The Minnesota Twins signed first-round draft pick Trevor Larnach just one day before Major League Baseball’s deadline.

For both sides Markus Wheaton Color Rush Jersey , the delay was well worth the wait. There were no contentious contract negotiations in the way, only a College World Series championship for Larnach with Oregon State.

”We figured it would go to the end, because I thought Oregon State was the best team I saw all spring,” Twins scouting director Sean Johnson said. ”They were really built to win that series, so we knew it would take a while.”

Larnach’s standard minor league deal, signed on Thursday afternoon, came with a $2.55 million signing bonus. The slot value set by MLB for the 20th overall selection was $3.12 million, so the Twins put some of that savings toward signing other players in their draft class.

Larnach, a corner outfielder who hit .327 with 17 home runs and 65 RBIs this season for the Beavers, batted .417 with five doubles, nine RBIs and 10 runs scored in eight games at the College World Series. His two-run homer in the ninth inning against Arkansas helped Oregon State stave off elimination in the second game of the finals , and the Beavers went on to win the decisive third game the following night.

”I would say it’s probably the closest thing you are going to get to playing here in the big leagues,” Larnach said as he toured Target Field for the first time before the Twins played Baltimore on Thursday night. ”There are a lot of people at every game. You start playing some SEC teams, and you start hearing them pretty well. It’s all part of it. It’s a wonderful experience, and I wish I could re-live some of it, but you know there are better times ahead.”

The Twins said the 21-year-old Larnach will report to rookie-level Elizabethton of the Appalachian League.

”It’s good to have him in the fold,” Twins manager Paul Molitor said. ”I told him to enjoy the experience. I couldn’t really relate to him what it was like to sign at this particular point in my life because it was 40-some years ago, but it was nice for him and his parents to come in and have a chance to talk with them.”

Johnson was on a scouting trip in North Carolina, dining at The Cheesecake Factory restaurant with Twins vice president of player personnel Mike Radcliff Avonte Maddox Color Rush Jersey , when they saw Larnach’s dramatic home run. They weren’t exactly sweating the timing of the signing.

”Twenty seconds before he hit the home run, I’m like, `If he hits a home run here to give them the lead, we can wait another day,”’ Johnson recalled. ”Right on cue, he hit it. That was the first time I celebrated in a Cheesecake Factory. That was pretty cool. That was a fun moment to watch.”

For Larnach, too, of course.

”My experience at Oregon State, man, it’s pretty unbelievable. I can’t put that into words,” he said. ”I can’t thank my family at Oregon State enough for what they’ve done for me. I’m always going to come back to them and say hi and give them my love and just give back to them as much as I can, because they’ve developed me not only as ballplayer but as a person, and that’s what they promised when I got there.”

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More than 40 million people watched the NFL’s two preliminaries for the Super Bowl on Sunday, a drop of more than 8 percent compared to last year’s conference championship games.

The Nielsen company said an average of 43.2 million people watched the games. While that’s down from the 47.1 million who watched the conference championships last year, it was a more heartening report than the NFL had gotten only a week earlier. This year’s divisional championship round had seen a 16 percent dip in audience size.

Night games generally do better in the ratings than afternoon contests, but not this year. The New England-Jacksonville contest that ended around dinnertime was a better game featuring the league’s marquee player in Tom Brady. That game reached 44.1 million, compared to the 42.3 million who watched Philadelphia blow out Minnesota, Nielsen said.

After seeing viewership erosion all year, the NFL will be anxious to see if that extends to the secular holiday of Super Bowl Sunday on Feb. 4. The Super Bowl is the most-watched television event each year.

The NFC game boosted Fox’s new medical soap Josh Sweat Color Rush Jersey , ”The Resident,” which reached 8.65 million viewers for its premiere episode on Sunday. Television viewers had their stethoscopes handy, with medical shows ”The Good Doctor,” ”Grey’s Anatomy” and ”Chicago Med” also landing among Nielsen’s 20 most popular programs last week.

With a prime-time football game, Fox won the week by averaging 10.6 million viewers. CBS had 6.9 million, ABC had 4.74 million, NBC had 4.69 million, the CW had 1.53 million, Univision had 1.47 million, ION Television had 1.3 million and Telemundo had 1.2 million.

Fox News Channel was the week’s most popular cable network, averaging 2.65 million viewers in prime time. MSNBC had 1.95 million viewers, USA averaged 1.5 million, HGTV had 1.49 million and TNT had 1.46 million.

ABC’s ”World News Tonight” topped the evening newscasts with an average of 10.4 million viewers. NBC’s ”Nightly News” was second with 9.8 million and the ”CBS Evening News” had 7.4 million.

For the week of Jan. 15-21, the top 10 shows, their networks and viewerships: NFC Championship: Minnesota vs. Philadelphia, Fox, 42.3 million; ”NFC Championship Post-Game” (9:39-9:47 p.m. ET), Fox, 26.53 million; ”NFC Championship Post-Game” (9:47-10:04 p.m. ET) Mason Rudolph Color Rush Jersey , Fox, 18.88 million; ”The Big Bang Theory,” CBS, 14.92 million; ”Young Sheldon,” CBS, 13.33 million; ”NCIS,” CBS, 9.88 million; ”This is Us,” NBC, 9.82 million; ”Blue Bloods,” CBS, 9.45 million; ”The Good Doctor,” ABC, 9.34 million; ”Mom,” CBS, 9.26 million.

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ABC is owned by The Walt Disney Co. CBS is owned by CBS Corp. CW is a joint venture of Warner Bros. Entertainment and CBS Corp. Fox is owned by 21st Century Fox. NBC and Telemundo are owned by Comcast Corp. ION Television is owned by ION Media Networks.

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