And So It Begins.....

Then there are the main courses, where you can really get your fill. The path between the players locker room and the practice fields is lined on both sides by fans every morning. It's for good reason. The players are at their most open, their most generous; it's spring for them, too. And then you walk over to the bleachers for a front row seat while Tom Kelly chatters up classic baseball-ese to a minor leaguer who had drawn his attention.

Also, it's 80 degrees and sunny today. It’s 80 degrees and sunny every day.

I don't blame you for not getting here yet. It took me far too long to properly soak in a spring training. It might be too late for you to make it this year (though maybe not; you've got a whole month left). But do yourself a favor and make spring training a priority, and the sooner the better as every year it gets a little larger, a little more structured and a little more commercial.

But that’s because it’s awesome.

The Spring Training Schedule

The Grapefruit League's schedule is unbalanced like the MLB schedule, but even more so. Teams tend to play teams in their area of Florida to reduce the bus travel. For the Twins, that means playing 18 of their 33 spring training games versus just three teams:

• The Orioles, who are about 1.5 hours north along the same (gulf side) coast as Fort Myers.
  
• The Pirates, who are just about 15 minutes north of the Orioles.
  
• The Red Sox, who are located just down the street in Fort Myers.
  

The Twins will play seven other teams, usually once at home and once on the road. Oddly, they won't get to face many teams in the American League. All the ones they will face are all in the AL East: Toronto twice, the Yankees twice, the Orioles six times, the Rays three times and the Red Sox seven times. There's nothing strategic about this; the other teams just happen to have spring training in Arizona or in the middle or east coast of Florida.

So, if you're watching scores and thinking to yourself, "Didn't we just face them?" - yes, yes we did.

Watching the Lineups

The lineup for this afternoon’s inaugural game versus the Red Sox was released yesterday, and those watching position battles should be thrilled. Byron Buxton (CF), Oswaldo Arcia (LF) and John Ryan Murphy (C ) all made the cut, plus we get our first glimpse of Byung-Ho Park in a game and Miguel Sano in right field.

The more casual fan will be more interested in Thursday night’s home opener. Besides kicking off the home season, it will also televised on FSN, so you can expect manager Paul Molitor to be starting a bunch of the anticipated starters. I think you can safely expect too see Kurt Suzuki, Joe Mauer, Brian Dozier, Eduardo Escobar, Trevor Plouffe & Eddie Rosario in the same spots they'll be on Opening Day.

I’m going to try obsessing about lineups and substitutions this spring training quite a bit more than most would deem healthy. But there’s a reason for that. I think you can learn a lot from watching how the manager dishes out playing time and innings. Those opportunities are commodities, and the players know it.

Lineups reflect a manager's priorities and often communicate his thoughts more clearly (or earlier) than his words. I guarantee you that players obsess about whether they are given a chance to prove themselves more often or earlier in a game than the guys against whom they're competing.

Plus, a lot of factors can go into those decisions. For big games, the veterans are often showcased. But veterans also won’t be asked to play two days in a row early in camp. Meanwhile, guys trying to make the club might play nearly every day. Coaches might want to see a guy early in camp with who they’re unfamiliar. Before anyone is cut, the team will want to feel like they've given them a chance to show what they can do. And of course, pitchers' workloads must be monitored.

Road games provide their own issues. There is an invisible hierarchy for which veterans go on the long road trips like the trek across the state to play the Marlins But each road game lineup needs to have five "regulars". Teams are hesitant to make any of their regulars go on back-to-back road trips early. And the team needs to plan ahead for split squad games, when there are 40 roster spots instead of just 25.

It’s likely that today’s lineup is as much a result of who Molitor wanted to start on Thursday night as anything else. It’ll be interesting to see if he lets Buxton and Sano play two days in a row this early. If not, I’ll speculate that Thursday’s lineup looks something like this:

C – Suzuki

1B – Mauer

2b – Dozier

SS – Escobar

3B – Plouffe

LF – Rosario

CF – Danny Santana?

RF – Max Kepler?

DH - Byung-Ho Park

That's pure speculation and mostly a thought exercise on my part. In any case, I want to start paying attention to who is being granted playing time and when. Let’s track that as we go through this March and see if it tells us anything.