Just When We Wrote The Twins Off...
A week ago, I thought it would be appropriate to pose the question of how everything could go wrong for a team as filled with promise as the Minnesota Twins. I listed my top 10 reasons why we all had such hope to start the season, then I listed the 10 biggest disappointments in the first couple of months of the season. They were the same 10.
Being a cup-full type of person, I wasn’t saying it was a hopeless write-off of a season, so much as just trying to ask how all facets of their game could fall apart right at the start of the season. Normally, a team can depend on pitching or hitting or defense to pick up the other attributes when something goes wrong. With the Twins, all facets disappeared with the start of the regular season.
It seemed an aberration when the Twins closed out their last homestand with a 7-5 victory over Kansas City. Then they hit the road for Seattle, which was leading their division. Suddenly, to the surprise of everyone, all facets suddenly clicked into focus, and the Twins swept the series at Seattle with 7-2, 6-5 and 5-4 victories. That’s 22 runs in four games, for a team that had been the lowest scoring team in baseball, a team that might take two weeks to score 22 runs.
The starting pitching looked impressive, the defense seemed to realize the season had indeed started, and the hitting erupted. Joe Mauer and Miguel Sano were the big surprises, with Sano hitting home runs in four straight games, and Mauer in three. But newcomers were just as prominent, as Eduardo Nunez kept hitting, plateauing at a .338 clip, and Robbie Grossman cracking the faltering lineup to also hit over .300 in just a few games.
A four-game winning streak that ran through the three games in Seattle lifted the Twins above the worst-record-in-baseball level, and knocked the Mariners out of first place. The four-game streak was broken when the Twins went to Oakland and lost Monday’s game 3-2.
The good news is that when the Twins return home to Target Field, there will be genuine reason to have fans show up and cheer them on. No, they have no chance of erasing the horrible start to the season, but we can realistically shoot for the .500 mark, which would be remarkable enough at this point.
Indy 500 Surprise
The 100th Indianapolis 500 last Sunday set standards that will long be remembered by all who watched it. Every Indy 500 runs its course and gets down to the last dozen laps or so with the field spread out enough so observers can generally figure which two or three drivers have a legitimate shot at winning it.
On Sunday, those drivers were Ryan Hunter-Reay, Townsend Bell, and pole-sitter James Hinchcliff, an independent Canadian driver who had won the pole in qualifying. Those three had run up front all day, holding off Carlos Munoz , Josef Newgarden along with several others. Those cars run about 25 laps on a tankful of fuel, and the front-runners all knew they couldn’t make it to the finish if they went fast enough to win it. So when Mikhail Aleshin caution slowdown coming, most of the front-runners dashed into the pits for the briefest splash of fuel – just enough to make it the rest of the way.
Hunter-Reay and Bell, the two fastest cars on the track, bolted from their pits and bumped, spinning both with slight damage. Both were pulled back to their pit spots and had the repairs fixed, but returned a lap down. That left Hinchcliff, Munoz and Newgarden as the most likely to win, after they pitted quickly with five laps to go. When they returned to the track, they found the leader was a completely unknown rookie, Alexander Rossi, a California native who had been trying his hand at Formula 1 racing in Europe and had never had a ride in the Indy 500.
Rossi already had spent his prescribed laps for fuel, and hadn’t pitted for the splash to make it the final few laps, which made it appear certain that he would either have to dart into the pits, or run out of gas. Driving a car for former racer Bryan Herta, as a peripheral part of Michael Andretti’s team, Rossi, 24, followed team orders for a gamble, and stayed out and kept circulating. Herta told him to conserve fuel every way possible, even shifting in spots to coast. Since pitting would assure him of dropping out of the top five, why not stay out and try to nurse it home?
Incredibly, he kept driving, increasing his speed up from his economy-run status when he was informed that Munoz and Newgarden were closing in. Rossi said later his Honda engine sputtered once in Turn 4 on the final lap, but he coaxed something like 33 laps out of it, and crossed the finish line with an incredible victory. As 400,000 fans cheered him around on his cool-down victory lap, he ran out of fuel as he came out of Turn 4 and aimed down pit road,. A wrecker had to be dispatched to pull him to Victory Lane.
Huskies Open
The Duluth Huskies have opened their Northern League season on the road, and will come home to Wade Stadium to face Mankato. A few familiar faces from UMD and St. Scholastica will make the Huskies an instant attraction. Grant Farley is the top name from the power-hitting Division II Bulldogs, and Division III St. Scholastica is supplying shortstop Steven Neutzling from St. Cloud, and pitcher Martin Alcoverde from Arizona and Mesabi Range Community College.
As the Huskies start their season in the college summer league, the area high schools are reaching the sectional climax in both baseball and softball which makes spring an outstanding attraction for area sports.
