Joe Mauer, the pride of St. Paul, agreed Sunday to an eight-year contract extension worth $184 million that begins next season and runs through 2018. The deal includes a full no-trade clause. The Twins will officially announce the deal Monday night at a press conference in Fort Myers, Fla.
Mauer's new contract will be the fourth-largest in major league history in terms of total value, trailing only Alex Rodriguez's two mega-deals ($252 million with the Rangers, $275 million with the Yankees) and Derek Jeter's $189 million contract that expires at the end of this season.
PHOENIX -- Jim Edmonds can't say why he's back in spring training, fighting for a job, after a year of surf and links in Southern California.
But he does know he didn't come back to play twice a week.
So while he has a good shot to be a backup outfielder and first baseman for the Brewers, Edmonds could also call off his comeback at the end of the month and just pack it in.
His heart doesn't seem completely in it to begin with.
"Some days," he said last week, "driving in, I think [WTF]."
Asked by FanHouse if he was OK with being the fourth outfielder and playing a couple of times a week, Edmonds said, "I don't know if that's going to be enough."
GLENDALE, Ariz. -- Vin Scully told the story just as if he were on the air, with precision, humor and the voice that, more than any other, equals baseball.
And after five minutes Sunday morning explaining how he fell in his Los Angeles home Thursday night, bruising his elbow, opening a cut on the back of his head and sending him to the hospital, Scully ended the rare interview session.
Because, just as if he was on the air, Vin Scully insisted he wasn't the story. Baseball was.
We have a chance to watch the two best closers of all-time, and a player who may wind up the all-time home run king. But we are also in the presence of greatness in Vin Scully, who is better at his job than any player on the field.
His hospitalization threw a scare into Los Angeles greater than any fault line could, reminding us that Scully is 82 and we don't know how much longer we'll have him to listen to.
LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. - Retooling a swing amid the grind of a daily big league schedule is next to impossible, so it should have been no surprise to Chipper Jones that he couldn't work his way out of a slump during the season.
What really bothered Jones, though, was that he couldn't do it through most of the offseason either. With nothing to do in January but take swings and analyze video, he was still lost.
"I struggled pretty much all winter," Jones said. "I went through a little over a month of hitting, searching for an answer, and not really finding it."
Joe Nathan will have Tommy John surgery on his ailing right elbow and miss the entirety of the 2010 season, the Star Tribune is reporting today. Nathan played catch with Twins pitching coach Rick Anderson earlier this morning and still felt significant pain in the injured elbow, so he made the almost inevitable decision to have surgery on the elbow in hopes of returning to the field as soon as possible in 2011.
The Twins have already said that they'll first look internally to replace Nathan and with Jon Rauch and Matt Guerrier coming off of excellent seasons for the Twins in 2009 and Pat Neshek looking to return from his own Tommy John surgery, which cost him most of 2008 and all of 2009, that seems like the best place to start. If those options don't work out, there are several closers expected to hit the trade market at some point this season that could help the Twins.
The face of the 
PHOENIX -- 
GLENDALE, Ariz. -- 
LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. - Retooling a swing amid the grind of a daily big league schedule is next to impossible, so it should have been no surprise to 
