The blessing of lowered expectations

 Being a Minnesota sports fan is a constant struggle. Being a Twins fan may be the hardest of all, but then, is it tough having low expectations and meeting them, or having high expectations and getting a punch in the gut? 

Low expectations might actually be saving Minnesota Twins fans' collective health, frankly. A lot of people have prognosticated a bad Twins season because of one of the worst bullpens ever seen. The pen has been protected because of good starting pitching thus far, but make no mistake: It's bad. 

Aside from that, the Twins are in contention. The AL Central is miserable, and it isn't getting any better. The Twins are 7-3 against their division, and 6-1 against Cleveland and Detroit. They have also been scoring runs: the 9th most in baseball. The starters have the 8th best WAR in the game. The Twins, again, aside from the bullpen, have been good.

And they keep getting hurt.

Of those good pitchers, Two are now on the shelf - Mick Abel and Taj Bradley are hurt. Simeon Woods-Richardson has fallen on hard times recently, and Joe Ryan has had some injury scares. Can you imagine how much those things would bother us if we looked at their offense and rotation instead of the bullpen and our preseason expectations?

I am only half kidding when I say that our pessimism is helping us out. We aren't necessarily disappointed in the sub-500 record, because we didn't expect anything better. Some people are thinking that this might even be the apex of their season. Having two above average units and still remaining out of the postseason will sting a little less if we didn't think they would be there anyways.

In my opinion, that is easier to cope with than what happened to the Wild. 

Business is hard.

 Last week, I noted that there was probably one more shoe to drop. Unfortunately, that shoe was actually rushing towards us to kick Twins fans collectively right in the gut. First, Pablo Lopez went down with a UCL injury, because of course he did, but now Joe Ryan is also getting checked out for a back issue that will probably be serious because: Curse. 

There is also something else going on here, and it's something that so many Twins fans have been saying for such a long time: The Pohlads. 

It's not entirely what you think, though. The ongoing conversation is that Pohlads are miserly, unwilling to pay the necessary salaries to field a competitive baseball team and generally hostile to the Twins. I am hear to offer a different opinion. The Pohlads don't understand baseball and are bad at the business therein. 

Just a couple highlights before our recent circumstances. The Twins signed the last small (relative) TV deal before the Dodgers signed a huge deal, and other teams had a blueprint for making money from local TV. The Twins were at least able to secure a new stadium, and had a good season before all of their stars got injured, and took very few actions to replenish the roster and were bad for most of the 2010s. Then, again when TV deals were coming due and the team ramped up to position themselves as an attractive piece of media, only to see the entire regional sports carrier market collapse. Instead of then pivoting, they throttled their payroll and destroyed fan loyalty, which was the only reliable source of income they could count on.

Now, obviously bad luck played a role in those various disasters, but it is important to acknowledge that bad decisions led the team to be vulnerable when there were headwinds. Their TV situation over the past 25 years has been the number one overarching factor in keeping the Twins as a small market team, as the Pohlads saw the organization as a traditional business, rather than the investment smarter owners see it as. Payroll goes up only as profits due, so with a fixed television income below what other markets were offering, the Twins were always going to be handicapped. 

Now, according to the comments that Tom Pohlad has made (and maybe this is thanks to the new investors in the organization), he seems to appreciate that the way to drive up interest is by winning, and that winning takes some monetary investment. He also, quite rightly, sees the Twins as a viable contender in the AL Central. If your team has a pulse, you are a contender in the AL Central. I'm on board there too. 

Now here's the problem. A fundamental difference in the world of business and the world of sports is that your operational "year" starts at the trade deadline, with an opportunity to reset at the end of the season. January 1st is just a holiday, and not an opportunity to make changes to your front office or direction of the organization. If they wanted to reevaluate at the beginning of the offseason, that would have been fine, they could have been aggressive and rounded out the current roster. They would have been justified in continuing the tear down and creating a super-farm. 

But they didn't. The business minded Pohlads got their new investors, and after the new year shook the organization up. Unfortunately, this is like Target firing the store manager during Christmas season. The desire to be more aggressive came too late to do anything. The Twins held the Falvey led organization from continuing their aggressive reset for the future. Now, Lopez and maybe Ryan will not be able to provide any return for the Twins, either on the field or as a trade option. This wouldn't have been a problem if the Pohlads knew what they were doing, and just made their decision a couple of months earlier.

But they don't. Ownership incompetence is its own curse. 

Actions have Consequences

 We are in the midst of some pretty heady times here in Minnesota. The Timberwolves are on the Western Conference Finals after convincingly defeating the Golden State Warriors, and the Twins just finished a 13 game winning streak.

But remember, as the Wild and Vikings did with their playoff flameouts, that Minnesota men's sports are cursed. The highest nail is the one that gets the hammer. This was the result of our own hubris. 

The Twins are scuffling, but which scuffle is greatest

Since around mid-August, the Twins have been in a tail spin. Starting with August 18th's loss to the Rangers, it's been nearly a month of drudgery. A lot of this has been pinned on the team's financial woes, managerial missteps, and general team exhaustion. I have two other theories that kind of go hand in hand. 1 - The Twins, as are all Minnesota men's sports, are cursed. 2 - Since about mid-August, the Twins have been without the three top WAR producers on the team, Carlos Correa, Byron Buxton, and Joe Ryan. That's unlucky, but it is fortunate that some combination of those three will be back before seasons end and the post season. 

But if you want depressive takes on what is going on, or someone who is willing to pack it in for the rest of this season and look at the future as a Pohlad (modestly) funded abyss, then you can go to Twins Daily. I'm here because of something I heard on the news last night, roughly, "It's not just the pitching and defense that are bad, the offense isn't very good either." 

Oh? I have been under the impression that the set back in offense has been significantly worse than the run prevention side. I dug into it a little bit. First, I looked at the runs against. In the season ahead of the slump, so through the 17th, opponents were scoring at a clip of 4.3 runs per game. Since that time, that number has jumped to 5.1 runs a game, or about .8 runs more per game.

On offense, the Twins have scored at an abysmal 3.3 runs a game, compared to their pre 8/18 average of 4.9 runs a game. The offense has cratered at twice the clip of their run prevention. In fact, according to Fangraphs, the Twins have the 4th highest pitching WAR in the Major League baseball, which suggests they are pretty good. Since they lost Ryan, they are #12, which means, and hold on tight... they have dropped to slightly above average. Lost in the misery is the fact that Pablo Lopez has been great, Bailey Ober has been incredible, and Simeon Wood-Richardson has silently been a strong back of the rotation starter all year. The pitching seems worse because the Twins are so bad at scoring runs themselves.

Since 8/18, the Twins offense has been 4th from the bottom in all of baseball. They were 7th overall before that The only player regularly producing is Carlos Santana. Maybe it's exhaustion. Maybe it's a slump. Maybe it's Maybelline. I don't know, but the offense is the problem, underlined, bullet pointed and starred. The Twins need Carlos Correa and Byron Buxton back to give the offense a hard reboot. Hell, I would take Alex Kirilloff at this point. 

The pitching since the slump started has taken a mild step back. The offense went from being a strength to no longer being competitive. It's as simple as that. 

Supreme confidence and the undoing of Minnesota sports

I have some exciting news to share, that my family just was unimpressed by at the Mother's Day cookout. I had a question answered by Steve Adams during MLB Trade Rumors' regular chat. It's quite the accolade, and I'm very happy about it.

Suffice to say, Steve didn't share my opinion, but also, he didn't convince me that I was wrong

The Twins thought they were going to be good enough to win the AL Central with the roster as it was. Ultimately, they are still a business, and if they thought they could do it with Carlos Santana and Anthony DeSclafani, then they weren't going to spend any more money. Like I've been saying, they didn't believe they needed the strong players now, they need them in October. 

And of course, this hubris led the Twins to a very rocky start to the season. watching Louie Varland's start to the season had quite a few Twins fans on the cusp of a breakdown. The Twins front office, again, by my theory and not necessarily thanks to evidence from anyone else, assumed they had the upper hand in the AL Central, and an abysmal start to the season made that assumption seem silly. 

Amid the Twins surge back to baseball relevance, the Timberwolves were on a blistering 6 game playoff winning streak. They swept the Suns out of the playoffs, then took the first two games against the Nuggets in Denver. Nearly anyone that spoke about basketball with any sort of national presence and knowledge of the game declared the Timberwolves a force to be reckoned with, a potential NBA champion.

Then, there was a long layoff before the series moved to Minnesota. The Wolves got to hear about how great they were while the Nuggets, 2 time defending champions, got to get angrier, and prepare to for the Wolves. As we all now are painfully aware, the Nuggets subsequently went on to peel off three straight wins. Ouch. 

Now, Minnesota, given less time to figure it out, after not thinking they would need to figure things out. Denver adjusted to them, and when you are in control, you don't ever plan to make adjustments. The Wolves are lost, now, unsure of how to get back to where they were, and with time running out. They got overconfident, and it may cost their season.

Even with the long history of sports malaise in Minnesota, you would think that people would temper their expectations when it comes to our teams. I guess this is athletes and management who don't have the 30 years of torment, or the national press, looking at Minnesota teams as though there wasn't a unique history of failing to live up to the moment. Overconfidence is a blight for any situation, and it's tough to watch, since local teams haven't won anything yet. 

The shattered confidence that comes with a Twins postseason.

The Twins are heading to the post season with their offense finally starting to come around. I mean more than just these last couple of games against Oakland and Colorado. The last few months have seen rookies like Royce Lewis and Matt Wallner take an outsized role on the team, while the return of Max Kepler and Jorge Polanco have also added some life to the roster. 

This is a situation where the narrative fits the season better than the stats. Just look at the team leaders for the year. Right now, they are without RBI team leader Carlos Correa, and his 65 runs batted in. The 2nd highest home run total belongs to Joey Gallo, also on the shelf. Both of these things can be true, and it is also true that these players have also disappointed their fans.

The value of counting stats notwithstanding, 65RBI and 21 home runs are both terrifically low figures for an RBI team leader and a #2 in home runs for a playoff team. In this case, it shows a couple of things. One, Correa is one of the ew consistent every day presences in the lineup, and two, the Twins roster effectively pivoted to the fresh faces after the halfway point in the season.

The rate stats for players that are going to be on the roster headed into the post season are strong. With one of the best rotations the team has ever had, the vibes have been very good through September. There was n element of confidence, and a feeling that the Minnesota Twins might actually make some noise in the postseason.

I was at the game when the Twins clinched, and there was a feeling of euphoria, right up until Kyle Farmer declared that the Twins were definitely going to win a game in the playoffs this year. That's when all the stats that really matter came back to haunt us.

0-18.

No playoff wins for 19 years.

1 very real curse. 

The good news is, there isn't likely to be an outcome that is more embarrassing than our expectations. 

The MOA curse

Given that the Twins have just swept the Giants at Target Field in extremely compelling fashion, perhaps this isn't the most opportune time to reveal my findings. I've always joked about a curse in Minnesota, and I think, at long last, I've found the source. 

First, let's go back to the last time there was any success whatsoever in Minnesota men's sports. Back in 1991, the Twins won the World Series, but also, the Minnesota North Stars were in the Stanley Cup Finals earlier in the year. Then, less than two seasons later, Norm Green chose to move the team to Dallas. 

Green is a terrible guy, overall, and said he wanted to move the hockey team from Minnesota because it wasn't popular enough. The hockey team that just reached the Stanley Cup, he claimed, wasn't popular enough because college and high school hockey were TOO popular. All right, buddy. If this sounds bogus to you, that's because it probably was.

Not only did Green chase money (he'd already relocated the Atlanta Flames to Calgary as well) there were allegations of sexual harassment and perhaps an affair. His wife is reported to have demanded that Green move the team. Green originally intended to move the team to Los Angeles (only to be supplanted by the Anaheim Mighty Ducks) and settled on Dallas, again, to get away from the temptresses in Minnesota. 

So they moved, and the Met Center, in the foreground of the above image, was torn down. The sports complex south of 494 in Bloomington had been turned to rubble, with Metropolitan Stadium having been torn down years before, when replaced by the Metrodome. The sin wasn't that the stadiums were torn down. Curses don't start until graveyards are disturbed.

The Met Center was replaced by the Bloomington Ikea, but the Mall of America opened just over 30 years ago, on top of the remains of the former home of the Twins and Vikings, Metropolitan Stadium. Since the mall opened, and sports abandoned this site for good when the North Stars left, Minnesota has failed to put a men's sports team into any championship game or series ever since. Think about that the next time you are at Bubba Gump Shrimp Company, on the desiccated remains of Minnesota Sports history. 

Since the final blow to sports at this site was the scornful wife of a misogynist, the sports Gods had one final tweak to other misogynists in the area. You'll note that the curse applies only to men's sports. Women's sports have proven to be extremely successful. The curse remains intact for those that can't appreciate that. 

Let's talk about what's really bugging the Twins

 

After the last couple of weeks, it seems like the Twins have grounded into about 1,000 double plays. The number is still a league leading 71 GIDPs, which is very frustrating, but also it makes sense. Lefties are more likely to ground into double plays, and you can only do that if you have runners on base. Look at how the lineup unfolds most nights. Two of the best table setters in the game, with Arraez and Correa early, often followed by lefties like Jorge Polanco, Alex Kirilloff, or Max Kepler. 

What doesn't make sense is how the Twins completely shut off as games continue on. Fangraphs have a statistic called "Clutch" which measures how a player performs in high leverage situations versus their typical performance. 

The Twins as a team are a -1.06, which qualifies as "poor". Lest you think that this is standard, that teams just naturally perform more poorly in stressful situations, the Twins are 21st in the league in "clutch". Naturally, owing the spurious nature of baseball, especially on something like this which will likely ultimately converge to "0", one might believe that this is something that will settle out this season. Alas, the Twins have been well under 0 for the last 4 season.

One can come up with all sorts of reasons why this might be the case, but the mix of players every season is different, and looking at things more granularly, the "Clutch" score for player to player is inconsistent. Jorge Polanco has been near the top of the list a few times, except when he was near the bottom in 2019. Miguel Sano found himself towards the bottom, but he was one of the best before his injury this season. 

So with a normally spurious statistic, and a lot of noise among individual players, what gives? Why are the Twins so subpar at executing in clutch? The only plausible reason that I can come up with is that curses are real, and the Minnesota curse has struck again.

There is a lot of ink spilled over the Twins and their pitching, but the offense and whatever ancient artifact is spirited away in Tommy Watkins locker.