The second game of spring didn’t provide the Twins with their first win, as they lost their first home game to the Red Sox 8-3. But, as I mentioned after game one, these early games are to get timing back for the hitters and get back into throwing form for the pitchers. There were more positives from this game two:

**Boof Bonser pitched very well in his first outing of the year. Like the Twins will do all of their starters early on, Bonser pitched two innings. He allowed just one hit and struck out another in his two innings of work.

**Kevin Slowey would have made himself an early leader in the starting pitcher competition had he been able to get that final out in the fourth inning. Slowey pitched 1.2 awesome innings of baseball with two strikeouts and no runs. But them he hit a bump and allowed back-to-back homeruns to go from no runs to three.

**After Bonser and Slowey, Brian Bass entered the game. He’ll be competing for a bullpen spot this spring. He started off his spring with a one inning outing allowing two hits and a run. Nathan relieved him, and had his ups and downs. He allowed two hits and a run, but all of the outs that he recorded came via strikeout.

**Three pitchers pitched after Nathan, Philip Humber, Zach Day and Mariano Gomez. Humber improved from his rough start earlier this week with a solid inning of no-score baseball. Day walked the first two batters he faced, but rebounded to strikeout two hitters and allow no runs. Mariano Gomez then pitched the ninth and got a few quick outs. But the last out caused him some problems and he went on to allow two hits and three runs.

** Hitting wise, the Twins didn’t improve much from game one. They collected just eight hits as a team and scored just three runs.

**The centerfield competition continued to heat up. Denard Span got the start and singled in his first at-bat. He did nothing after that, but it was a nice start for him.

**Carlos Gomez then entered for Span and had his ups and downs. First, Gomes had an outfield assist nailing Pedroia at the plate by four steps. His throw was reportedly in the air the whole way. However, Gomez tried to make another throw a little later in the game when he didn’t have much of a chance at a play. Instead Coco Crisp advanced an extra base on the throw. Another good thing from Gomez however was him beating out a double-play ball.

**Brian Buscher helped his chances of making the team by hitting a homerun. Between his ability to play third and first, and being a power threat, Buscher has a very good chance to make the team.

**Other notable players included Delmon Young, who collected his first hit as a Twin, Justin Morneau, who picked up his first spring hit and Jeff Christy, who picked up two RBI in the ninth with two outs.

The game resulted in another Twins loss, but Gomez and Span showed good signs along with Bonser, Buscher and a few others. Spring isn’t really about winning every game, its about seeing others play and putting your team together. In the coming weeks, we should get a better look at several different players vying for spots.