The Twins reached Monday’s off day just more than 20 percent through their 162-game season after a pair of one-run victories in Boston. There were some positive signs in those final two games against the Red Sox, but by all accounts, the team isn’t where it wants to be.

The set to start a three-game series against Baltimore starting Tuesday, the Twins sit 15-20 in fourth place in the American League Central, far from where they thought they would be. Here are five observations through the first five (plus) weeks of the season.

Injuries have piled up — again

Somehow, some way injuries wind up being a big storyline for the Twins every year. In April, that was no different.

Royce Lewis was activated from the injured list (hamstring) on Monday but has yet to make his 2025 debut. Willi Castro was activated, as well, but his absence because of an oblique strain lasted longer than the Twins anticipated.

Pablo López had a minor hamstring strain but has since returned. Matt Wallner (hamstring) and Luke Keaschall (forearm), whose one week in the majors provided much to like, are both likely out through May — tough news for a team that could use their production at the plate.

As a result, the Twins went out and grabbed both Jonah Bride and Kody Clemens in trades for cash considerations to fill out the roster. Both, along with Mickey Gasper, have seen more playing of late.

The injury problem has been exasperated by the fact that two players that likely would have been called up — Austin Martin and Jose Miranda — are on the Triple-A injured list.

Starting pitching has been a strength

It’s not a surprise, but it’s been nice for the Twins to see this play out as expected, particularly after a tough go of it at the beginning of the season.

Bailey Ober, dealing with an illness, got rocked in his first start of the season for eight runs but has given up just a run in five of his six outings since then. Joe Ryan has pitched to a 2.93 earned-run average, picking up where he left off last season before an injury cut his year short. López has not given up more than two earned runs in any of his starts this season.

Chris Paddack, like Ober, got crushed in his first start but has rebounded. Against Boston on Sunday, he gave up three runs in five innings. And Simeon Woods Richardson has kept the Twins in games. The starters have a 3.50 ERA as a group, sixth in the majors entering Monday’s play.

“I had a lot of belief that our rotation was going to be strong,” manager Rocco Baldelli said. “That first week was an odd week. It was challenging. … But that’s behind us. The guys have settled in very well. They look like themselves and like they’re taking off.”

The offense not so much

And yet, the Twins find themselves looking up at .500 and feeling some urgency because the offense hasn’t performed. After firing their hitting coaches after last year’s finish, the Twins have an offense that offense ranks in the lower third of the majors in many major categories (average, on-base percentage, slugging percentage, OPS, home runs, runs per game).

Sometimes it seems as if they’re on the verge from breaking things open, just a hit away. But those big hits have often been hard to come by, and the inconsistency has plagued them during the first part of the season. Shortstop Carlos Correa, an all-star a season ago, hasn’t produced the way the Twins know he can, and his 57 OPS+ (on-base plus slugging) is 43 percent worse than the average hitter (and very far from his own career 124 OPS+).

“We just haven’t seen that level of production overall, unfortunately, from a good chunk of our lineup,” president of baseball and business operations Derek Falvey said. “But I know that it’s in there, and I know they have the ability to do it. I don’t think it’s a significant, philosophical shift across the board for everybody. It’s just some players aren’t getting those kinds of outcomes that they had before.”

New additions have looked good

The Twins didn’t make many moves this offseason, opting to keep their core intact — something questioned at the time and, for obvious reasons, now. But the additions they made have looked good so far.

Harrison Bader, brought in for his defense, has adapted seamlessly to the corner outfield positions after primarily playing center in his career (and winning a Gold Glove there). He’s made his impact felt with the bat, too. On Sunday in Boston, he scored twice and drove in a key run with a late double off the Green Monster.

Ty France has driven in a team-leading 19 runs and has had some important hits for the Twins already this season — including a walk-off winner. And Danny Coulombe, the only lefty in the bullpen, has yet to give up an earned run in 12⅓ innings. His 0.568 WHIP (Walks and Hits per Innings Pitched) is a career low, and he’s allowed just one walk while facing 44 batters.

Attendance at Target Field is down

It’s no secret that attendance has been down at Target Field, a troubling trend for the Twins. A mid-April game against the New York Mets had an announced attendance of 10,240, the lowest for a game at the ballpark in any season except the COVID-affected 2020 and 2021 campaigns.

The Twins are averaging 17,030 tickets sold through their first 14 home games. That’s a 14.3 percent decrease from the first 14 games of the 2024 season, down 2,850 tickets per game.

At a time when attendance is up across the league, Falvey posited a couple reasons for why this may be, citing some fans having ticket package that allow them to swap April tickets — when the weather might be worse — for warmer months, as well as Timberwolves and Wild playoff appearances and, of course, the team’s play.

“When we look at April, obviously not our best month on the field,” Falvey said. “That contributes, too. No other way to say it.”

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By MICHAEL WARREN

Indigenous people across North America are calling this week for sustained responses to the violence in their communities, much of it against women and girls.

In prayer walks, self-defense classes, marches and speeches at state capitols, they are pushing for better cooperation among law enforcement agencies to find missing people and solve homicides that are among about 4,300 open FBI cases this year.

Some parents say they will use Monday’s Missing and Murdered Indigenous Persons Awareness Day to make sure children understand what’s at stake.

Many young women are covering their mouths with bright red handprints, vowing to speak for those who have been silenced. According to the U.S. Justice Department, Indigenous women are more than twice as likely to be victims of homicide than the national average.

What ‘the talk’ means to Indigenous people

Lisa Mulligan, of the Forest County Potawatomi, carries this message when she rides her motorcycle from Wisconsin to rallies out West. She plans to give her two granddaughters “the talk” as they grow older about what they statistically might encounter in their lives.

She will warn them that her father was killed and another relative was a victim of sex trafficking.

“That’s why I ride for it,” Milligan said. “I don’t want it to happen to anyone else.”

Christina Castro, of Taos Pueblo in New Mexico, has a 12-year-old daughter. Navajo Nation citizen Joylana Begay-Kroupa has a 10-year-old son. They also have shared anguished reality checks, hoping to protect their children and foster change.

“Indigenous people don’t have the luxury about NOT talking to our daughters about violence against girls. I’ve had to talk with my daughter since birth about bodily autonomy,” said Castro, who co-founded the advocacy organization 3 Sisters Collective in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

The collective organized speeches at the New Mexico capitol on Sunday and a showing of part of the documentary “She Cried That Day,” about the 2015 unresolved death of Dione Thomas, a Navajo woman.

And self-defense classes will be held soon at the collective and at the Phoenix Indian Center, a social services hub for Indigenous people in Arizona’s capital.

“I always go into auntie mode. You automatically want to protect your nieces and your nephews and your children,” said Begay-Kroupa, the center’s chief executive. “Unfortunately in Indigenous communities, we’ve seen this type of suffering occur over and over again.”

She said she doesn’t hold back information when speaking with her young son.

“We have relatives that have gone missing, and we just don’t know where they’re at,” Begay-Kroupa said. “He wants to understand why, where’d they go and what happened to them.”

Yaretzi Ortega, a 15-year-old from the Gila River Indian Community who wore the red handprint Saturday, said Native Americans need to speak up every day. It’s a message she understood when she too got “the talk.”

“People need to be aware at a young age because it could happen to them,” Ortega said. “‘The talk’ is an acknowledgment of how Native American women and children have often been targeted. They have to be aware of the risks.”

Indigenous men aren’t immune. Donovan Paddock, who joined an awareness walk Friday in Scottsdale, Arizona, said two of his uncles were killed. His grandfather Layton Paddock Sr., a Navajo Code Talker, was found dead months after going missing in Winslow.

“My passion now is to help those that can’t find their loved ones,” Paddock said.

Years of advocacy have produced slow results

Some tribes have invited federal teams to lead simulation exercises showing what to do if someone goes missing.

Fully implementing Indigenous Alerts as part of state Amber Alert systems will require more resources and coordination with the 574 federally recognized tribes, Navajo Nation Council Delegate Amber Kanazbah Crotty said.

Tribal alerts only recently became eligible for federal funding, and tribes had to lobby the Federal Communications Commission before Apple upgraded iPhones to accept them, Crotty said.

Pamela Foster, a Navajo woman, has been a strong advocate since the delayed response to the 2016 kidnapping and murder of her daughter, Ashlynne Mike. Several years later, 76% of the tribes responding to a survey said they were participating in state alerts, but some state coordinators said they still didn’t even have tribal contact information.

The Trump administration in April announced a surge of FBI resources to 10 field offices to help the Bureau of Indian Affairs’ Missing and Murdered Unit and tribal police prepare cases for prosecution.

The 2023 “Not One More” recommendations commissioned by Congress no longer appears on the Justice Department website, but still can be seen at the National Indigenous Women’s Resource Center. In it, former Interior Secretary Deb Haaland noted over 84% of Native American men and women experience violence in their lifetimes.

Associated Press journalist Matt York in Scottsdale, Arizona, contributed to this report.

By JOHN LEICESTER, Associated Press

PARIS (AP) — Fearful that the kidnappers might sever another finger from their hostage or worse, the French police commander ordered his officers — with a radioed “Go” command — to raid the house where he suspected that the father of a wealthy cryptocurrency entrepreneur was being held.

Fabrice Gardon, director of Paris’ judicial police, then waited anxiously in his unit’s headquarters in the north of the French capital for the code word they use to signal that a hostage has been freed.

Finally, it came: “Jackpot!”

With seven suspects in custody, the police commander detailed in radio interviews Monday 58 hours of drama, mutilation and finally relief that marked the latest kidnapping in France of people working in the cryptocurrency business.

The victim was the father of a man who made his fortune in cryptocurrencies, the prosecutor’s office said.

Attackers wearing balaclavas bundled him into a van as he was coming out of his Paris house to walk his dog last Thursday morning, Gardon said. He said bystanders alerted police.

Speaking to RTL radio, he confirmed French media reports that the kidnappers severed one of the hostage’s fingers. He said they sent a video to his son of the mutilation and other video of his father tied up, and demanded millions of euros (dollars) in ransom.

On Saturday night, police tracked the gang to a house in the Essonne region south of Paris, where investigators believed the man was being held.

“We got there a few minutes before a new ultimatum where the victim might again have suffered another mutilation,” Gardon said.

He gave the go-ahead for an assault by a police Search and Intervention Brigade, known by its French initials, BRI. He then followed its progress over the radio from the judicial police headquarters.

“After a few moments, the head of the BRI said over the radio – using what’s our code – ’Jackpot!” In our jargon that means, ’All good. We have freed the hostage,’” he said on France Info radio.

“Obviously, it was a big relief,” he said.

The prosecutor’s office said police detained four people in or close to the house where the man was held captive, and a fifth person at the wheel of a vehicle thought to have been used for the alleged abduction.

Another two suspects were detained Sunday, it said.

It said the police investigation is looking at an array of possible criminal charges, including kidnapping “with torture or a barbaric act.”

In January, police said a co-founder of French crypto-wallet firm Ledger, David Balland, was also kidnapped with his wife from their home in the Cher region of central France.

Police said they made 10 arrests and that the alleged kidnappers demanded a ransom in cryptocurrency from another of Ledger’s co-founders.

A raid by France’s elite National Gendarmerie Intervention Group unit that specializes in hostage situations freed Balland the next day, followed the day after that by the liberation, again by the GIGN, of his wife, found tied up in a vehicle, police said.

By REBECCA SANTANA

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration says it is going to pay immigrants in the United States illegally who’ve returned to their home country voluntarily $1,000 as it pushes forward with its mass deportation agenda.

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The Department of Homeland Security said in a news release Monday that it’s also paying for travel assistance and that those people who use an app called CBP Home to tell the government that they plan to return home will be “deprioritized” for detention and removal by immigration enforcement.

“If you are here illegally, self-deportation is the best, safest and most cost-effective way to leave the United States to avoid arrest. DHS is now offering illegal aliens financial travel assistance and a stipend to return to their home country through the CBP Home App,” Secretary Kristi Noem said.

President Donald Trump has made immigration enforcement and the mass deportation of immigrants in the U.S. illegally a centerpiece of his campaign, but that is a costly, resource-intensive endeavor.

While the Republican administration is pushing Congress for a massive increase in resources for the Immigration and Customs Enforcement department responsible for removing people from the country, it’s also pushing people in the country illegally to “self-deport.”