CHICAGO — Major League Baseball will reveal its schedule for the 2026 this week, but there’s already one big highlight on the Twins’ schedule.
The Twins have been tapped to play in the Field of Dreams game in Dyersville, Iowa, an industry source confirmed, hosting the Philadelphia Phillies in a game is expected to take place in August. The game will be played at the site which the 1989 Kevin Costner baseball classic was filmed, about four hours south of the Twin Cities.
It will be the third major league game played in Iowa, following the Chicago White Sox and New York Yankees playing among the cornfields in 2021 and the Chicago Cubs and Cincinnati Reds playing there the next year. The temporary stadium that those two games were played at held around 7,800 fans. Since then, a massive undertaking has been underway expand the site, add youth fields and other amenities and construct a permanent stadium, which is expected to have a smaller capacity.
The first Field of Dreams game turned out to be one of the more memorable games in Major League Baseball history, starting with Costner emerging from the cornfields and walking onto the field of play before the White Sox and Yankees followed. It ended with the Yankees scoring four runs in the ninth inning before Tim Anderson hit a walk-off home run that disappeared into the corn stalks.
This will be the first regular-season destination game that the Twins have played in since they traveled to Puerto Rico in 2018. They also played a spring training game in the Dominican Republic in 2020.
Topa calls his pitch
Watch Justin Topa’s next relief outing carefully and you’ll see him twist before each pitch, hitting a button on his PitchCom device. With Erasmo Ramírez designated for assignment on Sunday to make space on the active roster for Taj Bradley, Topa is the Twins’ lone pitcher who is calling his own pitches.
Topa started doing it last month, at the suggestion of his coaches, and the reasons are twofold.
One, he often felt that if he shook off a catcher’s call, he’d wind up with very little time left on the pitch clock and so calling his own pitch immediately and then adjusting as necessary makes for “less anxiety,” with the pitch clock. And two, it allows him to take ownership of how he’s going to attack hitters and be aggressive immediately.
“(It) kind of gives us a piece of mind … in the sense of not feeling rushed and boom, right away having that conviction of, ‘OK, this is what I want to throw in a situation,’ and then … if (Ryan Jeffers) or (Christian Vázquez) or if Mickey (Gasper’s) back there, if they’ve seen something different, we can play off of that.”
Briefly
Joe Ryan will take the ball on Monday when the Twins head to Toronto opposite three-time Cy Young Award winner Max Scherzer. … Byron Buxton played in his 98th game of the season Sunday. He is on track to reach game 100 in Toronto, which would be the first time in his career that he’s played in 100 or more games in consecutive seasons. … Buxton is also just one stolen base away from becoming a member of the 20 home run/20 stolen base club, something which he has yet to accomplish in his career. … The Twins have not named a starter for Wednesday in Toronto but Simeon Woods Richardson joined the team in Chicago and could be in line to come off the injured list and start that game.
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