Fire Gardy

It’s the last workday of the offseason, so let’s toss together another lengthy article, shall we? This time looking at someone’s offseason recap of the Twins.

When I saw the headline over at The Hardball Times, Five Questions: Minnesota Twins, I figured at least one of the questions would be something like “Why do you suck so much?”

Of course, it’s possible that my expectations were set by the article’s summary in Google Reader, which was, and I quote, “Or, how to succeed in the AL Central without really trying.” You don’t get to be one of the most efficient teams in baseball without trying, and a division that has two of the top three most efficient teams in all of baseball basically makes it impossible to succeed without trying. I point this out because I wanted to explain my mindset as I clicked through to read the article.

I’m not going to re-post much of it here (it’s refreshingly long, and you should go read it yourself). But I’ll run through a quick recap of the questions.

[Here's the format: The questions are me paraphrasing his answers, and the italics are me responding to his answers. If you want to know what the actual questions are, too bad. You'll have to wish someone invented some kind of "hyper link" which would allow you to go check it out for yourself. I'll try to paraphrase his answers concisely, accurately, and in such a way that you don't actually need to know the question to get the jist.]

Question the first: Good job not signing another Livan/ROrtiz/Ponson, and going with the young guns. It was long overdue.

I agree completely, and the Twins Blogodome (or whatever it’s called) has been basically saying exactly that for years. Finally.

Question the second: The defense sucks. I mean, Gomez and Span are good, but Delmon Young is so bad the outfield defense is pretty much crap overall. Also, the right side of the infield is terrible, as is the middle infield. And Joe Mauer? Overrated. In fact, the Twins were one of five teams to suck across the board defensively.

Wow, he is really not enthusiastic about the defense. I don’t blame him, in 2008 the Twins had one of the worst defenses in the league, and certainly by far the worst one they’ve put together under Gardenhire. But I expect Casilla to improve at 2B, Punto will do a better job than Everett did, and Crede is a pretty big upgrade at 3B. And also, Delmon Young will probably not continue to suck that badly in the field. So I don’t know if the defense’s prospects are really all that bad.

Question the third: If Crede’s healthy it’s a huge boon to the offense, and while he fits the Twins “don’t walk or strike out” mold, he also diversifies the lineup by adding a flyball-hitting bat. 

I don’t know if diversifying the lineup in that way is meaningful at all, but it is interesting that Kubel was the only Twins player last year who put the ball in the air more than the major league average. Remember all that talk about how we don’t hit home runs? Well, you can’t hit home runs without hitting fly balls. Perhaps Crede will help us take advantage of the weaknesses of flyball pitchers, which we’ve tended to ignore in true Minnesota-Sports fashion. Also maybe that’ll rub off on Delmon Young and he’ll start putting some air under the ball too.

Question four: This is a make or break year for Delmon Young and since I’m the same age as him I expect him to do well. And if he does, the Twins have a pretty strong middle of the lineup.

That’s what I’ve been trying to tell everyone! There’s no reason to think a 23 year old is just going to crap out, and his increased maturity in the last year or so continues to be comforting. And I’d add Kubel to Isleib’s potential middle of the lineup.

Fifth and final question: The AL Central blows, so the Twins can rack up wins against shitty teams like the White Sox, Tigers, and Royals.

I really don’t know why everyone’s going out of their way to bash the AL Central so much this offseason. At worst, they’re the third strongest division in baseball right now. The Twins and Indians are two very well run, talented teams, and the White Sox are also a legitimate contender. I mean, the Royals are a joke and the Tigers are the punchline … but only the AL East doesn’t have at least two bogus teams (and even they’re pretty close now that the Jays are sinking). I personally think the Twins are the best team in the division, but the gap between them and the Indians and White Sox is extremely small. It’s not like this division is going to be “easy” for anyone.

Alright then. That’s over with. I thought it was actually a pretty good article, mostly aimed at people who don’t follow the Twins specifically. (Which is, of course, the point of these “introduce you to the team” articles.) And it didn’t end up being nearly as critical of the Twins as I expected it to be, which I appreciate.