Spring training begins this week. The Seattle Mariners, incredibly, have already reported; they open the season in Japan this year and so they figured they'd better get a jump on things. For the rest of the league, the musical lyricality of the phrase "pitchers and catchers report" trips across the tongue this weekend. The Twins show up Saturday, the first workout for pitchers and catchers is Sunday, and the rest of the team gets in a few days later.

It's sunny where I am, as I write this. It's sunny and the snow has disappeared and it's getting light out when I wake up and the sun is still above the horizon when I leave work. It's kind of impossible for me not to sit down and make a list about baseball, about good baseball things. And as with so many things... it begins with the Cubs.

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I will use today's report to review this year's Top 50.

The Twinkie Town 2012 Top 50 included 22 position players and 28 pitchers, although only two pitchers made our top ten. Seven players who were in our 2011 Top 50 didn't make the cut this year, Kane Holbrooks (24), Bruce Pugh (34), Brett Jacobson (35), Danny Ortiz (36), Dan Osterbrock (38), Bobby Lanigan (41) and Anderson Hidalgo (48).

Chris Herrmann made the biggest move, moving up to our tenth spot after not being ranked last year. Other players making significant moves upward included Eddie Rosario who moved up sixteen spots to second, Brian Dozier, twenty spots to ninth, Tom Stuifbergen, fourteen spots to seventeenth, Niko Goodrum, eleven spots to nineteenth, Cole DeVries was thirty-fourth and Logan Darnell who was twenty-first after both not being ranked last year.

The players dropping the most included, Jorge Polanco, sixteen spots to forty-eighth, Dakota Watts, nineteen spots to forty-first, Deolis Guerra, twelve spots to twenty-eighth, Pat Dean, eleven spots to thirty-ninth, and David Bromberg, who dropped thirteen spots to twenty-fourth.

The most votes cast in any round were 525 in the eighth round when we selected Liam Hendriks. The player receiving the most votes was Miguel Sano who collected 286 votes in the first round. He also had the highest percentage, 58%. The fewest votes were 113 in the forty-eighth round when we selected Jorge Polanco. The closest round was the twenty-third round when Manuel Soliman beat David Bromberg by three votes. The biggest win was Sano, who won our top spot by 251 votes.

A complete review of this year's poll follows the jump, including last year's ranking in parenthesis.

There will not be a report next Saturday as I will still be traveling home.

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Today we will be voting for the last player to make our 2012 Top 50, which is perfect timing as I am about to leave on that long road trip home.

The players who won the four preliminary rounds are Jairo Perez, Javier Pimentel, Steve Hirschfeld and Luis Nunez. Considering this is the fiftieth top prospect, that is four excellent players from which we can choose.

Perez was one of the top hitters in the organization and the Midwest League at Beloit. Yes, he is older which is due to his missing all of 2010 following surgery. Pimentel is a shortstop who signed for about $700,000 a year ago, which is a lot of money for the Twins. In a move not often made by the Twins, they promoted him from the DSL Twins to the GCL Twins last summer when he was only 17 years old. Hirschfeld is a veteran minor league pitcher who was one of the most effective starters in the Eastern League last year. Although the Twins signed more than a dozen AAAA pitchers this winter, Hirschfeld is close and could work his way up to the Twins in the next year or two. Nunez returned to the GCL Twins last year where he was their closer. He was also very good and could become a very good short reliever over the next few years.

This round will remain open through tomorrow morning when my weekly Minor League Report will recap our 2012 Top 50. I hope you all enjoyed this process this winter. If you have any suggestions on how to make next year's better, please leave them in the comments.

Yesterday, the Twins claimed outfielder Darin Mastroianni off waivers from Toronto, designating relief pitcher Esmerling Vasquez for assignment to make room for him. You're probably saying to yourself, "Who is that?" If you're me, you're also probably saying, "Esmerling Vasquez? He was on the 40-man? I should've remembered that, since I write about the Twins in a light-hearted manner once a week." Here, then, is a little more about Darin Mastroianni, another piece of the puzzle that is the 2012 Minnesota Twins.

• He's 26.
• He has played in one major league game in his career, on August 24^th of last year. He went 0-for-3.
• The only reason he played in that game was because Kelly Johnson forgot his passport.
• As noted by Rhett Bollinger at MLB.com, his best season in the minors was 2010, when he was the Double-A Eastern League leader in steals and hits.
• He has played for both the Lansing Lugnuts and the New Hampshire Fisher Cats, both of which are not made up. A good prank might be to assign him to the Waterloo Clog Dancers, just to see if he buys it. "Eff it, maybe that's their thing down there."
• He does not appear to be related to the great Italian film actor Marcello Mastroianni. Yes, he died before you were born, but he had a child with Catherine Deneuve and dated Faye Dunaway when that meant something, man.
• Is Aaron Gleeman nonplussed by the move? Yes. He gives it two "meh"s.
• Seth Stohs says/speaks that offensively, Mastroianni's high-end would be Ben Revere. His low-end is former Twins designated hitter Jason Tyner (never forget). Joe C. thinks Jason Repko is a good comparison, and says he is not expected to be on the Opening Day roster.

As per usual, if anything else happens in Twins Territory today, we'll check back in. Pick the move apart, complain about how bad The Office has gotten, talk about girls or do whatever it is you do in the comments.