Our morning snow has pretty much melted here at One Morrie Silver Way, and it now feels a lot like a day we could play a game here, don’t you think?

Our home opener Saturday April 7 against Wally Backman’s Buffalo Bisons looms in the distance, but today Twins pitchers and catchers report to Spring Training in Fort Myers, FL. We’ll begin speculating on possible combinations of a 2012 Wings roster here in a few weeks…for now, check out TwinsBaseball.com for complete coverage as the Twins’ exhibition opener against the Rays is just two weeks away on March 3.

Speaking of the Twins: 2011 marks the 10th season of the Red Wings-Minnesota Twins affiliation. The relationship has produced five winning teams for Rochester in nine seasons with one trip to the Governors’ Cup finals – plus two league ERA leaders (Scott Baker, 2005;  Kevin Slowey, 2007)…three IL Rookies of the Year (Jason Kubel, 2004; Francisco Liriano, 2005; Randy Ruiz, 2008)..one league strikeout leader (Boof Bonser, 2005)…one league wins leader (Dave Gassner, 2004)…and two batting titles (Kubel, 2004 and Ruiz, 2008). This season, we’ll feature 10 players from the 10 seasons with the Twins in a magnet series, and we’d like your input. Check out this detail page for information on how you can vote.

And to help kick things off, see if you can identify this player from the 2003 Red Wings season – our first as a Twins affiliate. The first five fans to correctly ID this player   by e-mailing Info@RedWingsBaseball.com will receive a full set of the MT 10 magnet series.

 

 

 

 

 

MiLB.com’s Benjamin Hill posted a story on the impending “residence of the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre Yankees in Rochester this coming season. Here’s a link in case you missed it - the piece provides an updated overview of the how’s and where’s of this unique arrangement at our ballpark this season.

Next week’s blog will go into detail about our 2012 Red Wings Yearbook – which will be bigger than ever before, and include special features on the SWB Yankees playing here this summer. The same book will be sold at all Wings and Yanks games this season. We’re quite proud of our yearbook, which is available each game for only $1 and comes with rosters, stats, lineups and team notes. The 2012 yearbook will also have an expanded scorecard section, as we wil now have just one print product available at the games; we’ll go a little more into detail on that decision next time also.

A couple of dates to note: Red Wings Insider on Time Warner Cable Sports returns on February 29 at 6:30 pm, featuring an interview with new Wings Manager Gene Glynn and features on new Hitting Coach Tom
Brunansky; and players Liam Hendriks, Brian Dozier, and Joe Benson. Check out the Multimedia section of RedWingsBaseball.com for the complete list of air dates and times, plus archived episodes of previous Insiders. And our annual Ballpark Hiring Day takes place here on Saturday, March 10; find out more about what kind of ballpark jobs will be available, what to bring and when, etc, by clicking here.

-Nick

 

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