What does that have to do with baseball? Glad you asked.
With the Twins winning nine games in a row in interleague play, moving them seven games above .500 and just half a game behind division-leading Chicago, the big question is 'Are these Twins for real?' Star-Tribune columnist Jim Souhan seems to think so, to the point where he's advocating a front office that he claims had a 'bad winter' to make more deals to try and improve the ballclub. Meanwhile, Ken Rosenthal of FoxSports.com weighs in to talk about how the Twins have been either 'lucky or clutch', and that it isn't likely to last. Jesse Lund of TwinkieTown is simply enjoying the ride, and documents the offensive numbers for all the Twins during this current 10-wins-in-11-games stretch.
Everyone's focusing on the offense (and I'll admit, this includes me), and for good reason -- the offense is actually improved since the start of the season:
April - .260 BA/666 OPS
May - .273/740
June - .284/764
But when I went back to look to see how often this kind of offensive improvement leads to a Twins division title over the Ron Gardenhire era, I found something odd -- it's not really the offense that stirs the drink when it comes to the Twins. Since 2002, improvement in the Twins pitching staff at midseason is actually more responsible for the Twins winning division titles than improvements in their offense.
In retrospect, this seems obvious -- the Twins haven't finished higher than 6th, and usually finish below average in offense even in their division title years, so the point is that the offense is just good enough to contend -- it's the pitching staff that gets the work done.
In 2002, the Twins offense was actually doing very well for the first four months of the season before falling apart in August and somewhat recovering in September:
April - .284/803
May - .272/753
June - .272/773
July - .290/830
August - .252/695
Sept/Oct - .262/764
However, while the offense was going well, the Twins were just a handful of games over .500 because the pitching staff wasn't yet clicking. Then, in July, the pitching staff kicked in* and the Twins went 19-7.
* - I like how Joe Posnanski uses these asterisks to call out parenthetical comments, so I'll do the same. Twins fans remember that the 2002 improvement in the pitching staff was due to Johan Santana's promotion to the starting rotation -- except that it wasn't. Santana was called up to the Twins on May 31 and pitched a fairly unimpressive game against the Angels in long relief, then moved into the starting rotation in June. While Santana himself pitched well in June (3-1, 1.88 ERA, 37 K and 20 H in 28.2 innings), the Twins as a whole went just 15-12 with a staff ERA of 4.45. In July, when the Twins staff improved by nearly a full run in ERA and went 19-7 for the month to pull away from the pack, Santana started only four games, and two of them were miserable: a 7-run (3 earned), 4.2 inning outing against the Angels where Santana walked seven, and an 8-run (all earned), 3.2 inning disaster against the White Sox in Chicago. The starter who was most responsible for the Twins improvement in July? Kyle Lohse - who was 3-1 in six starts (the Twins won both of Lohse's no-decisions and were shut out in his loss) with an ERA of 2.41 in 37.1 innings. (During the same period, Santana had a 4.21 ERA in 25.2 innings.) Of course, no Twins fan remembers Lohse's July heroics...
In 2003, Twins fans remember that the offense was sorely missing a leadoff man until Terry Ryan swung a deal with Toronto over the All-Star break to bring Shannon Stewart into the fold. Oddly enough, while the Twins offense was fairly unimpressive in July, it's hard to argue that it was that bad throughout the first half of the season:
April - .247/699 - 101 R
May - .292/820 - 152 R
June - .294/807 - 141 R
July - .264/724 - 113 R
August - .284/777 - 153 R
Sept/Oct - .276/798 - 141 R
The Twins' OPSes were higher in May and June than they were in August and September, and they scored almost exactly the same number of runs in May and June as they scored in August and September. The real problem for the Twins in June (when they went 12-15) and July (when they went 10-16) was that the pitching staff sucked -- the staff ERA in June was 5.54, while in July it was 5.43. The ERA for Twins starters was even worse: 6.01 in both June and July. Then, suddenly, in August, the starting rotation dropped to a 3.77 cumulative ERA and it fell again to 3.65 in Sept/Oct. This time, the main driving force for the drop was Santana, who entered the rotation full-time in July and threw a couple of bad outings before turning it on in August, finishing 5-0 with a 1.07 ERA in six starts. (Kyle Lohse was 5-1 with a 3.83 ERA in six starts, while Kenny Rogers was 3-1 with a 2.60 ERA in five starts.) Down the stretch, however, Santana had an unimpressive 4.85 ERA (though he did win three of five starts); it was Lohse again picking up the slack (3-1 in six starts with the Twins splitting his no-decisions and a 3.50 ERA) assisted by a month for the ages from Brad Radke (4-0 and just 7 earned runs allowed in five starts).
To reiterate something that most Twins fans likely don't remember and will disagree with, it wasn't an offensive improvement that drove the Twins to their 2003 pennant:
First Half Second Half
Offense - .275/768 .280/779
Pitching - 44-49, 4.74 ERA 46-23, 3.96 ERA
Yep, that extra eleven points of OPS really did the trick.
In 2004, the Twins were doing well offensively in April, but an injury to Stewart deprived the club of its leadoff man and the team went into an offensive slump until he came back after the All-Star break.
April - .297/836
May - .245/689
June - .246/721
July - .271/770
August - .268/802
Sept/Oct - .272/772
That seems pretty clear, right? Weak first half, stronger second, all driven by the bats. Well, what if I told you that the Twins had effectively the same record in June (14-12) as they had in August (15-13). And in this case it's not even the pitching that's responsible for the difference, since the club had a staff ERA of 3.98 in June and 4.03 in August? The Twins' best months of 2004 were, not surprisingly, also their best pitching months:
July - 17-10, 3.24 ERA
Sept/Oct - 19-11, 3.83 ERA
This was the year Santana began the season in the rotation and eventually won his first Cy Young, so it probably wouldn't surprise you to learn his July was almost incomprehensibly good: six starts, 46 innings (nearly eight per start), 14 hits, 15 walks, 61 strikeouts, and six earned runs for an ERA of 1.17. Yet Santana was just 3-2 for the month, and the Twins were 4-2 in his six starts. The real stars were relievers J.C. Romero, Grant Balfour, and Joe Nathan, who combined for 36.2 innings of relief while allowing one earned run. Yes, I meant one earned run between the three of them. (For those of you scoring at home, that's an effective ERA of 0.245.) Add in setup man Juan Rincon, who allowed six earned runs of his own, and the relief staff pitched more innings (50) at a slightly higher ERA (1.44) than Santana, while putting together a combined record of 5-1 with eight saves.
September, on the other hand, was Santana's month. Carlos Silva was 4-0 with a 2.41 ERA, while Jesse Crain played vulture with a 3-0 record in 16 innings of 1.69 ERA work, but Santana took his July numbers nearly to a whole different level: 40 innings, 20 hits, 7 walks, 2 earned runs, 52 strikeouts, and a 5-0 record in six starts. (The Twins lost Santana's final start of the season, the first of a doubleheader against the Yankees.) The staff as a whole helped the Twins hold off both the Royals and the White Sox in turn in the closest of the Twins three consecutive division titles.
If we were on a Twins site rather than the No Bias Network I'd just say '2006, you know about' and leave it at that. But on the off-chance you're not a Twins fan, let me recap: the accepted story of the 2006 season is that the Twins, moribund in May, got amazing turn-arounds from Joe Mauer (who ended up winning the AL batting title; the first time a catcher has done so) and Justin Morneau (who won the AL MVP for his effort), supported by the pitching of Johan Santana (who won his second Cy Young for his effort). Well, here are the numbers:
April - .250/675
May - .288/771
June - .281/793
July - .316/838
August - .289/777
Sept/Oct - .293/764
Now I realize I may be giving the impression that I think the Twins offense was superfluous in these division titles, and that's clearly not the case; in 2005, the Twins offense was among the worst in baseball and the club was never really in contention despite a Cy Young-caliber season from Santana. Also, 2006 gives us some solid evidence that the offense was carrying its weight -- during the club's best-hitting month, they also had a record of 18-8 and ran off an eight-game winning streak that helped them keep pace with the then-surging Tigers.
Of course, in June the Twins had a record of 19-7, had another eight-game win streak, and ran off the first eight of a completely separate eleven-game win streak that also helped them keep pace with the Tigers, who were themselves finishing June on an 18-3 run. The Twins had a 2.76 ERA, led by the one-two punch of Johan Santana and Francisco Liriano, who combined to go 9-1, and were ably supported by veteran Brad Radke, who put up a 3-1, 2.09 mark himself in June.
So while it makes sense to look at the Twins steadily improving offensive numbers and lay the credit for their current run at the feet of the hitters, I'm keeping my eye on the mound -- especially for the return of Liriano, who after an embarrassing three starts earlier in the season has been pitching much more consistently at AAA over the past month.
Offense Pitching
April - .260/666 13-14, 4.32
May - .273/740 15-13, 4.26
June - .284/764 14-9, 4.39
Or maybe this year it really is the offense...
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