Thursday Links - Position Players Report Credit: Kim Klement-US PRESSWIRE

Position players are reporting today, at least the last two that have not yet made an appearance, anyways.  Twins fans should get their first spring glimpse of Justin Morneau and Oswaldo Arcia.  When Morneau does arrive, he’ll have to deal with more than just his past concussions.  Other than those two, the other 64 invitees to big league camp have already shown their faces in Ft. Myers.  Additionally, many of the Twins’ Minor League players are in Ft. Myers getting some early work in before their camp begins next week.

The Twins are working hard, and so are Twins bloggers.  Here are the links that stood out from the past week:

One of the areas the Twins and hitting coach Joe Vavra will be working on this spring is helping players be more comfortable hitting at Target Field and understanding that hitters can do more than just pull the ball down the lines to hit home runs.  Parker Hageman has all the details at Over the Baggy.

Joe Posnanski has a couple of interesting stories this week over at SI.com.  The first, is about the magic of 3,000 hits and what it means about the hitters and the Hall of Fame voters.  It looks closely at Johnny Damon, who will need to find a home in 2012 and 2013 if he hopes to reach that milestone.  The second really speaks to the way that baseball drives conversations and friendly arguments between fans.

La Velle E Neal III has a list of seven players to keep an eye on during spring training.  Among the seven are Morneau and Francisco Liriano, both of whom need to bounce back from subpar 2011 seasons.  Having a successful spring will go along way towards dictating their success in the season ahead.

Yahoo’s Big League Stew is throwing out some lists of the 10 best things about being a fan of XYZ baseball team.  Minnesota’s own Lindsay Guentzel counts down the 10 best things about being a Twins fan.

A picture is worth a thousand words.  I like to think of this as Tsuyoshi Nishioka looking in on real Major League Baseball players, wondering why he cannot get in.

Terry Ryan projected a $100 million dollar payroll for the Twins this season, and it appears they’re right on the mark.

Twinkie Town has posted the transcript from a great interview with Twins Assistant GM Rob Anthony.  What a great way to gear up for Spring Training.

Andrew Walterthinks Jim Souhan is a hack.  They might both have a point.

The new MLB CBA seems like old news by this time, but in case you have not fully wrapped your head around all the details, Granny Baseball looks at what it means for the Twins in the 2012 draft.

Vegas thinks the Twins will win 74 games in 2012.  I think they will probably win more than that, but I am not sure they will win more than 80.

I have been planning to write a 2012 Projection for Nick Blackburn for about a week now.  The North Dakota Twins Fan beat me to it.

The Rockies have given Jim Tracy an indefinite contract?  Maybe.  But Rob Neyer thinks that a couple hundred losses could send Tracy packing.

The Twins do not have a shortstop.  They had one briefly in 2010 in J.J. Hardy, but he was not healthy enough to impress anyone in the Twins front offices and he was sent packing in a move that says more about the Twins than Hardy.

Intentions are funny things.  And you must never intend to let Sam Fuld pitch.  So shall it is written, so shall it be done.

It turns out that the MLB Network is not great, at least as far as networks go.  Not only is it the lowest rated sports network, it is the lowest rated network of any kind!

Video of the Week: La Velle E. Neal III talks with Terry Ryan about scheduling B games during Spring Training and finding spots for their 33 pitchers to work.

This is not baseball related, but it was too interesting not to include this week.  Behavioral Scientists have found a way to predict not only the likelihood of a particular shopper being pregnant, but also to predict her due date based upon the products she buys.   Maybe this is not cutting edge stuff, but it if researchers can track us this closely at the register, imagine what kind of stuff their digging up based on our online profiles.

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With the winter grinding on, I thought that this entry from NotGraphs’ Dayn Perry summed up perfectly everything I’ve ever wanted to say about baseball in January. “This has been a post about putting your hat in the dishwasher. This is the offseason.”

With the Twins’ roster construction turning towards the bullpen, Nick Nelson took at look at Free Agent relievers the Twins could sign, as well as internal options to fill the remaining spots in the pen.  Seth Stoh’s took his turn looking at available relievers as well, rounding up a large group of players that could be available for the remaining $2-$3 million dollars left in the Twins’ 2012 budget.    Twinkie Town’s Jesse does a great job of breaking down many of the advantages and disadvantages of the creme of the free agent relieving crop.

He isn’t a free agent reliever, but he is a free agent, and if the Twins are willing to stretch their budget, they could end up with Roy Oswalt on a one year deal, and if he pitches anywhere near his career numbers, he could help the Twins win another surprise AL Central championship.

More from Baseball Outsider where Edward Thoma continues dissecting the Bill Smith Era, checking in this week on the J.J. Hardy – Jim Hoey trade as well as looking closer at the rest of the trades from 2010.

The Twins Fan From Afar makes a case that signing Francisco Liriano to a long term deal this winter is a smart move and allows the Twins to Buy-Low on a guy with tremendous upside.  When healthy and pitching well, Liriano is one of the 5 best pitchers in the American League.  Even when he isn’t at his best, he can still manage to luck into a no-hitter, right? (Francisco Liriano took the hill last night for the first time this winter, throwing for Escogido.  He threw 1.2 innings, gave up 2 hits, a run, a walk, and struck out two.  Not great, but it’s something.)  (more…)

So many things have contributed to this collapse that it’s hard to recount all of them. For me, the primary reasons are the seemingly endless rash of injuries and the disappearance of Francisco Liriano as an average starter let alone the top of the rotation guy he was supposed to be. Certainly there’s plenty of room for debate and discussion to figure out exactly what went wrong but we know for certain that 15 players that contributed last year were not in the organization on Opening Day this spring.

Would the team’s fortunes be different if any of these players remained on the roster? It’s impossible to know of course since one change could have a ripple effect. Perhaps if the Twins front office had kept the most minor of these guys, Liriano would have been the ace we were hoping for. Perhaps Morneau and Mauer would have managed to avoid the DL. The universe works in mysterious ways after all.

The point of this 2-part article isn’t to state, emphatically or otherwise, where the organization went wrong in it’s decision making, but rather just to check in on where each of these guys are and how they are doing in 2011. I hope you’ll follow along, enjoy, and maybe even recall some of the great moments from 2010 in the process. (more…)