Notes, quotes and comment

Curtis Granderson fractured his right forearm on
this pitch by Toronto's J.A. Happ on Sunday.

Catching up on weekend developments:

*The wrangle over how to fit a baseball field into the coming Vikings stadium was resolved Friday. I had earlier cast doubt on the good faith of the football team in this issue, and even though the matter has been resolved to the satisfaction of the amateur baseball side, I can't help but think that it never should have become an issue of contention.

Anthony Slama has
been twice exposed
to the Rule 5 draft
and gone unclaimed.

*Yankees outfielder and former Mankato Masher Curtis Granderson broke his right forearm Sunday when hit by a pitch. The Grandy Man is to be out about 10 weeks, which would keep him out of action into May. The Yankees were tentatively shifting Granderson to left field and Brett Gardner to center; now there's little question that transition will take place. It will be interesting to see how the Yankees deal with the loss of their one power-hitting outfielder.

*I am frequently amused by the fervor with which certain online observers of the Twins campaign for Anthony Slama. Slama's appearance in Sunday's exhibition game was greeted with a predictable enthusiasm in my Twitter feed, but it didn't go well. It's not so much Slama's sour results (two-thirds of an inning, two hits, two walks, no strikeouts, three runs) as how he got there.  He had his usual lack of velocity and his usual lack of pitches in the strike zone. Only one of runs was earned, but the game sure slowed down when he entered. Yeah, it's early in spring training, but he merely confirmed the organization's skepticism of his skills.

* Two Peter Gammons tweets Sunday about the Twins:

"Ron Gardenhire has completely brought in on Mike Pelfrey"

"Twins think even though Eddie Rosario has a 70 arm he can be near star level as a second baseman, quickly after his Puerto Rican winter."

"70 arm" is a scouting grade that says, basically, that Rosario has a right fielder's arm. (The range scouts use is 20 at the bottom, 80 at the top— so 70 isn't top of the line, but it's well above average.) It's a confusing tweet by Gammons, because a strong arm is hardly a disqualification for second base, which is what the sentence implies. I think he's suggesting that Rosario throws too well to be "wasted" at second base, but that's the Twins plan. (The strong arm may wind up being a saving grace for other inadequacies at the position; it was Rosario's fielding error that resulted in the two unearned runs yielded by Slama.)