Especially, in terms of pitching. Blackburn has great stuff, no matter what Sickels or Gleeman or anyone says. He will be a solid starting pitcher.

Once Liriano comes around, the rotation will be strong, and the bullpen already is strong.

The Angels have a hell of a team, with speed, power, pitching and defense. They could easily win it all.

That said, this is mostly about the Twins' offense. One hit in either of the last couple of games would have won the game.

Here's what some sage said about this before the season started:

I predict that this will be a continuing problem, despite seemingly being a stronger offensive team on paper.

The reason: they have had a ton of player turnover, with only Mauer, Cuddyer, Morneau and some of Kubel returning.

Scoring runs is about making best use of rallies, whether started by walks, hits or errors. Good teams find a way to get runners around. A lot of that is about the synergy and trust that develops among hitters in the lineup, plus some moxie--the big hit, the little things, stealing an extra base, taking extra pitches.

When you have a bunch of new players, you have much more uncertainty about where, how and when you will score runs, particularly when you don't have a lot of instant offense in the form of boppers. That creates a kind of anxiety and lack of confidence which can spiral into a negative feedback loop. That's when players really start to press and lose confidence.

Essentially, the current players will have to learn to trust each other, to not get down when they aren't scoring and realize that they will get the job done; if not this inning, then next; if not this game, then the following day.

That's the way good baseball teams think. Poor baseball teams press, question themselves, lack leadership and find ways to lose.

Despite all the talk about their inexperienced starting pitching, I think it much more likely they will have trouble scoring runs, especially in the first half of the season, and definitely as long as neither Morneau, nor Cuddyer, nor Young are able to go deep.

For example, I just highlighted this entire entry and clicked on both blockquoting and italics, but it only highlighted the first row.

...Brian Bass. After a long minor league career, lets chalk up the first outing to nerves. The second outing, he was excellent for 2+ innings. Now I would like to ask the question (which someone here may know), what was his longest outing this spring? I listened to alot of games and read almost all the boxscores, I don't recall seeing him going beyond 2 innings, maybe 3 max. If that is the case, I do not blame Bass for the two homeruns. My complaint must go to the manager for not gettin ghim out of the game after an excellent performance for 2+. We were going into the 7th and our vaunted bullpen certainly should have been able to handle the 7-8-9 without a problem.