Opening night: Angels 6, Twins 3

Game story here.

Box score here.

Unimpressive start for Scott Baker (above), who was a bit wild early and didn't get out of the fifth inning.

And a worrisome relief outing from Jose Mijares, who gave up home runs to left-handed hitting Hideki Matsui and switch-hitter Kendry Morales. Morales who struggled against lefties last season. These are the guys a left-handed specialist is supposed to get out.

Last year, Mijares dominated lefties. But things started getting away from him late in the season, and he wasn't very effective in spring training either.

And despite that, the Twins were in the game. They loaded the bases in both the sixth and seventh innings but couldn't push even one run across in either frame. And in the eighth, after Michael Cuddyer walked on four pitches and Jason Kubel got ahead 3-1, Kubel popped up on what might have been ball four. And then Delmon Young swung at the first pitch (natch; he's Delmon Young, after all) and ground into a double play.

Young did have a two-run homer in his first at-bat and add an infield single, so it's not like he contributed nothing to the attack.

A potentially winnable game, but the pitching wasn't all that good, and the offense couldn't quite break through.

My encounter with Slovenian baseball

Geography class time. Yeah, I know — you came here looking for baseball. We'll get there. I promise.

The Republic of Slovenia, part of the former Yugoslavia, is a nation of more than 2 million people wedged in the mountains between Italy, Austria, Hungary, the Adriatic Sea and Croatia. It is not, so far as I can tell, a noted baseball hotbed.

There came last week into my inbox the following message:

Hi,

I was reading your notes about Twins outfielder Mark Dolenc. Coul you be so kind and tell me more about him, or, do you think he's going to make the Twins rooster this year, or ...

Kind of special request: Is it possible from you, to provide me his e-mail adress?

Best regards from Slovenia — EU,

Rok Lesjak

ZBSS media relations department

Now — I reproduce the e-mail with its misspellings and odd sentence structures with trepidation. I have no wish to ridicule Mr. Lesjak (I assume Rok is a masculine name; it sure looks like it to an English speaker). My attempts at Slovene would be far more pathetic.

I googled a Web site listed under the name and, with the wonders of Google's page translator, came up with this. And with another click of the mouse, a post to which I seem to be unable to link, titled "Mark Dolenc?"

The text must be easier to follow in the original, assuming one can read Slovene.

As best as I can tell: ESPN broadcast a Twins-Yankees exhibition game into Slovenia, where people involved in Slovenia Baseball and Softball took note of a player with a Slovene name — Dolenc. So they googled him, and found all the posts I've been doing about his spring training appearances.

And asked me for information about him, since I am apparently the ace of the Mark Dolenc beat.

I've sent an e-mail with some details of Dolenc's MSU career and biographical information, which isn't much. I suspect ZBSS is looking for a role model for Slovene athletes to interest them in baseball; Dolenc may not fit that bill perfectly. I don't know.

I just find the whole saga an interesting sample of this bizarrely ever-more interconnected world. Baseball in Slovenia? Who knew?

Poll results and Alex Burnett

I should have mentioned in the previous post that the main reason Alex Burnett (above) was brought up rather than Anthony Slama, Ron Mahay or Kyle Waldrop is that Burnett is on the 40-man roster. The others are not.

Baseball America ranks Burnett as a better prospect than Slama anyway.

Burnett is a "smallish right-hander" (6 feet, 190 pounds) who came on last season with a move to the bullpen. Working in short stints, his velocity is around 93 mph with occasional gusts to 95. He also throws a straight change to lefties, who really struggled with him last season. (LH's hit just .150 off him in two levels, High A and Double A.)

Key sentence in BA's write-up: "Burnett will become a big league bullpen factor when he improves his breaking ball command."

It wouldn't hurt if he became a factor starting Monday night.

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Last week's poll was about how many games Michael Cuddyer will play in center field.

The consensus appears to be: Not many. Fifteen (38 percent) said less than five games; 13 (33 percent) said five to 14; seven (17 percent) said 15 to 24; and four (10 percent) said at least 25.

Twenty-five games would be almost one a week, and that's not going to happen. If Denard Span needs that much time off, the Twins will add a legitimate center fielder to their bench. I'm inclined, personally, to the less-than-five category.

New poll is up.

Applauding Jacque Jones

Jacque Jones didn't make the team this spring.

And he still got ovation after ovation in the two Target Field shakedown games.

He was always a flawed player — he couldn't hit lefties, his strike zone judgment was poor, his throwing arm was subpar. He was miscast as a leadoff hitter, and then he was miscast as a right fielder.

But he was a key part of the 2001-04 team that turned the franchise from hapless to divisional champs, a team made up of flawed players with a knack for adding up to more than the sum of their parts.

I suspect that any significant player from the 2002 team who dons the Twins uni again will be warmly greeted by Minnesota fans, no matter how little they have left in the tank. Yes, even A.J. Pierzynski.

A few of the players from the 2002 playoff squad are still stars, or at least key regulars — Johan Santana, Torii Hunter, Michael Cuddyer, Pierzynski. Some of them — Corey Koskie, Brad Radke, Eddie Guardado — have retired. Others — Luis Rivas, Eric Milton, Doug Mientkiewicz — have slid into athletic senility; they haven't left, but the jobs are harder to find and keep.

But the Jones saga is a bit different from the rest. There's something endearing about his quest to come home again, his willingness from the outset to accept a bench role, or even to return to Triple A and bide his time for another chance.

Whether that chance ever comes, Jones can head to Rochester secure in the knowledge that he has a place in the hearts of Minnesota fans.

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No real surprise: Clay Condrey is going on the DL. What is a surprise: Alex Burnett is getting the roster spot, not Anthony Slama or Kyle Waldrop, the two young pitchers who were brought north for the Target Field test games, or veteran Ron Mahay.

Closing the committee

The Twins' planned closer by committee never convened.

On Friday, manager Ron Gardenhire anointed Jon Rauch (left) as his ninth-inning go-to-guy.

How long the tattooed one will keep the position is anybody's guess. Mine is "not long." I predict the Twins will trade for relief help before April is out.

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On a somewhat related note, a relative novice to the world of Twins blogging, one Adam Beck, recently dropped me an e-mail. He is wise enough to speak respectfully of my work and foolish enough to seek my advice about his blog. (Be careful of what you wish for, young man!)

He also stuck a comment onto my previous post, on the "minor" stories of spring training, about the wisdom of trading prime catching prospect Wilson Ramos for a closer:

My question to you, and to everybody else out there is, 'would you/should you trade Ramos, one of the organization's best positional prospects, for a closer? Anthony Slama is waiting in the minors with a lot of closer experience under his belt, and most baseball experts view a closer as created, not born.' Thoughts?

Two points:

1) Minor league closers are seldom prospects, much less prospective closers. In general, good relief pitchers were starters in the minors. Slama has a chance to be an exception to that rule, but with a walk rate last year of more than 4 per nine innings, he's NOT going to be a closer in the bigs.

If there's a minor leaguer in the Twins system who projects as a closer, it's Carlos Gutierrez, who is currently being used as a starter. As a starter, he gets more innings, thus gets more experience. There's a big difference in the learning curve for a pitcher getting 120 innings as compared to one getting 40 innings.

2) Would I trade Ramos for somebody to fill the closer role? Depends on who that closer is. I wouldn't move him for the likes of Kerry Wood or Trevor Hoffmann or anybody else on their way out. If the Royals would do Joakim Sora for him, absolutely, but I don't expect that to be on anybody's agenda.

In truth, I'd probably be less inclined to trade Ramos for an "established" closer than for somebody who hasn't had the job but has the talent to take it. Daniel Bard of the Red Sox, for example. And even there, the Twins might want more than a one-for-one swap.

A more likely prospect to trade away for somebody along the lines of the Padres' Heath Bell is Ben Revere. If Revere turns into the player the Twins think he will become, he'll be Denard Span. The Twins have one of him already — and a bunch more outfielders in the pipeline.

The end of camp

The headline developments of Spring Training 2010 are pretty obvious: Joe Nathan's injury and Joe Mauer's contract. I've written plenty about each, both in this blog and in the print column, and while I'm sure there'll be more to say at some point, I haven't anything today.

But there were under-the-radar developments worth noting as well ...

Ben Revere. The non-roster invitee impressed everybody this spring, particularly Ron Gardenhire. He even had four extra-base hits, a bit of a surprise considering that he had all of 19 last season in High A ball.

He hasn't had an at-bat in Double A, much less Triple A, but Gardenhire already sees him as a possible call-up this summer.

Jacque Jones. (Photo above) Another who is possibly an outfield injury away from the call. Jones had been released by three teams the past two years — Tigers, Marlins, Reds — but the longer training camp went, the better he hit. He's 35, but there appears to still be some juice in him.

I would rather he made the 25-man roster out of camp than Alexi Casilla.

Kevin Slowey. The right hander opened camp talking about how his pitching wrist might never feel the same after what he described as a reconstruction. But his command and control — the key to his pitching — was as spot-on in exhibition play as ever.

Francisco Liriano. The outward signs are good. But ... except for his final outing, against the Pittsburgh Pirates "b" lineup — so weak it doesn't deserve a capital letter — he didn't go deep in his starts, suggesting that his fastball command remains lacking.

There are a lot of expectations here. Until I see him using the fastball well, I'm going to be skeptical.

Wilson Ramos. Even more than Revere, Gardenhire thinks he's ready for the bigs. The front office right now thinks he's more valuable in the minors — perhaps to keep his service time clock from starting to tick.

If the Twins decide they have to trade for a closer, Ramos is the most valuable chip in they have in the minors — a premium, ready-for-the-majors prospect at a premium position.

Juan Portes. Played mostly outfield in camp, but word is he'll play third at Double A. He hit three homers early in exhibitions, but once the breaking balls came out, the long balls (and his playing time) diminished.

Bullpen issues. Clay Condrey has not impressed and reports some shoulder stiffness; I won't be surprised he goes on the DL in the next week. Jose Mijares has not been sharp. Pat Neshek's velocity is down slightly from his pre-injury days.

The Dolenc Watch continues

Yes, that apparently irrepressible former MSU outfielder Mark Dolenc played yet again in a Twins exhibition game on Wednesday. He went 0-for-3 and is still hitting .000 in his Grapefruit League playing time.

He came in for Denard Span when the big league CF took himself out of the game after lining a foul ball off his mom's collarbone. (That link includes video from the ESPN broadcast).

Dolenc won't get much more time on the major league side this spring, what with camp breaking today.

The Twins are back on ESPN this afternoon for their last Florida exhibition, but that broadcast conflicts with my 1 p.m. KTOE appearance. I'm sure you're all torn between my babble, a get-out-of-town game with the Red Sox and something potentially useful.