This morning, we took the kids to the Mall of America, and they went on rides at Nickolodeon Universe, and I walked around, very happy not to do the rides. While walking the grounds, I walked over the site of the Met Stadium home plate, and said, "Aw, crap" and recalled the curse. Then the Twins blew their game against the Reds. Sorry, gang.
One factor that I regularly called out during obnoxiously slow starts was the "clutch" metric from Fangraphs. Essentially, it showed that the Twins were regularly and dramatically worse than their regular selves in late. close and run scoring opportunities. This year, the Twins have gotten off to a better start despite meager projections.
Naturally, I thought that perhaps this meant the Twins were finally seeing things fall their way. The "clutch" rating is thought to be luck driven, and should ultimately trend towards 0. The beginning of the 2026 season seemed like all those bad times were being corrected, with a better than normal performance in the clutch. You know, the Twins are getting results because they have been lucky.
The Twins are in the middle of the pack. Their clutch score is a hair above 0. The highs we have been feeling in the first 1/10th of the season? That's just how normal fans live. I see why baseball is so popular.
So are the Twins actually good? Maybe. Probably better than promised. They have played a bit above .500, and I think that is plausible. If they had hit a bit better when it mattered in the past couple of years, perhaps this recent run of success wouldn't be so hard to believe.
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