It feels like we have been trapped indoors forever, and at least to me, it makes me forget completely about the weather and what kinds of impacts it might have on anything but my afternoon walk. (Today – none! Though I might wear shorts).
We are now through the most unfavorable part of the season for Twins home games, however, and it seems like in recent years, the spring has been most unkind to baseball fans. This year, the spring seems like it was a lot milder, but was it? Of greater pertinence, would that have correlated to the home schedule at Target Field?
Here’s a look at the home schedule to date, and the first pitch conditions, with annotations if necessary. Bold games are those that I would deem “unpleasant” and Italics mean I suspect they would have been delayed or postponed.
APRIL
4/2 – 58 degrees, cloudy.
4/4 – 36, mostly sunny – It didn’t get much warmer through the day, but light winds would have meant the game was somewhat tolerable.
4/5 – 51, Mostly sunny – Fairly breezy, especially late in the afternoon. Not pleasant
4/6 – 52, cloudy – Steadily warming throughout, but on the back of a stiff breeze.
4/7 – 58, Hazy – The sun would come out later, and the wind would subside after a couple of early innings. Not bad.
4/8 – 51. cloudy – Absolutely howling northwest wind.
4/17 – 48, Clear – The first night game of the year, and it would not feel great.
4/18 -59, Partly cloudy
4/19 – 44, Fair – Sitting still outside for 3 hours wen the temperature is in the 40s or lower is cold, especially when the day before was 66.
4/20 – 50, Mostly cloudy – Winds were gusting into the 40mph range at first pitch. Horrible conditions for fans.
4/21 – 46, Cloudy – I mean, on a sliding scale this is probably the best night game so far (the 17th and 20th were the others) but that means the temperature starts at 46 an only goes downhill.
4/22 – 63, Partly cloudy – This is the best night game so far. Cool by the late innings for sure, but 63 in the twilight is manageable, even with some wind.
4/23 – 56, Mostly cloudy
4/24 – 59, light rain – The fact that it is light rain makes me wonder if the team would try to play through it, or they might wait to start because they know it would wrap up before 9.
4/25 – 65, Mostly cloudy
4/26 – 62, Partly cloudy – Light rain would have showed up a couple hours later. This would have been the Red Sox, so probably around the 4th inning.
MAY
5/4 – 62, Mostly cloudy
5/5 – 57, Cloudy – Probably not great by May standards, but tolerable by the standards we are using.
5/6 – 62, Mostly cloudy
5/8 – 48, Clear – Very windy for first pitch, and generally not a pleasant game all around.
5/9 – 49, Light rain – There was a tight window to get this game in, and it was cold and drizzly. Exactly the environment you don’t wasn’t for a game against the Royals.
5/10 – 46, cloudy.
5/18 – 64, Cloudy – Fairly windy, with the wind blowing in.
5/19 – 69, Partly cloudy – Nice
5/20 – 60, Clear
By quick observation, most of the games in April were pretty bad for baseball fans, but it started turning around in May, but no, there likely would not have been any rain outs. It helped that the Twins would have been on the road during the mid-May cold snap we had. It doesn’t appear that this spring would have been significantly more mild for people in the stands, so at least COVID 19 hasn’t also robbed us of too much good outdoor baseball weather,
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