James Richter
Member
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How many Twins starting pitchers do you have confidence in? For me, the list begins and ends with Scott Diamond. How sad is that?

Check this out: Through Sunday's games, the average AL starter gives his team just under 6 IP/GS with a 4.33 ERA. The Twins have gotten just 5 1/3 IP/GS with a 6.18 ERA. With league average starting pitching, the Twins would have allowed 41 fewer ER in 34.1 more IP. That reduced workload on the bullpen (3.58 ERA) saves another 14 ER, for a total of 55 fewer

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Through 25 games:

Year

W

L

GB

RS

RA

Diff

BA

OBP

SLG

ERA

WHIP

HR/9

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In my last post, I investigated whether the offense was really as bad as it has looked so far. I discovered that, since the Home Opener, the Twins have been swinging the bats well enough to average about 5 runs/game. They have been held back by an extremely low BA with RISP and high rate of HIDP, each of which is likely to revert to the mean over a large enough sample. Once that happens, we should be left with an above-average offense for 2012-2013.

The news is not so good on the run

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If I’d told you before the season started that, 20 games in, Denard Span would have a .386 OBP, Joe Mauer would be hitting .329 and Justin Morneau would have an IsoP of .236, plus newcomer Josh Willingham would have a 1.114 OPS, what would you have expected the Twins’ record to be? Better than 5-15, I hope. There are a lot of reasons why it is that poor, and some of them are not easily solved, but I don’t believe the offense is one of them.

Ultimately, it’s about scoring runs, and the

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On April 16th, 2000, I went to the Dome to see the Twins take on the Orioles. Joe Mays vs. Sidney Ponson - what an auspicious pitching matchup that was! Mays took the mound and proceeded to lose the game with dizzying speed. Homer, single, double, 2-run single, groundout, 2-run homer. 6 batters and 20 pitches into the game, he’d allowed 5 ER on 5 H.

Undoubtedly, someone was up in the bullpen. Perhaps there were some derisive cheers when TK walked out to the mound. After all, this was

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