Twins 2015: Improved Work In Progress

Gulf Coast League Twins (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

For the first time in five years, we have reasonable expectations that the Minnesota Twins will not be one of the worst teams in Major League Baseball this season.   Which is surprising to those of us who had given the team up for dead after four awful seasons, and the Target Field 'new car smell' had just about given way to something worse.

The Twins have the second-best record in the American League this season at 49-40, good enough for second place in the Central division headed out of the All Star break.  Ahead of them is the Kansas City Royals, another team that came from the gutter back to prosperity as the defending AL champions.

What changed?  Manager Paul Molitor is credited with turning this sorry bunch of Twins around, but a few other things came together.  The starting pitching has improved with Phil Hughes, Kyle Gibson and Mike Pelfrey turning in some more-than-decent performances.  Fielding mistakes are fewer.  Brian Dozier and Trevor Plouffe have been contributing plenty to the Twins' offense.  And veterans Joe Mauer and Torii Hunter are hitting the ball like they used to, though not as much.

What still needs work are the middle relievers who give up so many runs that closer Glen Perkins seldom has a chance to save games.  The jury's still out on those much-publicized rookies the Twins brought up from the minors.  Byron Buxton is injury-prone.  Aaron Hicks is hot and cold in the outfield.  Miguel Sano has a hot bat, but has yet to prove he can cut it in the outfield.

If the Twins want to compete with the Royals the rest of the season, they will need to play above-.500 ball.  The way to do that is to keep leaning on the pitching staff, which includes the just-back-from-drug-suspension Ervin Santana.   The offense can't just be a few runs in the early innings, then taking the rest of the game off.  And those rookies need to justify the hype.

With the new MLB playoff system, the Twins don't need to win the division title to make the post-season.  They could be one of two wild-card teams that will face long-shot odds to make it to the World Series, just like the Royals did last year.  The American League will have home-field advantage for the Series, having won the All Star game in Cincinnati on Tuesday.

But we're getting ahead of ourselves, aren't we?  Nobody expected the Twins to be this good this fast, and we will soon see whether they can handle the pressure.