Twins win series with Tigers, bludgeon Indians

Though the Twins breezed through interleague play with a league-best 14-4 record, there was some concern about the Twins returning to divisional play and possibly suffering a let-down. So far, that hasn't happened, as a series win versus Detroit and a 12-2 shellacking of Cleveland have pushed Minnesota to a previously unthinkable 10 games over .500.

How have they been doing it? Lately it's been a little of everything:

- In 8 of the past 15 games, the Twins have scored 6 or more runs.

- In 8 of the past 15 games, the Twins have allowed 3 or fewer runs.

On a team with few stars, it helps when everybody pitches in, and at this point the Twins are as much in a team mode as any club in the league: Craig Monroe and Jason Kubel hit key homers, Brian Bass and Jesse Crain get key outs in relief, and you probably won't see any of them at the All-Star Game. Heck, you might not even see Joe Nathan, despite FoxSports's Ken Rosenthal's endorsement of him; despite being poised to inherit the mantle of 'best closer in the AL' from the Yankees's Mariano Rivera, there's been more buzz around the Royals' Joachim Soria and the Orioles' George Sherill, and Nathan hasn't been to the All-Star Game since 2005 anyway.

Oh, and as long as we're talking about FoxSports guys...

Dayn Perry is the latest to weigh in on the topic du jour -- why the Twins run of good luck can't last. (Again, it's a topic I'm pretty familiar with.) Perry hits all the right notes -- he mentions the Twins good luck in clutch situations and their relatively poor on-base percentage and slugging percentage compared to their overall offensive output. But one thing stuck out as I was reading his essay:

There's also a divide between the Twins' offensive performance at the rate level and the number of runs they've scored. Despite their impressive runs total, they're a mere eighth in the AL in on-base percentage and slugging percentage. Given their below-average abilities when it comes to reaching base and hitting for power, the Twins have been exceedingly lucky to score as many runs as they have. They've made up the difference, as indicated above, by thriving in clutch situations. Whether you believe in the theoretical concept of "clutch" or not, it's almost impossible to imagine they'll able to keep that up.
(emphasis mine)

Perry's not wrong -- the Twins have made up for a relative lack of OBP and SLG by coming through in key situations, and there's little reason to think that the Twins will keep that pace up all season long. On the other hand, back at the start of May the Twins were dead last in OBP in the AL and close to dead last in slugging -- the club was still waiting for its first home run by a right-handed hitter back then -- so that the club's offense has moved all the way up to middle-of-the-pack in each category is actually awfully encouraging, if that improvement can be sustained.

Can it? We'll get to that later.