Well, the first day of live batting practice usually is hitter abuse. But some players got some shots in. Here’s some highlights and batting cage chatter:

Scott Baker’s two problems are that he doesn’t keep the ball down and he doesn’t repeat his mechanics so he can get used to keeping the ball down. But he looked good on Saturday as he threw to Joe Mauer, Ken Harvey and Josh Rabe.

Mauer thought Baker was throwing harder, and because Baker kept the ball down, his ball had more movement. The last few pitches left the strike zone, however, and Harvey hit Baker’s final pitch off the top of the fence for a homer.

Twins pitching coach Rick Anderson was impressed, but warned that pitching well in the bullpen, then pitching well in batting practice and THE pitching well in games is very, very different.

Harvey does swing the bat with the bottom two fingers of his top hand dropping down over his bottom hand. “Some guys are comfortable doing that,” Rod Carew said as he watched Harvey swing. “I can’t even do that playing golf.”

Glenn Perkins looked good. He has a nice easy delivery and his ball seems to jump on hitters. Some people behind the cage said Perk reminded them of Jarrod Washburn.

 I didn’t see it, but Denard Span took Rickey Barrett off the batter’s eye in center. Span entered the organization with his hands spread apart on the bat (yes like Cobb!). Once he started mastering slapping the ball to the left side of the infield and beating out hits, the Twins wanted him to close his hands and drive the ball more.

Span struggled with that last year at Class AA New Britain - I know because he called Torii Hunter out of frustration and Torii told me about it. But he may be getting the hang of it.

Oh, the Twins also worked on signs today. Last year, third base coach Scott Ullger yelled at me to. `take a hike,’ when I tried to listen in. This year, I watched from the press box.

What difference does it make? The signs for spring training are different than the regular season, and the Twins like using a second indicator, so I get confused anyway. 

 

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This entry was posted on Saturday, February 24th, 2007 at 5:49 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.