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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The Tampa Bay Rays have had some minor tweaks to their roster, most notable losing Evan Longoria to the DL, but through the first 22 games they’ve only brought up two guys from their Minor League system.  The Twins, on the other hand, have faced plenty of adversity through their first 21 games and have already played 30 guys on their Major League team, due to a variety of reasons from ineffectiveness in the bullpen to bi-lateral leg weakness behind the plate.

Unfortunately for the Rays and the Twins these injuries have plagued both clubs where they have relatively weak depth, compared with their options in the outfield.  In conjunction with my brother’s Baseball Card Series I will be showcasing a few baseball cards of my own, and today marks the first effort on that front.  I’ll be profiling two MLB Rookie Cards from this year’s Topps collection, Desmond Jennings of the Tampa Bay Rays and Ben Revere of the Minnesota Twins. (more…)

As is becoming a tradition on these previews I have reached across the aisle to get the Tampa perspective from someone more versed on all things Rays related. To that effect, Ben Ice, Lead Writer of Rays Colored Glasses, agreed to collaborate with me on the pitching and the Q&A portions of this preview. Also helping out on the series preview is Puckett’s Pond Staff Writer Adam Krueger who was kind enough to author the Twins half of the pitching matchups for me.

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