More Fun Facts about the Worst Offense in Baseball

Last night, the Minnesota Twins offense exploded, torching Royals pitchers for four (4!) runs over 10 innings. The offensive barrage marked the third time this season the Twins have scored more than three runs in a game, which, I'm guessing, could be some sort of record.

Yes, friends, the Minnesota Twins are currently sporting the worst offense in baseball. By a pretty considerable margin. Thankfully, we've managed to scrape together four wins in our first ten games, despite our scuffling offense.

Yesterday, BeefMaster (here) and Adam (here) gave us some great examples of just how pitiful the Twins offense has been this season. Unfortunately for you, dear readers, I had been working on a list of my own.

So, at the risk of beating a dead horse, I present more fun facts about the worst offense in baseball:

Even after the team's prodigious hitting display Tuesday night, Twins hitters are still batting a combined .228/.279/.296. Pretty terrible, right? Consider this:

• The 1899 Cleveland Spiders are widely considered the worst team in baseball history. This is a team that was so bad - and drew so few fans - opposing teams refused to travel to Cleveland to play them (they played just 16 home games that season) They finished the year with 20 wins and 134 losses, a record for futility that has lasted more than a century. In that 20-win season, Cleveland, as a team, hit .253/.299/.305. That's good for a 605 OPS. That's 30 points higher than the current OPS of the 2011 Twins.

• Last season, 149 players accumulated enough plate appearances to qualify for the batting title. Of those 149 players, just one - Orioles shortstop Cesar Izturis - posted an OPS worse than the 575 mark currently held by the 2011 Twins.

• In seven seasons with the Twins, the gritty Nick Punto hit .248/.323/.324. Right now, the Twins would kill for that type of production. Nick's career OPS as a Twin was 72 points higher than the hometown nine's current production.

• In his ill-fated 2008 stint with the Twins, Mike Lamb hit .233/.276/.322. Even that would be an improvement over the 2011 Twins.

• The Twins are on pace to score 454 runs this season. The last time a team scored that few runs in a season? The strike-shortened 1981 campaign. Even in the strike-shortened 1994 season, with teams playing 114 games or so, no squad scored fewer than 466 runs.

• With 3 homers in 10 games, the Twins, as a team, are on pace to hit 49 homeruns in 2011. Last season, Jose Bautista hit 54.

Admittedly, none of this means much, other than to reinforce just how pitiful the Twins offense has been in the early going this season. We know we're just 6% of the way through the season, and we know the core of the lineup will see better days (soon, hopefully). And, again, the Twins have won four games already, a pretty impressive feat considering the fact they're scoring less than three runs a game.

But, boy, have the bats been dismal so far. And to think: we don't even have the pine trees to blame anymore.