CHICAGO — Covering baseball is such a weird thing.
We cover a day-to-day game, though we really need about a month — two weeks in either direction — to really feel good about the assessments we make.
There’s a lot we don’t know even when we’re in the clubhouse, too. Why didn’t the manager use that reliever in that spot? Why isn’t this player in the starting lineup? Those are heavily guarded secrets by the manager, both to protect his players but to maintain a competitive advantage over the other team. If your top lefty isn’t available out of the pen, it really isn’t to your benefit to let the opposing manager know that when he’s putting together his lineup.
But we’re 78 games into this season. Nearly halfway home. It’s not too soon to make some declarations about this Twins team.
Let’s get the facts out of the way.
The Twins come into Saturday’s game eight games out of first place and the same number of games under .500. In some ways, that feels like a small miracle. They’d be 17.5 games out of the AL East and *gulp* 20 games behind the Astros in the win column in the West.
They’ve gotten a grand total of 37 very poor games out of their projected starting left side of the infield, and for two different — but both worrisome — reasons, each player finds themselves in the minor leagues.
Miguel Sano is in the Florida State League being rebuilt from the ground up, while Jorge Polanco is knocking off the rust from an 80-game suspension for performance-enhancing drugs.
The rest of the infield has been far from ironclad, as well.
Brian Dozier is having a down year at the worst possible time — both personally with free agency looming and professionally with the offense as a whole slumping — and Joe Mauer has played in only 50 games to this point while doing very little to drive the baseball (.352 SLG).
Well, Friday notwithstanding, anyhow.
It just seems like the Twins haven’t been able to sync up the offense, defense and pitching all at the same time at any point this year. Early on it could be blamed on the weather, and the sporadic playing schedule it spawned. On the whole, it can be blamed on injuries and an inconsistent offense.
But with that said, the Twins are running out of time to make things click on offense.
According to Fangraphs, the Twins have a 2.4 percent chance of making the playoffs. Baseball Prospectus is slightly more pessimistic at 2.1 percent. No matter how you slice it, those odds are worse than where the Twins stood last season at the trade deadline, when they flipped Brandon Kintzler to the Washington Nationals, then played like their hair was on fire the rest of the way to secure the second Wild Card spot.
They won’t have that luxury this year.
Baseball Reference doesn’t even list the Twins among the Wild Card standings, which really says something. The worst team they list is the Los Angeles Angels, who are 42-41 — 4.5 games clear of the Twins.
In other words, the Twins are further out from the Wild Card (14.5 games) than the division (8.0 games).
So Cleveland it is. The teams have 10 more head-to-head matchups, and it’s not like the Twins have played poorly against them this year. In fact, they’re 6-3 against them. The primary difference has been taking advantage of the rest of the division.
Against the Kansas City Royals, Detroit Tigers and Chicago White Sox — who are a combined 67 games under .500 — the Twins are a modest 11-10. The Indians, meanwhile, are 22-7.
So it’s pretty easy to see where the gap comes from between the Twins and Indians, right?
The Indians aren’t without their own issues. Danny Salazar hasn’t thrown an inning this season. Jason Kipnis is mired in a season-long funk. Their bullpen has the third-worst ERA (5.13) in the big leagues, and has allowed an MLB-worst 1.57 homers per nine innings.
The trouble, however, is that bullpen is one of the more easily-fixable issues in this current marketplace. If the Indians are willing to pay the price, the Baltimore Orioles could easily flip them a pair of relievers that could instantly give Cleveland added credibility in the back end of the ‘pen.
Furthermore, Andrew Miller is on the comeback trail. He’s only thrown 14.1 innings this year. Nobody wants to face him and Cody Allen late in games — October or otherwise.
And don’t forget, this is the same Cleveland team that reeled off 22 wins in a row down the stretch last year. The Twins played .603 ball (35-23) after the trade deadline last year, and lost 10.5 games in the standings because the Indians were a ridiculous 45-12 (.789) from that point on.
This Cleveland team can still take off.
This Twins team still needs to. They’ve had exactly zero games this year where they’ve been at full strength, and now the concern is that by the time they get there, it’ll be too late.
The Twins still have a lot of games to make up ground against the also-rans of the Central, but don’t forget that Cleveland plays them, too.
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