I guess the Twins don't have the best record in baseball right now, but they're a couple of raw games played behind the Rays and the Dodgers for the honor. They've done a good job beating up on some bad teams though, notably - going on the road to beat up on bad AL East teams feels a bit different than the mid-00's heyday of slapping around the Royals until we dinged 90 wins.

I've never really had to apply my "is this team for real?" radar so early in the season for the Twins, which in itself has guaranteed the realness of past decent teams because the question is more likely a "yes" if you have to ask it in July than in early May. But goddamn are they fun. I guess the stuff that's unlikely to be real long term are:

-the three-headed catching unit collectively outhitting vintage Joe Mauer
-Jorge Polanco posting Mike Trout WAR numbers
-Berrios/Odorizzi/Perez all pitching like CY contenders
-bullpen full of randos locking teams down

But the three catcher thing seems sound to me, even if they all decline substantially. Polanco is young and has shown sustained bouts of excellence before, so he may not be 8 win good, but "occasional All-Star" doesn't seem out of hand does it?

I don't want to say any words about the pitching staff. That actually seems sort of delicate because outside of Berrios, I don't actually like any of those guys that much. So we'll avert our eyes and just hope that sticks.

In any case, there's also room for improvement. Marwin Gonzalez has only recently started to hit like a functional starter. Miguel Sano will be back soon enough. Eddie Rosario has really only been hot when it comes to hitting the ball over the wall - he may have actually been kind of ball-in-play unlucky so far. Cron can be better (or be seated more often in favor of Miguel Sano). Adrianza has been worked into the lineup pretty regularly since Astudillo went down and he... isn't good.

I got nothing summing this up. It's been fun to watch them, both the long, effective starts from pitchers I've never seen do that regularly (Gibson and Odorizzi) and the lineup just grind starting pitchers into dust with 1-9 decent at bats and homeruns in bunches. I, uh, hope that continues.