CLEVELAND — A new era of Twins baseball — the era of opportunity, if you will — began this weekend.

It figures to be painful, at least at first, like it was on Friday.

All-star starter Joe Ryan, who had been rumored to be on the move, gave up two runs in six innings and the Twins rallied for a pair of runs to tie the game up in the seventh, but could not muster any other offense and Kody Funderburk eventually gave up a walk-off hit to Kyle Manzardo in the 10th inning of a 3-2 loss to the Cleveland Guardians at Progressive Field.

But it might be potentially fruitful down the road, particularly as the players whom the Twins acquired in trades this week start graduating to the big leagues. Aggressive moves at the trade deadline on Thursday — the front office dealt 10 players off the major league roster — have opened the door for different players to step into larger roles.

Players like Austin Martin, who returned on Friday from Triple-A for the first time this season and had three hits in the loss to the Guardians. Players like Justin Topa and Cole Sands, who will have larger roles after the bullpen was decimated by trades. Topa pitched a scoreless seventh and Sands a scoreless eighth on Friday.

“I’m excited about all the opportunities that are going to be given to some guys that either are deserving or have been waiting in the wings and now are going to get an opportunity to showcase that on the highest level,” third baseman Royce Lewis said.

It probably won’t look pretty at times. But, frankly, neither has the season up to this point or the Twins wouldn’t have reached the trade deadline six games under .500, looking to sell.

“We haven’t been able to win like we wanted to win. We’ve shown glimpses of greatness and glimpses of one of the worst teams in baseball,” catcher Ryan Jeffers said. “Maybe a reset was needed. Maybe this is the harsh reality of what was needed for this club. It’s a hard pill to swallow for players, fans and everyone associated with the organization. It’s the reality of what we’ve got moving forward.”

The Twins’ traded arguably their top five bullpen arms — Jhoan Duran, Griffin Jax, Brock Stewart, Louie Varland and Danny Coulombe — and will now look to reform their rework their bullpen.

Their defense will surely take a hit with a pair of former Gold Glove Award winners — Carlos Correa and Harrison Bader — gone. Edouard Julien, back from Triple-A on Friday, bobbled a ball in the first inning that should have been a double play. That run eventually scored.

But the final two months of the season will give the Twins a chance to assess which players should have roles on the team moving forward.

“(Thursday) was just a weird day overall,” outfielder Trevor Larnach said. ‘The game goes on, we all have to move on. We’ve got an entirely new team, but a lot of new guys. I think everyone is excited to meet each other and play with each other, move on, really.”

Before Friday night’s game, the Twins added pitchers Travis Adams, Pierson Ohl, Erasmo Ramírez and José Ureña to the roster as well as infielders Ryan Fitzgerald and Julien, Martin, a utilityman, and Alan Roden, the only player acquired in a trade currently on the major league roster.

Roden, 25, was playing for Triple-A Buffalo, the Toronto Blue Jays’ top affiliate, in uniform and ready for a minor league game when he got word of the trade.

“For me, I’m a young player,” he said. “I’m a rookie so I’m still getting my feet wet with being in a clubhouse, major league clubhouse. … I’m definitely still learning and I think we’ll all move forward together.”

That they will.

Twins manager Rocco Baldelli and president of baseball operations Derek Falvey addressed the group before Friday’s game, something they felt necessary after a difficult, emotional day for the team. And now, they’re looking for players to take hold of their newfound chances and run with them as the Twins try to salvage the rest of the season.

“Let me be clear: This is not take five steps back and just watch the young guys play and whatever happens, happens,” Baldelli said. “That is not what’s going on here. The mentality is to go out there and win every day.”

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The 2025 Fringe Festival is on.

This year’s eclectic performing arts fest runs July 31 to Aug. 10, and is set to bring 99 stage shows to 13 venues around Minneapolis, for a total of about 500 performances throughout the 11 days. Check out our full guide to the Fringe Festival for more information on shows and tickets.

Throughout the festival, Pioneer Press critics are reviewing shows and narrowing down what’s Must-See, Worth Considering, Could Be Worse or You Can Skip It.

Here are our takes:

Must-See

A Good Cancer to Have: a cathartic and truly funny monologue with an all-time-great ending
Songs Without Words: a best-in-years masterpiece of solo performance
Jewelry Power Elite: a heartwarming one-woman show gives jewelry new meaning
The Gentlemen’s Pratfall Club: a smart, slapstick farce whose performers give it their all

Worth Considering

I Have Griefances: an enthusiastic and endearing monologue that finds the goof in grief
The Abortion Chronicles: powerful, gritty, true stories of abortion — told well, mostly
Jon Bennett: American’t: a digression-prone raconteur veteran (finally) outgrows juvenile humor
All Your Shimmering Gold: a thought-provoking satirical opera goes nuclear
Romeo and Juliet: Lottery Style: brings an improv twist to the classic Shakespeare story
La Tunda: A Reimagining of a Colombian Folklore: retells an ancient myth with spookiness and comedy
That Which Is Green: ponders religion and hope, but requires some reading between the lines

Could Be Worse

Neon Breeze: a post-apocalyptic buddy comedy that’s a bit too drawn-out and difficult to understand

You Can Skip It

(more reviews coming soon!)

This article will be updated throughout the 2025 Minnesota Fringe Festival.

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Fringe review: In ‘Jewelry Power Elite,’ jewelry takes on new meanings

CLEVELAND —  As the clock wound down towards Major League Baseball’s trade deadline, a group of Twins players gathered together in a room at the team hotel in downtown Cleveland, their eyes glued to MLB Network.

Sometime around 5:50 p.m. local time, outfielder Matt Wallner estimated, reliever Louie Varland’s phone rang. About six minutes later, so did Griffin Jax’s. Everybody in the room knew what that meant.

“It was pretty surreal just seeing them answer phone calls and the next thing you know, they’re on different teams,” starting pitcher Bailey Ober said. “It’s tough. It’s never fun to go through.”

Thursday marked a day unlike any other for the Twins, one in which the front office executed seven different trades. All told, the front office made nine deals before the trade deadline, sending away 10 major leaguers — nearly 40 percent of the 26-man roster — as it attempted a reset on a roster that been underperforming. By the time the Twins returned to the ballpark a day later to take on the Cleveland Guardians, they were still trying to process everything that had happened over the past few days.

“It was the most interesting day of my big-league career, for sure,” Wallner said. “It was just different.”

Wallner said he hadn’t used the social media site X — formerly known as Twitter —  in two years, but logged back into his account to keep up with all the trades, which came in at a dizzying pace.

Ryan Jeffers spent Thursday at home in Minnesota with his family after welcoming his second child, Hayes, on Saturday. He took his daughter, Harper, to the aquarium at the Mall of America and rode the carousel with her, enjoying some one-on-one time with his daughter.

“I’m constantly checking my phone and seeing what’s happening, seeing what latest news is dropping, seeing the dominoes continue to fall, continue to fall, go home and eat some lunch, then see someone else go,” Jeffers said. “It just kept coming. It never felt like it ended.”

By the time the front office was done with its work, Chris Paddack, Jhoan Duran, Harrison Bader, Brock Stewart, Danny Coulombe, Willi Castro, Carlos Correa, Ty France, Varland and Jax had all been shipped to other teams. Twins players walked into a clubhouse on Friday that featured some new faces  — like Alan Roden, who was acquired as part of the Varland/France trade with Toronto — and some more familiar, like Edouard Julien and Austin Martin.

But even a day removed from the deadline, it was still hard to completely comprehend what had happened.

“No one’s done processing all parts of what went on,” manager Rocco Baldelli said. “That might take some time to happen but we have to get back to work.”

Baldelli spent his day bouncing from hotel room to hotel room, touching base with his players, talking both to those who were departing and some of those who remained. Traded players who hadn’t yet traveled to Cleveland received a phone call from the manager.

While the scope of what the front office did was shocking, the individual trade that seemed to surprise people the most within the clubhouse was the Varland deal considering the local product is much further from free agency than the other players who were dealt.

“There (were) some guys that you had a feeling we might trade. I wouldn’t have initially put Louie in that category,” Baldelli said. “Everyone was some version of emotional. I think it was hardest on Lou. I don’t think that’s even close.”

Of the group set for free agency after this season — Bader, Castro, Paddack, France and Coulombe and Christian Vázquez — all dealt but Vázquez, who said he was surprised he was not part of Thursday’s roster purge. The other five players traded — Correa, Stewart, Varland, Jax and Duran — were under team control past this season. In return, the Twins were able to access either more prospect capital or, in Correa’s case, payroll flexibility.

For those who remained, Friday marked the beginning of a new reality.

“A lot of guys were shocked,” outfielder Trevor Larnach said. “I think it’s safe to say not a lot of people have seen something like that. It’s definitely crazy to be a part of.”

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By MARIA SHERMAN, Associated Press

NEW YORK (AP) — Jeannie Seely, the soulful country music singer behind such standards like “Don’t Touch Me,” has died. She was 85.

Her publicist, Don Murry Grubbs, said she died Friday after succumbing to complications from an intestinal infection.

Known as “Miss Country Soul” for her unique vocal style, Seely was a trailblazer for women in country music, celebrated for her spirited nonconformity and for a string of undeniable hits in the ‘60s and ’70s.

Her second husband, Gene Ward, died in December. In May, Seely revealed that she was in recovery after undergoing multiple back surgeries, two emergency procedures and spending 11 days in the ICU. She also suffered a bout of pneumonia.

“Rehab is pretty tough, but each day is looking brighter and last night, I saw a light at the end of the tunnel. And it was neon, so I knew it was mine!” she said in a statement at the time. “The unsinkable Seely is working her way back.”

FILE – Jeannie Seely performs at the 2018 Medallion Ceremony at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum in Nashville, Tenn., on Oct. 21, 2018. (Photo by Al Wagner/Invision/AP, File

Seely was born in July 1940, in Titusville, Pennsylvania, about two hours north of Pittsburgh and raised in nearby Townville. Her love of country music was instant; her mother sang, and her father played the banjo. When she was a child, she sang on local radio programs and performed on local television. In her early 20s, she moved to Los Angeles to kick-start a career, taking a job Liberty and Imperial Records in Hollywood.

She kept writing and recording. Nashville was next: She sang on Porter Wagoner’s show; she got a deal with Monument Records. Her greatest hit would arrive soon afterward: “Don’t Touch Me,” the crossover ballad written by Hank Cochran. The song earned Seely her first and only Grammy Award, for best country & western vocal performance in the female category.

Cochran and Seely were married in 1969 and divorced in 1979.

Seely broke boundaries in her career — at a time when country music expected a kind of subservience from its women performers, Seely was a bit of a rebel, known for wearing a miniskirt on the Grand Ole Opry stage when it was still taboo.

And she had a number of country hits in the ‘60s and ’70s, including three Top 10 hits on what is now known as Billboard’s hot country songs chart: “Don’t Touch Me,” 1967’s “I’ll Love You More (Than You Need)” and 1973’s “Can I Sleep In Your Arms?”, adapted from the folk song “Can I Sleep In Your Barn Tonight Mister?”

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In the years since, Seely continued to release albums, perform, and host, regularly appearing on country music programming. Her songs are considered classics, and have been recorded by everyone from Merle Haggard, Ray Price and Connie Smith to Ernest Tubb, Grandpa Jones, and Little Jimmy Dickens.

And Seely never stopped working in country music. Since 2018, she’s hosted the weekly “Sunday’s with Seely” on Willie Nelson’s Willie’s Roadhouse SiriusXM channel. That same year, she was inducted into the Music City Walk of Fame.

She appeared nearly 5,400 times at the Grand Ole Opry, which she has been a member of since 1967. Grubbs said Saturday’s Grand Ole Opry show would be dedicated to Seely.

She released her latest song in July 2024, a cover of Dottie West’s “Suffertime,” recorded at the world-renowned RCA Studio B. She performed it at the Opry the year before.