Each of the Twins three Division titles has been sort of strange, and in almost exactly the same regard. Every year the team confounds expectations every which way, and still finds a way to win.
I don’t know why I expected this year would be any different, but I know I wasn’t alone. I watch a lot of baseball games, and listen to the rest, and maybe this is just the hyper-critical reaction of a fan who has seen too many games and been spoiled by all those titles, but this team just doesn’t seem like it should be as good as it is.
Why is that, do you suppose? It’s certainly not because the Twins aren’t as good as they seem, because “good as they seem” doesn’t mean a damn thing in baseball. The numbers speak for themselves.
The thing is this, I think: once again, as so often in recent years, the Twins have had to improvise to a degree that is both characteristic and uncharacteristic of winning teams. After all the hullaballoo coming out of spring training, the original starting shortstop is back in Rochester, replaced by a mix-and-match combination of journeymen. The starting second baseman –no real surprise here– has been supplanted by whichever journeyman isn’t playing short on any given day. The third baseman has been alternately dismal, encouraging, and erratic, and still doesn’t have numbers a major league third baseman should be proud of. The guy at first base continues to be snakebit, missed a big chunk of time after getting hit in the head, and was in a freefall before he got briefly shelved again by a bone spur in his elbow. The phenom catcher has also had a hard time staying in the lineup.
Last year’s team, of course, also battled through injuries. Nothing you can do about that, as the old salts will tell you. No, but it’s the production of the guys who have not been injured that continues to puzzle. In 2004 the Twins didn’t have a single player with thirty homeruns, and nobody with either 100 RBI or runs scored. Shit, no regular hit .300. That seems highly unusual for a team that won 92 games and the division, particularly in this day and age.
The Twins appear to be on a similiar course so far this season. Shannon Stewart leads the team in homeruns with eight, and is on a pace to possibly score 100 runs. It sure seemed for awhile that Justin Morneau was going to easily hit thirty homers and get that monkey off Minnesota’s back, but that’s no longer the lock it once was, and even twenty might be a stretch.
The story, of course, is the pitching, which has been even better this year than last. The Twins lead the majors in ERA and fewest runs allowed, and they’ve got an unreal strike out-to-walks ratio. The starters have been tremendous, and the bullpen has been even better.
Minnesota’s giving up fewer than four runs a game, and the magic number to win baseball games has been at four runs for several years now. The Twins definitely need that slim margin, because their offense seems determined to just squeak by.
Consider this, though: Kyle Lohse has the highest ERA on the entire staff, at a more than respectable 4.25. Both Carlos Silva and Joe Mays have lower ERAs than Johan Santana and Brad Radke.
The strange thing is that the White Sox have been a virtual carbon copy of the Twins, which was pretty much their stated goal coming out of spring training. They’ve scored almost the same number of runs as the Twins (as of a couple days ago Minnesota had actually scored more), and are second in the majors in team ERA.
One of these teams is going to either have to step it up offensively or go out and get a banger for the middle of the lineup. Chicago seems far more likely to adopt the latter strategy, but if past performance is any indication they’ll accomplish nothing by doing so. They can’t very well find a way to swing trades for Carl Everett or Roberto Alomar again this year. The more plausible scenario –and it’s hard to say, really, how plausible this is– is that Frank Thomas comes back and gives the White Sox just enough offense to put them over the top.
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