Carlos Correa sees success ahead for Twins, with a familiar caveat: ‘If we stay on the field’

ST. LOUIS - Carlos Correa has played on three World Series teams, and he recognizes the signs of a winner, he says, in the Twins’ clubhouse.

“Everywhere you look, we’re very good. I feel great about where our rotation is at right now. Our bullpen isn’t just good, but nasty. And the lineup is very strong — if we stay on the field,” Correa said. “But if you take out the best two or three hitters from any team in baseball for a couple months, you saw what happens.”

What happened, when Correa, Byron Buxton, Max Kepler and Royce Lewis were all limited by injuries to fewer than 110 games in 2024, was a late-season collapse that still stings. The Twins, within two games of first place in the AL Central Division as late as Aug. 24, went 9-18 in September and finished fourth, 10½ games out.

But Correa, who puts himself through a 20-minute foot workout each day — he resembles a ballet dancer hopping and stretching and pirouetting on the turf — to prevent a recurrence of the plantar fasciitis that has ruined each of his past two seasons, says he sees an especially positive sign about the 2025 Twins.

“Buck is healthy,” Correa said, “and Buck is ready.”

Actually, Buxton had his first fully healthy offseason in more than a half-decade, and he followed it up with a strong spring training performance. He totaled 13 hits in 41 at-bats (a .317 batting average) with three homers, two doubles and a 1.005 OPS.

He homered in two of his last three Grapefruit League games, connecting on a 95-mph fastball from Pirates closer David Bednar on Monday, and even one of his strikeouts against Toronto’s Max Scherzer came after a 10-pitch battle.

“Obviously, I’m going in feeling good,” Buxton said. “That makes a big difference when you’re not searching for stuff going into a season. That’s the exciting part of it.”

Buxton accumulated 50 plate appearances this spring, his highest total since 2018.

“His lower half was really firing this spring in a way that gets everybody excited,” Twins manager Rocco Baldelli said. “It’s what you want to see. His legs looked strong and underneath him the entire spring. He did some things that were really impressive, stuff that maybe he couldn’t do, especially early on, in a lot of springs. You can tell he feels good.”

Twins.TV will make its debut as the new way to watch regular-season Twins games Thursday afternoon, providing streaming customers access to nearly all 162 games, and with several planned improvements.

The team is hoping the old way still works, too.

MLB negotiations with cable and satellite carriers continued Wednesday, with the Twins’ confidence shaken but still intact that such companies as Comcast, Xfinity and DirecTV will assign the team’s new streaming service to specific channels on their systems.

Hopefully well before Thursday’s 3:15 p.m. first pitch.

What the team had anticipated would be a triumphant advance into the future of sports-viewing delivery, now that it has severed ties with its former regional sports network, is being blemished by the wait-wait-wait nature of TV negotiations and the inability of paying cable and satellite subscribers to know for certain that the games are available, and where.

So how can fans watch Pablo López and the Twins face Sonny Gray and the Cardinals at Busch Stadium on Thursday? Either by subscribing to the streaming service — or checking with the Twins (or the Star Tribune) sometime Thursday. The clock is certainly ticking.

Randy Dobnak hasn’t been with the Twins on Opening Day since 2021. This time seems more fun, especially since it was unexpected.

Dobnak is filling the bullpen spot that Brock Stewart will reclaim once he completes a rehab assignment with the Class AAA Saints, probably as early as next week. So Dobnak knows his time may be short.

In 2021, though, the longtime starter made the team as a relief pitcher, with the most unpredictable of assignments: long relief. Someone who pitches when the score grows lopsided, whether his team is far ahead or far behind.

“It’s definitely a different kind of mindset,” Dobnak said, because the high-leverage relievers will get work along the way to keep them loose, even in non-save situations. But the long reliever? He sits and waits.

Dobnak pitched on Opening Day, the last of seven Twins pitchers in a 10-inning loss to the Brewers, and again four days later. Then he went unused for eight days, one of four times he didn’t pitch for a week or more. By June, he was a wreck, and allowed 25 runs over his last 23⅓ innings before being sent to Class AAA.

“Now, I’m more prepared for the uncertainty,” Dobnak said. “I won’t be like, ‘Oh, how do I do this? How do I prepare when I don’t know when I’ll pitch?’ ”

The Minnesota Star Tribune’s Bobby Nightengale contributed to this report.