Okay. So now that the Twins are 4 games back from the nearest wild card spot, and have been lapped by both the Orioles and Blue Jays...that means they can power down a little, right? It's wild to me that a team that's 6 games under .500 is still technically a playoff-chasing team. Then again a team that's at .500 has hold of the AL West right now, so it's all kind of a mess anyway.
The single wildest part about the Twins' case to compete lasting this long is that their trade deadline acquisitions might be the most successful of anybody's. Dean Kremer's been excellent in four Minnesota starts, with a 3.18 ERA, 20 Ks and a 0.7 WAR. A.J. Minter has a 0.84 ERA in 10.2 innings. Jeff Hoffman has a 4.50 ERA, which compared to his Jays numbers is Bob Gibson stuff. They also brought up Kaelen Culpepper since the deadline, and in 16 games he's hitting .333 with 3 homers and 6 RBIs, already looking like a favorite to start at shortstop next Opening Day. But no matter you drape over this team, fundamentally they still have a long way to go, and only have so many good pieces. The hitters have a combined 13.5 WAR, and that's mainly because the starting lineup is a bunch of 1, 1 and a half WAR guys all doing perfectly alright. With the exception of Byron Buxton, this is a team of pedestrian players doing their best. Brooks Lee, Luke Keaschall, Royce Lewis, Trevor Larnach and Kody Clemens are doing everything they can, even if on any other team a lot of them would be a bench bat. Keaschall I do see a future with, but these days he's a pretty good bat with some defensive struggles.
You also think about the fact that beyond Taj Bradley, Joe Ryan and Dean Kremer there's still rotation unrest. Zebby Matthews and Connor Prielipp are two fundamentally strong pitchers that aren't having great seasons. Bailey Ober is perfectly fine right now, he's 7-4 with a 4.50 ERA. We've seen him do better. In a season where the Twins had a lick of a playoff chance, this was not the right #3 man performance. Maybe if Mick Abel, Pablo Lopez and Mike Paredes had stayed healthy we wouldn't be here, but that's not the hand the Twins were dealt. You can't really blame the ownership for screwing the pooch here, they actually tried, they didn't completely burn the team down in the offseason, an effort was made. It just didn't really work out, regardless of how close it got.
Even now you can still see some effort being put in, a decent Trevor Larnach season with 11 homers and 43 RBIs, Kody Clemens leading the AL in triples because Corbin Carroll isn't here, and Byron Buxton trying to make the most of yet-another injury-shortened year. There's even the entry of a new rookie star, outfield bat Walker Jenkins, a man born in 2005, meaning there's now people ten years younger than me in the major leagues, which is quite sobering. Jenkins was hitting .308 in St. Paul, got to emerge from the corn in Iowa a couple days before the other Twins did, and now gets to [supposedly] finish the season in the majors. Hopefully he's the next step to a year that doesn't end as strangely as this one for the Twins.
Coming Tonight: An all-star closer who's just now seeing the other shoe beginning to drop.
No comments:
Post a Comment