AaronGleeman.com

• Changes at the Minneapolis Star Tribune, as Joe Christensen and Phil Miller are swapping roles in 2013, with Christensen covering Gophers football and Miller covering the Twins. I'm sad to see Christensen leave the Twins beat he did so well while increasingly blending stats into his work and being nice/understanding to bloggers. With that said, Miller is an excellent writer, an even better guy, and was stellar on the Twins beat in his St. Paul Pioneer Press days.

• "Saturday Night Live" really ought to just have Louis C.K. host every week.

• I'm thinking about getting a similar tattoo that reads "You've Made A Terrible Mistake."

• I saw Artie Lange, Dave Attell, Jim Norton, and Amy Schumer perform a great stand-up comedy show Saturday night at Mystic Lake Casino. One of the running jokes of the night was how no one--comedians or audience members--could drink, but apparently that's all changing.

• Now the real insanity test will be if I keep watching "Survivor" after Jeff Kent's crazy exit.

• If we pretend for a moment that the Twins might actually sign a top-of-the-rotation starter, who are their options?

• This week's "Gleeman and The Geek" episode was recorded Sunday at Stella's Fish Cafe and featured me getting so annoyed with John Bonnes that I threatened to punch him in the face. After the podcast mercifully ended we headed upstairs to hang out with a few dozen people who got together in the name of charity to watch the Vikings game, at which point Bonnes thought it would be a great idea to shoot this four-minute (four-minute!) video of me:

My co-stars are Dana Wessel of 1500-ESPN, Chris Long of KSTP, and Heather Balgaard of being completely ashamed to appear in the above video.

• And speaking of Bonnes' anti-semitism discussed in the video, congrats to Delmon Young!

• Charles Barkley leaving "Inside The NBA" would make me incredibly sad, but in the meantime at least this was funny.

• Sideline reporter Robby Incmikoski is leaving FOX Sports North to take a job in Pittsburgh, where hopefully the bloggers aren't such big jerks and he can live in peace.

• Say what you will about Tim Tebow, but the man has good taste.

• Remember all those "best shape of his life" stories from spring training? How did those players actually fare this season?

• Once upon a time Brien Taylor was a No. 1 overall pick and baseball's best pitching prospect. Now he's going to prison for selling crack.

• Melky Cabrera is a finalist for the "Heart and Hustle" award despite his suspension.

• This is definitely my favorite form of child abuse.

• I have no doubt this show would be terrible and no doubt I would watch it.

• One of the most amusing knockouts you'll ever see.

• Baseball Think Factory is where all the good international scouting directors got their start.

• If you liked the Pepsi commercial in which Kyrie Irving was made up to look like an old man and played basketball you'll really love the new version with Irving and Kevin Love:

Love does a pretty convincing job stumbling around the court initially, although the whole being 6-foot-10 thing is tough to hide.

• Andrei Kirilenko and Nikola Pekovic made Alexey Shved cut his hair.

• Gregg Popovich's contempt for in-game television interviews is already in midseason form.

• Any fellow Maximum Fun podcast fans want to go with me to this convention next year? I'm mostly serious, I think.

• Speaking of which, for anyone into podcasts I wrote a lengthy article reviewing my favorites.

• In at least one key area Bryant McKinnie hasn't lost a step since leaving the Vikings.

• Old friend Mike Redmond has replaced Ozzie Guillen as Marlins manager and weather-wise Miami is a pretty good locale for naked batting practice.

• Dodgers catcher A.J. Ellis is good story and his wife is a great story.

• Popeyes is trying to move into KFC's turf in Minnesota.

• Carson Cistulli's chat with Matt Klaassen was very enjoyable if you're interested in two baseball writers talking about anything but baseball.

• AG.com reader Mike Fuchs compared Target Field to six other ballparks he visited recently.

• Some of this week's weird and random search engine queries that brought people here:

- "Dana Wessel hair"
- "Gleeman and Christopher Walken"
- "Jose Mijares girlfriend"
- "Jacqueline Bisset podcast"
- "Snoop Dogg bobblehead"
- "Statistical analysis for hire"
- "Nude party notes"
- "Marijuana and Chinese food"
- "How many donuts would equal 40 pounds"

• Finally, this week's AG.com-approved music video is "Don't Sweat The Technique" by Eric B. and Rakim:

• Clark Kent quit his newspaper job at the Daily Planet and might become a blogger.

• Something tells me this isn't quite how "the archetypal blogger's lair" should really look, if only because it appears to be an above-ground room.

• Behind the scenes of HardballTalk, where we're very serious about the photos used in posts.

• Alison Brie and Gillian Jacobs are my new favorite tag team, replacing The Road Warriors.

• Delmon Young, in addition to being MVP of the ALCS, is also the reigning king of GIFs.

• Old friend Mike Redmond is a strong candidate to replace Ozzie Guillen as Marlins manager.

• This week's "Gleeman and The Geek" episode featured lots of talk about what to expect from the Twins' offseason and me singing a Beyonce song. We're recording next week's episode Saturday afternoon at "Surly Darkness Day" in Brooklyn Center, so if you see a couple weirdos talking into microphones while everyone around them drinks beer come say hello.

• Last week my YouTube debut was such a massive hit that I decided to get behind the camera for this week's video, so here's my debut as a film maker:

Hey, at least I figured out how to shoot the video in landscape mode.

• Marco Scutaro as Andy Dufresne is my favorite moment from the playoffs so far.

• It's almost as if Official Fantasy Girl of AG.com Mila Kunis doesn't care what I think any more.

• CopyBlogger.com posted "eight strange habits for very successful writers" and I'm happy to say at least three and sometimes four of them apply to me. Feel free to guess which ones.

• Louis C.K. is hosting "Saturday Night Live" on November 3, so I'll be watching "Saturday Night Live" for the first time in a long time.

• Carlton Fisk decided to make his own very weird sequel to "Field of Dreams."

• Ball Don't Lie has an interesting, lengthy preview of the Timberwolves co-written by three of the best basketball bloggers around.

• The world's toughest job is now open.

• Truth or dare? Truth. I took two pages of notes while watching this week's "Survivor" so I could write a stupid Jeff Kent recap post.

• This review of "Gleeman and The Geek" describes exactly what we're going for.

• In bad movies forcing the title into the dialogue can seem incredibly forced, but in a good movie you get some memorable moments like this:

I also appreciate the sheer randomness of the movies picked for that video.

• If you're into mixed martial arts this lengthy roundtable discussion with Ariel Helwani and my old NBCSports.com colleague Mike Chiappetta is definitely worth watching.

• And people say Twitter bots are dumb.

• Finally, some meaningful analysis about homefield (or grass) advantage in the World Series.

• Whatever you think of the Twins' farm system in recent years, at least they aren't forcing top prospects to go through this silliness.

• Since the World Series is also known as the "fall classic" it's safe to say Lil Wayne finally gave at least one of the seasons reason to hate him.

• "Fantasy Football Almanac" is a pretty cool idea from Deadspin.

• Oh, no. This changes everything.

• I'm proud to be a very small part of MinnPost, which is celebrating its fifth anniversary.

• My new thing is watching dark, depressing foreign movies on Netflix after midnight, so if you want to be a miserable insomniac check out "King of Devil's Island," "Bonsai," and "Sidewalls."

• Some of this week's weird and random search engine queries that brought people here:

- "What real men look like"
- "Brooklyn Decker baseballs"
- "Authentic dark colored chicken fried rice"
- "John Sharkman"
- "Susan Tedeschi baseball game"
- "Top rated elbow surgeons"
- "Glen Perkins net worth"
- "Carson Cistulli wife hot"
- "Chelsea Peretti drugs"
- "Livan Hernandez golf club"

• Finally, this week's AG.com-approved music video is "Could You Be Loved" by Bob Marley:

• It turns out the coaching shakeup wasn't as extreme as first believed, as the reconfigured staff includes Joe Vavra and Scott Ullger sticking around in new roles. Vavra goes from hitting coach to third base coach and Ullger goes from bench coach to first base coach. Ullger is running out of jobs he can be moved to, going from hitting coach to third base coach to bench coach to first base coach, which is the role he filled upon joining Tom Kelly's staff in 1994.

Vavra and Ullger remaining on Ron Gardenhire's staff and Rick Anderson keeping his job as pitching coach means the shakeup led to just three new coaches: Tom Brunansky replaces Vavra as hitting coach, Bobby Cuellar replaces Rick Stelmaszek as bullpen coach, and Terry Steinbach replaces Ullger as bench coach. Brunansky and Cuellar were the Triple-A hitting and pitching coaches, while Steinbach has been an assistant coach for Wayzata high school.

Cuellar is an intriguing addition because he has a lengthy track record in the minors that includes being credited with teaching Johan Santana his incredible changeup and also gives the Twins a much-needed Spanish-speaking coach. Brunansky was promoted from Double-A to Triple-A this year and has drawn some rave reviews for his work with young hitters, so it will be interesting to see how his approach differs from Vavra's, especially with Vavra still around.

Cuellar and Brunansky were expected additions, but Steinbach seemingly came out of nowhere after the Twins decided against taking Paul Molitor up on his offer to join the staff. Steinbach is a Minnesota native who starred for the Gophers and spent the last three seasons of his 14-year career with the Twins, but he's never coached professionally beyond being a spring training instructor. In addition to bench coach duties he'll work specifically with catchers.

It's not often that you see both a hitting coach and a bench coach demoted to base coaches, but it fits with the Twins' overall reluctance to make sweeping changes. Even when they shake things up they still can't quite say goodbye to longtime staffers and in the end Stelmaszek, first base coach Jerry White, third base coach Steve Liddle are the only members of the 2012 staff who won't be on the 2013 staff.

• There was a major change in the front office, as Jim Rantz announced his retirement after an astounding 52 years in the organization as a player, scout, and executive. Rantz was born in St. Paul, pitched for the Gophers, and actually predates the team's move to Minnesota, signing with the Washington Senators in 1960. He never made the majors, but pitched five years in the minors and went on to become one of the most important people in Twins history.

For the past 27 years Rantz has been the Twins' minor league director, overseeing the draft and development of prospects that has consistently played such a key role in any success the organization has found during that time. He's specifically credited with picking Kirby Puckett third overall in the 1982 draft and repeatedly received awards from his peers in the scouting community. Rantz's right-hand man, Brad Steil, has been named the interim replacement.

• Kyle Gibson is turning heads with his performance in the Arizona Fall League, combining great results with better velocity than he showed prior to Tommy John elbow surgery last year. So far we're only talking about a total of 13 innings, so the sample size is barely worth mentioning, but Gibson has a 0.69 ERA and 19-to-2 strikeout-to-walk ratio while inducing nearly three ground balls for every fly ball. Keith Law of ESPN.com filed this scouting report:

Gibson was very impressive Tuesday in his second start of the fall, working from 92-94, driving the ball down in the zone, and showing a plus slider at 83-86 that he would throw in any count, in or out of the zone, and would even back-foot to a left-handed hitter when the guy might be looking for a changeup away. He did show a true changeup, but was mostly fastball-slider and looked like a big leaguer, and one with a higher ceiling than he showed as an amateur when he had a pretty-but-slow curveball as his primary breaking ball.

Gibson wouldn't be the first pitcher to come back from Tommy John surgery throwing harder than before, but that certainly hasn't been the norm for Twins pitchers over the years and too often the opposite has been true. He still has a long way to go, but so far so good.

• On this week's "Gleeman and The Geek" episode we did a tutorial on transaction, roster, and service time issues and one of them was the circumstances in which "Super Two" players get an extra year of arbitration eligibility. Based on MLB Trade Rumors' calculations Twins reliever Alex Burnett missed qualifying for "Super Two" status by four days, so he'll make the minimum salary in 2013 rather than potentially doubling that amount via the arbitration process.

• In preparation for the offseason teams are clearing 40-man roster space by waiving players and because of their high waiver wire priority the Twins may be able to snag someone useful. Their own housecleaning should come soon and marginal players on the 40-man roster include Luis Perdomo, Esmerling Vasquez, Matt Carson, Jeff Manship, P.J. Walters, Deolis Guerra, Cole DeVries, Samuel Deduno, Carlos Gutierrez, Kyle Waldrop, and Drew Butera.

• Just a reminder in the wake of his ALCS MVP: Delmon Young has hit .268/.296/.422 in 191 regular season games for the Tigers, was moved to designated hitter on a team that has Miguel Cabrera and Prince Fielder in the field, hit .240/.270/.320 in "high leverage" situations this year to rank dead last among 143 qualified hitters in Win Probability Added, ranked 139 out of 143 in Wins Above Replacement, and hit .235/.278/.235 in the ALDS. Shit happens.

• I wrote the foreword for the "2013 Offseason Handbook" published by Twins Daily, which includes an incredible amount of good, unique content written by John Bonnes, Seth Stohs, Nick Nelson, and Parker Hageman, plus a lengthy interview with Terry Ryan. I'm not part of the Twins Daily crew, so my recommendation is based purely on merit: For just $6.95 you can get a great product and support writers who provide tons of free Twins content year-round.

• There's no real correlation between playing ability and coaching ability, but I ranked Brunansky as the 28th-best player in Twins history.

• I'll start breaking down potential free agent options, trade targets, and other offseason topics once the World Series is over, but in the meantime this week's episode of "Gleeman and The Geek" includes a lengthy preview of the Twins' payroll situation and winter plans along with a position-by-position look at free agency.

• If you thought Tom Hardy was hard to understand as Bane, wait until you hear the original.

• Official Fantasy Girl of AG.com candidate Aubrey Plaza seems nice.

• Delmon Young is back in court and looking for a plea deal in his hate crime case. Mazel tov!

• Lew Ford is 35 years old and back in the majors for the first time since 2007.

• My mom sent me this link and wrote "could be trouble."

• And then about three minutes later she sent me this link and wrote "sorry."

• Let this be a lesson to local mainstream media: Being nice to bloggers is good for business.

• Nine rejections, one chip on your shoulder, and zero other ideas can make you do something for 10 years. Thankfully.

• Speaking of which, can I use all you guys as references? Fingers crossed!

• My blogging debut on August 1, 2002 was about the Marlins overworking A.J. Burnett. One day short of exactly 10 years later Burnett threw a one-hit shutout.

• This is the perfect tweet, obviously.

• Vin Scully + Twitter = adorable:

I still tune into Dodgers games almost every night just to hear him, at age 84.

• Maybe things get polished a little bit in translation, but Andrei Kirilenko comes across as incredibly smart in this interview about signing with the Timberwolves.

• Guess who leads the AL in homers, RBIs, slugging percentage, and OPS since May 15?

• Amanda Dobbins examined if The Cutting Edge holds up 20 years later, which reminded me that I watched it at least 10 times on television as a kid and had a crush on Moira Kelly.

• Speaking of movies I've seen on TV double-digit times, Super Troopers is getting a sequel.

• I never know what topics Paul Allen has in mind when I show up to KFAN's studio and this week we ended up talking about our respective food issues and my weight loss quite a bit.

• For anyone who heard the aforementioned weight loss discussion on KFAN yesterday and wants to know more about my story, click here.

• My bourbon-drinking buddy Cee Angi has a very interesting article about the role of gender in baseball writing.

• I'm ashamed and disgusted to admit how charmed I was by this conversation between Carson Cistulli and Dayn Perry.

• Parker Posey had a great guest role on Louie and did an interview with Grantland about the experience which she ended by asking: "Why isn't there more ping-pong on television?"

• Glen Perkins shared some unique insight into the trade deadline experience.

• If you missed my analysis of the Francisco Liriano trade, I wrote a bunch of words about it and also talked a bunch about it on the radio.

• I'm convinced Paul F. Tompkins deserves a talk show, but these videos will have to suffice:

Zach Galifianakis is pretty good too, of course.

• My all-time favorite podcast guest, Chelsea Peretti, was predictably great on Alison Rosen Is Your New Best Friend.

• I was way too excited for Sunday's season premiere of Bar Rescue, which is my favorite cheesy reality show. You can watch the episodes online and fall in love with Jon Taffer.

• As someone who attended the annual National Sports Collectors Convention a handful of times as a kid, I can only imagine the crazy scene there as this happened.

• I got a nice e-mail from Steve Braun after he read my profile ranking him as the 35th-best player in Twins history. Now if only I had enough free time to finish the series. (Sorry.)

• UFC fans will enjoy watching Tito Ortiz's informal, two-hour conversation with Joe Rogan. It really changed the way I think of him.

• Netflix instant recommendation: Goon, which charmed me despite a shaky start.

• In terms of great Jon Hamm guest roles, this might be even better than his 30 Rock stint.

• Artie Lange, Todd Barry, and Greg Fitzsimmons was podcasting magic (and also filthy).

• Having dealt with them in the past, Metro Magazine closing up shop is sad but not surprising.

• Back by popular demand, this week's most amusing, weird, and random search engine queries that brought people here:

- "Aaron Gleeman fat"
- "Dick Bremer salary"
- "Binge once a week weight loss"
- "Aaron Gleeman chicken"
- "Jerome Felton girlfriend"
- "Hormel chicken packaging"
- "Rob McElhenney exact weight"
- "Yuengling in Minneapolis"
- "Mustache dresser games"
- "Back hair baseball jersey"
- "Jason Kubel's sister"
- "Jon Rauch tattoos"
- "Paul Charchian versus Karl Pilkington"

• Finally, this week's AG.com-approved music video is a live version of "I Can't Hear You" by The Dead Weather:

This week's blog content is sponsored by the local B&B Blog, a top 20 accounting blog and "the most fascinating accounting blog in the world." Please support them for supporting AG.com.

• I'm pretty convinced that it will rank somewhere between incredibly embarrassing and utterly humiliating, but at Paul Allen's urging and in the name of good radio "Girls Gone Gleeman" is a dating game-style show that's going to happen on KFAN live from the state fair next month. I'll pass along full details later, but in the meantime you can listen to us brainstorming on the air yesterday (mixed in with a bunch of Twins talk during an hour-long segment).

• Based on this St. Paul Pioneer Press headline for Ben Goessling's article, the Twins now have the same problem that's plagued bloggers.

• Join the club, Demi.

• Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David more or less shooting the shit for a day is basically perfect.

• Delmon Young has a gorgeous new mustache, which more than makes up for his .700 OPS.

• Zubaz, white limousines, pitching machines, and Minnesota fashion icons of the 1980s.

• I've given up trying to explain Jason Marquis since the Twins released him.

• Behold, the most Carlos Gomez thing in the history of Carlos Gomez things.

And of course the at-bat ends the only way the at-bat could possibly end.

• I give Michael Phelps credit for not being afraid to further his stoner reputation.

• Kevin Love apparently stays awake on flights to document his Olympic teammates sleeping.

• I'm thinking about trying to put $100,000 together just to hang out with Hakeem Olajuwon.

• Gordon Ramsay making $38 million per year may seem like a lot, but that breaks down to less than 50 dollars per television show.

• On a related note, as a loyal Twitter follower seeing Chelsea Peretti make a brief cameo as an unhappy diner on Hell's Kitchen cracked me up.

• Cal Ripken Jr.'s mother was abducted at gunpoint and Orioles manager Buck Showalter shared a similarly scary story about his mother.

• Warning: Don't use the bathroom around Michael Morse.

• Pirates prospect Starling Marte debuted last night and homered on the first pitch he saw.

• I like to watch Ted Berg make sandwiches.

• As a kid I often wrote stuff on my mom's old typewriter for absolutely no reason other than it seemed fun, but as an adult I'm not quite pretentious enough to install this on my laptop.

• Here's a Google Chat transcript of what happened when my mom asked me why Twitter wasn't working yesterday afternoon:

I waited another half-hour to fess up, and only because Twitter finally started working again.

• Interesting news in the online sportswriting world, as former Fanhouse founding editor and Yahoo! director of blogs Jamie Mottram has a new job with USA Today Sports Media Group.

• An original baseball blogger, Jon Weisman, celebrated 10 years of Dodger Thoughts.

• Now that Alex Rodriguez is old and injured, what are his chances of breaking Barry Bonds' all-time homer record? I'm glad you asked.

• It turns out the mask makes everyone as scary as Bane.

• The Trade Deadline Rises.

• Movie recommendation: The Prestige, which is the film Christopher Nolan directed in between Batman Begins and The Dark Knight. It somehow flew under my radar until now, but has a few of the usual Nolan favorites in an interesting story and is well worth a $1.99 rental on Amazon.

• Speaking of the usual Nolan favorites, this made me laugh.

• Thanks to Barnabas Piper for naming Gleeman and The Geek as one of his favorite podcasts.

• According to this completely scientific poll, AG.com is the second-best "sports blog" and I'm the ninth-best "sports talk radio personality."

• Every day hundreds of people arrive at AG.com via search engine queries and most of them are Googling stuff like "Gleeman" or "Twins blog." I'm also amused by the weird and seemingly random searches that lead people here, so here are some of my favorites from this week:

- "Chuck Knoblauch fat"
- "Dick Bremer hates Kevin Slowey"
- "B.J. Hermsen salary"
- "Rene Tosoni salary"
- "Dana Wessel hair"
- "Kate Bilo age"
- "Evan Longoria dating Kate Upton"
- "Why does Matt Capps suck so badly"
- "Is eating a pound of carrots really zero points"
- "How many children does Brett Myers have"
- "Sasha Gray blog"
- "Patrick Reusse diet"
- "Jay-Z is not left-handed"
- "Kathy Kepler ballet"
- "Is a .199 batting average good"
- "Jenna Fischer covered post-it notes"

And then there were like 500 variations of "how to lose 150 pounds."

• Finally, in honor of Paul Allen describing me to potential dating game applicants as having "a George Michael beard" this week's AG.com-approved music video is "Faith":

This week's blog content is sponsored by Ballplayer: Pelotero, a controversial new documentary about baseball prospects in the Dominican Republic starring Miguel Sano as a 16-year-old.