As I looked around the Metrodome on Sunday afternoon, seeing 40,000 fans scream as the Twins took the division lead, I couldn’t help but ask, ‘what the hell?’  We’ve spent a lot of time talking about all the things we think the Twins should or should not do to what players and who they might trade and how they can capture the division.  But we’ve happily glossed over the fact that the Twins are really where they are quite inexplicably.  The national media is typically surprised to see us sitting atop our division.  We, after all, lost our two most recognizable stars last offseason, including the best pitcher in baseball.  Wise Twins fans saw that this tea looked like one that would play just above .500.  Pessimistic ones wondered if we’d beat last year’s win total of 78.

So what the hell’s happened in the meantime?  We can’t help but feel very pleased with the contributions we’ve gotten from our young starters.  Even still, our run prevention, hurt by a mediocre defense and a bullpen far more pedestrian than we are accustomed too, had remained unimpressive at 9th in the AL.

Our hitting is where things get weird.  The Twins hitters have been perhaps a bit better than expected, but few Twins hitters are really shattering realistic expectations (Denard Span and Alexi Casilla come to my mind as the most pleasant surprises, but those guys are still humbler speedsters, not world mashers).  Michael Cuddyer was supposed to remain an important right handed producer in the heart of our lineup, but he’s missed much of the year and produced poorly when healthy.  Brendon Harris and Delmon Young have hit much better of late, but both started so poorly that their overall numbers are still relatively depressed.  Carlos Gomez has been one of the worst hitters in the league so far this year and has more plate appearances than anyone else on the team other than Morneau.  So the Twins team production numbers are good, though not great.  While their team batting average is a nice 4th place in the AL, proven better indicators OBP and SLG remain middle of the road at 8th and 20th in the AL respectively.  This puts our OPS at .743, respectable, but only good for 8th in the AL.  Of course, there is the well publicized lack of homers with the Twin having more than no other AL team.  We aren’t a successful team at stealing bases, ranking in the bottom half in bases stolen and tied for last in all of baseball with the putrid Washington Nationals for worst success percentage.

So then why is the middle of the road production of our hitters adding up to the 5th best run scoring offense in the American League, right among with all the top tier offenses like Boston, Detroit, and Chicago?

The Twins have had absurd success this year with runners in scoring position.  The team OPS shoot up over .100 points above normal to a stratospheric .848.  The general trend is for teams to hit better with runners in scoring position than overall (pitcher’s in jams already struggling, worse pitchers are more frequently in that situation in the first place, pitchers in the set, etc) but the Twin’s jump is far beyond reasonable deviation.  The Twins are the best hitting team in all of baseball with RISP.  They are hitting a ridiculous .315.  They have both the highest on base and second highest slugging percentages in all of baseball in these situations.  That’s right, the team with the fewest home runs in the AL magically transforms into the biggest bundle of sluggers in the entire game when runners are standing on second or third. 
I don’t really believe in clutch hitting as a sustainable skill, but even the most devout lover of Derek Jeter has to admit that our team production with runners in scoring position is well beyond what even the most clutch team should be able to expect to hold.  The best explanation for the majority of the disparity is plain luck, and lots of it.  Lots of baseball is a lot of luck, but this is just ridiculous.

So, first the Twins are scoring more runs, a lot more runs, then they really ought to be.  Then, on top of that, they’re winning more games than their run differential should even allow.  The Twins have given up 514 runs this year and scored 547, good for a quality +33 difference.  Their Pythagorean winning percentage has them at 59 wins.  Sitting 3 games above their Pythagorean expected isn’t outside the bounds of simple chance deviation but it is once again, on the lucky side of fate.  Often, you will see teams with very good records in close games which can be a big part of the disparity.  Often, great bullpens or defenses are given as factors that can help win close games and push a team beyond its expected numbers, but the Twins have neither this year.  Close games hasn’t been they key anyway as the Twins have a 21-17 record in 1 run games that isn’t peculiarly different from their overall record.  Meanwhile, we sit ahead of the White Sox who have scored more runs than us, given up less, and have a much more impressive +75 run differential.

So the Twins are scoring more runs than the contributions of their hitters ought to lead to, and are then winning more games than those runs, even with all those strange extras, should allow, leaving us doubly lucky.  I can’t profess to know why this is happening and the Twins are where they are.  I wrote in the Gameday programs over a month ago about the Twins’ unusual fortune with runners in scoring position and mentioned that those successes were likely to regress, but it just hasn’t come about.  The Twins have long been accustomed to beating their Pythagorean, but the elements of the team typically given credit for the achievement are absent from the team this year (although the team is not beating their expected wins so radically this year as it has in the past when it was sometimes well outside usual statistical deviation).

I can’t explain why the team is drawing 40,000 eager fans in what was to be a ‘reloading’ year.  I can’t explain why losing their two best players from the previous year, then losing Pat Neshek, their most important set-up man, and Michael Cuddyer, their most important right handed bat, hasn’t killed whatever remaining chance the team had.  The best I can do is thank the baseball gods that the Indians have totally collapsed and that we play in a suddenly weak-again AL Central.

I don’t have the answer to how the hell this team is pulling it off, so all there is for us to do is sit back, cheer, and enjoy the ride.