FORT MYERS, Florida — At the very beginning of his major league career, everything was going Brooks Lee’s way. Lee, who was a top prospect at the time, began his career with 11 hits in his first six games after debuting on July 3. He was cruising.

And then, he wasn’t.

“We’re all going to fail in this game and I happened to fail after being on top of the world for like two weeks,” Lee said. “It sucked.”

Pitchers started using more of the zone and he started chasing. Eventually, he developed shoulder soreness which robbed him of most of August. His numbers plummeted and he finished the year hitting .221 with a .585 OPS in 50 games played.

Now, Lee, who went 0 for 3 in the Twins’ 5-1 Grapefruit League loss to Pittsburgh on Sunday, is looking to show the Twins what he can do as he fights for an roster spot this spring.

“Those first two weeks, I think everyone knows what I’m capable of,” Lee said. “It’s not a standard, but I hold myself up to that competition, that level. I would like to do that again, sustain it for a season, a whole career, so that’s what I’m trying to do.”

Lee prepared at shortstop, second base and third base this offseason. With Carlos Correa at shortstop and Royce Lewis at third, Lee could be an option for the Twins at second base, both now and in the long-term.

The Twins selected Lee eighth overall out of the in the 2022 draft, and at the time he debuted, he was among the best prospects in baseball. Though he had a difficult introduction to the majors, there’s still plenty of belief in Lee as a big piece of the Twins’ future.

Lee, a switch hitter, said he spent the offseason working on his swing mechanics, saying he had “always hit differently” than he did last year so he was seeking to get back to that.

“My hands are relatively in the same area but just the way that they go back in my swing and they load is the biggest difference,” he said. “My hands would raise pretty high and I have always had a flat bat path but when they get too high, then I don’t enter the zone very efficient and I could only hit a few pitches.”

Lee noted that him chasing too much — he had a 35.8 percent chase rate, per Statcast — was a result of a bad swing and “just trying to get hits too hard.” With his mechanical tweaks in place, he said he believes he is now better equipped to impact the ball.

“Going out there and having quality at-bats and controlling the zone is going to be really important for him, something that challenged him during the season last year and something that is part of his focus going into this year,” manager Rocco Baldelli said. “I think that doing it in spring training games, that’s all he can do right now.”

A spot on the team isn’t guaranteed, but the opening that the Twins have at second base could be his for the taking. Edouard Julien is also in the mix there and Willi Castro will see at-bats at second.

But Lee’s focus, instead of a roster battle, is just on getting better every day. And if he does, that will lead him where he wants to be.

“I really wouldn’t view it too much as competition,” Lee said. “If we all get better at what we’re doing, then it’s great to be a better team, and that’s what matters.”

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FORT MYERS, Florida — Louie Varland would like you to know that he is still Louie Varland.

He will continue to go by Louie, though scoreboards from Hammond Stadium to Target Field will be displaying his full name, Louis, a switch he made on a whim when asked if he would like to make a change.

Varland said yes because he thought it might be something his mom and grandparents might like, seeing as he’s named after his uncle. The slight name change has generated plenty of interest on social media, though the pitcher is not quite sure why.

Now that that’s settled, the real question is how the Twins play to deploy Louie Varland. They have an idea and they’ve told him as much. They just haven’t made an announcement publicly.

“I can’t say it,” Varland said.

But signs seem to be pointing towards the St. Paulite transitioning from starting to relieving, as he’s done late in each of the past two seasons. Of course, over the course of spring, if a health issue or two crop up within the projected starting rotation, the Twins could always stretch Varland out. But at this point, his clearest path to the major leagues appears to be in the bullpen.

“We’re just going to send him out there right now for probably an inning at a time, let him get going, kind of like everybody else. There will be a point where he throws two ups and gets multiple ups this spring,” manager Rocco Baldelli said. “We’re not going to sit here and state his permanent role for 2025.”

In September 2023, Varland rejoined the Twins as a reliever and posted a 1.50 earned-run average, striking out 17 in his 12 innings pitched. The way his stuff played up was clearly intriguing to Baldelli and the Twins.

Last September, they made the late-season switch again. The results weren’t quite as smooth, but he did turn in four straight scoreless performances at one point.

“I was told, ‘Be ready for any role,’” Varland said. “And that’s what I’m doing.

Coming out of the bullpen, he said, is enjoyable — while there’s less of a game within the game, he’s more on the attack mode, emptying the tank and throwing his best stuff at opposing hitters.

Saturday, Varland came out of the bullpen and threw a scoreless inning in the Twins’ spring opener. His fastball topped 98 miles per hour and Varland seemed pleased with where he is at currently.

“He’s a guy that has the pitches. He can mix them up but … in the shorter stints, the stuff does play up really nicely,” Baldelli said.

Varland said his offseason focus was working on his execution and as for what he wants to show the Twins this spring as he fights for a roster spot, it’s simple.

“That I’m ready,” Varland said.

Game notes

David Festa threw two scoreless innings in the Twins’ 5-1 loss to the Pirates in Bradenton, Florida. Rule 5 Draft pick Eiberson Castellano struck out three of the four batters he faced in the game. Austin Martin scored the Twins’ only run of the day on a DaShawn Kiersey Jr. single to left, giving the Twins a fifth-inning lead that they held just briefly.

Briefly

Chris Paddack is scheduled to make his first start of the spring on Monday when the Twins venture to Port Charlotte to face the Tampa Bay Rays, but a weather forecast calling for rain basically all day, and thunderstorms in the afternoon could impact the Twins’ plans. … Bailey Ober threw live batting practice back at the Twins’ facility in front of an almost empty stadium on Sunday. There were four young fans — Blake, Jax, Olivia and Kollins Ober — in attendance watching and screams of “Hi Daddy,” were loud enough to hear throughout the park.

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It’s been nearly a decade since Minnesota United picked Abu Danladi with the first pick in the 2017 MLS SuperDraft. That decision continued to haunt the Loons on Saturday.

Jeremy Ebobisse — whom Portland Timbers took with the fourth pick in that draft — scored the winning goal in Los Angeles FC’s season-opening 1-0 win over MNUFC.

Meanwhile, Danladi played 16 minutes for New Mexico United in the USL Championship in 2024 and he’s not listed on the roster for the second-tier team going into this season.

Former Loons manager Adrian Heath reflected on the Danladi selection during an interview with the Pioneer Press in December. At the time, Ebobisse, who had left Duke early, had briefly trained with MNUFC during its final season in the North American Soccer League in 2016. The Loons were encouraged by what they saw.

“Great kid. Great personality. Working hard,” then-Loons sporting director Manny Lagos said about Ebobisse in October 2016.

Come January, Ebobisse remained a top candidate for the first overall pick, but Danladi moved past Ebobisse in the days leading up to the draft. That was despite concerns about Danladi’s injury history at UCLA, primarily with his hamstrings.

MNUFC made that pick official at No. 1, and Heath said it was initially confirmed as the right decision.

“We could have traded Abu to virtually every team in the MLS when he came out of college,” Heath recalled this winter. “We’ve never had as many phone calls about a player as when Abu was coming out of college.”

But in retrospect, how much did the club waver between Danladi and Ebobisse in the selection process?

“You interview them as well, and you can’t help but like Abu’s smile and infectious personality,” Heath said. “And I got to know him. I went to watch him a few times at UCLA, and got a feel for him. And I liked him as a kid.

“The one question mark was the doubt of his health. Can you keep him fit? And when you’ve got somebody who is so explosive, like he did with his pace, the hamstrings started to become an issue. And that was, for me, a real disappointment because there’s a player there.”

Under the watchful eye of head coach Adrian Heath, Abu Danladi tries to get past Kansas City’s Matt Besler in the second half as Minnesota United FC beat Sporting Kansas FC 2-0 at TCF Bank Stadium in Minneapolis, May 7, 2017. The Loons drafted Danladi over Jeremy Ebobisse in the 2017 MLS SuperDraft.  (Scott Takushi / Pioneer Press)

Since then, Ebobisse has produced 61 goals and 12 assists in 13,776 MLS minutes for Portland, San Jose Earthquakes and now LAFC.  Saturday was the first time he has scored against Minnesota, and it was a perfectly placed strike from outside the 18-yard box to the top corner of the net.

Danladi, meanwhile, has managed 16 total goals and six assists in 3,908 MLS minutes for Minnesota and Nashville SC.

To his credit, Danladi had an encouraging start with eight goals and two assists in 1,393 minutes in 2017, but only managed only three combined goals across 488 minutes in 2018 and 718 minutes in 2019.

Danladi was then nabbed by Nashville in the 2020 expansion draft, but the Ghanian scored only three goals in 657 minutes across 2020-21.

Heath remained so enamored with Danlaid that he signed him in 2022, but Danladi still couldn’t stay fit and scored two goals across 634 minutes. He went all the way to Albania to play for a club called Bylis in 2023, but that too was ineffectual and he came back to the U.S.

Ebobisse wasn’t the only player the Loons passed on in that first draft who can come with regret. Miles Robinson went No. 2 to Atlanta; the center back out of Syracuse has played 16,788 minutes for United and FC Cincinnati. He’s also a member of the U.S. men’s national team.

Four more selection players in the top eight have played more than 14,000 MLS minutes since then, including Julian Gressel (eighth to Atlanta), Bloomington’s Jackson Yueill (sixth to San Jose), Lalas Abubakar (fifth to Columbus) and Jake Nerwinski (seventh to Vancouver).

But it’s Ebobisse who has the Loons sitting at 0-1 for the first time since 2021.

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DETROIT – It takes less than two hours to fly from Boston to the Motor City, and there are dozens of daily non-stops between the two airports. That meant Brock Faber and Matt Boldy re-joining the Wild from their stint with Team USA at the 4 Nations Face-Off in time for their Saturday matinee at Little Caesars Arena was no real trouble.

For Faber, getting back together with his team after an international competition is something he’s proven adept at, even if it means traveling from – literally – the other side of the Earth.

Canada’s Mason McTavish (32) and United States’ Brock Faber (14) skate behind the net during a preliminary round men’s hockey game at the 2022 Winter Olympics, Saturday, Feb. 12, 2022, in Beijing. (AP Photo/Matt Slocum)

Three years ago, almost to the day, Faber and Minnesota Gophers teammates Matthew Knies and Ben Meyers skated for the Americans at the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing, China. Their team was eliminated on a Wednesday night, and immediately the question became whether they would get back to the U.S. in time for that weekend’s Gophers games at Penn State.

Their coach thought rest would be a better idea, but gave them the option.

“We said, ‘If you guys just want to go home (to Minnesota), go home. We’ve got this.’ That was a tough trip home,” Gophers head coach Bob Motzko recalled in a 2022 interview with The Rink Live. “The text 20 minutes later said, ‘We’re coming.’ I just gave them a thumbs-up.”

The long journey home began with a bus ride from the Olympic Village, which dropped them off at Beijing Airport several hours before their flight. That turned out to be fortunate, as a notable amount of paperwork was required for them to exit the country. The first flight took off after dark, and landed in Tokyo in the middle of the night, where they had a five-hour layover in an airport where nearly nothing was open.

“Every time we were at the airport, it was too early for anything to be open, so lots of Snickers, lots of chips, just trying to get by,” Faber said. “As soon as we got back to the states we really loaded up.”

From Tokyo, the next flight was nearly 12 hours, and landed in Dallas, where they were able to find McDonalds and a diner, to begin the process of adjusting back to an American diet. The Gophers split up in Texas. Faber went to Boston. Knies and Meyers went to Charlotte, N.C. They met up again in Harrisburg, Pa., a few hours later then took a two-hour car ride to State College, arriving at the team hotel after 11 p.m. Friday, a few hours after a shorthanded Gophers team had won the series opener.

With all of the flights and layovers and changing time zones, the details are fuzzy, but they estimate the trip from China to small-town Pennsylvania took somewhere between 34 and 40 hours.

And after all of that effort, Knies couldn’t play versus the Nittany Lions, due in part to bumps and bruises from the Olympics, and a sore back from all of those plane rides. Meyers and Faber looked dead in the first period as Penn State built a 3-0 lead. At the first intermission, Motzko told his team to either start the plane and head home, or start playing hockey. Faber and Meyers were in no hurry to get back on a flight.

Their games, and the Gophers, roared back in the final 40 minutes, scoring six of the next seven goals – three of them assisted by Meyers, who would be named Big Ten most valuable player a month later – as the Gophers won 6-4.

And on the two-hour charter back to MSP, all three Olympians got some sleep.