Random Tuesday: Twins Thoughts and Tidbits

Here is this week's installment:

• Apparently, the Twins beat out the defending AL Champions in signing Joel Zumaya. Seems that Zumaya was atop of the Padres' wish list as well. The reaction of both the press and the fans in the Twin Cities about the signing was, surprisingly, mixed. I think that the down side is minimal and the upside is so huge, which makes this a no-brainer. I just hope there is an incentives-based option clause there.


• If you want to follow the Dominican winter league games live, there is a TV stream of each game (in Spanish, of course) from the home page of the league located here. Just look at the scoreboard to the upper right of the page and click on the TV symbol to take you to the live stream. And it is free, but fairly uninspiring quality, but it is baseball in January. MLB.tv eat your heart out. And, speaking of the Winter Leagues, here you can find the stats for (most of and some not anymore) Twins' players in the various winter leagues, so you can ooooh and aaaaah about the performance of players like Aaron Bates, Alexi Casilla, Luke Hughes, Nelvin Fuentes, Deolis Guerra, Lester Oliveros, Louis Perdomo and others...


• From the numbers' department: Forty (40). This is the grant total of games that Jack Morris played wearing a Twins' uniform. Forty two (42). This is the grant total of games that Jack Morris played against the Twins wearing a Tigers, Jays or Indians uniform. For reference, Jim Thome (a long time AL-Central player) played 182 games for the Twins and 191 games against the Twins. So, I'd say that Thome is as much a Twin as Jack Morris, which is not much, other than the broadcasting thing and hailing from the Cities, for the latter...


• Prom the plagiarism or copying is the best compliment department: It is interesting to see that Terry Ryan also thinks that there are lots of parallels between Trevor Plouffe, and Mike Cuddyer, unless he first read it here, a couple months ago. (Just kidding... the parallels are to easy to spot from 100 feet away.)


• From the Meet the Press Department: The Sporting News' Stan McNeal picks the Twins to finish 4th at best at the division. Methinks, let the 25 man roster get final before you make predictions, especially for clubs you don't see every day. Also CBSsports started making fantasy predictions for the 2012 Twins, indicating that Joe Mauer will have a bounce back season, Scott Baker a breakout season and Ryan Doumit will be a sleeper.

Today's parting shot is of the Twins' Winter Caravan edition, which started yesterday making its first stops at Sauk Centre, MN, Glenwood, MN and Detroit Lakes, MN. The participants were: Glen Perkins, Brian Duensing, Ron Gardenhire, Joe Vavra, Cory Provus. Everyone knows who the first three are, mostly everyone wants to forget about the 4th, but who is Cory Provus, and can he play shortstop? Apparently not. He is the newest Twins' radio broadcaster, former Brewers radio broadcaster, and I am certain that the Twins' fans are lining up to pay $6 to get his autograph. For some reason the Twins think that this might be the case... This is what Cory Provus looks like: