When the Royals lost again Thursday, the Twins quietly moved into a tie for first place. I do my best not to look at the standings for the first couple of months of the season, and would be hard pressed to tell you about the races in the other divisions right now. Unless a team is really hot or cold, it doesn’t matter as much where you are relative to other teams as it does about the direction in which you are going. The nonconference part of a college basketball season is an imperfect but valid comparison.

That being said, victories like those of the last two days count double, in my book. Hitting on most cylinders, the Twins are showing themselves that falling behind by a handful of runs or an inept pitching performance aren’t reason to fold the bats and wait for another day to fight. At times in recent seasons, that seemed to be one of their less endearing qualities.

Again, the challenge is on the front office to make a better bullpen and for the starting pitchers to figure out their individual foibles. Scott Baker has morphed from Home Run Baker to Big Inning Baker, which feels like a correctable flaw. Nick Blackburn suffered from that ailment for the first half of last season and adjusted his approach to minimize that kind of damage. Glen Perkins needs to work inside consistently and stop dropping cookies over the plate — in other words the same problems that threatened his standing in the rotation toward the end of last season. Of course, Perkins is still riding his excellent early starts so that he has the best ERA among the starters. Some of the starters’ numbers look like they were compiled by Livan Hernandez.

If the Twins, in fact, have become a bit more mature, a weekend in New York would be a good place to prove it. Going back to 2002, the Twins are 3-19 playing in the Yankees in New York, and two of those victories were by a left-hander who now pitches in New York, but for the city’s other team.

Speaking of playing in New York, I’ll be keeping an eye out for “Joe Mauer’s contract expires after next season and he’d look pretty good in pinstripes” work from the New York media. It makes perfect sense for them to raise that issue and for the advocates to carry that banner.

It also makes perfect sense for Twins’ management to head that off before the issue becomes a dominant one.

Stealing Jeff Probst’s line from Survivor to tell you that Section 220 is shutting down — barring big news — for the weekend a day early. Lots to do here, all of it good.

La Velle’s blog post after Thursday’s game pretty much sums up the road trip. In the meantime, the links in my blogroll down the right side of the page are pretty good and you can spend your Section 220 time this weekend checking ‘em out. (D.C. Twins Fan went to Camden Yards and his thoughts are here.) It’s a diverse and mostly Twinscentric collection, including a guy who is recreating the 1924 major-league season. Your rooting interest there is the Washington Senators, of course.

Have a good weekend.

This wonderful nugget comes from mlbtraderumors.com and was sent my way by Bill Ward, who handles the wine beat (and therefore is very popular at parties) for the Star Tribune.

From Page 111 of “Becoming Manny”: (Twins scout Herb) Stein pushed the Twins to take Manny with their third overall pick (in the 1991 amateur draft).  But he was rebuffed by his bosses - a source of bitterness even today.  The Twins chose Stanford first baseman David McCarty, who wound up hitting 36 career home runs and batting .242 in eleven major league seasons of part-time duty.

Cleveland took Manny with the 13th pick, which means other teams made the same mistake. But, according to the book, the scout who followed Ramirez for Cleveland, said the Twins were the only team that considered him to be higher than a fifth-round pick.

Stein, by the way, was the scout who signed Rod Carew and Frank Viola for the Twins.

The fun we could have had.

Here’s a transcript of today’s Twins Chat, which drew more than 1,500 viewers during its 70-minute run. Thanks to everyone who read along and asked questions.  Over the course of the season, we hope to make this a regular Twins feature with myself, La Velle and Joe taking turns at the keyboard. Make sure you take a look at the instant polls that are scattered throughout the transcript.

A couple of other things that you can take advantage of: Sign up to be a Star Tribune Twins fan on Facebook. In the first three days that the Facebook page went live, it attracted 350 fans, which makes it more popular at the moment than the Twins front office. The page includes links to our latest stories and blog posts, as well as an assortment of team information.

Also, you can click here to sign up for our daily Twins newsletter and news alerts when there’s breaking news.

We’ll also been doing more baseball video this season, which will be featured on our Twins page. Staff photographer Jerry Holt is in Fort Myers right now, and his video on the first day of workouts is here.

Because my day job around here is keeping up the sports part of startribune.com, I’m always interested in your thoughts and ideas for the web site. You can email me here.

On a baseball note, the best thing I read this morning was LaVelle’s short piece on Corey Koskie’s attempt at a comeback. That would be great.

See you around noon.

The irrepressible Jason (and I use that term fondly) ended the last thread with a plea that we no longer talk about free-agent acquisitions. However, I am an advocate of free speech (short of falsely yelling “fire” in a crowded theater and “Mike Lowell” for a team that plays on turf) and am loathe to dictate behavior.

For the most part, we are a reasonable crowd here in Section 220 and I understand the combination of frustration and fatigue that sets in. I believe in the notion that most of the serious stuff takes place in a way that becomes public quickly and suddenly, at least when management has some control over the situation. As fans, we are still in the backwash of the public serial drama that surrounded last winter’s Santana trade and Hunter departure. The Delmon deal hasn’t worked out so far and we have not chosen to make a big deal out of the fact that Craig Breslow has taken over as the reigning Sandy Koufax of the major leagues. (That’s the distinction of being the best Jewish lefty in baseball, of course. Sorry, Scott Schoeneweis) Signing Sean Henn (not a tyPo) as a minor-league agent doesn’t do much (2-6, 7.56 in part of four MLB seasons),

The hot stove is cooling a bit. I mean, there’s something reassuring about driving home through the snow listening to XM’s Home Plate even if it means overdosing on the Sabathia signing, WWMD (What will Manny do?), contract ho’ Rafael Fercal Furcal and the greatness of the Boston Red Sox’ front office. Bringing up XM also allows me to point out that “Baseball This Morning” is no longer a must listen now that the Mark Patrick-Buck Martinez team has been ousted. They knew the game and conveyed more fun than the current guys — and provided listeners with the added benefit of an occasional reading from Section 220.

Here are a few good hot-stove fixes:

*Get ahold of Seth Stohs’ 2009 “Minnesota Twins Prospect Handbook.” It’s 80 pages of minor-league analysis from Section 220’s favorite non-Strib blog. Lots of detail about minor-leaguers and an entertaining foreword by Pat Neshek. Seth pretty much tabbed Neshek as a prospect before Neshek knew he was a prospect, so the foreword is a nice way for the reliever to return the love. You can order it here.

*Make sure you have cable enough to get the MLB Network, which debuts January 1. All baseball all the time. And the network will give you a chance to record the Ken Burns baseball series, which will be running on Tuesday night.  Here’s more about the network from mlb.com. One suggestion:The aforementioned Mark Patrick is on the free-agent market. MLB Network should sign him.

*Circle Jan. 24 on your calendar for the “2nd Annual Last Hot Stove League Banquet.” Last year’s was supposed to be the last one, but they lied. If you went, you heard Bill Lee ramble and Clark Griffith offer context and Mike Veeck retell the story of Disco Demolition Night. Umpire Tim Tschida is confirmed for this year and there are Corey Koskie rumors going around. It’s going to be at the Harriet Island Pavilion and you can find out more, become a sponsor or donate an auction item by calling Julian Loscalzo at 651-227-3437. (I’ll be donating a chance to watch a game with me in the Section 220 seats.)

And if the Twins haven’t done anything by then, we can organize a march on the Metrodome.

If we don’t talk before then, enjoy the Holidays.