What the heck ails the Minnesota Twins? Are the Twins as bad as they have shown so far? After almost three weeks of play the Twins are tied for last place in the AL Central with the Detroit Tigers and no team in the AL has a worse record and only the Colorado Rockies over in the other league have won fewer games.
Then again the entire American League seems to be is disarray with the Boston Red Sox leading in the East with a 12-6 record and they are five games ahead of the last place New York Yankees (dang it feels good to say that) and the Toronto Blue Jays are just a half game better at 7-10. In the West the the high-flying Oakland A’s are 11-7 and on a ten game winning streak prior to todays game. The Seattle Mariners are also at 11-7 and the last place Houston Astros are just 7-9. In the Central which the Twins call home the leaders are the Kansas City Royals at 9-7. Has the entire AL gone nuts? I know only about ten percent of the games have been played so it is a small sample size but things are kind of crazy.
The Twins are a team that is built around power and right now only one team in the league has hit fewer home run than then Twins have. Hard to believe I know, but it is true. The Twins are 11th in runs scored and 12th in total bases.
The pitching staff numbers show that Twins pitching is not that bad. But the facts are that the Twins starting pitchers have put up half way decent numbers although Rocco Baldelli and apparently his pitching coach Wes Johnson keep them on a very short leash. Only one starter has sniffed the seventh inning this season and seven of the 16 starts have lasted less then five innings. The bullpen has been brutal with the exception of Taylor Rogers who has yet to give up a run but yet his record is 0-1.
Alex Colome who is part of the closer by committee group that Baldelli employs has been struggling, he seems to be the closer that can’t close. Going into todays game against Oakland he was 1-1 with a 5.68 ERA primarily because he had given up 10 hits in 6.1 innings. The only blessing was that he hasn’t walked anyone.
Like I said, that was prior to today. Baldelli brought him in to protect a one run lead in the ninth in Oakland with the Twins leading 10-9 and he proceeded to blow his third save of the season. In the top of the tenth inning Byron Buxton hits a two run home run and the Twins go up 12-10 so Baldelli keeps Colome in the game and Colome gets the first two outs of the inning on a fly ball and a strikeout. Then Colome issues his first walk of the season, then he walks another batter and the bases are loaded. Colome gets the next batter to hit a grounder to second but Travis Blankenhorn bobbles the ball and a run scores and the bases remained loaded. Colome then gets a grounder to third and Luis Arraez fields it cleanly and fires a ball to Willians Astudillo at first that was high and wide of it mark and two runs score and the Twins get walked off 13-12 and the Oakland A’s win number 11 in a row. The A’s score three times without the benefit of a hit. Twins starter Kenta Maeda threw 51 pitches today in three poor innings of work, Colome threw 49 in 1.2 innings. Unbelievable loss today! So many bad decisions today and so many bad plays, where do you start to fix this mess?