Two years ago, not long after the All-Star break, maybe the beginning of August, I declared that the Minnesota Twins would win the American League Central title. The Twins, at the time, were somewhere from four to six games behind Detroit and hadn’t posed a challenge to the Tigers all season.
The problem was I didn’t make my declaration to anyone but myself; I never wrote it anywhere so I couldn’t take credit when the Twins pulled even with the Tigers on the next-to-last day of the season, then beat them in a one-game playoff.
I’m not going to make that mistake again. I will say simply they’re back.
I will say also that I don’t feel as strong about these Twins as I did about the 2009 Twins, and I wouldn’t feel strong about them at all if I listened to the executive of an American League club who disagreed with me and pronounced them “a .500 club.” But he also acknowledged that the Twins have “had a lot of injuries” and they have “been impressive in what they have accomplished as far as coming back.”
The Twins have lagged behind three other teams in the division virtually the entire season and some days they were behind all four of the other Central teams.
“We dug ourselves a huge hole early in season,” general manager Bill Smith said, referring to the team’s 17-37 record in the first third of the season. “But our managers and coaches and players never quit.
We have got our work cut out for us, but we’re in contention.”
After games of June 1, the Twins were 16 ½ games from first. When I talked to Smith last Thursday, they had slashed that deficit to 5 games.
Since then, they lost twice to the first-place Tigers, showing how difficult their task is. Earlier in the week they lost a doubleheader to the first-place Indians but rebounded and won the final two games of the series. They also won the third game of the four-game Detroit series, putting themselves in position with a win Sunday to do to the Tigers what they did to the Indians.
Tigers, Indians, White Sox, Twins: it promises to be a good, down-to-the-end race, and probably any of those teams could win it.
Before the season, the White Sox were generally considered the division favorite and, in fact, the executive said, he ranked them second strongest in the league behind the Red Sox. But, he added, speaking of developments since the season began, “The White Sox have a lot of dysfunction.”
What the Twins have had is a lot of injuries, far more and far more significantly than their division rivals.
First baseman Justin Morneau and center fielder Denard Span are currently on the disabled list, Span since June 9, Morneau since a day later.
Last year Morneau missed the rest of the season after suffering a concussion July 7. When he was injured, Morneau was leading the league in on-base percentage and was third in batting average and slugging percentage. Before he was hurt this season, he was hitting .225 in 55 games.
“We’re looking to getting him healthy and getting him back,” Smith said. “He had a herniated disk in his neck and a wrist issue. We decided to take care of it all at once.”
Joe Mauer, the Twins’ most valued player, missed 57 games, slightly more than a third of a season, with leg problems. Since his return June 17, Mauer has raised his batting average 60 points to .295. He has also
played first base in a couple of games, but that’s not to be taken as a sign of things to come.
“Joe’s our catcher,” Smith said. “He’s an all-star, an impact player offensively and when he catches defensively. When he goes behind the plate that’s where we want him.”
Jason Kubel (with his better than .300 batting average) is back in right field after having missed all of June and three weeks of July with an ankle injury.
Tsuyoshi Nishioka, the Japanese import, is into his second month back at shortstop after he missed all but the first week of the first two and a half months of the season with a fractured leg.
Left fielder Delmon Young and designated hitter Jim Thome have visited the disabled list twice each, each with oblique and leg injuries. Thome missed most of May and June. Young sat out parts of each month of the season.
“That’s just position players,” Smith said. “We’ve had pitchers on the disabled list as well.”
Kevin Slowey, who won 23 games and lost 9 the past two seasons, has been on the disabled list twice, first with a shoulder ailment, then with an abdominal strain. He was activated last week but optioned to Triple A. He has been available to the Twins for three weeks and has started no games this season.
Other visitors to the disabled list have been starters Francisco Liriano and Scott Baker and relievers Joe Nathan, Glen Perkins and Jose Mijares.
Smith, however, is not looking to injuries to excuse the team’s poor play earlier in the season.
“Everybody goes through injuries,” he said. “No one is crying over our injuries. They have their own.”
That includes the teams ahead of the Twins in the division.
The Indians have led the division most of the season but in recent days have been supplanted by the Tigers. One of the reasons might be the presence of two-thirds of the Cleveland outfield on the disabled list.
Shin-Soo Choo has been on the list for a month with a wrist injury, and last week Grady Sizemore made the list for the third time this season, this time with a knee ailment.
In all, the Indians have had 15 placements on the disabled list. The Twins have had 17. The Tigers have had nine and the White Sox only seven.
Carlos Guillen, the Tigers’ second baseman, didn’t start his season until July 16 because of a knee injury. Magglio Ordonez, right fielder-designated hitter, missed a month with an ankle injury.
The most prominent members of the White Sox who have served time on the disabled list are two starting pitchers, John Danks and Jake Peavy. Danks missed a little more than three weeks with an oblique injury while Peavy has been on the list twice with pelvis and shoulder injuries.
Peavy has endured a succession of physical problems since he won the Cy Young award with San Diego in 2007, and the White Sox could have used a 2007-type performance from Peavy to help them produce the division title that had been forecast for them.
Much, of course, can happen in the next two months. For one thing, it is a forgiving division, as the Twins have learned. The Tigers, too. They fell 8 games out early in May and now lead the division.
“It’s obvious that it’s very closely bunched with four clubs,” Dave Dombrowski, the Detroit general manager, said. “We play the majority of games in our division and it will be settled in the division.”
With the majority games to be played, it’s not possible to forecast the outcome of the intra-division games. But through Saturday night, these were the won-lost records of the four contenders within the division:
- Detroit 21-11
- Minnesota 22-16
- Cleveland 15-15
- Chicago 12-19
Why do I like the Twins? For one thing, I like their resilience. As their general manager said, they dug themselves a really deep hole, but they’ve climbed most of the way out, and they’ve done it without some of their best players. If they have their ‘A’ team for the final six weeks, they will make life difficult for the other contenders.
For another thing, I like their history of winning, knowing it starts in the front office and goes to the players through the managers. Tom Kelly and Ron Gardenhire have been perfect for the Twins, and I look for Gardenhire to extend his run to three straight division titles.
REYNOLDS RISKING RECORD
Mark Reynolds needs to pick up his pace or face the end of his streak and his dominance of a batting category that should bear his name: The Mark Reynolds Strikeout Totals.
For the last three years Reynolds has led the major leagues in strikeouts, surpassing 200 each season. Two years ago he set the record with 223. Last year he became the first non-pitcher whose number of strikeouts (211) exceeded the numbers of his batting average (.198).
The Arizona Diamondbacks traded the 27-year-old third baseman because they were tired of his strikeouts. The Baltimore Orioles traded for Reynolds because they liked his offensive production (44 homers, 102 r.b.i. in 2009).
This season Reynolds has struck out 108 times (through Saturday night), tying him for third in the majors with Austin Jackson of Detroit and putting him behind Drew Stubbs of Cincinnati (130) and Adam Dunn of the Chicago White Sox (125).
Others who are just behind Reynolds are Ryan Howard of Philadelphia and Mike Stanton of Florida 107 each and Kelly Johnson of Arizona 105. Johnson obviously is bidding to become the Diamondbacks’ new Mark Reynolds.
By letting Stubbs and Dunn to get so far ahead of him, Reynolds risks losing not only the major league strikeout total but also the chance to gain a line alone in the Elias Book of Baseball Records. Right now Reynolds is tied with Hack Wilson, Mike Schmidt and Dunn for leading the majors in strikeouts for three consecutive seasons.
If Reynolds rallies and leads the majors again this season, he will knock Wilson, Schmidt and Dunn out of the record book.
MR. MILLER GOES TO COURT, NOT HALL
The Hall of Fame is inducting some new members this weekend, but to its everlasting shame none of the new members is named Marvin Miller.
Hall officials defend Miller’s absence by saying they have changed the format and the voting committee and what else can they do?
Well, I have a suggestion. Strip the voting committee of some of the club owners and other management executives and replace them with three new voters – Richard Moss, Donald Fehr and Michael Weiner, former and current union officials.
They have as legitimate a reason for being on the committee as any of the management people. The Hall’s board of directors, however, will not endorse such a change. The owners supply the Hall with operating funds, and they don’t want Miller in their Hall of Fame.
Miller, meanwhile, has been honored by other organizations and is in the process of receiving yet another honor. A law journal, the “Green Bag,” plans to distribute baseball cards with a portrait of Miller paired with a portrait of Arthur Goldberg, former justice of the United States Supreme Court.
It is part of a project that has produced cards of several justices, including Chief Justice John Roberts, and has donated the original paintings to the Supreme Court for its permanent collection. Ross Davies, head of the project, is editor-in-chief of the law journal.