I Choose to Ignore the ’05 Indians

Let’s face it: as they stand today, the Twins are a better team than the Tigers. Things as a small as a two game deficit or a slightly harder remaining schedule should not really pose too great an obstacle. Certainly, in the first half, the Twins struggled with the Tigers, much like they struggled with the league at large as long as the likes of Tony Batista and Juan Castro occupied positions of importance on the team. The turnover changed their fortunes across the board, and proved especially poignant versus the division-leading Tigers, who have experienced a corresponding period of attrition.

One development exemplifies the closing of the gap more than any other, the defense. Where the Tigers started the season as a red-hot team built on pitchers who keep the ball in play and a defense that converts those balls into outs at an exceptionally high rate, the Twins tried to mimic that formula, giving up too much at the plate. Unlike nearly every aspect of offensive performance, defense is very questionably quantifiable- even though all sorts of very smart people have developed very advanced statistical metrics for defense, we are still at the point where our eyes occasionally tell us more than the numbers. Remember when Tony Batista’s glove was going to make up for his lack of OBP? In any case, Dave Dombrowski did a better job than Terry Ryan at identifying the underrated defenders and stockpiling them in his big ballpark. Placido Polanco, Marcus Thames, and Carlos Guillen all came cheaply because he saw their strengths and used them to complement one another. He paid a premium for Magglio Ordonez and Pudge Rodriguez, though the money was well spent, because the pieces fit into the larger plan, a fact which was lost on me and many in the analysis community before this breakout season.

Nonetheless, these two seemingly disparate rosters have found some common ground atop the AL Central. The Twins defense has improved consistently since mid-May, part of a larger trend toward becoming one of the four best teams in the major leagues. At the same time, the Tigers have regressed from other-wordly with the leather to simply very good, a difference which has brought them back to the pack in the division. The Twins dug such a hole before reforming their evil ways that even three months of superior play has not made up the difference. This short weekend, though, made big strides toward achieving that goal, cutting the Detroit lead from 4 games to 2 and tightening the screws on a team that is hardly on the right path. The series was crucially important for its timing and one-sided result, but the Twins’ wins came from such different places, exemplifying such different skills, that a look back at the weekend tells a lot about who they are.

Friday- Minnesota 9 Detroit 5:

Coming off a loss on Thursday, the Twins were looking at a series split if they could take two out of the last three, and with Matt Garza on the mound, they could hardly consider a strong start a given. After falling behind 4-2 through 4 ½ innings, the Twins were under a lot of pressure, facing the prospect of going down 6 games in the division, and possibly falling behind the White Sox in the division. The turning point came when Justin Morneau doubled in two runs in the bottom of the 5^th, scoring Mauer and Cuddyer, eventually scoring the go-ahead run on Hunter’s follow-up single. Morneau, Mauer, Cuddyer, Hunter. Those four have led the offense at different times during the last year, but any time that they combine to turn the game around, all seems right in the universe we call Minnesota. Together, they reached base 13 times in the game. The whole piranhas thing is nice, but the Twins also have legitimately good offensive players to go with their fluky ones. If they are going to overcome bad pitching performances from time to time, these are the guys who will be largely responsible for those wins.

Saturday- Minnesota 2 Detroit 1:

The Twins won Friday night with patience at the plate and their best hitters hitting. By design, they are supposed to win with strong starting pitching and good defense. Without Radke, Liriano, or a functional Silva (although he has supposedly rediscovered his sinker, like a twenty dollar bill left in a winter jacket after it was packed away for the spring, instead of the riding-a-bicycle method used for most skills), they have had to cobble together their innings like a pair of hand-me-down jeans. Baker has been a total let down from the start of the season to the point that management has decided to retry a slightly modified Rick Aguilera experiment with Matt Guerrier, debuting on Tuesday against white-hot Oakland. Kyle Lohse is contributing, just for the wrong team in the wrong league. At very least, Boof Bonser has seemingly made the leap at exactly the right time. I am going to give credit to Rick Anderson, because the difference between the struggling Bonser and the successful one comes down to two factors: improved pitch sequencing, and better command of his breaking pitch, two of Anderson’s trademarks. On Saturday, he dropped the hammer over and over, keeping the Tigers off balance at times where he was a much more predictable pitcher earlier in the season. The bullpen versatility came into play, as well, with Neshek dominating three righties in the eighth. With a total of only seven hits, I would hope the Twins do not have too many games like this one the rest of the way, because there is a lot that can go wrong, but having such a strong pitching staff goes a long way toward filling in the gaps left by offensive inadequacy.

Sunday- Minnesota 12 Detroit 1:

If Friday was the classic comeback, and Saturday was the classic pitchers’ duel, then Sunday was the classic blowout. The Twins scored 12 runs on 15 hits, but Cuddyer and Morneau were only 2-8 with 3 K’s and no XBH’s. They got an even output from the rest of the lineup, including Nick Punto’s 4 hits. The greater story was the starting pitching, where Johan Santana took a big step ahead of the pack in the Cy Young race, and showed why so many pundits think the Twins are dangerous in the playoffs. Santana’s invincibility in August and September is becoming legendary; he has been completely unbeatable for three straight years. Even Gardenhire impressed me in the game, leaving Santana in long enough to protect his pride, but taking him out on a high note after recording his eleventh strikeout on his 108^th pitch. He even leveraged his bullpen, using Will Eyre instead of pressing his most important relievers going into the next big series. Beating the likes of Jeremy Bonderman is satisfying in itself, but doing it so thoroughly and in so many different facets of the game warrants a special tip of the cap to the whole Twins lineup.

Perhaps the most telling aspect of the series is the fact that games 3 and 4, the ones where the Tigers had a chance to redeem themselves and even up the series, turned on defensive mistakes by a team that built its dominance on its defense. Both of the Twins runs on Saturday came by virtue of defensive shortcomings, and they took the lead on Sunday when Perez could not handle a grounder in the first. Two games remain between the Twins and Tigers in the standings, but this weekend’s games served as a microcosm for the last few months by showing that the team the Twins are today may be good enough to pay the checks that the weaker version nearly bounced earlier in the season.