"While recovering from shoulder surgery performed this week, Twins manager Ron Gardenhire is helping recruit free agents the team is targeting, and he's being honest about the job ahead in 2012.

The Twins lost 99 games last season, the second-worst record since the franchise began play in Minnesota in 1961.

"The pitch is we have a lot of work to do, and we don't know how it's going to turn out," Gardenhire said Thursday. "We have to get healthy and back on the field and move forward like we're building a baseball team. We're trying to get good players back in there so we can get back where we want to be, which is in position to win the division - and I'm talking next year, not down the road. We want players who can help us now."

Just who those players are, Gardenhire wouldn't say, though he did acknowledge he wouldn't mind having infielder Nick Punto back. Punto left the Twins as a free agent last winter, signed a one-year deal with St. Louis and won a World Series title with the Cardinals.

Gardenhire said he hasn't talked with Punto yet but he will, if only to congratulate him. "