BOSTON — After nearly emptying out the bullpen on Friday night, using seven of eight relievers to secure a 12-inning win, the Twins get to give their relievers’ tired arms an extra day of rest before returning to work.

With steady rain falling in Boston all day, the second game of the Twins’ three-game series in Boston was postponed, called off about 20 minutes after it had been scheduled to start. The two teams are scheduled to play a doubleheader on Sunday, with the first game starting at 11:35 a.m. and the second at 4:35 p.m.

Pablo López, who was scheduled to start on Saturday, will take the ball for the first game of the doubleheader with Zebby Matthews starting the second game.

After the doubleheader, the Twins return home and will have Monday off, meaning the bullpen should get somewhat of a mini-break. The Twins used multiple pitchers on Friday who had been told they would only be used in case of emergency, manager Rocco Baldelli said, and the extra-inning game qualified.

As a result, the Twins called down for a fresh arm, optioning Ronny Henriquez to Triple-A on Saturday and calling up Brent Headrick, who spent most of the season on the Triple-A injured list with an arm injury.

“He’s healthy now. He’s gotten himself right,” Baldelli said. “It took a little while to get everything straightened out and feeling good, but we think Brent’s in a really good spot right now.”

Castro makes history

There have been tens of thousands of Major League Baseball players spanning more than a century. But only one can claim this: When he shifted from second to third base in the 11th inning on Friday night, Willi Castro became the first player in history to play 25 games at five different defensive positions in a single season, a testament to his versatility.

“It means a lot,” Castro said. “Obviously you don’t think about records like that. You just come here to play ball, but it feels good. It feels really special to know I’m in history.”

Castro knew he was close but thought he still had a few more games to reach the milestone. He found out after the game on social media that he was part of history.

The all-star has seen a majority of his playing time — 56 games — at shortstop, filling in there primarily while Carlos Correa was on the injured list, first with an oblique strain and then with plantar fasciitis. He’s made 39 appearances at second base and 29 each in left and center field while reaching 25 at third base on Friday.

His versatility has certainly made life easier on Baldelli and the coaching staff, who have way more options and flexibility to make the in-game moves they want to make because of Castro.

“He’s done a great job. I always say he’s earned all of his opportunities through working his tail off, playing well,” Baldelli said. “He came in this year as someone that we knew was going to move around the field from the very beginning of the year. Was I anticipating him setting a major league record? No, I wasn’t even thinking anything like that, but I was thinking he was going to play all over the place.”

Castro considers shortstop, which was his primary position in the minor leagues, and center field as his two favorites. Second base, he thinks, is his best position. He doesn’t have a least favorite, he said.

“(I’m) really proud because I came last year and I wasn’t playing a lot, even though I made the team,” Castro said. “Now, I have a place every day, so I really enjoy every time Rocco puts me in there. The mentality that I have is to go out there and do little things to make us win the game.”

The Wild settled on their top line relatively late last season, and it was still one of the best in the NHL. Kirill Kaprizov, Joel Eriksson Ek and Matt Boldy scored 29 goals in 374.9 minutes of ice time last season,10th among combinations.

Among lines that played together for fewer than 470 minutes, it was the NHL’s most productive, according to advanced statistics from moneypuck.com.

Yet, the Wild started training camp this week hoping they can break up that line. Minnesota missed the playoffs last season for the second time in 12 seasons, in no small part because the team’s offense was top heavy.

“The easy thing would be to just go back to that one line that had success last year,” general manager Bill Guerin said this week. “We don’t want one line just to have success. We need multiple lines to have success. We need to regain chemistry in some lines that we had before, and create new ones. And I think it’s a good move.”

To that end, coach John Hynes has reunited wingers Kirill Kaprizov and Mats Zuccarello with center Ryan Hartman, which joined forces sometime around Thanksgiving in 2021 and dominated the rest of the way.

Those three players combined to score 105 goals and 252 points for then-coach Dean Evason and a team that finished with team records in points (113) and wins (53). According to moneypuck.com, their 48 goals scored as a line that year ranked fourth in the NHL.

Kaprizov and Zuccarello have played together a lot since then, even strength and with a man advantage, but Hartman has been all over the place, playing center and wing on four lines even last season. Playing mostly with Kaprizov and Zuccarello in 2021-22, he scored a career-high 34 goals and 65 points in 82 games.

When Hynes replaced Evason as coach Nov. 27, Hartman was serving a two-game suspension for tripping Detroit’s Alex DeBrincat. Minnesota won those two games, and when Hartman returned, he was playing wing on the fourth line with the Deweys — Brandon Duhaime and Connor Dewar — each of whom was traded at the deadline last February.

“I told Hynsie right away, I don’t care where I am, as long as our team’s winning. Whatever helps us be a better team,” Hartman said Saturday after a practice at TRIA Rink. “If that’s me playing between Kirill and Zuccy, that’s great. If that’s me trying to be a depth scorer and shut down some lines, that’s great, too.”

For now, the Wild are committed to getting the band back together in the hopes that combining Boldy and Eriksson Ek with another winger — right now it’s Marcus Johansson — will create another dangerous scoring line. Boldy (29) and Eriksson Ek (30) each set career highs in goals last season.

None of these players traveled to Winnipeg for Saturday night’s preseason opener against the Jets, but they have composed the team’s top two lines in practice during three practices and a pair of scrimmages.

The team’s second-best line combination last season was Kaprizov and Zuccarello centered by rookie Marco Rossi, 19 goals for (and 13 against) in 313.5 minutes. Johansson (11 goals, 30 points) and Freddy Gaudreau (five goals, 15 points) struggled no matter who they played with.

After Kaprizov (46), Eriksson Ek and Boldy the next-highest goal scorers last season were Hartman and Rossi with 21 goals.

“If the other (lines) weren’t very good, let’s find the reasons why,” Hynes said this week. “Maybe spread it out a little bit.”

The Wild also hope to kickstart Zuccarello, a skilled veteran who finished with 51 assists last season but 12 goals, only seven of which came when at even strength. That was the winger’s fewest since he had three even-strength goals while playing 15 games for the New York Rangers in 2012-13.

“At the end of the day, you need production from more of us,” Zuccarello said. “So, if we can do that, I think we’re shown in the past that we’re a good team, a hard team to play against. So, we’ve got to get back to that.”

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When Brad Jacobsen, a retired St. Paul police officer, was informed by his doctor at Regions Hospital that his November medical appointment would have to be rescheduled, he asked for a date early next year. HealthPartners, his medical system, denied the request.

“I asked to reschedule in January and they said no, because my insurance wouldn’t be accepted,” said Jacobsen, a former president of the St. Paul Police Federation and current secretary of the St. Paul Police Retirement Association. “I’ve gone to Regions Heart Center since 2000, when I had my heart attack. I’ll need to find a different cardiologist now.”

Jacobsen isn’t alone. Thousands of fellow public retirees insured by UnitedHealthcare may soon be in the same boat.

“From our end on the retirement association, we’ve had three people — myself included — that were denied appointments in 2025,” he said.

Impasse shows no sign of ending

In July, HealthPartners notified some 30,000 seniors enrolled in UnitedHealthcare’s Medicare Advantage program that it will no longer accept their insurance next year, effectively excluding them from sites such as Regions Hospital in St. Paul and Lakeview Hospital in Stillwater. Come January, even established patients who show up willing to pay extra for out-of-network care with their long-standing doctors will be turned away, according to the health care provider.

That news sent a chill through thousands of retired public employees who have earned retirement benefits through Ramsey County, the city of St. Paul, St. Paul Public Schools and the Metropolitan Council, among other public employers. Bloomington-based HealthPartners has accused UnitedHealthcare, a Minnesota-based for-profit health insurer, of aggressively denying claims at rates up to 10 times greater than other insurers, while offering limited reimbursement for medical services.

UnitedHealthcare and others have raised the possibility that the hospital network is bluffing and will not turn anyone away in 2025. But the impasse has shown no signs of thawing. A spokesperson for HealthPartners said Wednesday that he had no information to add to the statement issued in July.

In an email Thursday, UnitedHealthcare spokesman Cole Manbeck said: “We recently met with HealthPartners. We continue to remain at the negotiating table with the goal of renewing our relationship. We hope HealthPartners continues to engage with us and works toward a new agreement that ensures continued access to the health system for people enrolled in our Medicare Advantage plans.”

Essentia Health, a Duluth-based health system, announced in recent weeks that it also would drop UnitedHealthcare come January.

“For patients who are covered by UnitedHealthcare’s Medicare Advantage plan, we will no longer schedule any appointments that occur after Dec. 31,” reads Essentia’s announcement, which was posted this month to its website. “In evaluating UHC’s Medicare Advantage plan, we found excessive prior authorizations and denial rates for patients who are covered by the plan.”

District, teachers ask AG to intervene

With few other options, the St. Paul school district sent its retirees a four-page letter this month, dated Sept. 9, urging them to contact the Minnesota Attorney General’s Office and ask state powers to intervene. The letter, signed by Patricia Pratt-Cook, executive chief of human resources, noted the school district’s retiree benefits are backed by $15 million in taxpayer funds, and switching insurance providers is a complicated process that involves a request for proposals and some eight to 12 months of administration.

About 2,300 out of 3,500 retired St. Paul Public Schools employees are impacted by the impasse between HealthPartners and UnitedHealthcare, according to the district.

The school district did explore the possibility of issuing an expedited request for proposals.

“Even with a compressed timeline, we would not be able to complete the process prior to January 1,” reads the letter. “We’ve also asked that our retirees reach out to the Minnesota Attorney General’s Office because the volume of your many voices carries weight.”

The school district also shared with retirees a side-by-side comparison between their Medicare Advantage and a Medicare Supplement plan, which would offer the group fewer benefits for higher premiums.

“I’ll be honest. It’s frightening for our seniors,” said John Thein, the school district’s interim superintendent, in an interview Friday. “There are some options, but those are not exactly what our retirees would want.”

St. Paul Retired Teachers Inc., a charitable nonprofit led by former teachers, also began circulating a form letter on Sept. 13 for retirees to send to the attorney general’s office and their state senator or state representative.

“(St. Paul Public Schools) retirees were promised a certain level of healthcare benefits, often in exchange for accepting smaller salary increases during our working years,” reads the letter. “We also paid higher premiums than many surrounding districts to ensure access to quality healthcare in retirement.”

“Many of us have been with the same healthcare providers for over a decade, during which time our health conditions have become more complex,” it goes on to say. “These doctors know our medical histories intimately and are crucial to managing our ongoing health needs. … It is unfair to force retirees to abandon trusted providers simply because of insurance coverage changes.”

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St. Paul, Ramsey County retirees also impacted

Of the 2,190 city of St. Paul retirees using the UnitedHealthcare Medicare Advantage plan, 1,000 of them selected HealthPartners/Park Nicollet as their provider, according to the mayor’s office, and those 1,000 retired workers represent all city departments. The city is contracted with UnitedHealthcare through 2025.

“For the two largest healthcare networks in our state and region to walk away from negotiations without a solution for our retirees is unacceptable,” said St. Paul Mayor Melvin Carter, in a written statement last month. “We count on our partnership with UnitedHealthcare and HealthPartners and expect them to go back to the table to keep their promises to our retirees.”

The plan also insures a total of 2,480 former Ramsey County workers and their spouses, and 45% of them visited a HealthPartners provider this year, according to data provided by the county.

Ramsey County Board Chair Victoria Reinhardt, who is about three months from retirement, said the county is in negotiations toward solutions on all sides.

“We care about our retirees. We are working on what that would look like. Honestly, we don’t have answers to that. But we are working on it,” Reinhardt said. “What would be the really best thing is if UHC and HealthPartners came to a solution.”

Legal fights, protests dog UnitedHealthcare

City and county retirees have noted that switching insurance providers on their own during open enrollment — which runs from Oct. 15 through Dec. 7 for Medicare beneficiaries — can have huge consequences, including losing benefits they’ve accrued through years, if not decades, of public employment.

“If I take on an insurance plan or insurance supplement on my own, I permanently lose my retirement health coverages currently received through the city,” said Rick Anderson, a retired employee from the city of St. Paul. “I am bound to take whatever plan the city chooses.”

“As the end of the year approaches, it is more concerning each week,” Anderson added. “HealthPartners is my primary provider for health care, so losing my ability to use them is upsetting, to say the least. For retirees, continuity of care is extremely important to us.”

Controversy surrounding UnitedHealthcare isn’t new. The Minnetonka-based for-profit multinational corporation is one of the world’s largest companies by revenue, and its practices have drawn tough scrutiny from the U.S. Department of Labor and other interested parties.

National health insurance carriers like UnitedHealthcare entered the Minnesota market after the Republican-controlled Legislature lifted the 40-year-old state ban on for-profit health insurance in 2017. A new state law takes effect next year re-implementing a key aspect of the ban — barring for-profit HMOs from running Medicaid health plans — though UnitedHealthcare has filed suit against the state to prevent its enforcement.

The U.S. Department of Labor last year sued UMR, a third-party administrator and UnitedHealthcare subsidiary, for allegedly denying thousands of patients’ payments for emergency room services and urinary drug screenings. The lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Wisconsin.

Also in 2023, patients enrolled in a UnitedHealth Medicare Advantage plan and their families filed a class-action lawsuit against UnitedHealthcare and its subsidiary NaviHealth for cutting off payment for rehab care based on what they alleged was faulty direction from the company’s artificial intelligence software, known as “nH Predict.” The lawsuit, which could potentially involve thousands of patients, was filed in the U.S. District Court for Minnesota.

In July, 11 people were arrested for blocking the street outside the UnitedHealthcare headquarters in Minnetonka during a sizable street demonstration against claim denials. The People’s Action Institute’s “Care Over Cost” campaign drew some 150 protesters.

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The Lynx were right around 50-1 odds to win the WNBA championship at the start of this season.

Which added up. Minnesota was a sub-.500 team a year ago that was bounced out of the first round of the playoffs. The pieces were present on the roster to have a good year in 2024, but certainly not to compete with the league’s “super teams” like New York and Las Vegas.

But then the Lynx won the Commissioner’s Cup — beating the Liberty, no less — and downed the Aces in convincing fashion in Vegas. Minnesota opened the season 13-3.

And, since coming out of the Olympic break, the Lynx have been even better. Frankly, they’ve been the best.

Subtract their loss in the season finale Thursday, in which they heavily managed minutes with their playoff seed secure, and the post-Olympic Lynx went 13-1 with the WNBA’s second-best offense (108 points per 100 possessions), third-best defense (97) and second-best net rating (11.0, which trailed only New York).

It was exactly the push Minnesota (30-10) needed to lock up the No. 2 seed heading into the WNBA playoffs, which open at home at 4 p.m. Sunday for Game 1 of a best-of-3 first-round series against with Phoenix.

Should the Lynx simply take care of business at home over the first two rounds of the postseason, they would find themselves in the WNBA Finals.

How did they get here?

Minnesota has just one superstar player — and an underrated one at that in Napheesa Collier, who might be the game’s premier two-way player.

But all of the surrounding pieces have perfectly snapped into the puzzle, from the shooting of Kayla McBride and Bridget Carleton to the playmaking of Courtney Williams and the toughness of Alanna Smith. Everyone on the roster defends at a high level, and everything else seems to fall into place.

That’s a beautifully rare occurrence in basketball, one made far more plausible by the relationships established within the roster.

“It’s really fun to be on this team,” Collier said.

More specifically, it’s the most fun the 27-year-old forward has had in the WNBA. She quickly realized upon her arrival in the pros that “hangouts” wouldn’t be nearly as frequent as they were in college, when those types of gatherings are all-but mandatory. Nothing is forced in Minnesota, but the bonding this season is similar for Collier to the experience garnered at the amateur level.

“With us, we’re always going to dinner or we have barbecues or we’re just hanging out together,” she said. “I think that just shows how much we genuinely like each other.”

Those off-the-court relationships translate onto the court. McBride can feel it in the team’s connection in the huddles and within the flow of the games. If a problem arises, players solve it together.

“There’s never anybody pointing fingers or anything like that. Everybody is very selfless, we’re all here for the same mission, which is to go out and win each and every game we play,” McBride said. “That becomes a lot of fun, because you’re just competing your (butts) off for 40 minutes, and hopefully you come out on top. That’s what we’re doing, and we’re having a lot of fun doing it and enjoying playing with each other, and that’s the best part.”

Both McBride and Collier believe it’s that chemistry that’s allowed the Lynx to exceed outside expectations and insert themsolves smack dab in the center of championship contention.

And it’s also what could potentially help the Lynx navigate what they anticipate — and hope — will be a marathon WNBA postseason run that awaits them.

“We want this so bad for each other,” Collier said, “because we genuinely just really love and like each other.”