CHICAGO — Carlos Correa wants to make a rehab assignment before returning from plantar fasciitis that has forced him to miss 17 games through Monday night’s game against the Cubs at Wrigley Field.

He didn’t do that last season when returning from the same injury, in a different foot, and wishes he had.

“I felt like last time I didn’t get any at-bats, and it took me two, three games to get back to form, and then you’re playing catch-up,” he said last Saturday. “So, I think we’re in a good spot, and hopefully I can get back in there as soon as possible.”

Could that be as soon as this week with Triple-A St. Paul? The Saints are host to six games against Columbus, but the all-star shortstop still needs to clear a few checkpoints before playing anywhere. As of Monday afternoon, there were no plans for Correa to be at CHS Field on Tuesday.

Twins manager Rocco Baldelli said Correa will go out on assignment but said Monday, “I’m not exactly sure when it is at this point, but sooner than later. … He’s doing well. He’s getting close.”

The Twins are 9-6 since Correa was sidelined just before the all-star break, and the goal is to get him back feeling good rather than get him back as soon as possible. On the other hand, it would be nice to have him back for a four-game series against Cleveland this weekend at Target Field.

The Guardians have a 4½ game lead on the Twins in the American League Central Division with 50 regular-season games remaining.

Fashion? It’s ‘comfort’

Carlos Santana turned 38 in April, but that doesn’t mean he can’t be a fashion trend setter, even if other major league players haven’t warmed to his pants-over-the-knees look.

“For right now, no,” Santana said. “I’m the only player using (it).”

The first-year Twins first baseman used to wear his baseball pants down past his shoe tops in the still-popular style pioneered by former Astros slugger Derek Bell. Now, he is essentially wearing shorts over a couple of pairs of lycra running pants.

Why?

“Comfort,” he said. “I changed to do something different, something fun, and to be comfortable. People like it, people don’t like it. But, you know, I feel good.”

The pants are, of course, a special order. The Twins’ equipment staff cuts the pants to Santana’s desired length, then cuffs them with elastic.

Royce Lewis is on board.

“I think he has good swag, man,” the third baseman said.

It certainly hasn’t hurt Santana’s performance this season. He entered Monday night’s game against the Cubs hitting .243 with 21 doubles, 14 homers and 48 runs batted in over 101 games while playing some of the best defensive baseball of his career.

Santana won a Silver Slugger Award as Cleveland’s first baseman in 2019 but has never won a Gold Glove, something he hopes to do this season. Correa, a great student of baseball’s statistics, said he should.

“If the season ended today, he should be a Gold Glover and a finalist for the Platinum Glove,” he said Saturday. “He’s got 11 Outs Above Average. He has been playing outstanding defense. He’s making everybody on our infield better every single day, with the way he picks every single throw that we throw in the dirt.

“I think when you seriously consider his numbers, there’s nobody better in the American League, numbers wise.”

That 11 outs above average leads all first basemen, according to mlb.com’s Statcast.

Briefly

Byron Buxton, who left Sunday’s game after hitting the wall on a catch in the sixth inning, was not in the lineup Monday. Baldelli said his day off wasn’t related to the collision and that the center fielder would play Tuesday night. … The Twins have placed left-handed reliever Steven Okert on the bereavement list. To replace him on the 26-man active roster, they recalled right-hander Josh Winder from St. Paul. … The Twins didn’t have any update Monday on Brock Stewart, who appears to be weighing whether to have season-ending surgery on his sore right shoulder.

Related Articles

Carlos Correa: Twins biggest deadline deal would be ‘us taking our game to a different level’

Twins place Correa, Paddack on injured list, recall Julien

Carlos Correa’s torrid stretch earns him player of the week honors

Twins’ big trio helps lead them to victory over Athletics

Twins rally to edge Royals, take three of four from AL Central rival

Saint Dinette, the creative French-inspired Lowertown bistro, will close once its lease expires in March 2025.

Don’t call it a funeral, owner Tim Niver said: no flowers, no mourning. Part of why he’s giving plenty of notice is because he wants to give the restaurant a proper celebratory send-off, he said. After all, he told his staff this spring, nearly a year in advance.

“It’s better to really live and love this one out,” he said.

Owner Tim Niver at Mucci’s Italian Restaurant in St. Paul on Friday, April 8, 2016. (John Autey / Pioneer Press)

Niver, who opened Saint Dinette in 2015 with J.D. Fratzke and Brad Tetzloff, also runs Mucci’s near West Seventh and hosts a podcast exploring issues affecting the restaurant industry. Closures are sad, he said, but it’s not inherently bad to recognize when the tires are running out of air.

“It’s sad because there’s memories that were made there, but those don’t go away,” Niver said. “A thing that’s an entity to you,  kind of like a living thing, ceases to exist other than memory. But we f—ing rocked that restaurant, and it’s such a good restaurant. It’s always been. I’m proud.”

The primary reason is financial, Niver said — not that the restaurant is underperforming, exactly, but that the business expenses that skyrocketed during Covid have not adjusted back down as the economy has improved, so his menu prices are unsustainably high.

If inflation is improving such that stores like Target can drop prices on thousands of products, Niver asked, why are food distribution giants like Sysco and U.S. Foods not doing the same? The restaurant’s ingredient costs have increased about 8 to 12 percent just over last year alone, he said.

Or take insurance: Because this country lacks an organized, centralized health care coverage system, Niver said — which “would bring a collective joy and ease to the majority of the population” — small businesses are on the hook when insurance companies raise premiums for the sake of their own profits.

“I’m wondering if they really realize what they’re doing by keeping prices as high as they are,” Niver said. “I think they’re trying to get us to succumb to this as the new normal, and I can’t. I run a neighborhood restaurant and I’ve got $30 entrees — there’s a point where it just doesn’t work anymore.”

The other challenge, of course, is that downtown and Lowertown have transformed since before Covid.

To replace lost revenue from workers’ lunches and dinners, downtown areas need to find new ways to draw people in from elsewhere, he said — and it’s not sustainable to rely on just one or even a few businesses to do that alone.

“I don’t want to pin it all on the city, but the city needs to understand that a fervent business community is a fervent economic community as a whole,” Niver said. “People don’t just show up to do nothing. They don’t show up to go somewhere and not be entertained. But somehow, I’m doing all the entertaining, and the city is like, ‘Oh, he must be doing alright.’”

Saint Dinette joins several recent restaurant closures in St. Paul that have come at the end of a lease term — Tavern on Grand, Salut Bar Americain, Foxy Falafel, to name a few — which Niver said makes sense. The end of a lease makes a complex decision simpler and more feasible, he said; you don’t want to find yourself insolvent one day with years left on a lease.

And as costs keep increasing, that fear also means restaurateurs, at least in Niver’s orbit, are becoming more hesitant to sign new leases and open new restaurants at all, he said.

“You have to be smarter, more limber to what happens in the moment,” Niver said. “But things (shouldn’t) have to hit rock bottom for there to be some sort of fire lit in people to understand, maybe we could’ve maintained this all along with a little bit better attention.”

Saint Dinette: 261 E. 5th St., St. Paul; 651-800-1415; saintdinette.com

Related Articles

Vinai, chef Yia Vang’s love letter to family and country, opens in Northeast Minneapolis

New food truck Greater Tater is a whirlwind dream for lifelong Stillwater friends, one of whom has Down syndrome

Beirut Restaurant in West St. Paul to move and change concepts

Miijim serves Indigenous-inspired fare on Madeline Island

Chef Brian Ingram of Hope Breakfast, others to compete on ‘Beat Bobby Flay’