March 31, 2009

Twins Rundown: March 31, 2009

Yesterday, Glen Perkins and the Twins faced an old friend in Ft. Myers as they hosted Matt Garza and the reigning American League Champion Tampa Bay Rays. Perkins edged Garza through 6 shutout innings to give the Twins a 3-0 win. Garza allowed 3 runs on 8 hits in the losing effort. Jose Morales, Nick Punto and Alexi Casilla all drove in a run each.

Perkins has been rock solid this Spring, he now sports a 3-1 record to go along with a 1.73 ERA through 26 innings.

Joe Christensen of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune caught up with Twins skipper Ron Gardenhire after the game. Gardenhire announced that both Delmon Young and Joe Crede will miss a couple days with injuries. Young has a sore shoulder and won't pick up a baseball for a few days while Crede was hit on the hand by a Matt Garza fastball and will miss a few days of action. Dick Bremer reported during the Fox Sports Net telecast of the yesterdays game that Crede broke a blood vessel in his hand, which made his knuckle really swollen. But both players should be fine in a few days.

Gardenhire also announced that the team will make more cuts today. But also mentioned that the battle for the final bench spot will go up until the last day of Spring Training.

Joe Christensen also gives us a great story about Twins legend Harmon Killebrew and current first baseman Justin Morneau. Killebrew still remains very involved with the Twins and every team could use a presence like him. He's done a lot for the Twins and continues to mentor young players.

The brass of Twins writers here at Baseball Digest are handing out pre-season hardware to who we think is going to win different awards at the end of the year. Today, the Cy Young Award is given out. We all believe the American League Cy Young winner will come from the American League East.

Seth Stohs of Seth Speaks (and Baseball Digest) is hosting his Weekly Twins Podcast tonight at 9:00 PM CT. Scheduled to appear are Twins pitching prospect Dan Osterbrock, TwinsBaseball.com's Kelly Thesier and Aaron Gleeman of NBCSports/Rotoworld, MinnPost and AaronGleeman.com. Make sure you tune in!

Frequent commentor at Howard Sinker's A Fan's View... from Section 220, JimCrikket, gives us a great in-depth look into Spring Training. Catch both of his posts here and here.

This post can also be read at Baseball Digest.com.

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