Twins off to a brutal start

The Minnesota Twins weren’t expected to be a contender in the AL Central, with many projecting them to finish in last place. In Jonah Keri’s AL Central preview, he noted that many projection systems had the Twins well under 75 wins.

Well, it sure looks like Minnesota is heading in the direction of a whole bunch of losses. After another dreadful defeat on Monday, this one a 12-3 loss to the Kansas City Royals, the Twins are 1-6. And it’s not just that the Twins are losing games, it’s how they’re losing games.

In a three-game sweep to open the season against the Detroit Tigers, Minnesota lost the three games by a combined score of 22-1. The first win of the season finally came against the Chicago White Sox in the fourth game of the year, a 6-0 whitewash, but then the Twins blew an early lead in the next game and lost 5-4. The final game of the series was a 6-2 loss, and then there was the demolition at the hands of Kansas City.

After these six games, Minnesota has a run differential of -29, which is the worst mark in the league. The Twins rank near the bottom of the majors in both runs and batting average, and the pitching staff is currently the worst in terms of ERA. And now after committing two errors in the loss to the Royals, Minnesota ranks near the bottom of the league in errors. All in all, the Twins are just a wretched squad right now.

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Looking at the individuals on the roster, not a single regular is hitting over .300 and nobody has more than two RBI. The Twins have hit just two home runs on the year. Joe Mauer has gotten off to a solid start with a .292 average, but he doesn’t have any extra-base hits.

Then there’s the pitching staff. There has only been two quality starts out of seven, and seven pitchers on the roster currently have an ERA over 5 with nine pitchers having an ERA of 4.50 or higher. These are all small sample sizes of course, but it’s really ugly.

With two more games against the red-hot Royals on tap, I wouldn’t expect the Twins’ fortunes to change anytime soon. And even when the competition softens up, there’s little reason to expect things to get much better in Minnesota. The Twins are pretty far away from contention right now, and there will be some growing pains as the franchise rebuilds.