The Minnesota Twins have played thirteen or so games this
season and have probably exceeded expectations at this point. They’ve hung tough against some pretty good
teams and some inclement North Land weather.
They’ve yet to play any division rivals except for the Royals so again,
it’s early! Two themes so far—they’ve
got to get the staff to miss more bats, and there are some impact bats down on
the farm.
At 6-7 and a minus 10 in run differential many teams would
be ambivalent but the 2012 Twins were a disaster with injuries taking a major
toll. So far, there have been a lot more
positives then negatives thirteen games in.
Even though the Twins pitching is the major concern (4.38 ERA-- 23rd
in MLB, tied for last with four quality starts) they’ve been able to avoid
homeruns and limiting runs in general.
They can’t expect to win many games while not striking guys out- as
they’ve only retired 64 batters via the “K”-30th in the MLB. The Twins are middle of the pack in terms of
staff ERA, although the relief has been solid and they’ve given up only eight
or nine long balls.
The offense hasn’t
dominated, but has gotten on base consistently and Joe Mauer seems like he’s
going to have another run at the batting title with a sparkling .386 batting
average through 13 games. Even though it’s
early, Kansas City and Cleveland, both looked improved so there don’t seem to
be any “gimmes” for the Twins. As of
Wednesday evening, the Twins were on the verse of sweeping the big spending yet
struggling Los Angeles Angels. This came
on the heels of an ugly five game losing streak at the hands of the rival
Royals and New York Mets. The offense
was only able to scrap together 12 runs in that stretch but have rebounded
nicely, putting up eight runs on back-to-back nights.
In Tuesday’s 8-6 win over the Angels, the Twins jumped out
on starter Jason Vargas early, taking a 3-0 lead. Joe Mauer was beastly in this game going 4
for 5 with three RBI and starting the scoring by singling in Wilkin Ramirez and
rookie Aaron Hicks. The Twins free agent
starter Mike Pelfrey was again able to skirt out of trouble with the dangerous
Angels lineup, scattering seven hits and two strikeouts over five innings of
work. Anthony Swarzak went three innings
in long relief and the Twins were able to get to closer Glen Perkins with a
two-run lead. Pelfrey was probably
excited to get the win, going to 2-1 with a better-than-it-looks 7.36 ERA. Gardenhire’s club looks like they are going
to roll with the punches in 2013, as they bounced back in a big way the last
couple of games.
In the short term the Twins have probably realized that
rookie centerfielder Aaron Hicks isn’t quite ready for prime-time yet, batting
.044 (2-for-45). He has drawn six walks,
but has no extra base knocks; the team dropped him to eighth in the batting
order for the time being. As the team
looks for answers at leadoff, which is so integral to the Twins philosophy,
Minnesota called up and then sent down and then called up again highly regarded rookie outfielder Oswaldo Arcia because the
youngster can hit (got a hit in his first plate appearance as a Twin). Arcia was called back up from Triple-A
Rochester (Darin Mastroianni was sent to the DL) and has hit everywhere he’s
been down on the farm. Arcia is
primarily going to play in rightfield and could cut into Chris Parmalee and/or
Ryan Doumit’s at bats—his bat is that good.
The Twins can hope of their rookies can impact the lineup as
the pitching will continue to put them in must-score mode more often than we’ve
seen around here in a long time.
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