A long, long time from now in a city far, far away...

by Skippy tastes better than Jiff on May 14, 2009 11:39 PM EDT Comment 6 comments

The Twins have certainly been the benefactor of home-cookin'; they have had the most home games of any American League team, so far and stand 18-17 for the young season.

However, June and July are on the horizon where the Twins will have two ten game road trips and one nine game road trip in a month and a half.

What I want to ask all of you wizards of smart is: How many games over .500 do the Twins need to be at that point to have a real chance of making the playoffs...or do they need to be above .500 at that point.?

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well

compared to last year, a 9 or 10 game road trip doesn’t seem too bad, especially if its not that close to the end of the year. i think the central will be very tight most of the season, so who ever wants to step up in the last month or two, can claim the al central crown.

by ianmader on May 15, 2009 3:04 PM EDT reply actions 0 recs

yeah

I’ve been busy, but I keep meaning to do a post on why we should be nervous. I won’t go into as much detail as I intended to, but here are the highlights:

The Twins are a game over .500, but there is reason to think that they will have trouble keeping it up.
-——————————-
They are 14-9 at home, but 4-8 at home. Add in .333 baseball in the 11 games needed to balance home and away, and we are 3-4 games below .500.

The Twins have given up 13 more runs than they have scored. I’m not exactly a believer in the pythagorean formula, because there is not theoretical reason that it SHOULD be predictive, but the point holds that a team that gives up more runs than it scores should lose more than it wins.

The Twins appear to be beating up on the easy competition, but struggling against the good teams. The are 7-3 against the west (basically taking advantage of Seattle), 8-6 against the marginal central, and 3-8 against the East. Fortunately baseball overloads the schedule with in-division matchups, which will help the Twins, but it is a bad sign that we can’t play with the Red Sox, Blue Jays, or even apparently, the Orioles. Bring it on New York!

The Twins aces (Liriano and Baker) have ERAs of 5.75 and 6.95, respectively. That does not bode well for the big matchups against top competition. #3 pitcher Kevin Slowey also has a worse than hoped for 4.91 ERA, and Blackburn still can’t pitch outside of the Dome.

If our bullpen isn’t given a six run lead, its a real toss up heading into the late innings.

Joe Mauer can’t even keep his ISO over .350.

That pretty much sums up my main observations. There are the other nits to pick, such as fears about our success aginst LHP, and Gomez’ lack of development. There is reason to be hopeful that the starters will work it out, and that the minor leagues may help us gain some stability in our bullpen. If those things work out, we could improve as a team, but I for one do not find 18-17 to be a good sign at this point in the year.

by snolls on May 15, 2009 6:31 PM EDT reply actions 0 recs

Agreed with everything here, but

I think you left out one counterpoint which is the lack of Joe Mauer for the first 30 or so games. Look at what he alone has added to our offense since he has come back, not to mention the synergitic effect upon the rest of the lineup whether due to an increased confidence, or a slight decrease in confidence from opposing pitchers…

by montanatwinsfan on May 16, 2009 12:09 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

Agreed

Getting him back is huge. You can also look at it and say that a bright spot is how well we performed despite the poor play from Baker and Liriano, but it sort of requires that you expect them to fix it.

I really hope we can expect that.

by snolls on May 18, 2009 4:05 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

4 more losses to the east...

…doesn’t bode well for post-season activities—besides golf and BBQs. The Twins were outscored by 5 runs over four games and lose all four? That is a BIG-TIME ouch and what I feared might happen once we took our show out east. The Twins are finding all kinds of ways to cough up leads.

"I don't think it's nice, you laughin'. See, my mule don't like people laughing. He gets the crazy idea you're laughing at him. Now if you apologize, like I know you're going to, I might convince him that you really didn't mean it . . ."

by Skippy tastes better than Jiff on May 18, 2009 11:10 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs