Here are some things which are interesting:

-Sam Fuckin' Deduno's walk rate is nearly two walks below his career average per nine. His strikeouts have declined at a fairly similar rate. Since we discussed the Rick Anderson'ing of our staff, it might be worth pointing to this Samfuckin' weirdo's new success as a scarce data point in Anderson's recent favor.

-Joe Mauer has thrown out 48% of attempted basestealers. I was worried had over fanboy'd by pointing to the relative indifference of Twins' pitchers to their (astonishingly frequent) baserunners as a reason for Mauer's declining CS numbers. So, going into 2013, I was fully prepared to not-Jeter on Mauer and say that he derrived his valued by manning the position as long as he could man it in a non-embarassing way. I guess he still has something to say back there.

-Dozier and Florimon are looking like a really good up-the-middle infield duo defensively. With Dozier seeming more and more like he might one day hold an MLB average bat, this is the kind of thing that looks a little less gloomy about our season.

-Trevor Plouffe's 6.5% walk rate bums me out.

-Aaron Hicks' last month: .250/.318/.467

Soooooooo, here's the interesting thing. If I had some faith in our recently acquired pitching prospects and the foolishness to think the Twins could walk into some extra luck, there's a recipe here to turn things around fast. It's based on the amount of people I've described above as potential plus-defenders. Hicks, Dozier, and Florimon all profile as really good defenders. Mauer was there once and may, apparently, be there again.

Terry Ryan went out of his way recently to describe Sano's glove as ahead of his bat at AA.* He's on a perfectly normal track for a 2014 debut and with the notion that he could be a better defender than Trevor Plouffe at the hot corner (not great compliment, except that the Twins have trotted Plouffe out there daily for two years now) it might be really easy for him to challenge for the Opening Day job.

Finding run prevention in weird ways is how teams make big leaps forward, and if the Twins suddenly turn from a middle-of-the-road team at this to an elite team at it, then the (fingers crossed for health) arrival/development of Meyer, May, and Gibson could be smoother than expected next year.

*a note on that - Sano seems to be coming alive down there at .286/.405/.600 for the last ten games.