tomatoes movie reviews to help practice English
• Correa boasts longest bio section in media guide at 8 pages
• It's well known that Randy Dobnak is a 4.99 star Uber driver to help earn extra money while in the minors, but he also worked as a consultant at a tax firm, accounting clerk, pizza delivery, and supermarket stocker across the 2010s
• Kyle Farmer appeared in The Blind Side, acting as a quarterback
• Kody Funderburk slashed .304/.429/.584 as a hitter in his one year in college
• Brent Headrick – "is known for his big hands – like, think Sandy Koufax-esque size", and can hold 7 baseballs in one hand
• Jay Jackson helped start a clothing line called Jaxland, of which a portion of proceeds are donated to charities that support NICUs and hospitals
• Griffin Jax was the first player in Twins history to wear uniform number 83
• Edouard Julien was semi-pranked by Rocco this offseason, who likes to call a few players a week to check in. The exchange went: "Rocco: WHAT ARE YOU DOING?! Eddy: uhh, eating cereal? Rocco: WHY ARE YOU DOING THAT?! Eddy: …because I’m hungry? wait, who is this? Rocco: Put the cereal down and save my number to your contacts"
• Max Kepler is likely to become the 5th player to reach 1,000 outfield games played as a Twin this season and entered the year needing 69 more to each the mark
• Alex Kirilloff runs an Instagram account @automobileathlete highlighting high end cars and those owned by athletes
• Pablo Lopez and his wife Kaylee run an Instagram account @bennielopez49 for their dog Bennie
• Pablo, like us, call days that he starts "Pablo Day", but also calls his bullpen days between starts "Pablo Day Jr"
• Pablo is well versed in midwest culture, thanks to playing in the minors in Iowa and meeting his wife there. Claims Casey's pizza is the best in the country, and when asked if he knows what Menards is, responded by singing the jingle "save big money at Menards"
• Austin Martin claims that Jason Momoa would play him in a movie
• Bailey Ober played high school baseball with Minnesota Vikings' Garrett Bradbury
• Chris Paddack co-founded Mad Duck Outfitters, an outdoor and sporting goods store
• Joe Ryan was nearly signed by the Twins in 2017 when Derek Falvey saw him throw a bullpen, but returned to finish college before being drafted by the Rays and later traded to the Twins
• Carlos Santana has played in more games (1,884) than any other player in the MLB since 2011
• Many Twins players claim Caleb Thielbar is sneakily the best athlete on the team

Misc tidbits and records

• The oldest player to appear for the Twins was Jesse Orosco, who in final appearance for Twins in September 2003 was 46 years and 159 days old
• The youngest player to appear for the Twins was Jim Manning, who was 18 years and 268 days old in his debut in 1962
• The Twins have winning records over the last 20 years against the White Sox (528-469), Tigers (491-443), and Royals (453-414).
  Cleveland is the only divisional opponent the Twins do not have a winning record against over that time frame (451-481)
• The Twins set a franchise high taking 5 intentional walks in a 12-inning game against the White Sox on May 4 last season
• The Twins set a franchise record with a .988 fielding percentage last season. Carlos Correa also set a record for highest shortstop fielding percentage as a Twin with .987
• Other franchise records broken in 2023 include most consecutive games with a home run (18), most strikeouts (1,654), most HBP (92), and highest stolen base percentage (82.7%)
• The Twins have never lost a regular season baseball game on March 28th or October 7th (1-0 on each)
• Only 2 players with a last name starting with "I" have ever appeared in a game for the Twins (Riccardo Ingram and Hank Izquierdo). Same with "Y" (Richard Yett and Delmon Young)
• No players have ever worn jersey numbers 69, 73, or 92 through 98 for the Twins
• Kirby Puckett's 1991 World Series game 6 home run is still the only Twins walkoff home run in playoff history
• The orb in right field has a diameter of 12 feet and weighs 2,500 pounds
• P!nk's 2023 summer concert hosted the most fans at any Target Field event in stadium history with 44,627