Twins Keep Fooling Everybody
The Minnesota Twins continue to confound convention this season.
A month ago, I wrote that the team’s new Moneyballesque braintrust decided to give up the season as a lost cause by trading a just-acquired starting pitcher and a just-developing closer because the Twins had a disastrous West Coast road trip. As an observer, I’m sure I spoke for a lot of fans when I suggested sarcastically that I figured the players hadn’t given up, and it would serve the organization right if the Twins got things together in August, made a run at a Wild Card slot, then fell one game short because they didn’t have a proper closer.
What a difference a month can make.
The Twins opened a vital six-game homestand on Tuesday, with a 3-game series against the Chicago White Sox, followed by a 3-game series against Kansas City. The White Sox are in last place in the Central Division, and while Kansas City is third behind Cleveland and Minnesota, the Royals fell out of contention and haven’t stopped falling -- beiong shut out for the fourth consecutive game on Monday.
That means there is an excellent chance the Twins could sweep both the White Sox and Royals, and if they could, those six games could secure the Twins Wild Card spot. The problem with that scenario is that the Twins have virtually reversed logic all season, and when the Twin Cities media goes on projecting a sweep, it scares me. Let’s not forget that the Twins went into Tuesday night’s game with an excellent 36-28 record on the road, they are an awful 31-35 at home at Target Field. OK, 31-35 isn’t awful by itself, but for a team capable of 36-28 on the road, it’s awful.
Whatever happens on this homestand, the month of August has been nothing short of amazing for the Twins, who went 17-10 through the month as of Monday’s day off. Everybody is singing the praises of Byron Buxton, who was hitting under .200 when August began, and is now up to .249, after a spectacular 4-5 with 3 home runs in Sunday’s 7-2 victory at Toronto. But he is far from alone.
Brian Dozier had a stretch where he went 11-36 to get up to a modest .259, but a major difference has been that Joe Mauer is surging toward the .300 mark, which will probably confound his many detractors. Mauer was sputtering along at about .250 when the month started, but in his last dozen games, Mauer went 20-for-46.
That boosts Mauer into the team lead with a .296 average, because Eddie Rosario has faltered from over .300 to .291.
The team’s great balanced hitting attack -- with Miguel Sano out with a leg injury and catcher Jason Castro also recovering from an injury -- has the Twins solidly in the Wild Card race. Go back to the start of this homestand Tuesday, and the Twins stood 67-63, behind the Yankees 70-60 atop the Wild Card slate. If the season ended right now, Houston, Boston and Cleveland would be the three pennant winners, and would be joined by a Wild Card survivor of a game between the Twins and Yankees.
But there are 30-some games remaining, and close on the heels of the Twins 67-63 mark comes the Los Angeles Angels 67-65, Baltimore 66-65, Seattle 66-66, and even Tampa Bay 66-67 is in the picture. Remember, a simple 4-game winning streak can turn a season around.
But for now, we can revise my sarcastic projection that the Twins might end up being a closer short of playoffs.
Now it looks like they could make the playoffs by their closer-by-committee approach.
Tech Gets Levi Stauber
With high school football just starting, what could be better than a little hockey news? When the summer free-play season ended, Marshall wound up its own tournament by beating Hermantown 4-3 in an intense battle between two great rivals. Levi Stauber smacked in a rebound to make it 4-2, and it stood up as the game-winning goal.
Earlier this week, Levi Stauber accepted a scholarship offer to play Division I hockey at Michigan Tech. This Marshall team has some very impressive talent, and the only question might be about its depth. But Levi Stauber is a powerful shooter up front, and he appears to be emerging as an improved team player -- a lot like his dad, Pete Stauber, who went from Denfeld to Lake Superior State where he won an NCAA title.
But Levi isn’t the only Stauber on the team, nor is he the only Stauber that can play D-I hockey. His cousin, Willy Stauber, plays defense, and he’s a tall, rangy player who also possesses a potent shot. In that Hermantown gam e, Willy Stauber scored the first goal of the night on a power-play slapshot from center-point. Leter on, the two Stauber cousins assited on the third Hilltopper goal. And
there are a couple more players on the team who will attract D-I attention as the season gets going.
Sports Notes:
The Twins hit 46 home runs in August going into Tuesday’s action, and 22 of them were by what is fast becoming a collection of the most impressive young outfield in baseball: Center-fielder Byron Buxton has hit 8, and left-fielder Eddie Rosario and right-fielder Max Kepler both have 7.
Speaking of quarterbacks, the Minnesota Lynx have a group of superstars, not the least of whom is their “quarterback,” point guard Lindsay Whelan. When Wheland went out with a broken bone in her hand, the Lynx knew they would probably get her back in time for playoffs, but they didn’t realize how vital she is in distributing the ball to her four All-Star teammates. Without her, the Lynx went 4-5 going into Wednesday night’s game. And with only two games left, the Los Angeles Sparks, who beat the Lynx 78-67 Sunday in L.A., were only a half-game back.
Good to see Maria Sharapova back in the women’s tennis picture. She won a dramatic and emotional 6-4, 4-6, 6-3 victory over favored Simona Halep in Monday night’s first-round at the U.S. Open. Halep rallied from facing a 4-1 deficit to win the second set and pushing Sharapova to the ultimate. Sharapova missed 15 months at the pinnacle of her career for taking a medication that she had been taking before it was declared an illegal enhancement. She should have known, and maybe even she did realize the change, but without a doubt the tennis world missed Maria at least as much as she missed the tennis world.
Sebastian Vettel is still in first place in Formula 1 points, but defending World Champion Lewis Hamilton held off the charging Vettel to win at the Belgium Grand Prix last Sunday, and the circuit moves immediately to Monza for the Italian Grand Prix this Sunday. Vettel got a break when a pace-car slowdown for debris-strewing crash allowed the field to close up ranks just after Vettel had installed a new set of the softest Pirelli tires. On the restart, Vettel made a spectacular bid for the lead, pulling alongside Hamilton for a stirring straightaway run, but Vettel had to pull in behind, and finished there. With his lead shaved to 7 points over Hamilton, Vettel takes the Ferrari team to home turf against Hamilton’s Mercedes.
Speaking of quarterbacks, we’ve all known that Matthew Stafford has done better than the Detroit Lions record shows. He has gotten his reward with a new 5-year contract calling for $27-million a year as the highest-paid player in the NFL!
Miami Marlins slugger Giancarlo Stanton has been even hotter than the Twins hitters in August. As of Tuesday, he had hit 17 home runs in the first 25 games this month, giving him 50 for the season and renewing the debate of whether we look at the 61 of Roger Maris or the 73 of Barry Bonds as the all-time record.
