Eleven games do not a season make, but the Twins are 7-4, and, judging by their upcoming schedule and the Minneapolis weather forecast, they are apt to remain 7-4 for a few days. Maybe a good time for our first check-in of the season.
For the mathematically inclined, winning 7 of every 11 games would, over the course of a 162-game schedule, yield a final record of 103-59. That's rosy enough to cause one to scan the team's stat sheet with any eye toward trends that can't last. Joe Mauer is batting .412, with an OPS of 1.075. He can't maintain that. On the other hand, it wouldn't be right to say he's been "carrying the team," since he has only 6 RBI and 6 runs scored--decent but, considering his other gaudy numbers, sort of modest run production. If he stays healthy, maybe he could both score and drive in more than 80 runs, which is about the pace he's on through eleven games. (Last year, he had 71 RBI and 69 runs scored.)
It's kind of fun to compare Mauer to another of the Twins' productive hitters, Brian Dozier. I tried to explain, here, a little about OPS, the sum of on-base percentage and slugging percentage and the shiny new standard of a batter's value. Dozier's OPS stands at a lofty .985, similar to Mauer's, but the two build their impressive number in opposite ways. Mauer is so far one of the rare players who has a higher on-base percentage than slugging percentage. In eleven games, he has 14 hits and 10 walks--on base all the time--but only four extra-base hits, all doubles. Dozier, on the other hand, has a slugging percentage more than 200 points higher than his on-base percentage, mainly on the strength of a team-leading 4 home runs. This is a trend that's apt to persist. Last year, Mauer's on-base percentage (.384) was nearly as high as his slugging percentage (.417), whereas Dozier's numbers were .359 and .498, respectively.
Miguel Sano has 40 at-bats and 22 strikeouts. When he's behind in the count, I take a long swallow of whatever was on sale at what my daughter calls the adult beverage store. He'll set a record if he keeps it up, and he'll get the at-bats, because his OPS is still a very respectable .908--of his ten hits, seven have been for extra bases. He also leads the team in RBI, with 8, one more than Eduardo Escobar, who's always smiling and often doing good things. Eddie Rosario and Byron Buxton are off to slow starts and it seems reasonable to expect that they'll both get going. Ted Williams said he would never have hit for a .406 average in 1941 if he hadn't been injured at the start of the year, thereby limiting his at-bats in chilly April. Is that a reason to hope that Logan Morrison, who has started the year 3-for-34 after being acquired in the offseason from the Rays, will by midsummer be at his lifetime average of .243, with some home runs?
Pitching? The Twins have so far allowed only 37 runs, less than 3-and-a-half per game. Possibly this, too, may be explained by cold weather. With Ervin Santana still recovering from his finger injury, the Twins have used only four starting pitchers, and this weekend's February weather will allow them to extend that further if they want. I'm a little nervous about Fernando Rodney as the closer, but then, I'm always nervous when the Twins are nursing a lead in the ninth inning. The real bright spots have been reliever Ryan Pressly and starter Jose Berrios: the former has pitched 6.1 scoreless innings, with 7 strikeouts, while the latter has allowed no runs in two of his three starts, one of them a complete game 3-hitter.
So far, so good. I just wish the weather would get better so that there'd start being a game every day.
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