Twins Notes

A quick break from the power rankings to comment on the surging Twinkies, and to celebrate the one year anniversary of MBC:

We enter play today with the Twins three games out of the playoffs. I bought a ticket to see the Phillies and Braves play today about two weeks ago, and now I am regretting that I will have to miss the Twins game on mlb.tv. The turnaround has been so complete and astounding that it begs the question of whether it is for real. Despite a big advantage for the Sox in run differential, I say the Twins have legitimately closed the gap, because the progress has come under an overhauled roster that cannot be held accountable for the sins of their predecessors. Sabermatricians like to say that the measure of a good team is not how many close games they win, but how many blowouts they win. The thinking is that close games leave more up to chance, and only specialized skills like ace relievers and situational hitters make much of a difference in those late-inning, high leverage situations. Blowouts, on the other hand, hint at a stronger team, top to bottom. The Twins have shown the ability to win both types of games in their two recent hot streaks, though the newfound ability to win games by four or more runs has been the most telling part of the team’s reformation. Since June 8th, when the Twins restructuring really took hold, they have won 15 of their 37 contests by at least 4 runs, helping them to a record of 30-7 over that stretch. In the 58 games before that time, the Twins won only 13 games by 4 or more runs. Their percentage of blowout wins went from 22.4% to 40.5% of all of their games. If a team wins 40% of its games in blowouts, it leaves little to chance, and it also predicates a very strong record, because winnings lots of blowouts requires the same skills as not getting blown out. Over the same stretch since June 8th, the White Sox have gone 22-15, allowing the Twins to gain 8 games in the standings, despite a nine game winning streak last month. They have won nine of their games in blowouts, good for 24.3%, much closer to the Twins old number. In terms of run differential, the Twins have started closing the gap by virtue of all of those blowouts, outscoring their opponents by 91 runs (220-129) since solidifying their starting lineup from within. The Sox have been strong, but not as strong, scoring 206 against 146 runs allowed. Altogether, it has taken the Sox a full season of relatively consistent (if not optimal) play to get them 86 runs above water (545-459), a number strikingly similar to the +91 differential the Twins have had to put together to close in on the lead that they spotted the rest of the division by playing Tony Batista, Juan Castro, and Kyle Lohse. So while the concerns about overall run differential may be legitimate, temper that pessimism with the knowledge that most of the deficit is the responsibility of players who no longer play for the Twins. The current composition of the roster has outplayed Chicago definitively for nearly 40 games, which is a meaningful and telling amount of time.

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How about the rejuvenation of Rondell White? After going to the DL as more of a merciful gesture than an injury concern, we all thought White would never make it back to the Dome, and we bid him good riddance. Then, we fell on hard times with Hunter, Stewart, and Ford hitting the DL in successive days, leaving the OF ravaged. White came back from the DL “prematurely” (I assumed it was not so much premature, as there is no real cure for suckitude) to fill in one of those OF spots, and he responded by erasing more than 10 runs of his deficit against the replacement level in a very short span. Indeed, White is now 13.5 runs below replacement level for the season, but he was past 25 when he went on the DL, so the improvement is much appreciated by the fans. His recent performance has been worth more than a full win since returning, but if there was ever a clearly visible yet intangible benefit of a player’s contributions beyond the stat-line, it has been White’s Lance Armstrong-like beating of the odds. In fact, I’ll take White’s last 10 games over Lance’s Tours every day of the week and twice on Sunday, since White was never the center of an international doping scandal, never hypocritically left his loyal family for a celebrity upon becoming famous, and never broke up with his celebrity girlfriend as soon as she got cancer. Lance did all of those things, and more. I say we start a fundraiser, selling Rondell White “Rock-Hard” bracelets to benefit research into how multiple recurring injuries sap a baseball player’s value over time. I’m on board for the time being, but I recognize the probable transience of White’s positive contributions.

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Finally, White’s “emergence” in the outfield does some interesting things for the Twins lineup. They recently started Josh Rabe at DH, along with White, Tyner, and Cuddyer in the OF. Usually Kubel would take the DH slot, or alternate with White in LF, but the presence of a tough lefty gave the team an excuse to let him rest his sore knees. It is important to keep the young players healthy and rested to prevent the type of end game exhaustion and collapse that ruined Cleveland last season, so Gardy needs to take every step possible to rest Kubel, Mauer, etc, down the stretch. One possibility which has not been employed thus far would be to give either White or Kubel his necessary day off while playing Tyner and Cuddyer in the OF. Start Redmond at catcher and let Mauer DH. Altogether, that lineup gives rest where rest is due, and puts Redmond’s bat in the lineup instead of Rabe’s, a tradeoff just about any Twins fan would make.