The Minnesota Twins have shown two different sides of themselves throughout the first half of the 2023 MLB season. Occasionally, they have looked like a team primed for a deep run in October. But at other times, they have looked as if they don’t belong in the playoffs. The Twins have already won the season series against three American League playoff contenders, the New York Yankees, Toronto Blue Jays, and Houston Astros. But baseball’s two best teams, the Tampa Bay Rays and Atlanta Braves, have swept them in June. On Wednesday, the Twins fell out of first place in the AL Central for the first time since April 10th. It’s worth taking a closer look to try and analyze what exactly is this team’s ceiling and what they might be able to do to make some improvements in the second half of the season.
One way to decipher Minnesota’s overall quality compared to the rest of the league is by looking at its ranking in a few statistical categories. The strength of their pitching staff immediately stands out. The Twins own a 3.70 team ERA, fourth in baseball, trailing only the Yankees, Astros, and Rays. Minnesota is also second in strikeouts among all pitching staffs (776), behind only the Chicago White Sox.
But it’s the opposite story on the hitting side of things. Minnesota’s offense ranks 25th in batting average (.231), 21st in OPS (.706), and has the most strikeouts of any team in the majors (838). Put this all together, and we can see that they are among baseball’s best in terms of the strength of their pitching and among baseball’s worst in terms of offensive production.
When the Twins are at their best, it looks a lot like their 6-0 win over the Boston Red Sox on June 22nd. Joe Ryan had the best start of his career, tossing a complete-game shutout and allowing only three hits. The lineup also did its part, highlighted by two no-doubt home runs by Byron Buxton and Carlos Correa. In this game, we saw a masterful performance on the mound from Minnesota’s ace and big hits from their two centerpiece position players. That’s exactly what many fans thought the Twins could look like at the beginning of the season if everything broke right.
Unfortunately, less than a week later, we saw an example of the Twins at their worst.
On Tuesday night, Ryan took the mound in Atlanta for his first start since his complete game the previous week. In two innings, he allowed five home runs after only giving up eight all season coming into the game. That put the Twins in a huge hole early. Still, they had plenty of opportunities to dig themselves out.
Minnesota left nine men on base and had several opportunities with runners in scoring position. However, they were not able to capitalize. A rare poor start from Ryan was part of the reason why the Twins lost that game. But the lineup’s inability to do much of anything against Bryce Elder and the rest of Atlanta’s pitching staff may have been an even bigger factor, especially because the Braves did not score any more runs after their ambush in the first and second innings. If Minnesota’s offense had been able to convert on a few of their opportunities, they could have ended up with an impressive comeback victory against the National League’s best team.
It’s difficult to figure out where the Twins are headed for the rest of the season. Usually, the sample size is large enough that we are able to tell which teams are good and which ones aren’t at the halfway point of the year. Minnesota has shown that they are capable of being a good team, but they have also built a habit of losing games that were there for the taking.
Minnesota has hovered around .500 for most of the season, and many feel that they should be getting much better results with the talent on their roster. The good news for Twins fans is that staying around the .500 mark could be enough to keep them in the division race all year.
FiveThirtyEight’s MLB prediction model currently has the Twins as AL Central favorites with a projected 83-79 record. It is understandable to be frustrated with the lack of consistency, but they are in a division where every team has struggled throughout the first half. It’s important to remember that anything can happen once you get to the postseason. If Minnesota can stay in the mix for long enough and bolster the team with some moves at the trade deadline, they could very well play into October and might make a run when they get there.
