Sports television dynasty ESPN puts out things called power ratings, which apparently go beyond simpler things like standings to try to convince the public that their vast ability to accumulate statistics and speculation means more than mere results.

Last week, the Minnesota Twins were listed as the fifth best team in Major League Baseball by those power ratings.

We can only stand back in breathless amazement at what that means. This is a Twins team that started the season so woefully inept that we didn’t know whether they mostly needed pitching, hitting, defense, or baserunning. The answer was “all of the above.”

Rookie manager Paul Molitor was added to the mix, and 10 days into the season we had to wonder if he might be part of the problem. But the turnaround by the Twins might be the most incredible story in sports this spring. The hottest team in baseball through May, the Twins still weren’t (aren’t?) getting hitting, but their starting pitchers started getting people out, and making the overused term “quality start” mean something that might describe the home team, too.

The Detroit Tigers, who outscored the Twins 22-1 in the season-opening series in Detroit, stumbled big time, and Kansas City was left to soar to the top. But here came the Twins, scratching and clawing for runs, getting great leadership and timely hits from Torii Hunter, tightening up the defense, and winning ball games.

After dropping the first game of this week’s series against Kansas City, a 3-1 game that actually allowed KC to pull into a tie with the Twins for first place in the American League Central, look at the Twins batting averages among key players: Brian Dozier .268,  Hunter .277,  Joe Mauer .264, Trevor Plouffe .245, Vargas .248, Kurt Suzuki .239, Eddie Rosario .298, and Eduardo Escober .239, and Aaron Hicks .262.

Digest that, for a moment. Rosario and Hicks haven’t gotten up much, but that was the Twins batting order against KC. We’ll take .277 from Hunter, but we have to believe Dozier, Mauer and Plouffe should all be hitting 30 or 40 points higher. Maybe they will, but the fact that they are hitting so lightly and yet the Twins keep winning is one of the great mysteries of sports.

The starting pitching has been outstanding, after a rocky start, and Glen Perkins remains the best closer in all of baseball. Can they keep it up? Who knows, and who cares? Let’s just enjoy it while it’s happening.

Elsewhere in the world of sports, we can pay tribute to a plucky Cloquet Lumberjacks outfit for making it to the state baseball tournament. It is next to impossible for a Northern team to do well at state, but getting there is a great accomplishment, and the Lumberjacks had to put together an enviable string to make it, with good pitching and defense and timely hitting.

On the world stage, the French Open tennis tournament was a rare and surprising thing. Somehow the pairings got arranged with Roger Federer in one bracket, and top-seeded Novak Djokovic, and top contenders Rafael Nadal (nine-time winner) and Andy Murray all in the other bracket. Amazingly, someone named Stanislaw Wawrinka upset Federer in the quarterfinals.

Djokovic beat Nadal in one of the great matches anyone could play, totally frustrating the usully brilliant Rafa, then he beat Murray in the semifinals. But that match lasted two days, went five sets, and was an exhausting demonstration of top-level tennis.  Wawrinka, meanwhile, breezed into the final on the other side. When Djokovic beat Wawrinka 6-4 in the first set, it seemed inevitable that he would win his first French Open. But exhaustion took over.

Wawrinka played brilliantly, but Djokovic was clearly a step slow, and Wawrinka won three straight sets to upset Djokovic and win the event. Fantastic upset, and another sports surprise.

It also was surprising that American Pharoah won the Belmont Stakes to complete the first horse racing Triple Crown in 37 years. That’s the only reason it was a surprise. But he did it, and will go down as the first accidentally misspelled Triple Crown winner in history. Right. Even though one of the horse’s owners is from Egypt, where “pharaoh” is spelled that way, American Pharoah came out spelled wrong. But running right.

Tampa Bay’s Team of the Future Can’t Wait

Surprises are always an exciting part of sports. Upsets are wonderful, cheering for the underdog is so fulfilling when the underdog comes through. And it always seems so satisfying when the favorite gets taken down a peg.

This has been an incredible spring for sports surprises – achievements that are flat-out astonishing, compared to what the experts predicted.

We need look no further than the current Stanley Cup Playoff Finals, where pretty much all of us in Minnesota anticipated the Chicago Blackhawks would dismantle the Tampa Bay Lightning in short order. Not so fast.

The very fact that the series opened in Tampa Bay should have been the tip-off. The team with the most points accumulated during the season gets to start on home ice. So there you are. The Lightning earned their home-ice stance, and even though all of us who were enthralled by the Wild’s second-half charge, and then let down by their four-game sweep at the hands of the Blackhawks, had pretty much overlooked Tampa Bay.

But what a team. The Lightning dropped a 2-1 opener to Chicago, but only after outplaying the Blackhawks most of the way, then seeing a 1-0 lead disappear when the Blackhawks scored twice in a minute and a half.

When the Lightning came back to win Game 2, we had to be impressed. Not only did we watch former UMD Bulldogs J.T. Brown and Jason Garrison play for Tampa Bay, but when things got dicey, it was Garrison who stepped forward and made two outstanding offensive plays during a game in which he had the most ice time and made countless defensive plays.

Garrison shot one that was deflected in by Nikita Kucherov, of the Lightning’s Triplets line, and it tied the game 3-3 in the third period. Then Garrison scored himself, a hard shot that ticked a Chicago defenseman on its way past goaltender Corey Crawford. That stood as the winner, and Garrison was named the game’s No. 1 star.

Heading for Chicago for Games 3 and 4, most people again assumed the Blackhawks would take control. By now they should have known better. Tampa Bay had beaten Detroit to open the playoffs, then took out Montreal, and then eliminated the favored New York Rangers, when 6-foot-7 goaltender Ben Bishop recorded 2-0 shutouts in Madison Square Garden in Games 5 and 7. After all that, Chicago’s United Center is a tough place to play, but the Lightning – the youngest team among the 16 NHL playoff teams – had been taking the short way around all the intimidating NHL arenas in cities that are known as Original Six.

On Monday night, Tampa Bay went to Chicago and pinned a stinging 3-2 loss on the Blackhawks and their stunned 22,000-plus fans. It was a remarkable game in a remarkable series, and the turning point came 16 seconds after Chicago had taken a 2-1 lead in the third period. The fans were still celebrating when Ondrej Palat – another member of the Triplets – drilled a shot past Crawford to tie the game 2-2.

That silenced the crowd, with 13 minutes remaining, and it got more silent two minutes later, when Victor Hedman, another unsung ace of Tampa Bay’s amazing defense, rushed up the rink and fed across the slot to Cedric Paquette, who rifled in his shot for a 3-2 Lightning lead.

Bishop and the Lightning defense then stifled the Blackhawks, all their firepower notwithstanding, and Tampa Bay won 3-2.

Tampa Bay General Manager Steve Yzerman has assembled this team almost in his own image, just as assistant general manager Tom Kurvers had explained. A high-skill forward with the Detroit Red Wings, Yzerman would always rather beat you with skill and great playmaking than by watching a teammate blast somebody into the boards and score goals by intimidation. When Yzerman and his Red Wings would beat you, it was almost painless because Steve Yzerman was such a good guy.

At Tampa Bay, he traded away experienced skill for youthful exuberance -- still with plenty of skill, and with incredible speed. But somehow the Bolts have acquired a steely determination to counter the likes of Jonathan Toews, Patrick Kane, Marian Hossa, and Duncan Keith with unflappable big plays from guys named Tyler Johnson, Kucherov, Palat, and yes, Paquette, Hedman and Garrison.

Through the first three games, Toews, Kane, Hossa and Keith have gone from unstoppable to...well, stoppable. Tampa Bay’s unsung, unheralded and unknown team defense has been fantastic, and any time they have faltered, big Ben Bishop has been there to make the save.

The Blackhawks are similar, and in some ways they must see almost a mirror image of themselves every time Tampa Bay stops a rush, instantly counters, and finishes speeding to the other end of the rink with a series of dazzling passes.

The best thing remains that both teams are playing the game with speed and skill. No intimidation stuff, just trying to beat good plays with great plays, and solid defense with creative playmaking.

This could still be a long series, maybe even a seven-game duel, but it’s hard to speculate. Tampa Bay may yet fall to the Blackhawks, but right now, right before our eyes, the Tampa Bay Lightning have gone from a team of tomorrow to a team of right now.