The increase in season tickets, the potential of contending for a playoff berth and the anticipated crowds for the Metrodome's final Baseball games in September should allow the Twins to eclipse last season's attendance of 2,302,431, third highest in franchise history, and could allow the team to challenge its record of 3,030,672, set in 1988. The Twins have drawn more than 2 million fans in each of the past four seasons.

Single-game tickets for the 2009 season, the Twins' 28th and last in the Metrodome, will not be available this year at TwinsFest, which begins Jan. 23. They will go on sale March 7.

Kubel, Guerrier file: Outfielder Jason Kubel and relief pitcher Matt Guerrier formally filed for arbitration by Thursday's deadline, setting in motion the process for determining their salaries for 2009. The Twins on Monday will exchange proposed salary figures with both players, their only two eligible players not under contract.

Arbitration hearings would be in early February, though the Twins have a history of avoiding that formality. Both players also were eligible last year, for example, and both settled on new contracts, Kubel for $1.3 million and Guerrier for 950,000, after exchanging contract proposals with the Twins.

Coin flips outlawed: Baseball owners have approved a rule for 2009 that eliminates coin flips to determine the sites of one-game playoffs. At the game's quarterly meetings in Paradise Valley, Ariz., this week, the owners ratified a proposal made at the winter meetings last month - "one year too late," joked Twins President Dave St. Peter.

Two-way ties will now be broken by a one-game playoff in the home park of the team with a better head-to-head record, rather than a coin flip. The Twins lost a one-game showdown for the American League Central championship last October, 1-0 - a game played at U.S. Cellular Field in Chicago, despite Minnesota's 10-8 advantage over the White Sox, because Chicago won a coin flip a month earlier.

"Everybody agreed that this is the fairer way," St. Peter said.

Jim Pohlad on hand: Jim Pohlad represented the Twins at the owners' meetings, along with St. Peter and Twins Sports President Jerry Bell, for the first time since the death of his father, longtime owner Carl Pohlad, on Jan. 5. Formal approval of the transfer of management authority to Pohlad's oldest son was not on the agenda, but the owners are expected to give their OK at a meeting this spring.

Commissioner Bud Selig opened the meetings, St. Peter said, with a tribute to Pohlad and Blue Jays owner Ted Rogers, who died Dec. 3.