Some early details for 2010 come out

We may not know exactly when Spring Training 2010 begins, but we do know when it will end: April 4.

How do we know this? The Minnesota Twins announced that they will end spring training at brand-new Target Field with a two-game exhibition series against the St. Louis Cardinals on April 2-3. That makes it easy to do the math. Many teams will be breaking camp at that time for some home games; others will stay on and squeeze out as many Florida and Arizona exhibition games as possible.

So the real issue is when spring training starts. If we assume a traditional four-week-plus spring-training season, that means games would start around March 2 — a little later than normal. But we’re not sure spring training will be run the same way this season: both the Cactus and Grapefruit Leagues will have an odd number of teams, and that means more days off because of scheduling issues. It’s very possible MLB will decide to draw out spring training to accommodate more days off, as was the case in 2009. We’ll have to wait and see.

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