| 15 April 2011
I'm pleased to introduce a new guest to you today, one who will hopefully grace us with his smart ideas and sound writing skills many more times this year, and in the future. Michael L. White, a graduate of Gonzaga, has a B.A. in history and double-minored in English and economics. Currently living in Rapid City, Michael is one of the biggest Twins' fans you'll ever meet. Please give him a warm welcome, and be sure to enjoy his take on the Twins up-the-middle struggles this season.
BY MICHAEL L. WHITE
When new contributors introduce themselves, many try to validate themselves writing on said wondrous platform, blah blah blah. I find the ideal introduction regarding my feelings on this type of lead is best plucked from the fringe-average 90s comedy “Good Burger:”
I'm a dude. He's a dude. She's a dude. We're all dudes, hey!
Your 2011 Minnesota Twins offensively—to be generous—are about as substantive as a Law & Order spinoff. The Twins in 2010, in switching from a somewhat generous offensive park to a pitcher-centric part, looked about as intimidated as a little leaguer taking cuts in Forbes Field. As Kneeland has previously pointed out, the 2011 club looks putrid, especially coming from the big money hitters.
While we can expect the Law of Sample Sizes to put things back in order, several positions required lots of love in the offseason. The 2011 Twins up the middle positions—C, 2B, SS, and CF—are bound to be crutches that spell doom in an open AL Central race.
C: Backstop Backup Blues 
Whether the fences-clearing or doubles-dealing version of Joe Mauer shows up, the starting position is nothing to worry about barring injuries, but that remains a huge qualifier with Joe’s history. As for the 2010 version, Mauer still ranked tops in the majors, ranking first among catchers in True Average (.312) and Wins Above Replacement (5.8).
Backup Drew Butera is nearly at the polar opposite in the rank of major league catchers. Of the 48 catchers to register at least 150 PA in 2010, Butera’s .197 True Average ranks 46th, ahead of Seattle’s Adam Moore and Jeff Mathis’ out-of-batters-box performance that surely helped sink the Angels in the late summer. However, Butera tied with Mathis at -0.5 WAR. Minding the fact that Butera is abysmal with the stick, it somehow gets worse behind him.
With Mauer now headed to the DL, Steve Holm is now part of the discussion, a 31 year-old minor league veteran with a career .249/.330/.380 line… in four seasons at AAA.
We all know depth is a crucial factor for teams making the postseason—just look at how the parade of injuries derailed the powerful Red Sox last year—so prolonged stretch beyond the 15-day DL without Mauer would certainly force the hand of GM Bill Smith to trade for a starter-capable catcher, one of the thinnest positions for quality bats in all the majors.
If there’s any backstop that could possibly be pried away and worth a couple of low-level prospects it may be Cincinnati’s Ryan Hanigan, a guy with way above-average plate discipline and pop for a backstop with a career .830 OPS vs. LHPs and currently splitting starts with the overexposed, aged Ramon Hernandez
2B & SS: Depth Free
Tsuyoshi Nishioka was the Twins biggest addition of the offseason. A low-leverage, high-contact hitter, Nishioka was an outstanding SS in the Japenese league. As Craig Brown points out, the Twins envisioned him as their 2B and moved in spring training as such, but this makes the trading of J.J. Hardy to Baltimore that much more confounding.
Hardy was about as good as you can hope for defensively, one of the AL’s best and worth four runs saved in 2010. Coupled with Nishioka, Span, and Mauer and there’s a stand-up defense throughout the middle of the ball field. Without that, and with Casilla/Tolbert, we’ve got a questionable defense, not to mention a SS in Alexi Casilla who relies on his contact rate to be effective offensively and has already once been the scorn of Ron Gardenhire’s Glass Cage of Emotion.
And now with Nishioka on the DL, you’ve got the crafty-yet-confused Gardy giving playing time to Matt Tolbert and re-inventing the wheel with Mike Cuddyer playing in the infield again. I’ll let Twins blogmaster Aaron Gleeman sum up my point with tweets from Wednesday’s loss against Kansas City.
CF: Racking Discipline
Denard Span is an oddity I cannot figure out. For all but 2010, Span was a contact and discipline hitter with good defense and just enough pop to make us happy with our starter. While the defense remained, along with efficiency on the basepaths, Span saw a heavy drop in his offensive contributions in 2010.
The contact dropped off heavily, and coupled with a drop in his Unintentional Base on Balls rate from 9.9% to 8.5%, Span’s TAv dropped 38 points to just .251. Span was already an above-average CF, but the offensive dropoff stings even more in the context of the entire outfield.
Jason Kubel stunk up RF offensively as much as he had done defensively for years. 2010 saw Kubel’s SLG drop 44 points from his pretty-good 2008 and over 110 points from his supposed breakout 2010 campaign, leaving a barely average offensive/dreadful defensive corner outfielder.
Young has never been great defensively or lived up to his seen potential as a prospect in Tampa, and Cuddyer’s well past his peak and continues to prove value only defensively, but only the high-revenue ball clubs could afford that value with that massive eight-figure salary.
With the Detroit and Chicago bulking up their batting orders in the offseason, the Twins are left to lean on Mauer and Morneau, the rotation, and defense, the last being a huge question mark. Coupled with the inevitable rise of the Kansas City Royals with a farm system so full of potential and talent few could call meager, the Twins’ opportunities in the future grow smaller.
So as we collectively cite the Law of Averages, let's hope Mauer's injury is nothing too serious. If he's out for an extended period of time, sucker-punching the already-weak up-the-middle positions, the Twins could be in trouble.
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