May Awards/Twins

As you can see I am making some changes with the Travis Talks blog here. I have moved all my minor league talk over to http://twinstarget.com/minors. So if you want to read my material on the minor league affiliates go over there. If you want to read about Minnesota Twins material though this is the right place to be. There will be a little bit of minor league talk here as I will continue my monthly awards with all the teams in the Twins organization. Also I will after the draft next week bring the Travis Talks Minnesota Prospect Rankings. I will start my look at the month of May by looking at the Twins. I will give a hitter and pitcher of the month along with a pitcher and hitter that really struggled in the Month. Let me know what you think of it by either leaving a comment in the comment box or shooting me an email at travis_aune@yahoo.com.

• Hitter of the Month: Justin Morneau 1b- Justin Morneau had a very historic month of May that will challenge the month of May that Joe Mauer made last year. Morneau hit for average, hit for power, got on base, played great defense, and made himself the early favorite for American League MVP. In the month of May Morneau hit an unbelievable .400 in 100 May at bats along with six homeruns and 19 rbi's and 13 doubles. Morneau also walked an unbelievable 20 times in May as he would not help the pitchers out who wanted to pitch around him in key situations. Morneau only struck out 23 times in comparision to the 20 walks. Morneau had a great .496 on base percentage in May which is very impressive. Along with a .710 slugging percentage and a season high 1.206 OPS. It was a great month for Morneau and if he can keep up anything close to this going forward he will win the MVP going away and led a good Twins attack in May.
• Others Considered:Orlando Hudson, Denard Span, Delmon Young

• Pitcher of the Month: Nick Blackburn- Nick Blackburn found his groove in May for whatever reason. After really struggling in April to a 6.85 era Black Jack really came back in May and was the ace of the staff in May. He still gave up a lot of hits, but did not walk anybody and got a lot of ground balls to put up zeros on the scoreboard. In the month of May Blackburn went 5-0 with a an awesome 2.65 era in 5 starts. He worked 37.1 innings which averages over 7 innings a start. Blackburn gave up 40 hits in those 37.1 innings so he still is very hittable, but walked only 5 batters in the five starts along with 10 strikeouts. Nick Blackburn really turned it around in May to become the pitcher that most Twins fans expect out of Blackburn. I know he has gotten off to a rough start in June, but the Twins need him to be the innings eater that he has been in the first 2 years of his career if the Twins want to stay on top.
• Others Considered: Scott Baker, Brian Duensing, Alex Burnett

Tommorrow I will continue my look at the month of May as I will bring pitcher and hitter of the month in Rochester and so on for the rest of the week. After I finish that I will bring you my top 50 Twins prospect including the new Twins drafted this week. So keep checking back every day for this information.