The 2019 MLB season starts on Thursday. Well, that’s not true, because the Mariners and A’s played a couple of games in the Tokyo Dome. The rest of the league will start their North American season on Thursday, including the Twins, who will host the Cleveland Indians at Target Field Thursday afternoon.
The Twins, as with evey team, like to load their spring roster with some non roster veterans who could make the team in the event of an injury, or perhaps some veteran depth. The Twins went after a lot of infielders in the offseason, including Ronald Torreyes, Johnathan Schoop, Marwin Gonzalez and CJ Cron who will all stay on the payroll, either in the Majors or in Rochester, in Torreyes’ caase.
On the other end, the Twins have already let Lucas Duda and Adam Rosales have both already been granted their release, despite some historic success or good production in the Grapefruit League, and that’s simply because things have gone pretty well for the other members of the roster. Schoop, Gonzalez and Cron are all going to make the team, as I noted above, but also there wasn’t enough from Duda or Rosales to force Tyler Austin or Willians Astudillo off the roster.
The great news is that there weren’t many spots to fill because for once, the Twins will come out of spring relatively healthy. Only Miguel Sano on offense has sustained an injury that will keep him out of the opening day lineup, and Gonzalez will start at third, in a role similar to the one Eduardo Escobar has filled for years.
What takes the field on opening day will likely be very close to the vision that the front office had for the roster. If they get off to a bad start, it will be had to blame bad luck.
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