Everyone knows that the Twins have been on fire the last month and a half. The latest stat is 35-11 in their last 46 games and a glance at today’s standings shows them to be 18 games over .500 and a mere three games out of the American League Wild Card position.
Obviously, when a team gets this hot, there is sure to be a steady diet of columns and features examining, recapping, and explaining the sudden turn of events. Almost all of these stories have focused on three players: Santana, Liriano, and catcher Joe Mauer.
While all three have been amazing and arguably the best in baseball at their positions, it is Morneau – the Forgotten Lefty – that is the single Twin (kind of a funny pairing of words) most responsible for this dramatic turnaround.
I understand this is a bold statement. Santana won the Cy Young award in 2004, should have won it last year, and is right at the top of the list once again this season (12-5, 3.11 ERA, 1.06 WHIP, 160 K’s in 156 IP). He is clearly the star of this team and the guy that anchors the pitching staff. Without him, Minnesota would not and could not compete.
Mauer is another guy that should get a ton of credit. He’s hitting .368 with a .441 OBP and serving as a reliable backstop behind the plate. Again, without him, it is hard to imagine the Twins being 18 games over .500.
That leaves Liriano and Morneau. Here we have two more extremely valuable players, but it gets even harder to figure out which guy is “most responsible” for the turnaround. Liriano has changed the entire pitching staff and the way teams approach series’ with Minnesota. It used to be that you only had to worry about Santana at the front of the rotation before going to work on their soft-tossers (Brad Radke, Jose Silva, etc.). The 2004 ALDS against the Yankees was a perfect example of this – New York basically conceded the Santana games and just bashed against the other guys. Now teams have to gear up for the most fearsome pair of lefty strikeout artists in recent memory and it makes a change-of-pace guy like Radke far more effective. So Liriano changes everything. Plus, his stats (12-2, 1.96 ERA, .96 WHIP, 137 K’s in 115 IP) are absolutely out of this world.
Article comments
1 - Ruvy in Jerusalem
Adam,
I haven't been watching the Twinkies for about five years now, given that I live a third of a world away. But my wife, the loyal fan and St. Paul native, keeps pressing me for stats - so in the past I looked in the Jerusalem Post (when you live in Israel, that paper is a real downer, as is Haaretz) or the major league baseball site.
The way I've seen it, the Twinkies, no matter how good they looked in the "Central Division" (whatever that is - this is baseball, not basketball!) of the AL, never really rose above the middle of the American League. If you look at all of the teams in the AL, do the Twins rise above the middle of the AL, or are they still sitting there?
2 - Matthew T. Sussman
Ruvy,
ESPN's Power Rankings should give you a good idea of who's playing the best right now. They update it every Friday:
1- Yankees
2- Tigers
3- Twins
Though personally I'd switch 1 and 2.
3 - Ruvy in Jerusalem
Thanks Matt,
I just went to the AL standings at the same site - and it turns out that with a .591 average, the Twins are in the 4th ranking out of 14. Not bad, but still solidly towards the center of the standings in the league. Usually they have been in 5th or 6th place in the past.
Still, it is nice to see the Twins garner a little attention outside of Minnesota and the Dakotas...