Donaldson, Garver, Cruz all-in on reruns

MINNEAPOLIS -- It's not only fans that miss having live baseball on radio and television available to them right now. Twins players are also trying to fill the long hours outside of their workouts by checking out some of the reruns on MLB Network and FOX Sports North.

One of those caught Josh Donaldson's eye as he hunkered down in Alabama on Wednesday, when MLB Network aired Game 4 of the 1991 World Series between the Twins and Braves as part of its #WalkoffWednesday programming. In that game, Atlanta pinch-hitter Jerry Willard hit a sacrifice fly in the ninth inning to walk the Twins off at Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium.

"I thought it was kind of funny because I was playing for the Braves last year and now the Twins," Donaldson said. "I thought that was pretty ironic."

It's probably a good thing that Donaldson could take in that game from the Twins side of things now -- they were the winning team in that Series, after all.

Now that Mitch Garver and his wife, Sarah, have completed their move from Albuquerque, N.M., to Minneapolis, the Twins' backstop was also tuned in to that game on Wednesday night, as he searches for any baseball content to keep him occupied.

"We watched [the 1991] game last night, and basically any time there's a baseball game on, I'll turn it on, and a few of the re-runs from last year," Garver said. "I watched [Miguel] Sanó's walk-off against Atlanta. Basically any time FOX Sports North has a game on, I'll turn it on and check out what's going on."

Similarly, Nelson Cruz was seen watching Twins highlights from 2019 on a television in his gym while he did one of his live-streamed workouts on Instagram two weeks ago. And though MLB Network and FOX Sports North are keeping their airwaves busy with plenty of baseball content, there's still plenty more of an appetite there for Garver.

"I wish there was more," he said. "I wish there was more going on right now."

Bauer's video about home run streak informs Kepler's workout

Now that Garver has relocated, he's able to play catch and run drills with Twins right fielder Max Kepler in the Twin Cities area, and the Twins' backstop posted a video to his Instagram page on Wednesday that showed the pair taking soft toss batting practice together in a makeshift batting cage.

One of their recent conversations was about the 35-minute-long YouTube video in which Reds right-hander Trevor Bauer discussed his pitching approach against Kepler and dissected the plate appearances last summer when Kepler tied a Major League record with homers in five straight at-bats off him.

Garver and Kepler took advantage of the heads up from their former American League Central competitor.

"It was interesting to hear Trevor Bauer's thoughts on that whole five home run thing," Garver said. "I talked about it with Kep, and for that day, we worked on a few of the things that his counterpart maybe thought he was weak at."

Garver said that Bauer's examination of the minutiae of the game reminded him of the approach taken to game preparation by a former teammate: Kyle Gibson, who is now with the Rangers.

"He was a good student of the game and always watched the bat path of certain hitters and he would try to figure out why they did one thing really well vs. one thing they didn't do well," Garver said. "We would exploit obviously what we didn't think they did well."