This summer's been peaceful, so I've had plenty of time to watch Minnesota Twins baseball and it is just not very good. But they're presently up seven and a half games on Cleveland and while they're definitely capable of a hilarious collapse, it's looking less and less likely for the simple reason that the Guardians are probably even worse.

Has this ever happened to anybody else here? A pretty bad team coasting into the playoffs this easily? How did it end up for you?

Because I'm beginning to get worried that this team might just be supernaturally weird and end up making a deep playoff run. There's no good reason for me to predict that, though they're shaped a little bit differently than the past two decades' worth of Twins playoff failure. The rotation is nearly excellent. Identifying a true ace is maybe a stretch, but Pablo Lopez and Sonny Gray have been, if not aces, a pair of excellent #2s who can work deep into games, keep the bases clear, and cand throw up double digit strikeout totals pretty regularly. Gray's a lot better at keeping the ball on the right side of the fence, but the point here is that even actually good teams should be moderately concerned about facing those two to start a series. I wish there were a lefty in there (not counting Dallas Keuchel because he makes me nervous so we're treating him as a temporary fix) because I'm old-fashioned like that. But filling out a playoff rotation by choosing the correct answer to the question "Kenta Maeda and Joe Ryan?" is a kind of good situation to be in. The bullpen is just good, not great - but Jhoan Duran is crazy fun to watch* and they could get a bump with Bassitt and Varland instead of Jax and Winder.

That's an uncommon position to be in. The 2006 team had an incredible rotation, but Liriano blew a tire and Brad Radke's value was more in his steady regular season dependability. This should be the best Twins rotation headed into the post-season. Though that reveals the stakes in the bullpen's mere adequacy - they're too-often tasked with holding very tight leads because the lineup just goes to sleep against even medium-tier pitching.

The lineup currently stands at fifty strikeouts above the next closest team in that category. I actually read an interview with some Twins personnel last season where they implied (but only implied) that swinging early in the count and often was actually part of a team strategy to avoid strikeouts. Initially, I thought he was joking or I was misreading or he was exaggerating or something but after this season it does seem, against all sense, to be a thing. Twins hitters go up there hacking. They're not any good at it, but apparently it's not about learning lessons because that outrageous refusal to make contact is buttressed by and ohhhhhh my god do you want to know something strange? I started writing this post with a very clear set of conclusions in mind, particularly with respect to the Twins offense. The idea was based on the above anecdote about a team strategy to swing early and often. In my observation, this was paying off as:

-completely punting walks
-with minimal power returns
-resulting in a lineup that's rarely on base and doesn't hit the ball over the wall often enough to make up for it

But I'm wrong about the first one (5th in MLB) and I was wrong about the second one (cracked the 200 homer barrier, which is at least pretty good) and that while they're unlikely to crack into the upper third in the league in runs, they've actually hit really well as a team for basically the last three months. They were just absolutely dogshit in April and May.

This isn't enough to change my mind about the team, though I guess it does indicate I'm working more off of vibes than anything. If this team is actually good (it's not actually good) it almost happened by accident as the team has stuck by its decision to DH Byron Buxton, robbing the team of his enormous defensive value, only to have him really just suck as a DH. Michael A Taylor has really bailed out the FO by fielding like his usual (excellent) self and hitting almost like a viable regular. But Carlos Correa has also been pretty bad at the plate, so the big, two shiny and very, very expensive stars have contributed almost nothing to this offensive turnaround (though Correa's been marginally better moving to a walks-oriented approach in the second half) and instead its been driven by rookies that I don't really know what to make of. Christ, while I was writing this silly post:

a)French-Canadian legend Edouard Julien hit a homerun to rightfield, swinging so hard that his helmet flew off (which happens frequently with him - keep an eye out in the playoffs, maybe)

b)#1 pick Royce Lewis' twice-repaired ACL held intact while he mashed a homer to leftfield

c)#1 pick Royce Lewis made a nice play at third base only to come up limping a bit. I was worried about his twice-repaired ACL but apparently it's an ankle thing.^

The point is that I have genuinely no idea what to make of some of these guys. They seem massively talented and this sport seems to reward richly rookies that are too young to know they're supposed to wait to be good. Maybe Julien and Lewis and Matt Wallner and maybe even Alex Kiriloff and same-shape-different-size Ryan Jeffers are just really good MLB players right now. But if that's true, and if you combine the rotation with that, then maybe this is actually not a terrible team.

That's hopeful, but it hangs together. Except that I watch them pretty much every single night and I'm pretty sure they're a terrible team. They routinely just take weekends off from scoring. In the first round, that's a playoff series. Much, much better Twins teams have been bounced from the first round than this current Twins team.

I doubt any human has read this far, but if so - you ever supported a bad team that just kept winning? Did you eventually change your mind about them being bad? That seems like the most likely outcome but it's mid-September and I have a really hard time believing that's going to happen.

*notably, not to cheer for. he's got the wild heart of an arsonist and watching him pitch when you're invested in the outcome is a terrible idea. but if you don't care about the Twins and they actually manage to make a deep run into the playoff, those juiced playoff guns and his unnerving intensity mean you might see a pitch clocked at 107.

^ though I'm really not clear why he's still in the game. It's September and it's the White Sox. Show some confidence in the division lead and the team depth and pull him.

______________________________

"Walleye, a lot of things are going to go wrong in your life that technically aren't your fault. Always remember that this doesn't make you any less of an idiot"

--Walleye's Dad

Decent start by Maeda, but I'm guessing they're gonna make him into a bullpen/swingman thing for the playoffs and give the first round nod to Joe Ryan.

I've seen some articles recently indicating that the Twins have been "hoarding" depth, which is an interesting turn of phrase given the fact that these teams are billion dollar businesses that, independent of financial constraints, are playing with identical roster limitations. If you've determined to view players as assets (rather than humans or even as workers) then isn't every team hoarding depth? Maybe the argument is that the Twins are doing it particularly well, which I could get behind as long as it's treated as partial information. The transition's got to be made to making the most of a 40-man roster and the slight (never before wished so much for a full expansion to an active roster of 40 during September for competitive reasons but now that's gone) expansion to composing a playoff roster that actually works.

And that's where the appearance that this team is only good by accident (that Buxton and Correa don't even appear on the BBRef lineup of team bWAR leaders) stresses me out. If management has succeeded in stuffing 35 good-to-useful MLB players on the 40 man roster, that's a real achievement. Now they've got to pick the right 25 to win some short series in October, and there's not much evidence they know how to do that. There's a right answer to the Ryan/Maeda/Other question and I've got a suspicion that it's Ryan, but even though it's only a suspicion I'm not sure that I trust the experts any more on this.

______________________________

"Walleye, a lot of things are going to go wrong in your life that technically aren't your fault. Always remember that this doesn't make you any less of an idiot"

--Walleye's Dad

1-4 start, followed by an 8-2 run, then 0-2 collapse down the stretch

they were never a good team throughout the year and won 9 games by turnover luck

Wentz only threw 7 interceptions (1.4% interception rate per attempt) but his interceptable passes were probably triple that, as he was at a 3.4% interception rate the year before a 3.3% the year after

he also fumbled 8 times and only lost 1

defensively they forced 19 fumbles, which is extremely unlikely and masked a unit that was 25th in yards per play

just a bad, unfun team to watch outside of Jonathan Taylor and Darius (Shaquille) Leonard, who both emptied their health bars that year and haven't been the same since

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>they were never a good team throughout the year and won 9
>games by turnover luck

The Twins' only luck this season is contextual - a dogshit division. They haven't won more than they deserve, and I feel like I'd hate watching knowing there's some other shoe to drop. And being preemptively unimpressed doesn't seem like it would help, no matter how true.


>Wentz only threw 7 interceptions (1.4% interception rate per
>attempt) but his interceptable passes were probably triple
>that, as he was at a 3.4% interception rate the year before a
>3.3% the year after

Yep. I'd hate waiting for that to normalize. Least satisfying "told you so" ever.

>just a bad, unfun team to watch outside of Jonathan Taylor and
>Darius (Shaquille) Leonard, who both emptied their health bars
>that year and haven't been the same since

And thats the operative word: unfun. A madcap bunch of rookies playing above their head can be an illusion and also fun. But not what you're describing.

______________________________

"Walleye, a lot of things are going to go wrong in your life that technically aren't your fault. Always remember that this doesn't make you any less of an idiot"

--Walleye's Dad

2012 through 2017 in particular. K was playing with a defensive scheme that basically said "we'll take away your 3 point shot and dare you to win by making more 2s than we make 3s." Which is a decent long term strategy over a regular season-- especially the closer you got to the top of the decade, because fewer non-PGs were good handlers and passers the further back you go, so if you had even one good defensive big man, you could really make life hard for opposing offenses-- but makes you *exceedingly* vulnerable in a single elimination tournament, especially once HS players started taking cues from Golden State and learning how to shoot 3s early on, regardless of position.

And it also made the defense gross to watch, because if you could break the pressure on the perimeter, it was just an absolute layup line from there. If you don't have a big body inside or generate a bunch of steals on the outside, you're really asking for it.

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I feel like I'm very familiar with the phenomenon of a good regular season strategy (in the Twins case, a weak-contact-oriented rotation that wasn't sustainable against good offenses, which playoff teams typically have) but it feels like an odd choice for a team that, by nature of the structure of college basketball, isn't often challenged by making the tournament and securing a high seed. Was it just based on their lineup - like the best call for that roster?

______________________________

"Walleye, a lot of things are going to go wrong in your life that technically aren't your fault. Always remember that this doesn't make you any less of an idiot"

--Walleye's Dad

I think K just liked running the schemes that gave him the most success. From 1999 to 2004 or so, Duke ran this-- and was kind of on the front line of some of the analytics stuff that suggested taking away 3s and forcing contested 2s was the move. And then, it was. Duke won a lot of games this way... but once you got into the 2010s, nearly every team had multiple 3-point shooters and shot creators. When the floor is wider for the offense, it's harder for the defense to cover in a perimeter-pressure-oriented system without just giving up layups and floaters.

So I think some of it was "hey, we don't have a great big man, so this is our best shot at net positive defense," for sure... but some of it was probably also an old man sticking to his guns. In 2015, he used a *little* zone down the stretch of the season, and it saved the year-- we won the title-- but you could tell he was reluctant. He then busted it out again in 2018 by necessity, and we went to the Elite Eight and were a possession away from the Final Four. So when K pivoted, good things happened... it's just hard for old men to change sometimes.

And hey, we more or less ran that same defense in K's last season, and we made the Final Four (and were a miracle shot by UNC away from the title game), so it still was a system that worked with a massive body inside to discourage those easy 2s... but for a run there, we just didn't really have that, and some tournament games against well-coached teams inevitably turned into layup lines.

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The team finished 11-3 and #10 in the AP. But, outside of a good, but not historical defense, the team didn't have the makings of a team with such a high ranking.

The QB, Maty Mauk, completed less than 55% of his passes. The team lost 34-0 to UGA (at home!!), and to an Indiana team that finished 4-8, and steamrolled by #1 ALA 42-13, that if memory serves me, wasn't as close as the score indicated.

Outside of a big win against FLA, most wins were by 10 points or fewer.

That being said, we don't get to cheer for division winners much in Missouri so it's still cool that we won the East that year. But, as is usually the case with Mizzou sports, we can't have nice things.

<--- Me when my head hits the pillow

I know it happened, but I still don't understand how you can go 0-for-18 in playoff games

so, this team at least broke the curse

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A long post-season winning streak should comparatively easier, though apparently the record is only 12 so way to go Twins. But if you've got a really good team and buzzsaw through the playoffs with the same roster, then you're already sitting on at least a half-dozen wins to start with.

The Twins had to be terrible in the postseason from the end of the 2004 ALCS (I saw losses #2 and #3 of this streak in person) through Oakland in 2006 (that one was rough - that 2006 team looked like an all-timer until Liriano went down and I think they should have beaten that A's team anyhow)through New York in 2009, 2010, 2017, and 2019 and then Houston in 2020.

Truly an impressive dedication to playoff awfulness. If you're looking for reasons beyond some terrible luck, I'll throw in:

a)a generalized awfulness against the Yankees that also extended to the regular season for most of the 2000s and 2010s. No 18 game losing streaks, but they were just magically bad against NYY during this period.

b)An institutional preference for low-K pitching staff during the Ryan/Smith eras, which take up almost all of those losses. Inviting contact is a decent way to stretch a staff and it's not at odds with winning 90-95 games in a bad division but since playoff teams are actually good and can hit, it's not optimal in the post-season.

c)An institutional preference for contact-oriented hitters, which usually means a lineup that isn't full of guys with three-runs-in-a-single-swing potential.

B and C are often the result of cheapness. But there you go.

______________________________

"Walleye, a lot of things are going to go wrong in your life that technically aren't your fault. Always remember that this doesn't make you any less of an idiot"

--Walleye's Dad