MVB Team

Meet the MVB Team

Editor/Founder – John Meyer

This is John really excited to take a picture with Mr. Kevin Slowey.

John started the Twins Most Valuable Blogger in November of 2007. He decided he had too many thoughts on the Twins and MLB bouncing around in his head that he needed to put them down on paper, or cyber paper. Thus, Twins MVB was born.

Originally from Brookings, South Dakota, John graduated from Luther College in 2008 and then moved to Minneapolis and accomplished a life-long goal of becoming a Twins season ticket holder. After spending a year in Minneapolis working for “the man,” John moved to Sioux Falls, SD to start his own social marketing firm, 9 Clouds, Inc.

Twins MVB has evolved in its two years and continues to carve its niche in the Twins blogging community. If you have any ideas, suggestions, or requests for Twins MVB please feel free to email us at twinsmvb@gmail.com or find me on Twitter at @TwinsMVB. We thank you for being a fan of our blog and sharing our love for the Minnesota Twins!

Senior Writer – Dan Wade

Here’s a very stern Dan ready to drop some SABRmetrics on you.

A prodigal son far away from the Teflon skies, Dan is a life-long Twins fan currently residing on Chicago’s South Side, where he was once refused service in a cafe while wearing a Twins jersey. A graduate of the University of Chicago in Political Science with a focus on International Relations (specializing in ethnic genocides), Dan is currently a database drone for the University and an editorial intern for Baseball Prosepctus. In January, he’ll begin a one-year masters program in Journalism at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism.

His favorite Dome memories include seeing Dave Winfield’s 3000th hit, Jason Kubel’s walk-off grand slam against the Red Sox in 2006, the Twins’ first play-off game in 2002, and every Pedro Munoz at-bat from 1992-1995.

He’s very excited to join the MVB team and hopes to provide a balance between SABRmetrics and more traditional tools in player evaluation. You can reach him at Dwade@uchicago.edu or @Dwade on twitter. His favorite thought-experiments are Zeno’s paradox and Schroedinger’s Cat Paradox.

Minor League Reporter – Andrew Kneeland

A nice little picture of Andrew, but he isn’t that small really.

Andrew is a high school student currently residing in the state of Arizona, after having spent years in the Midwest. Baseball and football are his favorite sports to watch, but baseball is where the real fun is had! Andrew loves baseball because of the strategy, complexity, and statistical measures involved.

Currently interning for a local newspaper, Andrew plans on entering j-school after he graduate to feed his love for writing. An ideal job, though, would be one that involves writing about baseball while focusing on sabermetrics, economics, and the minor leagues.

If ever you have any questions or just want to chat, feel free to drop Andrew a line either via email akneeland@bleacherreport.com or on Twitter at @akneeland.

Columnist – Dain TePoel

Author of Off the TePoel, Dain likes to make points by pointing.

I’m from Rochester, MN and was in pre-school when the Twins won the World Series in ‘87 and I have vague memories of that time- like watching a game at my grandparent’s house and then a night when my parents had some people over to watch a game. I mostly played with my Egon ghostbusters toy.

The next summer of 88 is when my true baseball passion took off. I have a brother who is just a year older so we ate that stuff up. We went to our first Twins game. I’ll never forget walking in the dome for the first time. My dad brought us home a pack of Topps baseball cards everyday. We played in the backyard, pretending to be major leaguers, and not just the Twins, but whoever the Twins were playing that day, too.

3rd grade in 91 when we won it again I organized a Twins club at my school. And while we accomplished nothing, some teachers knew we had this club, so one day Chuck Knoblauch was in town speaking at a different school, and they let us go. We felt pretty cool.

My passion hasn’t stopped. I made it through those awful years from 94 to 2000. Pat Meares, Rich Becker, Scott Aldred, Marty Cordova, Scott Klinginbeck, Dave Hollins, Scott Stahoviak, Alex Cole – these were the Twins of that time. At least we had Radke and some old veterans like Molitor and Winfield to make some memories – and we actually had a decent season in ‘96.

I was a senior in high school/freshmen at Luther College when the Twins had an amazing run in 2001. That was incredible. Out of nowhere, these guys (Guzman, Rivas, Mientkiewicz, Hunter, Pierzynski, Jones, Koskie, etc.) were taking aim at the perennial playoff AL Central juggernauts – the Cleveland Indians. I hated them so much. 2002 I went to the playoff games 4 of ALDS and Game 1 of ALCS with my brother and dad. We won both. Those were great memories. 2004 was the year – too bad we lost that game 2 late and game 4…rincon….2006 – wow! Another great run. I had season tickets and that was something else. Of course I suffered through those two losses to Oakland…IF HUNTER WOULD HAVE PLAYED LIKE HE DID FOR THE ANGELS vs. the Red Sox this year – shoot who knows.

So anyways, I’m long winded and really haven’t said much about myself, but that pretty much says it all. I eat, sleep, and breathe the Twins.