Lately, the Twins have been doing this new on-base celebration where they mime turning the pages of a book, and according to Austin Martin, it's because everyone on the Twins know they need to flip the script on their atrocious season and are trying to write a new chapter. And it's cool seeing guys like Martin and Luke Keaschall, Brooks Lee and such all doing the page-turning thing on second. But the thing about writing a new chapter is that if the first several chapters of a book are dogshit, people aren't gonna want to keep reading to get to where the book gets good.
The Twins had a truly excellent stretch in May, and a really nice streak. Then people got hurt and in June they lost enough games to completely undo the effect of said streak, and they couldn't pick themselves back up again. Then at the deadline they sold hard, giving up Carlos Correa, Harrison Bader, Jhoan Duran, Ty France, Willi Castro, Danny Coulombe, Griffin Jax, Brock Stewart, Chris Paddack and Louie Varland. That's...a lot of people. Meaning they've basically been left to die these last couple months. It's really just Byron Buxton, Joe Ryan, Bailey Ober, a mostly-healthy Royce Lewis, and bits and pieces of other players who were supposed to be better. Matt Wallner and his .218 average just went on paternity leave, and that's enough to really affect this team.
Though, to be fair, there are little inklings of regrowth happening now. One of them is Luke Keaschall, who was up in May for a very different version of this Twins team, then got hurt and couldn't come back til now. To be fair, he's been excellent in the majors, hitting .406 with 10 RBIs in his first 10 MLB games. You're also seeing Brooks Lee finally turning a corner, now that he actually has somewhere to play, as he's hitting .249 with 11 homers and 44 RBIs. And Kody Clemens may have found more of a home in Minneapolis than he did as a utility guy for the Phils. You're also seeing way more dominance from organizational favorite Zebby Matthews, who's at least had a couple strong starts since being brought back up. Beyond Ryan and Ober the Twins have a lot of question marks, but Matthews is surer than he was.
Granted, a lot of the rest of the season is gonna be a lot of musical chairs for replacement level guys. Lots of games of forcing Austin Martin to play defense or trotting Edouard Julien out there despite his lack of hitting, or giving DeShawn Keirsey another try despite...everything. Cause at this point the plan is to regroup next year in Fort Myers and figure out a unit that doesn't do this. I'm not exactly sure how many more years away the competitive idea is, but with Buxton, Ryan and Keaschall hopefully sticking around, they've at least got a starting point.
Coming Tonight: The Reds have been without Rhett Lowder and Brandon Williamson all year, have seen Hunter Greene get hurt and Chase Burns struggle with major league hitting. He even got here a month late. If the Reds were worried about him, they wouldn't have to for long.
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