This is the time of spring training when it’s pretty hard for a baseball story to get much attention in the food chain of sports. Most players have a pretty good idea whether they’re going to make the team and, for most people, the battle over the final spots on the roster doesn’t carry the same weight as trying to figure out their NCAA pool sheets (I’m thinking Kansas right now in a tournament without a lot of upsets) and following the other seasons that are reaching their conclusions rather than just starting up. I mean, I’m just not going to lose a lot of sleep over whether the Twins will lose Garrett Jones if they put him through waivers.

It looks like we’ve figured out in the last couple weeks that — barring the acquisition of 103-year-old, weak-armed Kenny Lofton — Craig Monroe will back up the winner of the center-field stakes. I’m betting Gogomez right now. That puts Monroe and Jason Kubel in the extra OF/DH spots. The infield battle is for the sixth spot — Buscher v. Tolbert.

I’m taking Tolbert right now because, while everyone has kind things to say about Buscher, Tolbert is a switch-hitter and has serious minor-league time at second base as well as third. I’m not sure the Twins want to come north with two lefty-batting third basemen and Buscher showed a less-than-stellar glove during his time in the majors last season, so penciling him in as a three-position reserve seems pretty wishful.

That allows Gardy to carry the 12 pitchers he wants and, given the setbacks during spring training, the rotation is the home of the real mystery. Baker’s health, Liriano’s comeback, Slowey’s readiness and Livan being Livan make the season-opening rotation something that could be settled by a game of darts or comparing notes from the doctor and psychologist. Not much is settled and, even if things had shaken out by now, I think there’d still be a healthy dose of prayer and wishing to go along with the coaching and strategy.

So, for now, I’ll lose my sleep over whether St. Joe can knock out Choklahoma, how far I can ride Lou’ville and looking at a Sweet 16 match-up between Xavier and Duke and going back and forth and back and forth and eventually settling on… (How do you all feel about Memphis?)

other people are here too.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 19th, 2008 at 8:12 am and is filed under Thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.