Twins Diary ’24

The main story from the Twins’ Opening Day 4-1 win over Kansas City was, simply, the injury to potential superstar Royce Lewis, who pulled up lame with a quad injury as he rounded second base. It’s not that a sustained injury, if it proves as serious as it looked, will hurt the Twins’ prospects this year; they could still win their division, though not so handily. The bigger concern is for Lewis’s career. He has charisma, leadership ability and all the athletic attributes you could want. He homered in his first two playoff at-bats last fall, and he homered in his first Opening Day at-bat yesterday, following up with a single to go 2-for-2 before getting hurt. But he hasn’t played a year of professional baseball without a serious injury. Is he snakebit, injury-prone, or is this a fluke? All anyone can think of is Byron Buxton, who is 8-for-9 in seasons ruined by injury. The Twins and Minnesota need Lewis. All we can do now is hope.

April 4: The desultory performance by the Twins’ offense in their home opener against the Guardians reminded me of all I disliked about their 2023 season and resurrected my worst fears for this year now that Royce Lewis is gone. The headlines: Twins were 0-for-12 with runners in scoring position (Guardians were 2-for-7) and had 15 strikeouts to 1 walk. Kiriloff tripled with one out in the 1st, then Buxton struck out. In the 2d the Twins loaded the bases then Julien struck out looking. In the 7th again the bases were loaded with one out before Buxton struck out and Kepler popped up. Correa led off the 8th with a double then watched the next three batters fan. The defense wasn’t much better. Cleveland’s game-deciding three-run rally started when Wallner shied away from Steven Kwan’s looper instead of charging and diving, then the third run resulted from a botched rundown play. The Guardians, by contrast, constantly put the ball in play. I’d love for Minnesota to have a player like Kwan; with a runner on third and less than two outs, you know he will get his bat on the ball. Unlike Buxton, Kepler, Santana…go down the lineup. In all, it was an enervating game to watch and a deterrent to watching anymore for awhile.

A general thought concerning official scoring and statistics: In his final inning (the 6th), Pablo Lopez got two quick outs then gave up a single and left the game “responsible for the man on first.” The Twins reliever, Kelly Funderburk, hit his first batter and walked the second. The third hit a ground ball that Correa booted, resulting in a run scoring and being charged to Lopez. Clearly, Funderburk was more “responsible” for the run scoring than Lopez. I would give the official scorer the discretion to attribute the run in this situation: a runner not in scoring position can be assigned as the responsibility of the relief pitcher if he enters the game with two outs, or maybe even one.