Dude, You Know How I Punched You? That Was Totally My Bad. Morneau, Hunter Plan to Apologize.
WBC: National Menace? Twins Face Greatest Risk of Losing Players.
Dude, It's Just Not Going To Work Unless You Do Something About the Ass-Bats. Twins Better Than White Sox, Indians, If...
Posted by Batgirl at January 30, 2006 08:05 AMThe only way the Twins win the division is if essentially all the following happen or they get historically lucky:
- They stay healthy. Almost perfectly healthy.
- Santana pitches in his 2004 form, Radke rebounds, Silva doesn't fall off the talent-cliff, and Baker keeps up with his projected ERA in the 4.00 range.
- Batista doesn't make it out of April.
- Mauer, Morneau, and Bartlett all improve their hitting- at least one of them signficantly (i.e. more than projections).
- Stewart plays less poorly or the team finds someone else who can get on base.
- The veteran players - Hunter and Castillo - don't regress.
- Someone emerges to play RF and Cuddyer goes back to third.
- Andy Marte plays poorly for the Indians or, for some other reason, they don't perform as well as they are capable of.
If those all happen, the team can win 90-95 games, and have a reasonable chance to win the division. If just "most" of them happen, they might have a shot at the Wild Card, but it's hard to be optimistic.
Posted by: neutrino boi at January 30, 2006 08:34 AM