Hammond Stadium is equipped and ready, Rocco Baldelli is in uniform and on the field, and batting practice and bullpen sessions are taking place daily. Five days before next Monday's official start of training camp, players under contract with the Twins are already pouring into Fort Myers and getting ready for the 2022 season.
Everyone except the 40 most essential ones.
"It feels like as close to a return to normalcy as we've had over the last few years," Twins player development director Alex Hassan said in a video news conference Wednesday, though he added a significant caveat: "At least on the minor league front."
After two spring training camps disrupted by a pandemic, Hassan understandably rejoiced at the prospect of a more familiar routine this spring. But "normalcy" figures to be elusive until players on the 40-man roster are welcome in camp, too, whenever MLB ends its lockout against major league players.
The league on Wednesday said if an agreement is not reached by Monday, regular-season games would be canceled and those games would not be made up, the Associated Press reported.
Until then, though, Hassan said the Twins' instructors and coaches, including Baldelli and his reshuffled staff, are filling their time helping the team's prospects develop the skills to reach the majors.
"Our responsibility to this point has been dealing with the players who have reported to minor league camp," Hassan said. Minor leaguers are expected to report by next Monday, though the majority have already arrived — and, in fact, many pitchers attended mini-camps in January to work on specific skills and begin the gradual buildup to regular-season strength.
"The only difference," Hassan said, is that "normally major league spring training is going on, [which] feels a little more chaotic."
Including catchers, about 35 players rotated through January mini-camps, which lasted a week at a time. The agenda for those workouts were specific to each player, Hassan said.
"Whether it's command work to get in the [strike] zone more, or if you don't miss enough bats, understanding why that is," Hassan said of the topics. "Certain guys, for health reasons, are working on certain things delivery-wise, trying to lessen some stress on their arms or just throughout their delivery."
The Twins have been pleased at how healthy their players look as they prepare for the grind of a regular season. Former second-round pick Matt Canterino, for instance, a righthander who appeared in only six games in 2021 because of a nagging elbow injury, "has been healthy. He's thrown a number of bullpens and we've had no real setbacks," Hassan said. "For the group we have right now, we've had really good health."
The extra work this winter also has created plenty of optimism about the players the Twins received from Toronto in the Jose Berrios trade. Righthander Simeon Woods Richardson, Hassan said, is "regaining some of the velocity that he had lost, and getting back into the strike zone as often as he had earlier in his career, which I anticipate him being able to do. We're able to get some hands-on work, which went really well."
Infielder Austin Martin, meanwhile, came to camp after working out at agent Scott Boras' facility, and "he looks great," Hassan said of the 2020 draft's fifth overall pick. "We're excited about where he's at. We're trying to help him impact the ball more consistently to produce some extra bases. He's been real receptive to that."
