A .500 Team?

After a pretty good weekend which saw the hometown club win 3 out of 4 against divisional rival Kansas City, the Twins are now 33-45 and 8.5 games behind the division-leading Chicago White Sox. The Twins' record still doesn't look pretty, but I'm here to tell you that it's not as bad as it looks. Since May 1st, the Twins have gone 27-29 thanks in large part to an offensive that has been out-producing some pretty horrible starting pitching.

Aside from Joe Mauer, the offensive production has come from a couple of unexpected performers in the likes of Josh "Hammer" Willingham and Trevor "Plouffda" Plouffe who both seem to have made it their mission to lead the team in homeruns this year. In yesterday's game against KC, both Willingham and Plouffe went deep and Trevor managed to have the upper hand at the end of the day, hitting two bombs in a 10-8 Twins' win. On the scorecard, Plouffe leads the team in HRs with 18 and Willingham is one back at 17 (Morneau is a distant 3rd place with 10 homeruns so far this season). In only 59 games so far this season, Plouffe has managed to rack up 31 RBI and 35 Runs and has asserted himself in the middle of what has become a very formidable lineup for the Twins. The 3, 4, 5, and 6 hitters for the Twins are Mauer (.324/.414/.445) and then some combination of Willingham, Morneau, Plouffe and Doumit, all of whom bring some thunder (or at least the potential for it) to the plate with them.

Getting back to the pitching; after owning an MLB-worst 5.64 team ERA in April, the staff as a whole has been slowly improving. In May the team ERA dropped to 4.96 and in June it dropped again to a mildly respectable 4.33 mark. Twins' starters have improved quite a bit as well. After posting a miserable 6.75 ERA in April, they posted a 5.74 mark in May and improved again in June with a 5.09 ERA collectively. A 5.00+ ERA is still pretty brutal, but at least they are moving in the right direction. It's possible that the Twins could get Carl Pavano back towards the middle or end of this month and I have a feeling that Nick Blackburn will begin to figure out his issues and start to pitch better as well. It would be hard to get much worse than his current 7.74 ERA...

With 4 teams ahead of them in the standings, it's impossible HIGHLY unlikely that the Twins will be contending for anything come September, but I think that over their past 50+ games, the Twins have shown that they are at least capable of competing on a night-in, night-out basis. It's been good to see some of the youngsters like Plouffe, Scott Diamond, Cole DeVries and Ben Revere step up. The result has been much more watchable than last year's 99-loss team and gives me a little more hope going forward. The only thing I hope this recent success doesn't lead to is hesitation on the part of the front-office to make the trades they need to make. Despite being "only" 8.5 games back in the standings, the Twins still need to be sellers and with players like Span, Willingham, and Liriano performing well of late, the team has some decent trade-bait to dangle out there.

Josh Willingham: What's Not to Like?

Depending on who you trust on Twitter, the Twins may or may not have agreed, in principle, to a deal with outfielder/DH free-agent Josh Willingham. Jerry Crasnick reported earlier this evening that a deal had been reached pending a physical - a report which was contradicted by Rhett Bollinger later in the evening saying that the two sides were close, but that they hadn't yet officially reached a deal...either way, I'm willing to bet that Willingham will become a Twin here within the next 12-24 hours so I thought I'd chime in. On an unrelated note, please forgive my scant postings over the last couple of weeks. I started a new job on Dec. 2nd and, well, it's been non-stop busy-ness since with no end in sight.

There's really not much to dislike about this deal from an outsiders perspective. Michael Cuddyer, whom Willingham is "replacing", is 32-years old, so is Willingham. Their hitting profiles are very similar in that they are both right-handed hitters with some power and good on-base percentages. In watching Cuddyer go to another team, the Twins get two draft picks in return and for a farm system that is somewhat depleted, the picks could not be coming at a better time. In addition, Willingham is likely to save the Twins a little bit of money. All of these things are positive. The only negative, in my opinion, is that you lose a guy in Cuddyer who has been a scrapper and a gamer for the last few seasons, who was clearly a good clubhouse guy and who was somewhat of a fan favorite. That said, none of those are reasons to keep a guy around.

Josh Willingham really didn't start to see regular big-league action until 2006 (age 27) but has been a pretty consistent big-league performer since, compiling a .262/.361/.475 triple-slash in 2,707 big-league at-bats. Since the beginning of the '06 season he has hit 131 homeruns (avg ~ 21/yr) and 155 doubles (avg ~ 26). Defense is where Willingham struggles a bit and where Cuddyer certainly has the upper hand when comparing the two players. Willingham will almost certainly be in left-field for the Twins - a position has spent the majority of his big-league career playing. He also gained some experience as a DH last year with Oakland so if the Twins get him, I would expect we'll see him used in that role as well from time to time.

I really hope the Twins do get Willingham. I was never bitten by the Cuddyer-bug, I respect him as a player and a hard-worker, but I think that the Twins benefit more in the long-run by letting him go. Willingham doesn't have quite the versatility that Cuddyer has defensively, but for a little less coin I'm willing to make the swap.