It’s always nice when you’re scuffling to get some wins from the back end of your rotation. It would be even nicer at this point to see the Twins start putting together some big innings and throwing some crooked numbers on the board to give the pitching staff a little breather, but I’m not about to complain.
Already people are starting to trot out the usual discouraging math that purportedly demonstrates how seemingly impossible it is for the Twins to catch the White Sox. You know what I’m talking about; you see this sort of thing every year about this time, particularly when one team is maintaining a blistering pace. It always involves daunting long-range projections –if the White Sox fall off to a .500 pace the rest of the way, for instance, the Twins would have to play at some unreal clip to catch them.
We’ve been on both ends of this sort of speculation in recent years, and should know by now that baseball is more than anything else a game of one- and two-week stretches. Even in late June a big lead can evaporate in a hurry. How long, for instance, did it take for the White Sox to stretch their lead from three-and-a-half games to nine games? Not very long. And why was that? Because while the Twins were going 2-8 during that period, the Sox were going 8-2.
I’m certainly not overly optimistic, but I do think Chicago is long overdue for a couple bad stretches, and if the Twins are going to capitalize they’re going to have to put together some 8-2 runs of their own. Wins from Kyle Lohse and Joe Mays are a good way to get one of those going, as are ten games against the Royals and the Devil Rays between now and the All Star break.
I think the stretch leading up to the break is crucial. The Twins are going to have to whittle Chicago’s lead in half –at least– because the rest of July after the All Star game looks pretty brutal, at least on paper. Minnesota will close out July with series against Anaheim, Baltimore, Detroit, New York, and Boston, and the last eleven of those games are on the road. Chicago, meanwhile, will have four games with Cleveland, three with Detroit, and three with Kansas City.
Perhaps this is nothing but a coincidence, but does anyone else find it strange that seven of Torii Hunter’s team-leading fourteen homers have come in seventeen games against National League teams, while it’s taken him 55 games against AL opponents to hit his other seven? You’d certainly think the NL teams would have the same scouting reports, but I sure as hell can’t remember seeing very many AL pitchers throw Hunter so many fastballs right down the middle of the plate. Does this say something about some difference in pitching philosophy between the two leagues? I have absolutely no idea, of course. Maybe Torii’s just hitting his stride and it’s all been a fluke matter of timing.
It looks like the problem with the comments, by the way, has been ironed out. Apologies for the snafu.
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