March 2007 Archives

The Twins roster is set for opening day, so it's time to give a player by player rundown of the team. 25 players is a lot, so I'll start with the hitters in this entry.

The Twins' AL Central rival Detroit Tigers got a bit of bad news today. Kenny Rogers, who at first was expected to only miss a start with a tired arm actually underwent surgery for a blood clot.

Minnesota Twins

I feel kind of like Carlos Silva did last season when he left a game early with a tummy ache. It sounds like the Twins are gonna give him the fifth spot in the rotation to start the season. To make matters worse, the Twins have cut left hander Mike Venafro after he pitched 10 scoreless innings through the spring.

I noticed some incoming links from the Twins page on SportsIllustrated.com. Near the bottom of the page they offer links to featured stories from fan sites and blogs as well as a few independent sites such as TwinsNation. It's pretty cool to see one of the big guys, best known for print, embrace the value of the small, independent bloggers out there.

With just a week to go until the start of the season on April 2nd, Sidney Ponson had his best start of the spring against his former team, the Baltimore Orioles. With 2 pretty bad outings and 2 pretty good outings this spring, Ponson has seemingly locked up a spot in the Twins' rotation along with Johan Santana, Boof Bonser and Ramon Ortiz. I expect Ponson to fill out the fifth spot of the rotation. Whether Carlos Silva or Matt Garza will get that fourth spot is yet to be determined, but I'd sleep a lot better at night if I knew it was Garza.

Project Prospect has completed its list of the top 150 players under 25. Many are in the majors and many are still on their way. The list is divided into two parts: Part 1 and Part 2.

Everyone knows that Carlos Silva is coming off a horrible season. While there are still a fair number of delusional people that think he'll magically turn it around, I think most people that follow the Twins regularly knew in the back of their minds that the Twins had probably wasted $4.5 million dollars when they opted to bring back Silva for 2007. Even with my highly negative view towards Silva, I still thought it was almost certain he'd start out the season in the rotation, but that's starting to look much less likely.

There's not much to say about spring training on a day by day basis, especially at its outset. Pitchers are just getting their first couple innings, none staying around longer than 2 innings and in many cases players are left behind and saved the bus ride for those one day road trips. So far, there's not much good to say about the Twins since games began last Wednesday.