The Twins in July: 10 wins, 12 losses, their second losing month in a row. In the AL Central standings, they're in first place by one game, which I believe is where they stood at the beginning of the month, too. The second-place Guardians were also a tick below .500 in July, while the third-place White Sox moved into strong contention with a 16-11 month. The Sox are only a game behind the Guardians. You probably don't have to be a probability-and-statistics nerd to calculate that being in a 3-way race diminishes the Twins' chances of eventually winning the division. If one team is chasing you, they could get hot. If two teams are chasing you, there's twice the chance that one or the other will get hot.
The Twins’ principal weakness isn't hard to diagnose: since June 1, their pitching staff has a 4.71 ERA, the highest in the American League. Only two relievers, Jhoan Duran and Griffin Jax, have been consistently reliable, and, as to the starters, two reliable ones might be stretching it considering that in his most recent start Joe Ryan, who looked like an ace in April and May, served up five home run balls. But let's say they have four who have been sorta good. That makes, like, nine who sorta definitely haven't, and, since there's a game almost every day, those nine pitch about twice as many innings as the four. Yikes! In their most recent win, the Twins led the Padres by 7-1 going into the ninth. Since Jax had pitched the seventh and Duran the eighth, Tyler Duffey was on the mound, and it went like this: hard-hit out, walk, hit by pitch, home run. At this point, Joe Smith started warming up in the bullpen, and Smith hasn't gotten anyone out since approximately Memorial Day. Not sure how we got the last two outs as I was googling the suicide prevention number.
I'm sometimes flummoxed by how the Twins use their thin staff. For example, in the game described above why, if you want to give Duran an inning in a one-sided game, would you assign him the eighth inning? Bring Duffey in and then, if he shits the bed and the score tightens, you have your best reliever still available. If Duffey does well, you can pitch Duran in the ninth inning of a 7-1 game. I don't stay up for "Twins Live," but if someone asked manager Rocco Baldelli that question, I'd be interested in his answer.
It's a little surprising that the Twins, with the league's worst ERA over the last two months, have over that longish stretch of games nevertheless been able to win almost half the time. Their fielding is usually good, especially on the left side of the infield when Urshela is playing third base—he's really good, and Correa is all-star caliber at shortstop. Outfield play is solid too. Their hitting can be shut down by a good pitcher—some teams have good pitchers—but the Twins can beat up the roster-fillers just like other teams do to our guys. Buxton is on pace for more than 40 homers, Arraez has the league's second best on-base percentage, Jose Miranda has for the past two months hit about as well as anyone in baseball, and several of our other guys are far from being easy outs.
Probably the most that could ever be said for the Twins is that they're the best team in a weak division. Starting tonight against the Tigers, they can prove it's so: of their 61 remaining games, 32 are against their four divisional rivals, which is to say, more than half their games are against the two teams that are chasing them (White Sox and Guardians) and two other teams that are saved only by Oakland from being the worst in the American League (Tigers and Royals). They need to win more than they lose from here on out.
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