"Even with a month left in the 2011 season, it's no secret that winter and spring will be, well, interesting for the Twins. That's why Ron Gardenhire asked for, and received, three extra days of spring training to prepare for the 2012 season.

"We've always said too much spring training is not good, but you know what? I just know we're going to have some different people and we're going to need to do some extra work," the manager said Sunday.

General manager Bill Smith agreed, which is no surprise. While the Twins have had an inordinate amount of injuries to key players - resulting in 24 total trips to the disabled list - the team hasn't been sharp, especially as Gardenhire relied more and more on players coming out of Class AAA Rochester.

Usually one of the American League's best defensive teams, the Twins enter tonight's game at Chicago with 95 errors, third most in the AL and sixth most in the big leagues. And that stat, in fact, does not tell the entire story. There are no errors charged for failing to cover a base, or get in correct position for a relay, or missing the cutoff man - common occurrences this season.

Gardenhire plans to attack that problem with more drills such as the infamous "Good Morning, America," around-the-horn fielding drill.

"I'd like to start earlier and give us, like, 13 days before the start of the first game and a little more time for our pitching early, and of course a little more time for our defensive fundamentals the first three or four days," the manager said. "Then we can have more days for full-squad workouts. We always had five days; now we're going to have eight.

"That will give us more time for the 'Good Morning, America' stuff, the fundamentals, the cutoffs and relays, those kinds of things. Normally we go through those once or twice, and we'll be doing more of that this year, make sure we get everybody in the right places." "