ashbury

And what is the signal to say wait another 75 seconds before throwing the next pitch?

I think that right now players with options remaining versus players out of options will dominate the decision making for April. I'm not totally thrilled, but I can understand the impulse by the front office to not throw away resources that can't be gotten back when instead resources that can be gotten back can be stashed.

We allowed ourselves the luxury of arriving sometime after 11, and learned that the minor leaguers would not play at noon but at 1. Since we had cheap-seat tickets for the big league game, we chatted outside the park with Thrylos then went on in. Tomorrow we'll stay outside and watch the prospects again. Warm day, starting out overcast but changing to partly sunny. Sunscreen advised. Ricky Nolasco had a very nice outing, particularly in the early going when I noted three backward-K strikeouts in the first two innings. In each of the next two innings he was aided by Mauer with a 3-6-3 double play (I'm remembering one now as 3-4-3 but I'll go with what I scribbled). He gave up a solo homer to Donaldson in his fifth and final inning. I didn't keep a pitch count but it had to be decently low. Ricky's a good bounceback candidate for 2015 and this was an extremely encouraging outing. This photo may or may not be of Donaldson, connecting or not connecting on that homer; I didn't take good notes when I was snapping action shots but I think it was just a foul prior to the homer. Meanwhile, as probably every Twins blogger on the planet has already noted, "Dozier celebrated his new contract extension with a first inning home run" to left. Here he is during warmups before the next inning. Doesn't he look elated? Schafer later hit a solo shot to right; maybe he wants some dough too. Plouffe finished out of the running with only a double. Hunter hit a deep homer to left, but he already owes us, amiright? My son AshburySteven pleased me with the observation that Hunter isn't actually costing anything meaningful because the marginal cost of his contract is zero in the absence of being close to any practical budgetary limit; that collitch edjamacation we paid for (at nonzero marginal cost, amiright?) is actually working out for him. Speaking of sunk costs, Mauer didn't have much to show in the box score, but he had two warning track shots to left. That's in keeping with what I saw in BP the day before. Here's a routine but classic pose by the man: Perkins had a clean enough looking pitching line in the box score, but he was bouncing several in the dirt. So he clearly is still working on a few things. Duensing came in next, for the seventh, and did not have good results, retiring no one and leaving with the bases loaded after he took a shot off of his leg. Molitor evidently wanted to see how he'd do against righties because he fed him to two very dangerous ones, Joey Bats and Donaldson. The outing didn't aid Duensing's ambition to be more than a LOOGY, I'm afeared. Here he is a few pitches before getting dinged, also bouncing one in there: (If that's any of you sitting behind home plate in the expensive seats, let me know when I should stop by for my free beer.) But JR Graham came in to the rescue, and got a strikeout, and then a DP, to escape with no scoring that inning. We haven't had many bullpen arms lately where you could base strategy on trying to get a strikeout in a key situation; I could get used to that, if we end up with such a pen soon. Graham got into trouble, himself, in the eighth, and Hamburger went on to give up the lead (and probably punched his ticket to Rochester) but wound up vulturing the win when Rosario drove in Nunez after a nice Fryer bunt. Ha ha, I said to Toronto fans (not really), your team lost to Mark Hamburger. Ha ha, AshburySteven said to me (really), you pay attention to pitcher wins.

As GM you don't have to outsmart all 29 other GMs, only 1 other one, on any given trade. But there aren't that many dumb GMs around and you can't keep trading with the Phillies every time. If this is Terry's strategy I don't really care for it; unless he can find several suckers it will be a lot of effort, and more importantly wasted roster spots and PAs and IPs in a rebuilding year, for precious little return.

Are you sure it was Hunter? I think Williams was in, by then.

At peace sounds suspiciously like the final stage of grief over one's career as a starting pitcher.

Or trading AJ when Mauer came up. There's no guarantee it'll be a logjam in the middle infield in a couple of years, but if Polanco and Michael look like our DP combination of the future, being ready to make a big trade is important and maybe this extension helps. And if there is no logjam but Dozier is performing, hey, fine. It does look to me like the team is taking on more risk than Dozier is, but that's because I'm discounting much possibility he'd be a 10+Million player in arbitration. He's good but we've been so starved for a major league average player in the infield that I think our perspective has gotten skewed.

No one has been removed from the organization's payroll, have they? Each player is just a phone call away. A trade or two before June and things may look different.

Stats are hard enough to evaluate in the regular season. ST suffers from small sample size plus a very uneven level of competition, at bat to at bat. I do hope the Twins are looking at spring training performance, though - just like at all times. If a hitter on the bubble is getting a few hits against weaker pitchers but is getting himself out on major league quality breaking pitches, for example, or a pitcher conversely is getting swinging strikeouts mainly against young players getting their first taste, I very much want the decision makers to take notice.

If Molitor shares the view that attitude was an underlying problem for the last seasons of Gardy's reign, I'd expect to see somebody made an example of before Opening Day. So far I can't recall an instance of anything really "surprising". Maybe it's still coming.

I dunno. I'm not sure I'd want to be married to the woman who read this about herself and decided to take that last part as an unfavorable comparison.

Did I fail to remember/realize today was your last day in Ft Myers, when we parted company during the downpour? If so, safe travels to you and your brother, my friend.

I seem to remember him having a slow start at one of the earlier levels, and he figured it out soon enough. He might turn the corner already by June.

Check Back In July, indeed. No sooner.

Thrylos and I chatted shortly before the rain started, and I thought it very interesting that both he and I were eager to talk about that walk Sano coaxed. In my own blog writeup of the day, I didn't think to mention Polanco, but I must offer a very Chief-like "concur" that I have spotted nothing whatsoever to criticize with his play on defense in several games now. I'm not capable of spotting itty bitty things that good coaches do, of course.

Here is a photo of Stephen Wickens warming up this morning. Are you sad to see this? I'm not, and you shouldn't be either: Why? Because: No One Mourns The Wickens. Hey, we went to Miami the other night to see Wicked, and I had to get this groaner out of my system once and for all. (Really??? He leads off with THIS?) So. After missing a couple of days of spring training Friday and Saturday, and then Sunday's minor league activities cancelled for a well earned day off, I was back at the fields at last today. Had nice chats with fellow TDers Halsey Hall, Thrylos, and Stringer Bell. Our youngest son AshburySteven is now with us for the remainder of the trip, and that added to the atmosphere for me. After watching the stretching and the drills at the back fields, we came back front and saw batting practice in the major league cages - mainly Hunter, Rosario, Schafer and Mauer. Tony O was around the cages but I didn't get a good picture of him except his back. Kneeling and resting against a bat, almost as though he knows he'll get photographed. Then the hitters went to the adjacent field for a bit of fresh air and some swings against a live backdrop. Vargas put on his usual show with several very loud flies beyond the fences in all directions. I'm hoping to see him nick the top of the nearby cellphone tower one of these days - that would probably be only about 1400 feet total, seemingly within his reach. Meanwhile, May and Milone were getting their throwing sessions in. I snapped this shot just after they were finished and were chatting with their coach: Then it was back to the back fields: games against Baltimore's young'uns commenced at noon, and a pickup game between what I took to be divided between low-A and high-A Twins prospects was on the remaining field began at one pm. In the AA game there were early homers by Gonzalez, AB Walker and Kanzler, interrupted only by a loud out by Paulino. The wind wasn't yet as much of a factor as it later became, and I think all these were probably legitimate. Goodrum booted a routine grounder that should have been a DP. Not good. Meanwhile on the AAA field, Ervin Santana was getting some innings in. This is him warming up to start the first: He wasn't especially sharp in the first couple of innings, but after a while I saw that the batters were having a difficult time and getting fooled frequently. Back on the AA field, Baxendale proved to be little mystery to the Baltimores and I didn't keep track of the actual score to know if he gave back all the runs he'd been provided. Here he is during his warmup tosses: And later ABW hit another home run for the good guys. I don't think anyone doubts his power, and his success will hinge ultimately on not striking out so much, but watching this was pretty cool. Levi Michael reached first base, and then a pitch or three later he headed for second base a little too soon and looked like a dead duck. But the Orioles' pitcher, Bobby Bundy I think, inexplicably threw to first base; by the time his fielders had it all sorted out Michael was in at second safely. I guess the official scorer calls it a SB - the runner never deviated from going to second - but geez. PA of the day for me was a humble walk by Sano. It started with a called strike and then a foul down the third base line for 0-2, and I decided at that point it was worth watching even more closely. Sano showed remarkable pitch recognition, I thought, and took four presentable pitches calmly and without drama, yet without leaving me in doubt that he would have tried to smack one in the strike zone. A very professional appearance at the plate. Later in the AA game Meijia was in for Goodrum at SS, and I thought he also acquitted himself poorly on one play, a deep grounder where a good arm would have gotten the runner but he arced it. There was a long HR, possibly wind-aided by this point, by a Webb (Brenden?) for Baltimore. I made a note to myself to look him up, but I see now that he spent his age-24 season in high-A and combines decent power with a low BA. Not a prospect to watch, after all. And back again to the AAA game, I note sadly that Buxton still hasn't done anything at the plate my entire time in Florida so far. On the plus side, I believe Meneses made a very fine catch (racing over from second base) in foul territory. Rain clouds had been building this entire time, with the wind picking up, and by the time I noticed that the other (intrasquad) game was going, we had just walked over to see a couple of pitches from Jorge Felix (or is it Felix Jorge?) when the rain started in earnest. All three games were summarily halted, and within three minutes had been called. The Orioles players trotted toward their buses, and I headed for my car. We thus missed an hour or so of more baseball, but it was a very fine time nonetheless.