“It’s still early” is usually the most calming mantra for frustrated baseball fans, reminding them that, no matter how hopeless their team’s season may feel in the midst of an awful start, the six-month, 162-game marathon provides no shortage of chances for redemption.
Of course, “it’s still early” can also sound like a threat if the awful start turns out to be an awful team. As in: “It’s still early, you’ve got another five months of this to suffer through.”
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While we wait to find out which side of the “it’s still early” coin the Minnesota Twins will land on following their 6-11 start, here are 10 ugly numbers after 10 percent of the season.
.193
Twins hitters have combined for a .193 batting average through 17 games.
Not only is that the worst batting average in MLB this season, it’s also the second-worst batting average through 17 games for any American League team in the past 50 years. Only the 2003 Detroit Tigers had a lower batting average (.180) through 17 games, and that team finished with the worst record in AL history at 43-119.
Of the 15 hitters to appear in multiple games for the Twins this season, 10 have a batting average under .200, six are under .150 and three are under .100.
Atlanta leads the majors with a .292 batting average, and the Braves could fall into an 0-for-300 slump and still have a higher batting average than the Twins.
Tyler Glasnow ties a career-high with 14 Ks! pic.twitter.com/vgpYe8mapV
— Los Angeles Dodgers (@Dodgers) April 10, 2024
.144
If you thought the Twins’ overall .193 batting average was bad, you may want to sit down for this one: They’ve hit .144 with runners in scoring position.
And having runners in scoring position is generally when hitters put pitchers on the ropes and often deliver a knockout blow. Season after season, it’s a situation in which hitters have an undeniable advantage. This year, the league-wide OPS is 40 points higher with runners in scoring position.
Meanwhile, the Twins have hit .144 with an MLB-worst .465 OPS with RISP, striking out in 31.3 percent of their plate appearances. Willi Castro is 0-for-14 and Carlos Santana is 0-for-12 with RISP.
Of note: No modern MLB team has finished a season hitting below .200 with RISP, so the Twins are either going to get substantially better or make history.
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6-11
It’s premature to write off the Twins, no matter how feeble they’ve looked, but the history of teams starting with a 6-11 record isn’t exactly encouraging.
In the Target Field era (since 2010), a total of 30 teams have started a season 6-11. Just two of those teams — the 2015 Texas Rangers and 2021 New York Yankees — made the playoffs. And only eight of those 30 teams even managed a winning record.
This is the fifth team in Twins history (since 1961) to start 6-11. None of the previous four teams (2021, 2011, 1988, 1978) made the playoffs, and only the 1988 team finished with a winning record, going 91-71 the year after the Twins won their first World Series.
Whether or not this qualifies as a silver lining depends on your point of view, but the Twins find themselves in the same boat as the team that knocked them out of the playoffs last season, the Houston Astros, who also started 6-11 after making the postseason in each of the past seven years.
2.05
Opposing starting pitchers have a combined 2.05 ERA with 106 strikeouts in 92 1/3 innings against the Twins this season.
No one should fault a lineup for being shut down by front-line arms like Tyler Glasnow, Tarik Skubal and Cole Ragans, but the Twins have also flailed away against plenty of mediocre veterans, untested youngsters and journeymen.
For example: Orioles right-hander Albert Suárez hadn’t pitched in the majors since 2017 before the 34-year-old last-minute call-up held the Twins scoreless for 5 2/3 innings on Wednesday.
Young or old, front or back of the rotation, the Twins have turned all the starters they’ve faced this year into a collective Cy Young Award candidate. Aside from notable exceptions like Suárez, the opposing starters are usually known days in advance, allowing ample time to scout them, which would seemingly call into question the quality of the game plans Twins hitters are being asked to follow.
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1.6
Dreadful hitting has received most of the blame for the Twins’ struggles, and rightfully so, but Twins pitchers have also gotten knocked around for an MLB-high 1.6 homers allowed per nine innings.
It’s not for a lack of raw stuff, as Twins pitchers lead MLB in strikeout rate and rank top five in average fastball velocity. Even without Jhoan Duran, their most dominant arm, the pitching staff is throwing hard and missing tons of bats.
However, they’re also leaving way too many fat pitches right down the middle.
Twins pitchers have thrown the AL’s fourth-most middle-middle pitches in the heart of the strike zone, which Baseball Savant amusingly labels as “meatballs.” Very few pitchers can avoid getting clobbered working the middle of the plate, so the goal is to throw strikes on the edges of the zone. Twins pitchers have also thrown the AL’s fourth-fewest pitches on the edges.
Red-hot Ryan 🔥 pic.twitter.com/s3IHBa5q9t
— Baltimore Orioles (@Orioles) April 15, 2024
.564
All six teams the Twins have faced this season have winning records, including three division leaders (Dodgers, Guardians, Brewers) and a pair of second-place teams (Orioles, Royals) within a game of first place. Small-sample caveats very much apply, but based on winning percentage, the Twins have played six of the top 10 teams and none of the bottom 20 (or 19, minus themselves) teams.
Early or not, that’s a tough schedule. In fact, it’s the toughest schedule. Twins opponents’ combined .564 winning percentage is the highest of any AL team.
That isn’t an excuse — the schedule is the schedule and the Twins benefit from it more often than not — but it does suggest their issues have been magnified by an uncommonly high level of competition or, at the very least, they picked the worst time to play their worst baseball.
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Thankfully for the Twins, they have seven games against the last-place Chicago White Sox over the next two weeks. They need to take advantage.
53
Despite playing the fewest games of any AL team due to scheduled off days and rainouts, Twins hitters lead the league with 53 strikeouts looking.
They also led the AL in strikeouts looking last season, so the passive two-strike approach that drove fans nuts is back for an unwanted encore. In fact, it’s gotten worse, relatively speaking, because the Twins have actually improved from No. 2 to No. 7 in strikeouts swinging.
Last year, strikeouts looking accounted for 26.7 percent of their total strikeouts. This season, that’s jumped to 30.5 percent. There are no enjoyable ways for any team to hit .193 with MLB’s second-highest strikeout rate, but doing it without taking the bat off your shoulder might be the most maddening to watch.
1-for-15
Ryan Jeffers coming off the bench with two outs in the eighth inning to deliver a pinch-hit, game-tying homer in Detroit on April 13 was a rare highlight from the Twins’ first 17 games. Unfortunately, it was also their only hit from a pinch hitter this season.
Twins pinch hitters have combined to go 1-for-15, which makes them 0-for-14 aside from Jeffers’ homer against the Tigers. In fairness, they do have six walks.
After barely using pinch hitters in his first couple of seasons as manager, Rocco Baldelli has become increasingly aggressive with in-game moves, in part due to the Twins’ overall roster construction and platoon-heavy lineup approach. This year, like last year, the Twins have used the AL’s second-most pinch hitters.
It hasn’t worked so far, but last season provides an example of how quickly and dramatically that can change. Twins pinch hitters combined for a .173 batting average and .512 OPS in the first half last season. That didn’t slow down Baldelli, who used pinch hitters just as often in the second half. And they combined for a league-leading .308 batting average and 1.028 OPS after the All-Star break.
RYAN JEFFERS OFF THE BENCH!! #WeBelieveInTC // #MNTwins pic.twitter.com/RNIVIMwa9y
— Bally Sports North (@BallySportsNOR) April 13, 2024
214
Twins players have already accrued a total of 214 days on the injured list, third-most in baseball.
Not all days missed to injury are created equal, and unfortunately for the Twins their crowded IL is filled with many of their best players, including Royce Lewis, Carlos Correa, Max Kepler and Duran.
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Bring up the subject of injury-wrecked teams and most Twins fans will point to 2022, when they led the AL in days spent on the IL and were forced to use a franchise-record 61 players. That led to hiring a new head athletic trainer, Nick Paparesta. But while the 2023 Twins were significantly healthier than the snakebitten 2022 version, they still logged MLB’s fifth-most days on the IL.
And now they seem headed for a third straight year in the “top five” for injuries.
145
This one isn’t technically a “bad” number, but it’s probably more important than anything else: There are 145 games left on the Twins’ schedule this season.
That may sound like a threat at the moment, when the Twins can seemingly do no right, and maybe this will wind up being a lost season. But in the meantime, “it’s still early” remains a positive thing for the Twins and a potential way out of this mess. They can’t let 10 percent of the season ruin the other 90 percent.
(Photo of Byron Buxton after a strikeout: Greg Fiume / Getty Images)
