After last night’s loss to the Baltimore Orioles, Rocco
Baldelli’s Minnesota Twins had capped off their first third of the 2021 Major
League Baseball season. To define it, a lump of excrement fits, a turd.
Sitting at 22-32, the two-time defending Al Central
champions find themselves 10.5 games back of the Chicago White Sox. While the Pythagorean
results have them at 25-29 due to a -24 run differential, the reality is that
positive regression has yet to take shape. This club has scored nearly 75 less
runs than the prolific Bomba Squad to the same point, and offense seems
non-existent most nights. Combine that with lackluster pitching performances,
and you have the result we’re faced with.
It’s still hard to place much blame on the skipper. Baldelli
has been very good over the course of his short career in Minnesota, and it’s
fair to suggest he’s been on the wrong side of many coin flips this season. The
deck he’s been working with isn’t full though, and the front office took some
gambles that certainly haven’t paid off. There was no real bullpen addition of
note, and the depth there amounted to a handful of waiver claims with the
intention of one being able to stick.
Health has also been a problem for Minnesota. On their 54th
game of the season, Baldelli was forced to start an outfield that consisted of
Alex Kirilloff, Kyle Garlick, and Willians Astudillo. That might be the worst
defensive trio any team in baseball has ran out this season, and it’s not
surprising that Cedric Mullins ripped a leadoff triple that Astudillo was
entirely overmatched on. Everywhere you look on the roster includes positional
groupings with guys on the Injured List, and as has been customary this season,
players have dropped right as they’ve begun to hit their stride.
Baseball is a marathon, not a sprint, but it’s also designed
that way for expectations and assumptions to normalize themselves. Coming into
the season there was a perception that Minnesota was again a Postseason team
with the ability to win a division title. The problem is that was under the
assumption that health and production would remain relatively predictable. The
former has not, and the latter may be even worse. To call the Twins a good team
is overselling the reality of what we’re being shown.
Over the next two-thirds of the season, Minnesota will only
go as far as they are available. Right now, there’s too much talent on the
shelf to be any sort of competition most nights. If a return to a relatively
healthy roster happens in short order, a plethora of players finding even the
baseline of their expectation all at once could give this team a shot. The
division isn’t good and chasing down a Wild Card spot is easier than it’s ever
been.
No matter what happens from here on out, flushing this first
third is a must, and putting together something of promise the rest of the way
should be the goal. Until that happens, we’ve got nothing but Rob Refsnyder
running into stationary objects to define this thing.
The #MNTwins 2021 in a video… pic.twitter.com/9PRb7wCbcB
— Ted (@tlschwerz) May 31, 2021
