| 02 May 2011
BY MICHAEL L. WHITE
Whilst futility continues to rear its head to the tune of a sweep the not-ready-for-primetime Kansas City Royals, your Minnesota Twins now stand apart as THE WORST TEAM IN BASEBALL. No more hiding behind injuries, depth problems, and cold bats—this is your AL and MLB cellar-dweller.
One can try to ascertain the problems simply by looking at the Disabled List, which contains names like Mauer, Young, Nishioka, and Slowey, but you wouldn’t get the whole story—nor any sympathy from the 2010 Boston Red Sox. The problems are many and some, such as defense and pitching, compound on themselves repeatedly.
The 2011 pitching staff leads the AL in runs per game, ERA, have the third-most hits allowed, fourth-most HRs allowed, fifth-most walks given, and are dead last in strikeouts. The healthiest portion of our roster has been one of baseball’s biggest sore spots.
The rotation’s problems come from all sides. The rotation coming into 2011 was an overrated bunch, filled with the usual command-control hurlers. Bats wouldn’t be missed much, strikeouts fewer, and leaning on the defense. 2011 has proven the show all the inefficiencies of their talent full-bore, as the control is lacking to the tune of being below league-average in the AL in allowing walks and still having 15 fewer strikeouts than second-to-last Kansas City, which came into 2011 with the least talented rotation in baseball, but at least Kansas City isn’t paying nearly $21 million for its patchwork rotation.
Compounding the problems of the pitching staff has been the defense. Nishioka’s absence has put Gardenhire into a whirlwind of lineups culminating in the ultimate sign of desperation: Michael Cuddyer playing the middle infield.
Gardy’s been a hamper to his club in other damaging ways as well. Gardy told his top strikeout artist, Francisco Liriano, to be a better starter is to “pitch to contact,” regulating much of his effectiveness in getting outs to his defensive squad mates. Liriano’s responded to the “advice” to his worst stretch in years with a 9.13 ERA, 18 K, 18 BB, 1.90 WHIP in 23.2 IP.
That defense behind him, regarded for years as good? Well-below American League average in Defensive Efficiency and barely average in errors committed, and third-to-last in total putouts. The defense is below average at the minimum and to ask the pitching staff, especially its best piece to rely on the weak defense instead of his stuff, notably Liriano’s lights-out slider, is asinine. It is that type of stupidity that costs personnel their jobs. Gardy needs to be a force of change, the man at the helm to be imparting words and ideas that helps this team remove itself from ineptitude. Instead the alpha male leader of this team turned out to be Denard Span, challenging his teammates to do better.
The offense, above all, can do better. Recurring injuries to Mauer and Morneau are sapping their effectiveness, but the putrid offense is an issue all across the lineup. The Twins rank last or tied for last in the AL average, on-base, and slugging percentages, dead last in HR and extra-base hits, second-fewest walks forced, second-most times struck out, third-fewest hits, and last in runs. To be among or the worst in all these categories is a total team effort in futility. Only Kubel, Span, and Thome have on-base averages about .330 and only Kubel sports a slugging percentage above .390 (.511 SLG enhanced by his .351 AVG).
The sample sizes remain small for most—only four hitters (Span, Kubel, Cuddyer, and Valencia) have seen more than 90 plate appearances, so there’s hope as guys get healthier as the weather gets warmer, but the gap that separates the Twins from contention is monstrous. The team now sits dead last in the AL Central, 10 games behind division front-runners Cleveland (3rd in AL in OPS and 4th in Defensive Efficiency) and a country mile in the early running for AL Wild Card.
The organization as a whole must challenge itself to get hot and stay consistently good. Many on this team can recall the streaking 2006 Twins team that overtake Detroit on the final day of the season for the AL Central crown, and while the problems may be vast, their chances remain for this club to return to being a hamper on opponents, or “piranhas” as Ozzie bequeathed upon them not too many years ago.
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