Twins manager Rocco Baldelli takes on a new duty: He's a papa

Rocco Baldelli's attention was elsewhere. Five o'clock would come around, but maybe Louisa needed a diaper changed, or a doctor would be in the room checking on the newborn infant, and he just didn't notice.

But his wife, Allie, did. "She told me, 'Put the TV on. The game is coming on,' " the Twins manager said Friday of his team's four-game series in Cleveland. "So we watched. It was really, really good to watch all the guys come out and play hard and play well."

The Twins won three of four, which was a nice way to finish off a road trip, but hardly the reason Baldelli called this week "some of the best days of my life." Louisa Sunny Baldelli, whose first name is the same as her great-grandfather's, was born late Monday night in Minneapolis, the couple's first child, and the start to something even bigger than baseball.

"I'm already starting to feel a little differently about some things, in life and everything going on. Most of my attention has just been on looking after everyone," Baldelli said. "I don't know if I feel like a new man, but I like what I'm feeling."

The manager said he conferred by phone or text message with acting manager Bill Evers every day, but he hardly needed to, he said. Evers, after all, managed in the minor leagues for two decades, and won five championships. "He's excellent at what he does, so that was very comforting for me," Baldelli said.

And Baldelli intends to be excellent in this new challenge. "I'm on diaper duty sometimes. I'm on feeding duty as well and I love it," he said. "I get right in there, I don't mess around from afar. I try to get involved in any way I can. It's fun."

Taylor Rogers won't pitch again this season, and Randy Dobnak almost certainly won't either. That was the disappointing, but not surprising, verdict after the pair of Twins pitchers visited hand specialist Thomas Graham at Cleveland Clinic on Thursday.

Baldelli said Graham found that the partial tear of a ligament in Dobnak's middle finger, which kept him out of action for two months, is now a full tear. And Rogers is still bothered by the ligament strain in his pitching hand. With only three weeks left to play, there's no reason to rush their recovery, the manager said.

But neither pitcher needs surgery to correct the problem, Graham informed the team. The recommended treatment is rest, allowing scar tissue to form and repair the damage itself. With five months before spring training, both pitchers should be recovered in time for next season.

Rogers, in fact, will begin playing catch in the outfield sometime this week to test his progress.

The NFL's schedule makers have ruined what could have been the coolest reunion in Charlotte Christian High's history.

The Vikings open their season Sunday at Cincinnati, preventing third-year center Garrett Bradbury from being at Target Field this weekend to visit his former batterymates, Twins rookie Bailey Ober and Royals rookie Jackson Kowar.

"He was our catcher in high school," Ober said. "He's married to Jackson's oldest sister, Carson. He came to my debut [in May], but since [Vikings] camp started, he's been pretty busy."

Still, this weekend is a thrill for the pair of right-handers, who helped the Knights win four consecutive North Carolina baseball championships. "Me and Jackson were pretty close in high school. He was a sophomore when I was a senior," Ober said. "I lived about 45 minutes to an hour away from the school, so I used to stay at his house on weekends so I could have a little bit of social interaction with my friends."

The North Carolinians stood behind home plate for 15 minutes before Friday's game, catching up on what has been a thrilling season for both. Ober has put himself in the middle of the Twins' 2022 plans with a strong rookie season, while Kowar, drafted in the first round after winning a College World Series with Florida in 2017, reached the majors for two weeks in June, then rejoined the Royals when rosters expanded this month.

"I don't think in our wildest dreams we expected to get here like this," said Kowar, whose 9.53 ERA after five games shows the difficulty of making the adjustment from minor league ball that has come somewhat easier for Ober this year. "We're really blessed, and we're just going to take as much advantage of it as we can."

— The offseason competition for some of the best available talent has already begun, and it's not limited to the free-agent market. The Twins are one of several teams posting job listings for their analytics department. The team's new director of baseball research, filling a vacancy created when Karim Kassam left last spring for a position with the Jacksonville Jaguars, will "oversee the development of analytical solutions that improve the club's baseball performance," the listing says, and "communicate findings with coaches, scouts and front-office executives."

— The Twins honored South Dakota's Little League World Series semifinalists before the game, but the real honor came 90 minutes earlier, when several Twins players greeted the 10- to-12-year-olds from Sioux Falls. Shortstop Brekken Biteler even played catch with his Twins counterpart, Andrelton Simmons.