FORT MYERS. FLA. - Pitchers and catchers start workouts on Monday, but a few position players already have arrived.

Michael Cuddyer and Brian Buscher hit the gym Wednesday morning before taking batting practice on a back field at the Lee County Sports Complex. Matt Macri hit off a tee at one of the batting cages.

I chatted briefly with Buscher, who looks a little more muscled up than I remembered him to be last season. He was raving about being on the infield last weekend for the Budweiser Shootout in Daytona. We didn’t get around to talking about the club’s interest in Joe Crede, but that might be a moot issue as the Twins don’t appear to be eager to give Crede $5-7 million.

There were about 20 cars parked near the back fields as players continued their pre-camp conditioning. Kevin Mulvey, Brian Duensing, Kevin Slowey, Glen Perkins, Craig Breslow, Bobby Korecky Jose Morales and Jason Kubel were among the recognizable faces.

Other players who live in Fort Myers have been known to work out on the fields before reporting to their camps. Derek Lowe and former Twin Brian Buchanan were on the field Wednesday and former Twin Jason Bartlett was around earlier in the week.

Groundskeeping guru George Toma is already here and is busy dragging the infield. Toma turned 80 while working the Super Bowl a couple weeks ago, and the organizers threw him a birthday party at the stroke of midnight with a big cake on the 50-yard line of Raymond James Stadium. 

For those of you who have been to games down here, you’ll remember how crummy the scoreboard was. But a new scoreboard, part of the Target Field scoreboard deal,  is being erected as I write this.

Now I’ve got to knock out a spring training preview and try to catch the end of batting practice. I believe Twins officials have landed in Fort Myers and should start popping up around here during the afternoon. If there’s anything newsworthy I’ll post it here,

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 11th, 2009 at 10:52 am and is filed under preseason. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.