Well, it's 38 games into the 2011 season and we are 12.5 games back from the Indians - wait, the Indians? How did that happen? To top it off, we are 2 full games behind the next worst team in baseball down in Houston. It doesn't look good, but my wife keeps reminding me that I am an eternal optimist. Even though it's next to impossible to show any kind of optimism right now, let's do it! Here are a handful of reasons for you Twins fans out there to stick with this 2011 season.
#1: As Earl Weaver used to say, "It ain't over til' the fat lady sings." Remember that the season is 162 games long. Until the Twins are mathematically eliminated, let's believe that anything can and will happen in the game of baseball. It's a weird sport like that - a sport where it's actually possible for a team to make up 12.5 games in 4.5 months. Oh yeah, there's 4.5 months left! There's plenty of time to turn this thing around!
#2: Let's say the Indians go .500 the rest of the season. This would give them a record of 87-75. Sounds pretty realistic right? Now let's say the Tigers go 65-57 to finish the season. This also sounds pretty realistic to me, and they would finish in a tie at 87-75. If the Twins finish 76-48 in these last 4.5 months, we will win the division at 88-74. Now, 76-48 seems a little overwhelming, but really it would mean going 3-2 every 5 games from here on out. Certainly that is possible with the caliber of team we know we have, and virtually being done playing the AL East. The Twins were 18-23 on May 20th in 2009, and ended up winning 87 games. I know that isn't quite the same, but there is hope.
#3: The disabled list is about to be emptied - hopefully for good. Delmon came back this weekend, Mauer and Nishioka are probably 2 weeks away, and Thome could be back this week. Those are 4 of our best bats we have, and based on their history, I would say they would have to add 2-3 runs to our offense every night. This is going to take so much of the pressure off our pitching staff, both in the rotation and in the bullpen. Sure, Mijares is headed to the DL now, but is that such a bad thing? With Mijares and Hoey gone, you have to think that our total number of 4 pitch walks is going to decrease drastically.
#4: It's only a matter of time before Morneau returns to form. It seems like he is one swing away from putting it all together finally and exploding offensively. He's obviously frustrated with the results right now, but the swings he is putting on balls are eventually going to start connecting like the old Morneau we all remember.
#5: With Mauer coming back soon, our combination of Butera/Holm/Rivera will be seeing a lot less time in the box. Their combined batting average of .110 right now, will not be missed on a daily basis. I do like Butera's cannon behind the plate though.
The Twins are by far the best 12-26 team in the history of baseball. With all the bad performances we've seen in the first 6 weeks of this season, I am not afraid or ashamed to say that I still believe the Twins will turn this around and win the AL Central division. Call me crazy, but no one is ever out of it this early in a season. Baseball can turn in one at-bat, one defensive play, one win, and one winning streak. It's not like we don't have the horses to win the race. It's just too bad we gave everyone else a head start.
How's that kool-aid taste?
ReplyDeleteI'll keep drinking this kool-aid. I never throw out kool-aid in May, it tastes way too delicious when it gets hot in June, July, and August. And even when those 3 monthos are over, there is still another month of baseball. That's a lot of baseball.
ReplyDeleteLike Nathan said, until the fat lady sings, we're not done. Although that lady better start exercising and stop eating at Golden Corral 4 times a day, she is still not fat.
We are 5-6 within the division. Remember, the DIVISION! I'm pretty sure our expectations were to never even think about a wild card, and so we don't really care about the rest of the divisions (although it would be nice to beat one every once in a while). However, we play 72 GAMES within our division. We've played 11. I know, we stink horribly right now, but even me still being a little kid, I've seen too many weird things happen on a regular basis in such a way that we don't even really consider them weird anymore. We just say, "That's Baseball." Well, with 61 baseball games left against the Royals, Indians, Tigers, and White Sox, I'm willing to drink up some more of that kool-aid right now and wait for some good baseball to be played. And like we've said for a month now, hopefully sooner than later.
There are too many "What if's" on this team right now. Even if the the injured starters return and start hitting, we have to deal with the huge question mark that is Nishioka. We don't even know if he can hit big league pitching. At this point, we're hoping he's closer to Ichiro than to Kaz Matsui.
ReplyDeleteEven if Nishioka comes back, we're still stuck with Plouffe/Casilla at the other middle infield slot. That's not exactly inspiring.
What if Mauer can't handle catching anymore? He goes from being a well above average offensive C to an average at best COF or DH. Which would leave us with Drew Butera at C...and we all know how that's going.
Finally, we can move to the bullpen, which is not going according to planned. Now we're looking at Phil Dumatrait and Anthony Swarzak to be the saviors.
I would agree in saying that the Twins aren't out of it yet, but I think that all of the above question marks need to break positively for the Twins, and unfortunately, the realist in me doesn't see that happening.
The fact of the matter is that the Twins front office chose to look the other way this offseason rather than to be proactive about addressing some of the team's needs (I'll give them a passing grade on Nishioka) - especially with the bullpen. Trading Hardy for what doesn't even amount to being bullpen depth is going to burn this team in the long run, because we're crippled in both of those areas now.
Of course, I hope I'm wrong in every one of these areas, but let's just say I'm not crossing my fingers.