Back home again; first cuts

I missed seeing David
Bromberg pitch during
my spring training trip,
which particularly
disappointed me because
I now know his girlfriend
reads this blog.

My wife and I were winging our way back to Minnesota today when the Twins made their first round of training camp cuts.

That they would start trimming soon was obvious. The minor league camp opened Friday, so the displaced players now have a place to report. The pitchers who are going to be in starting rotations in Triple A need to do more than one-inning stints, and the pitchers who are going to be in the major league rotation are going to suck up more innings.

None of the moves really qualify as a surprise. I note that Joe Benson will repeat Double A, but he hasn't had a full season there and struggled at that level to start last season. A month or more, even, of consolidation there isn't a bad idea. I surmise that Kyle Gibson, David Bromberg, Anthony Swarzak and Eric Hacker will be four of the five starters at Rochester, and it's quite possible that Yorman Bazardo will fill out the rotation.

Fourteen cuts, six of them pitchers, none of them left-handers. Five of them were subjects of the just-completed bullpen series, but none of them were, in my view, serious candidates. I got through that one just in time.

The Twins have about two weeks left in Fort Myers. I would expect the next round of bullpen cuts will nail at least two lefties (non-roster invitees Chuck James and Phil Dumatrait) and at least two of these five right-handers: Kyle Waldrop, Carlos Gutierrez, Jim Hoey, Alex Burnett and Anthony Slama. Waldrop and Gutierrez, as non-roster guys, will be easy targets. The toughest decisions will be still to come.