Here is a different Twins-Mariners competition

Last year's Dominican Summer League (DSL) game, where the Twins hosted the Mariners.

I love the shot of the Twins' catcher (17 year-old Randy Peña) dancing Salsa with the spectators.

A very sad day yesterday...

Steve Cannon passed at 10:00 PM. He was 81. Rest in peace Steve, Morgan, Ma and Backlash...

You got the money



here are a couple of samples from Cannon's show, preserved by radiotapes.com:

• show beginning from the basement studio with Steve Cannon, Morgan Mundane, Ma Linger and Backlash LaRue
  
• The Cannon Mess with Mike Lynch and James St. James

Oh well...

Crap happens, but it doesn't have to happen like that: burn the best pitchers in your pen when you are 3 runs behind and play lefty/righty match ups.

So, for tomorrow only Duensing and Humber will be rested enough to bridge the starter to Nathan. Rejoice...

Here is a quote when pondering the starting lineup for the opener.

Last winter, after the Fargo gaffe, Ron Gardenhire gave an interview to scout.com. Among other things he was asked about who he will start in the outfield. Here is his response:

Gardenhire: Well, they have to earn it. In the course of spring training next year, they will decide who is going to be out there playing. Either they get it done or they don’t. I don’t have to decide stuff like that, unless they all hit .500 in spring training and that makes it a little more difficult. But they have to decide who is going to go out there and play.

As a reminder:

This spring training:

Cuddyer .317/.358/.583, 2 HR, 5 BB. 9 RBI (60 AB)
Gomez .283/.358/.583, 3 HR, 6 BB, 5 SB, 8 RBI (60 AB)
Young .292/.313/.492, 3 HR, 1 SB, 9 RBI (65 AB)
Span .190/.274/.286, 1 HR, 9 BB, 2 SB, 10 RBI (84 AB)

Opening day lineup:

Span LF, Gomez CF, Cuddyer RF

This is not perjury, but Ron Gardenhire is a liar, any way you slice it.

About an hour or so for the first pitch...

Lineups posted, and my biggest decision for the day was made: I am wearing the #22 (Carlos Gomez) alternative home (blue) jersey and the batting practice cap.

And if the Twins need bulletin board material, here is a quote from Dave Cameron's (a usually respected blogger) latest post at U.S.S Mariner:

The Twins have some jerks. I don’t know that it’ll matter, what with Felix pitching.


niiiiice

Go Twins!

Ten Reasons to be optimistic about 2009:

On Saturday, La Velle Neal III, penned 5 questions about the Twins entering this season. Here, not in a direct response, I am listing 10 reasons why the Twins' fans should be optimistic about 2009:

1. Carlos Gomez spent the off-season working specifically on his plate discipline both in the Dominican Winter League and in Spring Training and the results show that all that work paid dividends. In addition, he worked out on his physique, translated to a bigger lower body. That also paid dividends, since he was the co-leader in Spring Training with 3 home runs and led the team with 5 stolen bases


2. Delmon Young is beginning to show some power. Like Gomez, he also had 3 home runs to co-lead the team in Spring Training.


3. The quest for quality set up may be over. Jesse Crain, another year removed from shoulder surgery and with a newly found sharpness in his curveball had a fantastic spring both with the Twins and team Canada in the WBC. Louis Ayala was not scored upon with the Twins this spring training and Craig Breslow led all relievers with 10.77 K/9


4. Joe Mauer is getting better. Friday, he took swings off a tee and caught R.A. Dickey on the side.


5. R.A. Dickey was probably the surprise of the spring. He showed both great control (4.5 K/BB) and excellent strike out ability (9.5 K/9), a rare feat for a knuckleball pitcher, suggesting that his performance as a reliever last season was not a fluke and that he can be an integral part of this team in 2009


6. Justin Morneau and Jason Kubel had great springs. They led the Twins in power numbers last season and they are set to be even better this season. Morneau's slight back issues are a thing of the past, since he played with no pain


7. Mike Cuddyer's performance is suggesting that he is set to put 2008 in the rear view mirror and have a very good season in 2009 (a contract season for him, which will determine whether the Twins will pick his option for 2010.)


8. Joe Crede had 53 AB and there was no pain in his back


9. The rotation, including its newest temporary appointee, R.A. Dickey, and excluding the injured Scott Baker, was nothing short of excellent, led by Kevin Slowey who continued to build on his 2008 by posting the following otherworldly numbers: 11 K/BB, 7.83 K/9, 0.87 WHIP. Kevin will be a Cy Young candidate this year


10. Last but not least, the Twins finished the spring with a 19-13 record and a .594 winning performance, tying in second with the 2003 team, behind the .625 2006 team, in the Gardenhire era. As I showed earlier the spring training record for these Twins, does translate to season success, and based on Spring 2009, 2009 will be a very successful season for the Twins.

The season starts tomorrow. Twins fans should enjoy the run to the fourth world championship of the franchise and the third in the Metrodome, so appropriate in its last year of hosting the team.

2009 opening day rosters for Rochester Red Wings. New Britain Rock Cats and Beloit Snappers

The rosters for the Rochester Red Wings, New Britain Rock Cats and Beloit Snappers are up at their respective official sites and starting to shape up. A few surprises, mainly the Delaney/Slama duo in New Britain and Tolleson in New Britain. Also, I was hoping that Ben Revere will be in New Britain... There are a few too many older players (esp. pitchers + Watkins) for my taste, who are blocking talent like Delaney, Tolleson and Valencia from AAA. And this has a domino effect, like Slama is blocked from being the closer in New Britain and Deibinson Romero, with one more year in the 40-roster before he has to be added to the 25-man roster or being lost, is stuck in Ft. Myers. In addition, Joe Gaetti and Toby G. are in New Britain at ages (27 and 26, respectively) that they should be able to play in AAA or be released. Another surprise: Eli Tindor, an outfielder with the Ft. Myers Miracle in 2008 is repositioned as a catcher and will be playing with the Beloit Snappers in 2009. Also, there are a three players that are not included in the rosters: Steven Tolleson, Oswaldo Sosa and Daniel Berg. I do not expect them to get a demotion... There are a still few days left at the minor league spring training camp and by then these rosters might change a bit.

The rosters are listed below. Rosters for the Ft. Myers Miracle and the Elizabethton Twins are not yet final. The short season rookie GCL-Twins' players will be in extended spring training until GCL games commence. I will update the other teams' rosters as soon as they finalize. Reading between the lines, based on who is on Beloit (and about two thirds of the 2009 Beloit roster were in Elizabethton last season) and in New Britain, expect Aaron Hicks and Ben Revere to man the outfield in Ft. Myers. And this is worth a trip to Florida.

Rochester Red Wings:

Pitchers:

Armado Gabino
Mike Gosling
Ben Hendrickson (DL)
Sean Henn
Jason Jones
Ben Julianel
Bob Keppel
Tim Lahey
Jose Mijares
Kevin Mulvey
Carmen Pignatiello
Reid Santos
Anthony Swarzak

Catchers:

Drew Butera
Jeff Christy

Infielders:

Justin Huber
Luke Hughes
Alejandro Machado
Matt Macri
Brock Peterson
Tevor Plouffe
Matt Tolbert

Outfielders:

Dustin Martin
Jason Pridie
Tommy Watkins
David Winfree

New Britain Rock Cats:

Catchers:

Wilson Ramos
Allan de San Miguel

Infielders:

Erik Lis
Whitney Robbins
Yancarlos Ortiz
Toby Gardenhire
Danny Valencia
Brian Dinkelman

Outfielders:

Joe Gaetti
Juan Portes
Rene Tosoni
Brandon Roberts
Matt Moses

Pitchers:

Cole Devries
Matthew Fox
Anthony Slama
Jose Lugo
Ryan Mullins
Robert Delaney
Jeff Manship
Zachary Ward
Frank Mata
Jay Rainville
Yohan Pino

Beloit Snappers:

Pitchers:

Michael Allen
Steven Blevins
Danny Hernandez
Shooter Hunt
Brian Kirwan (DL)
Bobby Lanigan
Curtis Leavitt (DL)
Blake Martin (DL)
Dan Osterborck
Henry Reyes
Danny Rondon
Michael Tarsi (DL)
Joe Testa
Bradley Tippet
Thomas Wright

Catchers:

Alexander Soto
Eli Tindor

Infielders:

James Beresford
Dominic de La Osa
Nathan Hanson
Paul Kelly (DL)
Juan Richardson (DL)
Nicholas Romero
Hank Sanchez
Ramon Santana
Andrew Tompson (DL)
Jon Walernbury

OUtfielders:

Evan Bigley
Michael Harrington
Ozzie Lewis
Angel Morales
Adan Severino

Spring Training Final Summary

I have been doing a weekly summary of the Twins' players' performance during this spring training. The 25-man roster is set, all their bags are packed, they are on their way to Minneapolis and the season opener is less than 2 days away. This is an overview on the spring performance for the players who are coming up north. As in the weekly reviews, I will indicate the position player of the Spring, but instead of having one pitcher for the best spring performance as I did in the weekly reviews, I am breaking it out to the Starting Pitcher of the Spring and Relief Pitcher of the Spring. These are the cummulative statistics of all Spring Training. (The rankings are by decreasing OPS for position players and by decreasing WHIP for pitchers, the leaders in individual statistics on each category have their numbers in the leading stats in bold) :

Position Players:


Morneau .395/.439/.711, 3 HR, 3 BB, 10 RBI (38 AB)
Buscher .393/.470/.534, 2 HR, 9 BB, 11 RBI (56 AB)
Kubel .369/.429/.524, 3 HR, 7 BB, 12 RBI, (63 AB)
Cuddyer .317/.358/.583, 2 HR, 5 BB. 9 RBI (60 AB)
Punto .353/.395/.500, 3 BB, 5 RBI (34 AB)
Gomez .283/.358/.583, 3 HR, 6 BB, 5 SB, 8 RBI (60 AB)
Harris .311/.417/.410, 1 HR, 9 BB, 2 SB, 3 RBI (61 AB)
Young .292/.313/.492, 3 HR, 1 SB, 9 RBI (65 AB)
Redmond .306/.370/.367, 5 BB, 3 RBI (49 AB)
Casilla .306/.354/.361, 5 BB, 4 SB, 6 RBI (72 AB)
Crede .189/.259/.321, 1 HR, 4 BB, 6 RBI (53 AB)
Span .190/.274/.286, 1 HR, 9 BB, 2 SB, 10 RBI (84 AB)
Morales .233/.226/.265 4 RBI (30 AB)

Position Player of Spring Training:

Justin Morneau



Honorable mention: Jason Kubel, Brian Buscher, Mike Cuddyer, Nick Punto, Carlos Gomez


Pitchers:

Starter Performance:

Blackburn ERA 2.57, WHIP 0.64, 1 BB, 4 K, 14 IP
Slowey ERA 2.13, WHIP 0.87, 2 BB, 22 K, 25.1 IP
Dickey 2.04 ERA, WHIP 0.96, 4 BB, 18 K, 17.2 IP
Liriano ERA 4.94, WHIP 1.17, 12 BB, 27 K, 27.1 IP
Perkins ERA 2.03, WHIP 1.23, 6 BB, 13 K, 31 IP
(Baker ERA 6.85, WHIP 1.73, 3 BB, 16 K, 23.2 IP)


Starting pitcher of spring training:

Kevin Slowey



honorable mention: Nick Blackburn, R.A. Dickey

Reliever Performance:

Ayala 0.00 ERA, WHIP 0.71, 2 BB, 4 K, 7 IP
Crain 4.22 ERA, WHIP 0.84, 1 BB, 8 K, 10.2 IP
Nathan 2.70 ERA, WHIP 0.90, 2 BB,10 K, 10 IP
Breslow 3.09 ERA, WHIP 1.20, 6 BB, 14 K, 11.2 IP
Duensing 2.65 ERA, WHIP 1.35, 6 BB, 7 K, 18 IP
Guerrier 5.40 ERA, WHIP 1.46, 4 BB, 8 K, 11.2 IP
Humber 7.53, WHIP 1.47, 2 BB, 5 K, 11 IP

Relief pitcher of spring training:

Jesse Crain




honorable mention: Luis Ayala, Craig Breslow, Joe Nathan

The Roster is finalized

The last cut was just announced: Matt Tolbert is going to Rochester and Brian Buscher won the last spot. Gardy is going with a 12-man pen.

Do I think that it was a good decision? No. Let me count the ways:

• First and foremost, they did not have to send Tolbert to Rochester, until April 10th, when Dickey is projected to make his first start: Keep an extra player who might be useful in some situation, instead of wasting a roster spot on a guy will will not see any work in 4 games. This is exactly what the Mets are doing with Livan Hernandez, their fifth starter; he will be added to the roster the day he has to pitch, so the team can have an extra player. No-brainer. Earth to Bill Smith: you gotta to act smarter to hold that office for long


• By adding Buscher, you got a singles bat from the left side, who is better suited to be a pinch hitter. Last time I checked, there were 4 more powerful LH bats in the lineup (based on 2008 isoP: ) Justin Morneau, Jason Kubel, Denard Span, and (surprise) Nick Punto. As a matter of fact, Tolbert has higher isoP in the majors than Buscher (and he is more than a year younger.) And can an American League team with only 4 bench spots, really afford a leftie pinch hitter taking one of those spots?


• You bring Buscher up north, Gardy will put him on the field. This is begging for a repeat of the Anaheim disaster last season, while Buscher's two errors in the third, that allowed 3 runs to score, singlehandedly cost the (4-6) game for Nick Blackburn and the Twins


• Tolbert would have provided more flexibility in case one of the injury-prone middle infielders and outfielders got hurt and were in a day-to-day situation. That said, he did make a huge gaffe on the bases today, costing the Twins the game and was probably the final nail on his coffin. Tolbert would not have been a perfect solution to the problem (I was hoping that Steve Tolleson was given a more than an 11 AB chance to show what he has this spring training, but anything that would have kept Buscher off the field would have been a plus)

that's how I feel about it. And I am wishing Buscher the best and hope he turns into a star overnight now that he made the team. However, I hope that the person who made that decision is held accountable (for once) if it does not work out.

What do you think?

And here is a scouting report for Brian Buscher from his Norwich Navigator days with the Giants:
"Stocky player who is going wrong direc. Body is getting worse. Dumpy lower 1/2. Low energy. Barrel chested. Sets up open and off plate. Short arms make it hard for him to cover plate. Swinging off his back ft. Very slow bat. Swings like he's in a swimming pool. Makes contact and clean contact but ball goes absolutely no where. Must've raked w/aluminum. Takes some of the worst swings in the league. Rolls over lots of balls. Can't go the other way with authority, in fact he can't pull the ball with any authority. Gd feel for bat head allows him to make contact against soft stuff but power is essentially nonexistent for such a big strong guy playing a premium offensive position. Gets blown away by gd stuff. Don't see much in the way of offense @ upper levels. Mediocre raw power. Defense seems to have gone backwards as well. Not likely to be able to stay @ 3B @ upper levels. 2B is out of the question with slow ft. Basically looking at a guy who belongs @ 1B from a defensive standpoint. Bat won't play anywhere. Should get back to AA next yr but can't see him moving any higher. Don't see org. value."

Have enough things changed in 3 years? Time will tell.

There are a lot of ways on getting into Target Field next season...

And I was just emailed a different one... so I am sharing

I suspect that the airwaves in and around the Twins Cities are buzzing about this already (but, alas, they are outside my range) and here is the deal:

The Minnesota Lottery is having a promotion that runs until October 19, in which you can send special tickets in through the mail (these are non-winning scratch tickets) or entering some numbers (sorry, not a big lottery fan here) in their web site and there will be a drawing for several Twins-related prices, including:

• Four-packs of regular-season game tickets in the new Target Field.


• Ballpark VIP section seats in the new Target Field.


• A suite experience for you and your friends in the new Target Field.


• Spring Training trips to Fort Myers, Fla., in 2010.

(that was cut and paste)
but, still, this is a cool promotion and even though I buy approximately 5 scratch lottery tickets a year (to put into Christmas stockings), I'd spent $5 bucks just for it (too bad that here in Pennsylvania this is not that applicable)

and those scratch tickets look mighty cool:

The pitching battle is over... for now

Scott Baker was placed in the 15 day DL, retroactive to March 27, which means that Brian Duensing, Phillip Humber and R.A. Dickey will all make the trip North. The starters will slide a day ahead with Liriano starting the opener against Seattle next Monday. It is reported that R.A. Dickey might be the 5th starter, starting at April 10th in Chicago. Baker will probably come off the DL on April 12, which means that the battle for that last spot will continue for a week or so in the bigs in meaningful games.

I will be doing profiles on Phillip Humber and Brian Duensing soon.

About the last 2 bench positions, for which there is a battle between Brandon Harris (he is close to a "lock" because he is out of options), Matt Tolbert and Brian Buscher, there are a couple of interesting developments today;

• It has been reported that Cardinal Scouts were in the stands in Twins' games, and Troy Glaus' rehab after his shoulder surgery took a turn for the worse


• Today, Mike Cuddyer started at 1B (Morneau was scratched with back tightness) instead of Brian Buscher

Could it be that Buscher will be a Cardinal in the near future settling that battle?