ashbury

Not hoping so, of course, but what's your prognostication in case Pinto needs to be DLed?

And one particular tool, hit, is a lot more decisive than the other four. You shake the baseball tree and about 9 gloves fall out before you see a bat.

A more homogenized Low-A without any of the highly drafted prospects, maybe.

Lehigh Acres.

TK sounds like TK, though. Which for me has become an important part of spring training.

My wife and I are taking a side trip to Miami tomorrow and Saturday. I had a hunch you were the guy with the big camera. Stringer and I were with his brother who's in a motorized chair, so you may have noticed us as well. At game's end I meant to go see if I was right, but you had slipped away before I noticed. I think Stringer and brother will be there, and I'll try again Sunday if you're around.

A much abbreviated version of my notes today. Arrived after lunch and watched the two games offered. Perkins was the "starter" in the AAA game versus the Bostons, and seemed to do well in his one inning. Here is a photo of him warming up. Tyler Duffey started in the AA game. Warmup photo alongside pitching coach Stu Cliburn: I forgot to mention that I caught a glimpse of Gardy when he attended the UW Stout game Tuesday against our younger players - son Toby coaches Stout. So here's a belated photo that I took from a distance once I got over my assumption I was merely seeing the imposter ChiTown previously reported. (I don't know who the others are.) Photos aside, I can't say I paid close attention to giving a good report on how the games went. A throw from LF that missed a cutoff man allowed a runner to advance. Polanco did well at short but allowed one bad hop to eat him up enough that his throw was wide. Buxton did not have a good day at the plate. I believe Sano got another HR in the other game but I totally missed it. I think the AAA team won, I think the AA team lost. Nice day at the park, good chat again with Stringer, nobody's paying me to report, ergo... this is what you get.

I remember seeing Clay this week in Ft Myers and he vaguely impressed me though I don't remember specifically why. I do have an excellent memory, but it's short.

I agree it shouldn't dominate any decisions. OTOH the GM is responsible for the overall health of the franchise, and fans do like for a team to "win" its major trades. Nothing wrong in my view with doing what you can to make sure the trades you make do go your way. It's a factor (again) in the context of the general good of the team. I would guess either Meyer or May succeeding would put more fans in seats than some of the other options succeeding. Baseball being a business, that has to count. But no, I wouldn't "construct" a roster "based on" trades, either.

Good gawd. How'd that typo slip through the previous time and nobody razzed me about it? Just for my sanity's sake I'll fix it in the blog entry, but your comment stands, with thanks.

I meant to write up these notes last night and forgot. No deep insights here, just my jottings from a day under the sun at Hammond Field. I arrived at 9:10, too late to get free parking on a game day. Cheapskate fans of minor league spring ball, take note! I was approached by a reporter from a Naples newspaper, who was looking to interview average fans. I had initially mentioned my tenuous "affiliation" with TD (thinking he might be Nick Nelson), and apparently that made me way too official sounding for him, so he moved on. LOL. The players were only just starting their warmups, and I saw maybe one other "civilian" like myself checking things out, to begin with. More started showing up soon, of course. This just in: Aaron Slegers is tall. He looks like a weed that the lawn mower missed, when standing amongst his fellow pitchers listening to a coach. Met up with fellow TDer Stringer Bell, and his brother. Great guys. We hung out together, off and on, most of the rest of the day. I watched the first hour of the two minor league games versus the Rays, back and forth between the adjacent fields. In the nominal AAA game, "A Rodriguez" (I didn't know A-Rod had joined the Twins organization!) scored a hit to right, and the players who had the game off behind the screen near me were hooting that this was his first time to hit to the opposite field, ever. One of these players was eating some berries, and another piped up with a crack about Hingle McCringleberry. A Key and Peele fan, apparently. No "Berrios" joke, considering he was sitting right there with us, so I guess it's too far from his actual pronunciation which I haven't completely mastered yet. "Bay-REE-ose"? Either that or for some reason they don't want to kid him that way, or Jose had duties charting pitches and maybe shouldn't have been disturbed. I already mentioned in a forum thread last night that AA pitching coach R. C. Lichtenstein asked the Rays kid who was holding the radar gun behind the plate, "was that a changeup?", while prospect Dylan Floro was on the mound. "No, fastball," was the reply. Hope Floro didn't overhear. Ouch. Very ouch. In the other game, Sano hit a very long homer on the first pitch he saw. It drew appropriate oohs and aahs from the spectating players. His ability is certainly respected. The players know who's who - see my above comment about A-Rod, and when Max Murphy hit a homer the previous day I watched, one of the guys confirmed his identity for me and added "he can hit". Stuart Turner threw out a would-be base stealer by about two miles. I know there's a lot more to catching than that, things I can't begin to judge on my own, but it confirms for me the good things I've read about his D. I finally walked over to the big leaguers' game and made use of my cheap seat ticket. Watched the middle part of the game with Stringer and his brother, and got to witness an error by Dozier and later a bobble by Nunez that he still converted to an out. Guess which infielder I gave a pass on that to, and which one I griped about. It wasn't a very compelling game in the late stages, so after my companions left I watched an inning more, then left with the score 3-2 going into the bottom of the ninth. Apparently I didn't miss much. That's it for now. Off to the park now for another go-round.

Sounds too optimistic. I have them at 87-75.

Switch to decaf, OK? SATIRICAL RESPONSE

Source: 30 Twins Prospects I'll Be Watching In 2015

Stringer and I were idly watching today's game at Hammond, where Nunez bobbled a ball hit to him but managed to recover in time to toss it to second for the force. Stringer is a Nunez backer, I am a Nunez skeptic, and we both had our say about that play. What we managed to agree on is that Nunez seems to have the athleticism and so forth, but somehow manages (in Stringer's phrase) to be less than the sum of his parts.

"The Claimed Clingers". He was lumped in with Schafer.