FORT MYERS, Fla. — In a weird way, playing with a torn ligament in his right elbow last year might have actually helped out Twins prospect Luke Keaschall.

“I swung at better pitches because when I swung at bad pitches, it hurt a little bit,” Keaschall said.

This is a 2025 photo of Luke Keaschall of the Minnesota Twins baseball team. This image reflects the Twins active roster as of Friday, Feb. 21, 2025 when this image was taken. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

Keaschall, selected by the Twins in the second round of the 2023 draft, put together an impressive season at the plate between advanced Class A and Double-A, hitting .303 with a .903 OPS. He hit 15 home runs and collected 115 hits in 103 games. He also drew 62 walks (to 80 strikeouts) and swiped 23 bags.

All of that earned Keaschall, now ranked the No. 61 prospect in baseball by MLB Pipeline, the Twins’ Minor League Player of the Year Award.

His season came to an early end when the Twins finally shut him down, deciding to have Keaschall, now 22, finally undergo Tommy John surgery in August to get him ready for the 2025 season. Now, he’ll try to repeat his performance — and this time he’ll be fully healthy.

“I was just excited to go out there and play,” Keaschall said. “I’m happy they let me do what I wanted to do, because normally they wouldn’t let a guy play through that. But I asked them to and they worked with me, and they let me do it. So, I’m grateful for that.”

Keaschall said he had a little bit of elbow pain in college when he was playing for Arizona State but didn’t think too much of it. Last year during spring training, his physical therapist — he was rehabbing from another surgery at the time — had him get magnetic resonance imaging on his elbow because it had been bugging him.

Imaging revealed he was at high risk for a tear, leading to a six-week shutdown period. That high-risk turned into reality — about a week into the season, he got confirmation that he had fully torn the ligament.

“It just helps you focus on what you can do well and what you can’t do,” he said of the injury. “Yeah, you can’t do this well, but you can really go do a good job with the glove, or if I swing at good pitches. I know I have to be productive.”

He sure was.

Now, months removed from the surgery, Keaschall is nearly back to full strength. He expects to be back in the field — first returning to second base before venturing to other positions — somewhere between March 17 and March 24. For now, he’s limited to hitting, appearing as a designated hitter in early spring games.

“He’s got a very short swing. There is some strength to his body, his hands and to the swing itself,” manager Rocco Baldelli said. “And he can run on top of that. He’s a good athlete. He’s going to be an exciting player to watch. It’s a very nice intro for him.”

Keirsey Jr. shines

A day after collecting a walk-off hit against the New York Yankees and making a catch that had Baldelli raving, DaShawn Keirsey Jr. smacked his first home run of the spring and made another nice catch, this one a diving grab in right field in a 4-0 win over the Detroit Tigers on Wednesday.

Keirsey Jr., 27, debuted late last season and played in six games for the Twins. The outfielder is fighting for a backup role, and while he might not make the team out of camp, he has certainly gotten Baldelli’s attention.

“He has made a lot of adjustments over the years to make himself into a really relevant and quality young player,” Baldelli said. “And that’s from work. … If we’re being honest, a couple of years ago, he didn’t have the skills to do all the wonderful things that he’s doing now. And he worked for it. He put in the work, he got better every day, and now we talk about him. We talk about him a lot.”

Briefly

Twins ace Pablo López will make his first start on the spring on Thursday when the Pittsburgh Pirates visit Hammond Stadium. … Andrew Morris and Cory Lewis, two of the Twins’ top pitching prospects, along with left-hander Kody Funderburk, each threw two scoreless innings in the Twins’ win over the Tigers in Lakeland.

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By MARCIA DUNN, Associated Press

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — A private company launched another lunar lander Wednesday, aiming to get closer to the moon’s south pole this time with a drone that will hop into a jet-black crater that never sees the sun.

Intuitive Machines’ lander, named Athena, caught a lift with SpaceX from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. It’s taking a fast track to the moon — with a landing on March 6 — while hoping to avoid the fate of its predecessor, which tipped over at touchdown.

Never before have so many spacecraft angled for the moon’s surface all at once. Last month, U.S. and Japanese companies shared a rocket and separately launched landers toward Earth’s sidekick. Texas-based Firefly Aerospace should get there first this weekend after a big head start.

The two U.S. landers are carrying tens of millions of dollars’ worth of experiments for NASA as it prepares to return astronauts to the moon.

“It’s an amazing time. There’s so much energy,” NASA’s science mission chief Nicky Fox told The Associated Press a few hours ahead of the launch.

This isn’t Intuitive Machines’ first lunar rodeo. Last year, the Texas company made the first U.S. touchdown on the moon in more than 50 years. But an instrument that gauges distance did not work and the lander came down too hard and broke a leg, tipping onto its side.

Intuitive Machines said it has fixed the issue and dozens of others. A sideways landing like last time would prevent the drone and a pair of rovers from moving out. NASA’s drill also needs an upright landing to pierce beneath the lunar surface to gather soil samples for analysis.

“Certainly, we will be better this time than we were last time. But you never know what could happen,” said Trent Martin, senior vice president of space systems.

It’s an extraordinarily elite club. Only five countries have pulled off a lunar landing over the decades: Russia, the U.S., China, India and Japan. The moon is littered with wreckage from many past failures.

The 15-foot (4.7-meter) Athena will target a landing 100 miles from the lunar south pole. Just a quarter-mile (400 meters) away is a permanently shadowed crater — the ultimate destination for the drone named Grace.

Named after the late computer programming pioneer Grace Hopper, the 3-foot drone will make three increasingly higher and longer test hops across the lunar surface using hydrazine fueled-thrusters for flight and cameras and lasers for navigation.

If those excursions go well, it will hop into the nearby pitch-black crater, an estimated 65 feet deep. Science instruments from Hungary and Germany will take measurements at the bottom while hunting for frozen water.

It will be the first up-close peek inside one of the many shadowed craters dotting both the north and south poles. Scientists suspect these craters are packed with tons of ice. If so, this ice could be transformed by future explorers into water to drink, air to breathe and even rocket fuel.

NASA is paying $62 million to Intuitive Machines to get its drill and other experiments to the moon. The company, in turn, sold space on the lander to others. It also opened up the Falcon rocket to ride-sharing.

Tagalongs included NASA’s Lunar Trailblazer satellite, which will fly separately to the moon over the next several months before entering lunar orbit to map the distribution of water below. Also catching a ride was a private spacecraft that will chase after an asteroid for a flyby, a precursor to asteroid mining.

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

By ELLEN KNICKMEYER and MATTHEW LEE, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration says it is eliminating more than 90% of the U.S. Agency for International Development’s foreign aid contracts and $60 billion in overall U.S. assistance around the world, according to an internal memo obtained by The Associated Press.

It details the outcome of a 90-day review ordered by President Donald Trump of all the money provided by USAID and the State Department for development and aid work overseas.

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The move leaves few surviving USAID projects for advocates to try to save in what are ongoing court battles. The Trump administration outlined its plans in both the memo and court filings Wednesday.

The Washington Free Beacon was the first to report the cuts.

The memo described the administration as spurred by a court order that gave officials until the end of day Wednesday to lift the Trump administration’s monthlong block on foreign aid funding.

“In response, State and USAID moved rapidly,” targeting USAID and State Department foreign aid programs in vast numbers for contract terminations, the memo said.

With Ward 4 council member Mitra Jalali officially leaving city employment on March 8, the St. Paul City Council is accepting applications to fill her seat on an interim basis.

Interested applicants must live in the ward — which spans Hamline-Midway, Merriam Park, St. Anthony Park and parts of Macalester-Groveland and Como — and are expected to agree not to run for the seat in the next election, which will likely be held in August.

Cover letters and resumes are due to the council by 4:30 p.m. on March 13. Candidates will be notified if they’ve been selected for interviews by March 18, and interviews will be conducted March 19. The council will appoint an interim council member March 26.

The winner of the August contest would serve through 2028 as a result of the city’s shift to even-year municipal elections. Members of the city council earn $76,800 annually, plus benefits.

Jalali, who was first elected to the Ward 4 office in a special election in September 2018, served for a year as council president but announced in late January she would step away from the council seat and focus on her health.

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