Archive for category: Twins

At the end of last season, I warned the Twins that I wouldn’t take them seriously this year if they brought back Tsuyoshi Nishioka, which they didn’t. As the 2012 season winds down, I must tell them I feel the same way about Justin Morneau. As valuable as Morneau was in the past – and for several years I proclaimed that the Twins would go only so far as Morneau could carry them – he has turned into a millstone dragging them down, as they live on the memories of what he once was and the hope that he will revive his career. As a result, they bat him fourth or fifth, where kills rally after rally, and further, he impedes the progress of Chris Parmelee, who is already a better hitter and cannot develop as the Twins’ first baseman while Morneau still casts his shadow. Maybe it’s just lack of confidence, but Morneau doesn’t even take very good swings. Half his hits are flares, lacking all authority. With two strikes, he is putty in the pitcher’s hand, totally helpless against a low, outside slider. Knowing he is dead meat once the count gets that far, he often makes up his mind to swing at the first pitch, which he will then do, regardless of its speed or location. If I have figured all this out, what must opposing scouts know, in addition? If Miguel Cabrera beats out Joe Mauer for this year’s batting title, think of the advantage he has, with Prince Fielder hitting behind him, while Mauer, now with Josh Willingham hurt, has only Morneau for protection.
I was glad to see in today’s paper that Morneau is aware that the Twins might trade him. (The problem is, who would want him, especially with his salary and concussion history.) The other rumored trade bait is Denard Span – a deal that I would oppose. Span and Ben Revere are a formidable top of the order, able to work the count, fast when they get on base, and afraid of no one. Mauer and Willingham fill the next two spots comfortably. It’s at that point that things get a little shaky. Ryan Doumit has been solid and would be even more impressive if he could bat a little lower in the order. Trevor Plouffe has shown more potential than actual Major League ability, both at bat and in the field. If he is truly a work-in-progress and can improve as much in the next two years as he has this year, he will be a keeper. He is just not good enough now to be an asset. Shortstop and second base remain holes to be filled. Given their lack of power, especially in the #3 spot, the Twins can’t afford two more players, however slick on defense, who hit .230.
As for pitching, the Twins amazingly have an effective rotation of five rookies, none of whom was with the team at the start of the year: Scott Diamond, P.J. Walter, Liam Hendricks, Samuel Deduno and Cole DeVries. This could be the start of something good – or it could mean years of mediocrity to come. Given how far each has come this year, I like to be hopeful. Jared Burton and Glen Perkins are solid anchors for the bullpen. I said at the start that Perkins was the best pitcher on the Twins, and I like him as the closer for the foreseeable future. There will be a role, too, for Brian Duensing. As for Alex Burnett, Casey Fien, Anthony Swarzak and others, I hope we can do better.

How could I have been so wrong in my predictions for the Twins’ 2011 season? 45 games into the year, they have the worst record in the majors and show no sign of getting much better. In hindsight, the thinness of the Twins’ roster should have been obvious, but who takes future injuries into account when doing a preview? Of course, every team has players on the disabled list, some as valuable as the Twins’, but for other teams, the replacements have been competent. The fact that every Twins minor league team finished last in its respective league last year, or close to it, should have been a tip-off that the well was running dry. Now we are at the point where there is no confidence on the team. So much of sports is mental, and if you think you’re going to lose, you probably will.
Now for the more individual causes: Joe Mauer’s breakdown is problem #1. Most obviously, you’re trading a .350 hitter for a .125 hitter, since the Twins last year traded away the two best-hitting catchers in their system, Wilson Ramos and Jose Morales. Just as important, Mauer has always been a winner, and his unflappable confidence anchored the team’s personality.
The second biggest problem is the morphing of the middle infield from a question mark to a disaster area. I had high hopes for Tsuyoshi Nishioka at second and guarded optimism for Alexi Cassila at short. Nishi, instead, broke his leg, and Casilla has remained as erratic in the field, on the bases and at the plate, as he was the first two times he was sent down to the minors. This has opened the door for Matt Tolbert and Luke Hughes, neither of whom could bat .200, and Trevor Plouffe, a default shortstop if there ever was one. He hits like an aspiring Michael Cuddyer – not a number two hitter, where Gardy is using him – while in the field his feet are slow and his throws are wild. Instead of being strong up the middle, the goal of every team, the Twins feature a black hole.
On the corners Justin Morneau and Danny Valencia, in contrast, look like legitimate Major Leaguers, but Major Leaguers having bad years. Morneau is clearly not recovered from his concussion-imposed layoff; he gets hits, but how many teams are using a cleanup hitter with only two home runs? That’s one more than Delmon Young has, and at least Morneau can field his position. Young can give up more runs in leftfield than he produces at the plate, and frequently does.
Jason Kubel is playing fine, all the more remarkable given how little help he is getting. Cuddyer is Cuddyer – a home run and double one game, three groundouts to short the next. He can be a piece of the puzzle, little more. Jim Thome has been hurt much of the year, but what can you expect from someone with his age and body? There’s a reason no other team wanted to sign him. His experience with the Twins is very similar to Brett Favre’s with the Vikings, and the sooner they cut the cord, the better off they will be.
As for the pitching, the starters have not been bad, except that they seem to be effective for six innings only, and the Twins have no one to pitch the seventh. All of them have had bad outings, but they have all had more good outings than bad, and remember that any team only need win 57% of its games to make the playoffs. It’s the relievers who have been the disappointment. Joe Nathan was rushed back to the closer spot prematurely, and we’re still trying to see where he will fit in. Jose Mijares can’t find the strike zone and is nowhere near the pitcher he looked to be two years ago. Matt Capps may have the bulldog personality of a closer, but he doesn’t have a strikeout pitch and is strictly average. Given how few times the Twins have taken a lead into the ninth, it has been especially deflating when he lets the game get away. Glen Perkins for the defense has been the equal of Jason Kubel for the offense. The other relievers are simply minor leaguers on loan.
Where does this leave the Twins? Unfortunately, like the Vikings last season, this was supposed to be year where all the pieces came together. The team was built for the present, not the future. As a result, perhaps, the future doesn’t have much to show for itself. There are no hotshots in the minors, just waiting for their chance. We’ve seen Ben Revere and Luke Hughes, and we’re worried. Can the Twins rebuild through a trade? It’s hard to see anyone on their roster whom another team would want. Someone like Denard Span is a good complementary player, but he’s not going to make an impact elsewhere, and most teams have a centerfielder. I could be wrong – and I’ve been wrong before – but all I see is a multi-year slog through mediocrity until a new generation of Mauers and Morneaus comes along. If it does.

I approach the 2011 season, opening tonight, with some trepidations, primarily because so many pundits (but not all) are picking the Twins to win their division and even beat the Yankees in the playoffs’ first round. This generous appraisal is based mainly on the fact that the Twins won the division last year (relatively easy – i.e., no playoff game required) and none of their players had particularly stellar seasons. There’s no one on the 25-man roster of whom it would be unrealistic to expect better things in 2011.
The problem is that in the past, when the Twins have been successful, it has generally been a surprise. They are good at sneaking past more star-laden teams, like the White Sox and Tigers, being overlooked and lagging behind until a late-season spurt gives them the division. When they are supposed to be good, they disappoint.
My other qualm is that, spending spring training in California, I have not seen a minute of actual player action. This, however, shouldn’t matter much, as countless years of experience have taught me that results in spring training don’t matter much. Further, as Jim Souhan points out in today’s Strib, the Twins’ recents victories have depended as much on mid-season additions or adjustments – viz., the Shannon Stewart for Bobby Kielty trade in 2005 – as on the opening-day starting lineup.
With those caveats in place, let me say why I expect nothing less than a banner year for the Minnesota Twins.
1. Starting pitching. The Twins have six solid starters, none dominant but each capable of the occasional gem and all able to keep their team “in the game.” I’ll bet the Twins rank very low on the list of teams involved in 10-8 games, and that’s because their pitchers rarely blow up. In fact, the one pitcher who can be unhittable, Francisco Liriano, is also in that regard the most problematic. We pretty much know what we will get from Baker, Blackburn, Pavano and Slowey. Duensing has looked promising in a limited role; if he blooms, the rotation could be very good. Best of all is the depth: if someone goes off track or gets hurt, as always happens, Slowey can slip right in, and Perkins and minor-leaguer Kyle Waldrop are right behind.
2. The Nishi effect. Keeping the same cast can make a team stale. Adding a high-energy newcomer can make everyone a little better, as the adjustment necessary creates a little edge. Tsuyoshi Nishioka sounds like a perfect Twin: excellent defense, good speed, handles the bat well – in short, everything Ron Gardenhire has been looking for in a #2 hitter the last several years. In some odd way, I also think his being Japanese will help cement the social fabric of the multi-ethnic Twins, divided fairly evenly among whites, blacks, Hispanics and Canadians.
3. Target Park. You have to think that the Twins will thrive even more in their home park, having gotten last year’s period of adjustment out of the way.
4. Delmon Young. Of all the Twins who could have a breakout year – Cuddyer, Kubel and Valencia foremost among them – Young is the one who seems most poised to deliver on the promise the Twins saw when they traded Matt Garza. I would still much rather see Young at DH than in left field, but that won’t happen so long as Jim Thome is around.
5. Last year’s underachievers. I’ve alluded to this before, but every Twin has had a better season in the majors than he did last year, and they are all still 30 or under. Morneau was hurt, Mauer’s power and average dropped, Span struggled, Punto was Punto and none of the bench players shone. It’s unreasonable to think everyone’s numbers will improve, but if only half do, and then if the Twins get production from a currently unidentified source, as well, the offense should be potent.
There are, to be fair, clouds on the horizon, too. To keep the net positive, I will list but four.
1. Alexi Casilla. Shortstop is the key to the defensive arch, the captain who has to take charge of the infield. With a rookie and an almost-rookie on each side of him, Casilla’s role has to be huge. In each of the last two seasons, he has been given every opportunity to win a starting job, and he has failed each time, mostly from inconsistency. With no one behind him who can both field and hit over .200, a faltering Casilla would seriously weaken the Twins.
2. Morneau and Mauer. They say he is back from his concussion, but Morneau was handled gingerly in spring training and his hitting was dismal. Morneau is a streak hitter, with a fine line between power and strikeout. If he doesn’t regain confidence quickly, he could become a black hole in the middle of the lineup. (Personally, I would relieve some pressue by batting Young cleanup and dropping Morneau to fifth, which would also set up a left-right-left lineup through the order.) Mauer is hardly fragile, but he plays with a bad knee at a physically demanding position and the Twins no longer have Mike Redmond, or even Jose Morales, behind him
3. Joe Nathan. For the same reason, loyalty, that Gardy will bat Morneau in the fourth spot, he has anointed Nathan his closer, even though he missed all of last year and the Twins acquired Matt Capps to replace him. Nathan made me nervous when he was healthy, and I expect less this year. Nor was Capps a sure thing. On the loyalty point (or, said another way, Gardenhire is loath to mix things up), I worry that Gardy will stick with Jim Thome when age finally catches up to him.
4. Middle relief. This is low on my list, even though others regularly bemoan the loss of Guerrier, Crain, Rauch, Fuentes, Neshek, et al. Seriously, how comfortable did anyone feel with Crain on the mound? How many disappointing home runs did the over-relied-on Guerrier surrender? How long were we holding our breath with Rauch as the closer? I’m not saying the new guys can’t be worse; it’s just that there’s no reason to believe that a middle bullpen of Slowey, Perkins, Mijares and Capps can’t be as good.
Finally, one neutral factor to consider:
The surprise star. Every baseball season produces a game-changing talent that no one thought much about this time of year, along the lines of Josh Hamilton, Joey Votto, Jose Bautista, or Buster Posey. Should such a star emerge for the Tigers or White Sox, the Twins’ chances would correspondingly diminish. But then again, should such a one come to pass in Minneapolis – say, from among Danny Valencia, Dusty Hughes, Kyle Waldrop, or Luke Hughes – the Twins could be unstoppable.

The air went out of the Twins tonight – and I hope it was just for one game, not the whole season – when that least-admirable of Yankees, Alex Rodriguez, turned a painfully wrought 4-3 Twins edge into a 7-4 Yankee pounding with one swing of his bat. One must question why Ron Gardenhire brought in Matt Guerrier to face A-Rod with the bases loaded, even though Rodriguez was batting .750 against Guerrier, including three homers in only eight times at bat. But then we all know that Gardy is strictly a by-the-(obsolete)book manager, who plays the right-against-right “percentages,” just as Yankee manager Joe Girardi brought in lefthander Damaso Marte the same inning to face Joe Mauer, even though Mauer’s average against lefties is about 150 points higher than against righties. Mauer proceeded to drive in the tying run, then left Justin Morneau drove in Mauer to give the Twins their shortlived lead.
I feel sorry for Scott Baker, who left the game with the lead but will have the loss on his record, but even worse for Brian Duensing, my current favorite Twin pitcher. Brought in to relieve Baker with men on second and third and no outs, Duensing retired the dangerous Brett Gardner on a popup, then was told to intentionally walk Mark Texeira before giving way to Guerrier. Of the four runs Guerrier surrendered on the Rodriguez slam, two go against Baker’s ledger and Duensing is charged with one run in one-third inning pitched, seriously damaging his ERA even though he did absolutely everything asked of him.
The Twins’ TV announcers were noticeably deflated, and the players seemed to merely go through the motions in their final two at-bats. The damn Yankees, whom the Twins haven’t defeated in years, had done it again, and what is more depressing is that Baker pitched a good game, Kubel broke out of his slump, and the two big men, Mauer and Morneau, came through with big at bats. And still, it wasn’t enough.