St. Paul Saints, Twins' AAA affiliate, can't stop getting rained out

The St. Paul Saints, Triple-A affiliate of the Minnesota Twins, have had absurdly poor luck with weather so far this season. They had a doubleheader completely rained out on Saturday in Columbus, which marks their 11th postponement already. In a little over a month (37 days, to be precise), that's more rainouts than they had in each of the past two full seasons combined.

Columbus, a city in Central Ohio that's home to the Cleveland Guardians' Triple-A affiliate, gets most of the blame for the Saints' misfortune.

St. Paul had two games postponed there in early April, one of which was scheduled to be made up on April 29, when the Saints returned to Columbus. Then the second leg of that doubleheader was postponed and moved to May 1. That was this Thursday...when the second leg of a doubleheader was rained out and pushed back a day. On Friday, guess what happened? The second leg was rained out and pushed back to Saturday — when both legs were rained out.

The Saints have announced that neither end of Saturday's doubleheader will be made up. They'll just play 148 games this season, instead of the originally-scheduled 150. And it's hard to blame them. They essentially had a game that was supposed to happen on April 5 get rained out five different times.

"Mother Nature is batting an impressive .297 against the St. Paul Saints this season," they said in their news release. "If she keeps this up it will be hard to keep her off the Major League roster. For the 10th and 11th time in 37 days the Saints had games rained out."

In addition to the seven rainouts in Columbus, the Saints have also postponed games due to weather three times in St. Paul and once in Iowa.

Their social media team has coped with humor, but all these rainouts have real ramifications, as The Athletic's Aaron Gleeman noted. It makes it very hard for starting pitchers to stay on a regular schedule, and for Twins players on rehab assignments — such as Royce Lewis — to get their work in. Lewis is currently on a rehab assignment with the Saints, and it's unclear if their weather issues could delay his return to the Twins' lineup, which was expected to come on May 6.

The Saints and Columbus Clippers will attempt to play one more game on Sunday afternoon. Saturday's rain is expected to stop by Sunday morning, but at this point, who knows?