Thrylos

Originally published at The Tenth Inning Stretch
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I arrived North a tad too late from Fort Myers last night, so I did not quite had time to compile my last Spring Training report, so here it goes:

• Mainly a drills day over at the Minor League fields yesterday with no games or scrimmages schedules. Interesting to see Ray Olmedo, who was cut earlier in the morning participate in drills with the position players who will likely stay at Fort Myers for

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Originally published at The Tenth Inning Stretch
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Today the Twins beat the Toronto Blue Jays 14-5 at Hammond Stadium with about a week remaining at Spring Training; meanwhile there were AAA vs AA and A+ vs A scrimmages at fields number 2 and 3 on the minor league side. Here are my thoughts and observations of the day

• A lot of great performances today, including Joe Mauer's 6 RBI day that included a HR at dead center and Aaron Hick's 4 for 4 day, but the

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Originally published at The Tenth Inning Stretch
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Actually I spent the day at Port Charlotte, watching the Twins beat the Rays; thus, no minor league report today other that the 5 guys (Jason Christian, Nate Hanson, Chris Colabello, Bruce Pugh and Dan Turpen - of Kevin Slowey trade fame) who made the half an hour trip up North to fill in as needed. Here are my thoughts and observations from today:

• I did not see it, but Scoot Diamond pitched for the AAA

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Originally published at The Tenth Inning Stretch
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I am officially at Fort Myers, where I will be through Monday, attending Twins' games and checking on the minor leaguers. Unlike last season, when I pretty much presented a photo diary with 20+ images a day and some commentary, this season I will be doing something different: I will be presenting some of my observations and thoughts during the day on both major and minor leaguers, as well as other Spring Training-related ...

Originally published at The Tenth Inning Stretch (where the graphics are better for some reason)
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t is already almost a month into Spring Training games for the Twins, and it is time for the second version of the dashboards. You can find all 2013 Spring Training dashboards here, for reference.

Again, you can find explanations of the measures and the colors of the dashboards to quantify Spring Training performance of the combatants in both the position player ...

Originally published at The Tenth Inning Stretch (with the full size images; for some reason hard to reproduce here)
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It is already two weeks into Spring Training games for the Twins, so it is time for the second version of the dashboards. You can find all 2013 Spring Training dashboards here, for reference.

Again, you can find explanations of the measures and the colors of the dashboards to quantify Spring Training performance of the combatants in both the ...

Originally published at The Tenth Inning Stretch (and with a little better colors)
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With the Twins' Spring Training about half a month old and eight official games in the books, it is about time that I start posting these dashboards again keeping track of how the players who are batting for positions are doing. It might seem that Spring Training has been going on for a while, and it has because of the World Baseball Classic. For comparison, last year the first Twins' ...

A Light exists in Spring
Not present on the Year
At any other period —
When March is scarcely here

-Emily Dickinson

Spring Training time is one of my favorite baseball times during the season (or is it "off-season", or "pre-season"?)This is the time where all the teams have the same record and all 60 players or so who are invited in the Major League camp hope that they will ...

Originally published at The Tenth Inning Stretch
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This is my second annual food guide to Fort Myers and the third and last in the series of the 2013 Guides to Fort Myers that include the logistics guide and the baseball guide. The first was more of a culinary guide, pointing out what are the local foods, and pointing out places you can sample them. That guide is still very relevant and you can find it here. This one is a little different than last year's. It is a ...

(originally published at The Tenth Inning Stretch)
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For a baseball team to content, one of three things need to happen:

1. An organization has to develop impact starting pitchers.
2. An organization has to trade for impact starting pitcher.
3. An organizations has to sign impact starting pitcher free agents.

I demonstrated earlier this month that the Twins' last two year abysmal record could have been predicted as earlier as 2008, based on the state of their ...

(originally published at The Tenth Inning Stretch)
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Today the Minnesota Twins selected two new members to their Hall of Fame, LHP "Everyday" Eddie Guardado, and long time staffer Tom Mee. All Twins' fans know Everyday Eddie, but who is Tom Mee?

Tom Mee has been with the Twins' organization from their first season in Minnesota (1961) until their last title (1991). He was the first front office person hired when the Twins moved to Minnesota in 1960 ...

Originally published at The Tenth Inning Stretch
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This is the second of the three 2013 Spring Training Guides to Fort Myers that will appear here. The first one was a guide on the logistics of how to get there and where to stay etc., including some ways to get there as inexpensively as possible, if that is a consideration. The Logistics Guide can be found here. The next guide will be about food and this one is about the reason people go to Fort Myers: Spring Training ...

Originally published at The Tenth Inning Stretch
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Less than a month for Pitchers and Catchers to report to Fort Myers so it is about time for you to make your arrangements to go to Fort Myers (I made mine late last year) and it is about time for the second annual Fort Myers Guides.

Last season there were two Spring Training Guides: the Spring Training Guide to Fort Myers and the Fort Myers Culinary Guide . This season there will be three guides and will be ...

Originally published at The Tenth Inning Stretch
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With Catchers and Pitchers reporting in less that one month for Spring Training 2013, I decided to get ready for my Spring Training Coverage (teaser: expect 3 new guides this month) so I was looking at the past coverage here. I stumbled upon this little piece from the end of the 2009 Spring Training. It looks really innocent. After all it is a list of all 97 pitchers in the Twins' minors in 2008 from DSL to AAA, who ...