Saturday Morning Baseball & Breakfast

Catching up with your Twins news from the week gone past, bullet point style.

• Rich Lederer of Baseball Analysts discovered that the Twins are getting the most bang (wins) for their buck (male deer money).  They've won an average of 87.67 games between '06 and '08, while averaging a $67.28 million dollar payroll.  No team averaging more wins paid less than $100 million.  Cleveland has been almost as efficient with their money.
• At the Strib's Twins page, LEN III and Joe C. gave their early impressions of the club on Tuesday.  They discussed Joe Nathan's (non) injury, but of note was their brief discussion of Delmon Young.  Neal spoke of Young's new, wider stance at the plate, saying it helped him get the head of the bat through the zone quicker; hopes are that a quicker bat will turn those weak infield grounders into something more productive.  Christensen then compared Young's new stance to the stance of one Albert Belle.
• For reference, Belle (in his age-23 season of 1990, like Young in '09) hit .174/.208/.304 in nine games for the Indians.  He wasn't an offensive force until the following season, and didn't post an OBP higher than .320 until his age-26 season in '93.
• After one week of baseball, here are the Twins leaders in OPS (minimum ten at-bats):  Brian Buscher (1.390), Dustin Martin (1.288), Delmon Young (1.282), Carlos Gomez (.973) and Alexi Casilla (.748).
• Joe Mauer's "representatives" will be meeting with the Twins this week.  Charlie Walters thinks the hot topic of discussion will be an extension for the best catcher in baseball, which would be a good idea.  We discussed this back in very early February, where my (admittedly optimistic) hope was that the Twins would sign Joe through 2015--seven year deal (adding five years onto his current contract), $98 million dollars.