Twins opt to head home with camps suspended

FORT MYERS, Fla. -- The Twins have made their choice as to where they will ride out the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, and most of the players will leave the club's Spring Training facilities and either go home or to Minneapolis for the immediate future, Twins president of baseball operations Derek Falvey said on a conference call Saturday night.

The organization's Minor League players are also leaving camp, and with the exception of a few that will stay at the academy in Fort Myers, most of them have already departed.

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Falvey estimated that only 20-25 players across the Major and Minor League rosters will remain in Fort Myers, along with a skeleton crew of staff members akin to the organization's offseason staffing at their facility, including strength and conditioning director Ian Kadish, hitting coach Edgar Varela and Triple-A Rochester manager Toby Gardenhire.

"I don't have any specifics from Major League Baseball on this, but it's feeling like it's going to be a little bit of time, and at this stage, I would expect to have more guidance on it in somewhere around ... a month," Falvey said. "But I don't have any specifics about when the return is. I would not anticipate us being back here in the next few weeks."

The facilities at the CenturyLink Sports Complex in Fort Myers are shut down, though the Minor League area could remain open for the handful of local players to continue some workouts.

Major League Baseball had issued a release Friday evening in which the league suspended all Spring Training camps and offered players the option to remain around their club's Spring Training facilities, return home or travel to the club's home city. In meetings with player representative Taylor Rogers and other veterans on the club Friday and Saturday, Falvey and manager Rocco Baldelli emphasized that they wanted players to be where they would feel most comfortable riding out the uncertainty of the next few weeks.

According to Falvey, it became clear to many of the players that their preference would be to return home or, in some cases, to travel to Minneapolis. Falvey and Baldelli will also head to Minnesota, joining general manager Thad Levine and other members of the front office that already flew north in the last few days.

"We just wanted to collectively put everyone's mind at ease that we were going to do what we thought was in the best interest of every individual and their family," Falvey said. "That was the primary [goal].

"We said to Taylor and other players, 'Where do you want to be should the next few weeks track the way the last handful of days have?'" he added. "Which is a lot of uncertainty and a lot of unknowns in terms of what happens next. We don't have a perfect start date. We don't know exactly what a ramp-up will look like."

Falvey said that pitching coach Wes Johnson touched base with his Major League pitchers about their throwing programs and activities before the club parted ways Saturday. Starting pitchers will aim to remain stretched out in 3-4-inning stints with up-downs in the bullpens for the time being, but that could obviously be subject to change as the calendar continues to evolve over the coming weeks.

The Twins will remain attentive to all of their players' programming and will keep in electronic communication to receive and give feedback as the weeks stretch on.

"The further you get out, and as weeks go by and you don't have true game activity and baseball activity, we certainly feel like we would need another extended ramp-up so to speak to get back and ready to play games, to get to regular-season games, for sure," Falvey said.

As recently as three days ago, the Twins played a game against the Braves in front of a full crowd at Hammond Stadium, the baseball news cycle carried on and nobody seemed to have any concern that the season would not start on time. Very quickly, the circumstances have proceeded into uncharted territory.

"The word that I was going to use and the feeling I think, generally, is probably a little bit of surreal," Falvey said. "This has been very unique for all across the world."