It’s photo day here, and Twins players are lined up to navigate through a maze of photographers, including ours.  Wait ’till you see the cover of our baseball section this year. It will be colorful and lively. Props to our photog David Joles for a well-done photo session.

The team is well behind schedule because of pictures and physicals. I talked to Jeff Cirillo, whose sore neck seems to be worse than Matt Garza’s. He won’t do much today so he can rest it.

I didn’t blog after Sunday’s workout because, well, I didn’t feel like it. But here’s some highlights.

I can’t stress enough how batting practice performances don’t reveal everything about a pitcher. But Kevin Slowey’s  control is impressive. Good movement on his fastball and he keeps it down in the strike zone. Good breaking ball. Based on his mound presence, he looked like it was his 10th camp instead of his first. Jason Kubel did take him deep during the last half of his session. But I’m confident, barring injury, that Slowey will debut this year.

 

Silva threw the ball well, too. But I’ve got to see his sinker in game action before I tout him as reformed…

 

Talked to George Toma behind the batting cage. Toma had nothing but nice things to say about how the Vikings treated him last year when he came to the Twin Cities to work on their practice fields. He said the Vikings gave him gifts and want him back for this season.

 

Watched catchers practice catching foul popups yesterday. I spoke with Terry Steinbach this morning about it and will drop a note in Tuesday’s paper.

Also watched Jerry White have the outfielders practice catching fly balls in the sun. It wasn’t pretty. Everybody, including Torii Hunter, had trouble. Rondell White made a complete meal out of a couple fly balls. Lew Ford, Garrett Jones, same thing. And it seemed like every time Cuddyer had a fly ball sent his way it was headed to wall, so he would pull up with that, `I’m not sacrificing myself on Feb. 25,” look. This is what spring training drills are for.

Now that I think about it, I never saw Denard Span drop one ball.

That’s all for now. I may have a few notes after the workout, and look for my second podcast of spring sometime Tuesday. Now go start your snow blowers…..

 

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Joe C. and I spent part of this morning reading about the blizzard, and we feel for all our friends who are getting slammed with snow.

It seems like every year I head to Florida, the Twin Cities gets hit with a storm within two weeks. But nothing like I’m reading about right now. Whew….

Anyway, a couple interesting pitchers will throw b.p. today: Kevin Slowey on the main field and Sidney Ponson on a back field. Needless to say, the Strib’s baseball department will be in attendance.

Carlos Silva also is scheduled to throw today. “I’m going to break some bats,” Silva said. Good luck, Carlos. You’ll need a forest full of toothpicks and sawdust to make everyone forget about last year.

That’s all for now, folks…

 

The media softball game wasn’t as lame as I thought it would be - but I still don’t see the point.

I was on a team managed by Tony Oliva that lost 7-5 to Bert Blyleven’s team. No one on my team wanted to play third, so I played there and it was a disaster. I booted five grounders. Two allowed runs to score, one allowed a runner on base but I recovered twice to force runners at third. My throws kept pulling the first baseman off the bag. My expectations were below zero on this one because I haven’t played since I was in a league in Kansas City 12 years ago.

Offensively, I was 2 for 3 with double, but I kept trying to go out and get the ball instead of letting the ball come over the plate. I tapped to third in my first at-bat. Blyleven, who was on the mound, tried to be funny and threw one in overhand on my next at-bat, and I lined it down the left field line for a double. My third at-bat began with a swing and a miss (once again, let the ball travel deeper, La Velle), but I lined a single to right two pitches later (much better, La Velle).

Some spectators - I’m not going to name names but their initials are Terry Ryan, Jack Goin, Remzi Kiratli, Mike Herman, Joe Christensen and Jim Souhan - heckled everything I did. At least I got out there.

Next year, the Twins should just do what they do best - skip the game and just feed us.

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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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Jackson Mijares, brother of Twins pitching prospect Jose Mijares, was shot and killed last night in a bar in Caracas, Venezuela. Jose Mijares is leaving camp this morning to travel back home. Two other family members were shot and wounded during the incident. We’ll follow up on this later and in Sunday’s editions of the Star-Tribune….