2012 Twins' uniform numbers musical chairs

Every new season there are a lot of old faces who are not any longer with a team and a lot of new faces who are replacing them. Usually a new player is assigned one of the departed players' uniform numbers. Here are the matches between the old and the new uniform numbers. Three of them are unassigned and Chris Parmelee switched his number from 2011. Joel Zumaya and Darin Mastoianni have not been formally assigned numbers yet.

Left the team:

5 Michal Cuddyer, now: J.R. Towles
16 Jason Kubel, now: Josh Willingham
18 Jason Repko, now: Ryan Doumit
20 Matt Tolbert, now: Phil Doumatrait
21 Delmon Young, now: Jason Marquis
25 Jim Thome, now: -
27 Steve Holm, now: Chris Parmelee
36 Joe Nathan, now: -
37 Jim Hoey, now: Sean Burroughs
44 Chuck James, now: Matt Maloney
50 Jose Mijares, now: Jason Bulger
56 Dusty Hughes, now: Terry Doyle
59 Kevin Slowey, now: Esmerling Vasquez
61 Eric Hacker, now: Jared Burton

Changed Uniforms:

64 Chris Parmelee, now: Tyler Robertson

Exclusive: New Twins Promotion: the Gardy Bear

The Tampa Bays Rays have announced that they will give away The Don Zimmer Bear, a bear with the face of Don Zimmer. The mania of putting a chubby manager's face of a teddy bear and giving it away to kids in the ballpark has been virally spreading across the league.

The Twins today announced that they will join in the mania give away a Gardy Bear to the first 5,000 children on Friday April 13, when the Twins play against the Rangers at Target field.

We have secured an exclusive picture of the Gardy Bear:

What will Roy Oswalt announce today

This off-season I have been following the Roy Oswalt saga closely, since I was informed that he and the Twins have been having conversations.

Today, according to his agent, the pitcher will make an announcement. What will this announcement be?

I do not have any sources about this, but based on the movement around the league, I think that Roy Oswalt will announce that will take some time off baseball. Temporary retirement.

We will see whether I am correct shortly

Random Tuesday Twins Thoughts and Tidbits

Here is this week's installment (The spring training edition) :

• Looks like one of the new Twins' players will be a daddy again, for the 4th time.


• Interesting news from the Twins' Blogosphere. The 4 bloggers (John Bonnes, Parker Hagaman, Nick Nelson and Seth Stohs - alphabetically) who were part of Twinscentric, desided to discolve their individual blogs and start Twins Daily, which is a Twins' community that includes for a lot of interaction and has a forum that everyone can post after they register. If anyone remembers the good old Strib blogs before the changes a couple years ago, with 3-400 comments and discussion, this has the potential to be a place like that (and also bury the readership numbers of the now for pay Star Tribune.) So go and have a look! My best wishes to Seth, Nick, Parker and John with their endeavor.


• This blog post By Jon Marthaler over at Twinkie Town is worth reading. With Spring Training starting, he reiterates The Good Things of Baseball.


• I think that Joe Mauer will have a monster Spring and will continue with a monster season. He sounds like he is a man on a mission. Interesting piece here in the News-Press, the local Fort Myers newspaper. Bookmark that site, btw if remotely interested in Spring Training and the Fort Myers Miracle. Also, check this tweet by Trevor Plouffe about Joe Mauer. Also think that it is about time that the heart of the Twins' lineup has a new nickname; and I am talking about the number two to five hitters (Jamey Carroll, Joe Mauer, Justin Morneau, Josh Willingham) : the killer J's. And they better live up to it.


• From the Health Report Deapartment: Good signs of the Spring Training so far: Jason Marquis threw 48 pitches and Joel Zumaya 40 in their first bullpens Sunday. Both were hurt with broken bones last season. Luke Hughes saw another doctor and he will be ready to start taking batting practice soon. On the other hand, sounds like the pollen count or dust count or something is way up there, because both Danny Valencia and Aaron Bates have been suffering with allegies. And to make things worse, Brian Dozier cut his left hand so he is limited. Details of how or how bad are unknown.


• From the "Watch the Enemy" Department (or from the "What is he Smoking" Department:) Jim Leyland recently announced that he will try to see if Brandon Inge can be the Tigers' second baseman (a position he only played in video games) for the 2012 season. That would complement greatly the other stellar infield defenders of the Giants: Prince Fielder at first, Johnny Peralta at short and Miquel Cabrera at third. Reports that Terry Ryan have been slipping $100 bills under Leyland's door and that Justin Verlander is contemplating suicide by paper cuts have not been confirmed


• Since I have been linking tweets by Twins' players, I decided to create a weekly feature: "The Tweet of the Week by a Twins' Player (TWTP) Award". The inagural TWTP Award goes to Ben Revere for this one on Valentine's Day. And he also gets the second spot with this one. Luke Hughes is at third place with this. Could had been higher, but I think that he still does not get some of the subtleties of US English slang.


• Another feature I will start incorporating to the blog, is the word of the day or word of the week concept. I've been toying with this in my head for a way, so about time to surface. So the word of the week for this week is: exhume. From the Latin exumare (ex- and humus -not to be confused with hummus- as in "body".) And I am using the figurative meaning of the word here, not the literal (dig a body off the ground.) So it is about time that the Twins bury 2011, and exhume the characteristics that made them competitive and fun to watch. Exhuming is akin to re-birth, figuratively and ceremonially, so is Spring. Let the 2012 season begin.

The parting shot today is an aerial view (via google maps) of the Twins' Spring Training Complex Headquarters at Fort Myers, where the action is happening right now.

Spring Training play starts two days early for the Twins

The Twins today announced that they will open the Spring Training play with a "B" game on March 1st at Hammond Stadium. This is 2 days before the March 3rd opening game against the Tampa Bay Rays. Their opponent in the B game on March 1st is the cross-town Boston Red Sox, who like the Twins have more than 30 pitchers in camp and need time to evaluate them. The game starts at 1PM ET.

"B" games are free to attend, but there are no concessions or amenities.