Wednesday, February 25, 2015

Two days of bullpens ...

J.R Graham is wearing No. 62 in camp.
... and no reported injuries. That's a plus. All 29 pitchers in camp have thrown now, and we'll see if any have issues coming back.

It's silly to try to glean any meaning beyond that from the first mound work of the spring. But people try to extract something anyway.

So we get stuff like Phil Hughes (who threw his bullpen on an adjacent mound) talking about how much more Ricky Nolasco's sinker was moving than he remembers it from last year. Maybe that's a good sign; maybe it's meaningless. The Twins certainly expected more from Nolasco last season than they got.

Mike Berardino, in one of those pieces bursting with spring training optimism, suggests that the Twins' revamped rotation could provide 1,000 innings. I'll be surprised if that happens. If it does, this team will be pretty good.

There was chatter about J.R. Graham. the Rule 5 draftee. He comes with a reputation as a high-velocity arm with injury problems. As a Rule 5 pick, he has to spend the year on the 25-man roster or be offered back to the Atlanta Braves. The Twins see him as a bullpen option, but he's unfamiliar to the organization and the window to decide is small. His first bullpen probably got a bit more attention because of that, but when the time comes to say yea or nay to him, nobody in the room is going to cite what he did in his first bullpen session.


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