Matt Wallner’s season appears to be done after the outfielder suffered a left oblique strain in Wednesday’s game. He was placed on the 10-day injured list on Friday before the Twins took on the Cleveland Guardians and, while he could technically return since the stint was backdated, it seems unlikely.

“It was something we (were) hoping would be a day or two,” manager Rocco Baldelli said. “It’s not going to be a day or two. … I think ultimately it very likely closes the book … on his season. It’s not the way anyone wants their season to end, but his goal now is to make sure he’s going into the offseason as healthy as possible.”

It’s been an up and down season for Wallner, who hit .202 with a .776 OPS. His 110 OPS+ is 10 percent better than the league average hitter and is third among Twins players who played in at least 50 games, behind just Byron Buxton and Harrison Bader, but well below his career average 127 OPS+.

“(He) had some really good periods of time where I think he was feeling really good, he was locked in, he was productive,” Baldelli said. “Some times where he had to work through his swing, but he battled well.”

Wallner hit a career-high 22 home runs, but drove in just 40 runs — a majority of them himself, hitting just .177 with runners in scoring position. He had 68 hits on the season, 41 for extra bases, a statistical oddity.

His strikeout percentage dipped to the lowest its been in his career and his walk percentage was at its highest, but his batting average on balls in play dropped more than 160 points from a season ago.

“It was up, down, up, down throughout the whole year,” Wallner said last week. “I’m just trying to be more consistently like I always am and, again, building myself for next year.”

Wallner was one of the Twins’ most productive hitters at the start of the season but suffered a hamstring strain while running to first base on April 15 that kept him out a month and a half. He returned at the very end of May and for the first time in his major league career, stuck in the majors for the entire season, a point that Baldelli felt was important to make.

“There’s something to not needing any sort of actual true reset which, the last two years, even though his numbers ended up better at the major league level, he needed a break, and time off and time to go work in St. Paul to get what he needed to find,” Baldelli said. “But to be able to find that while not needing that break, I think, is important and I think that’s what he did in a noteworthy fashion this year.”

Briefly

To fill Wallner’s spot on the roster, the Twins called up outfielder DaShawn Keirsey Jr. … The Twins will send Joe Ryan and Bailey Ober to the mound in their doubleheader on Saturday with Ryan starting the 1:10 p.m. game and Ober the night game, which begins at 6:10 p.m. The first game was originally scheduled to take place on May 20, but was washed out because of rain.

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Four months after a sinkhole on West Seventh Street near downtown St. Paul shut down the busy thoroughfare, challenging repairs are completed and the road has reopened, city officials said.

Several contractors worked to repair damage to the 30-foot deep sewer tunnel and the surrounding utilities after the sinkhole appeared on May 8. The busy street was closed to through traffic from Kellogg Boulevard to Grand Avenue. The city was able to maintain one lane of traffic on the block for access to businesses.

Officials said the sinkhole was caused by a number of factors that led to the soil above the tunnel to gradually erode, causing “surrounding soil and rock to collapse into the sewer tunnel. These factors included unique subsurface geology and movement of water and sewage leaking above the main tunnel.”

“This project has been a good example of public-private partnerships, where city departments, local businesses, and several contractors quickly came together to keep the area safe and repair aging infrastructure,” said Sean Kershaw, director of Saint Paul Public Works. “We greatly appreciate the regular communication, patience, and partnership of the surrounding businesses as we worked together to try to minimize impacts wherever possible.”

Although the street is open to traffic, additional repairs will take place in advance of a state project slated for 2028-2029.

Find out more at: dot.state.mn.us/metro/projects/w7thst-stpaul/index.html

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Gun control is taking center stage in Minnesota politics as Gov. Tim Walz prepares to call a special session on guns in response to the Annunciation Catholic Church shooting and the shootings of two Minnesota lawmakers and their family members this summer.

Firearm deaths in Minnesota have increased in the past decade.

Nationally, the most recent national gun violence death data from Pew Research shows a decrease from approximately 48,000 deaths in 2022 to roughly 47,000 in 2023.

What firearms are used in fatalities?

According to Minnesota Department of Health data, 63% of firearm deaths from 2015 to 2022 in Minnesota have been from handguns, 16% from shotguns, and 12% from rifles. While handguns make up a majority of firearm deaths, Democrats are proposing a ban on semi-automatic “military-style assault weapons” and high-capacity magazines.

Hamline University’s Violence Prevention Project Research Center found that more than half of the most deadly mass shootings in U.S. history involved such weapons, and their use spiking from 19% in the 1990s to nearly 60% in the 2020s.

Patricia Jewett, an associate professor and health scientist with the University of Minnesota who focuses on firearm injury prevention, said weapons such as AR-15s can produce the greatest number of victims at an individual shooting incident.

Three variations of the AR-15 rifle.
(AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli)

“With these weapons, these events turn into mass shootings,” she said. “Mass shootings make up a small percentage of all the firearm deaths, but specifically, when you only talk about mass shootings, as long as you focus on mass, assault weapons play a very, very important role in those shootings.”

In testimony to Minnesota senators on Monday in support such a ban, Dr. Tim Kummer, the first physician on the scene of Annunciation, spoke about the difference in injury that such weapons can create.

“I know some will say that most gun violence involves handguns, not high-powered rifles, and that might be true, but in an event like Annunciation, the rifle made everything worse,” he said. “It turned potentially minor wounds into life-threatening ones. It multiplied the number of children shot.”

Kummer said that at Annunciation, he cared for a 12-year-old girl who had what looked like a very small graze wound to the top of her head.

“Despite that bullet never entering her brain, the energy from the rifle was so powerful it caused severe bleeding in her brain, and she had to have part of her skull removed,” he said. “From a handgun, that wound would likely have only been a graze wound, but from a high-powered rifle, it became a life-threatening brain injury.”

What manner of death is most common in firearm fatalities?

Of the total firearm deaths in the state in 2024 alone, 72% were suicide — 60% of which occurred in Greater Minnesota, according to a July study from Protect Minnesota. Minnesota’s percentage of firearm deaths from suicide is 14% higher than the national rate, which stands at 58%, according to the Pew Research Center.

Lisa Geller, senior adviser with the Center for Gun Violence Solutions at Johns Hopkins University, told Forum News Service in August that states with more rural areas tend to have higher firearm suicide rates due to socioeconomic factors, lack of access to mental health resources, and higher rates of gun ownership.

During a hearing at the Capitol on gun control proposals on Wednesday, Sen. Ron Latz, DFL-St. Louis Park, proposed funding an awareness campaign on the state’s new “red flag law,” which allows courts to temporarily take away someone’s firearm if the person is deemed at risk of harming themselves or others.

“Most of the firearm deaths in Minnesota are actually suicide, not homicide, and most of those suicides are basically white, middle-aged, rural men. So the Red Flag Law specifically is saving more of those lives than any other lives,” Latz said Wednesday.

The Red Flag Law legalized the use of what’s formally called Extreme Risk Protection orders (ERPOs). Of the ERPOs filed in Minnesota in the first eight months of the red flag law, as reviewed by Hamline, 22% involved threats to others, while 30% involved threats to self.

What’s the data behind mass shootings, school shootings?

Including the Annunciation shooting, Minneapolis has had four mass shootings in the past two weeks, with a total of three people killed and 40 people injured. Since September 2012, there have been 89 mass shootings in Minnesota, according to the Gun Violence Archive, which classifies at least four injured or killed as a “mass” incident.

Since 2013, there have been at least 24 “incidents of gunfire” on school grounds in Minnesota, resulting in seven deaths and 35 injuries, according to Everytown Research data.

In 2003, a student at ROCORI High School in Cold Spring shot and killed two people. In 2005, a student at Red Lake High School shot and killed seven people.

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Following the Annunciation shooting, lawmakers close to ROCORI have reflected on the impact of the incident. Sen. Jeff Howe, R-Rockville, said on Monday that his son was in ROCORI when the shooting happened and that his son helped to lock down his classroom since he had a substitute teacher that day who didn’t know the lockdown drill.

“I was on active duty with the National Guard when that happened, almost 20 years ago, and … not knowing whether … one of those individuals shot was your child or not? Was nerve-wracking. Calling their cell phone, not getting an answer,” Howe said.

Speaker of the House, Lisa Demuth, R-Cold Spring, said her kids were involved in ROCORI and that from her perspective as a parent, Annunciation will “change things.”

“It takes a generation and beyond to really be able to move forward,” Demuth said. “As far as it being a passing news story, it’s not going to be passing for those families of both the victims, those that are injured, and the kids that were just in there. I can tell you that it does not just end.”

Cheryl Reeve recalled a playoff game in 2024 in which the 6-foot-4 Alanna Smith walked off the floor at halftime shouting, “Can I get some help?”

Smith was tasked with guarding what Reeve described as a “6-foot-9” player — presumably referring to Brittney Griner of Phoenix in Round 1. Griner had 11 points at the half of Game 2. But no, help was not on the way.

“You’re doing great,” Reeve told Smith.

It was all part of the game plan. Smith had to hold up as best as she could against the significantly taller center to allow Minnesota to devote more of its defensive resources elsewhere. Sure enough, the Lynx won the game to close out the series.

Those are the things Reeve and Co. have been able to put on Smith’s plate since she arrived in Minneapolis last season. Their body types suggest both Smith and Napheesa Collier are power forwards. But it’s Smith who’s tasked with guarding centers. And she meets the task every time.

She was third this season in blocked shots per game (1.9) and tied for 13th in steals (1.3).

Smith anchored Minnesota’s league-leading defense, which held opponents to just 0.975 points per possession.

It all added up to Smith earning co-Defensive Player of the Year honors along with Aces’ star forward A’ja Wilson. Smith won the honor a year after Collier did so. Those two form the most fearsome defensive frontcourt in the WNBA and have established Minnesota’s identity.

“We collectively want to be hard to play against. Lan takes that on,’ said Reeve, the Lynx head coach and general manager. “She personifies every possession (what it means to) be difficult to play against. Her will is greater than their will to do whatever they’re trying to do. That’s what Lan personifies.”

That’s not easy. Being difficult to play against means you have the intelligence to know what the opponent wants to do and the will to do everything in your power to take it away. The difficulty of that battle for Smith is multiplied on a nightly basis, given she’s often guarding the other team’s best post player, and giving up size in doing so.

“She’s highly competitive. I told her this year after one of our games — she might be one of the most competitive people I’ve ever been around, one of the greatest competitors I’ve ever coached. So it starts there,” Reeve said. “She takes pride in her matchup. Her instincts, her positioning, her intelligence allow her to be in great spots to take advantage of either keeping someone from catching it … playing the schemes the way we need them to be played. We just have a tremendous amount of trust.”

Smith said her persistent approach to defense is to attempt to make an impact on every possession, and then live with the result. It usually equals more stops, and more wins, for the Lynx.

Persistence defines Smith’s story. She was cut by Indiana in 2022, at which point she stepped away from the league entirely. The 29-year-old’s ascension from that point to this one came from “not staying bitter but getting better.”

“I think not allowing setbacks to define who you are in your career,” Smith said. “That’s something that I think I’ve unconsciously been able to do. I haven’t really had to think about it, but I think being able to set that example to others, and be an inspiration and remind others that setbacks don’t define your own future.”

Your actions do. And Smith’s play had the Lynx both on the brink of a title a year ago, and firmly back in championship contention this fall.

“Phee and I had this discussion, once we get our defense up to being at the top, we will be a championship contender,” Reeve said. “I didn’t necessarily know that when we signed Lan it would catapult us so quickly into that space, but the chemistry  … it’s the reason why we’re sitting here talking about the possibility of a championship.”

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