The Twins couldn't have asked for a better start to the month of June. After one of the worst starts in team history, they've opened up the third month of the season 4-1, after sweeping the Royals this weekend. So, what's different? Granted, this four-game winning streak came at the expense of the Royals, who haven't been a factor for almost 25 years, but this is also a Royals team that swept the Twins at Target Field earlier this season. So, how did the Twins get it done?
The injuries continue to pile up, so the lineup thrown out there on Sunday was one of the most inexperienced of the season. Both Denard Span and Justin Morneau sat on Sunday, nursing injuries, so the lineup continued to look different. Jason Repko and Luke Hughes looked very solid today, which hopefully will give both guys confidence going forward. The inexperience, however, has been an excuse many Twins fans have used this season during the low points thus far. "You can't expect us to win with a bunch of minor leaguers in the lineup," has been a common argument of many fans. But, it hasn't been the inexperience that's been the problem this season.
Over the last couple of weeks, the performances the Twins have gotten from their starting pitchers have been outstanding. Nick Blackburn had a perfect month of May, and looked solid on Saturday before leaving with a little lower back stiffness. Carl Pavano has started to look more like the veteran leader he was re-signed to be. Anthony Swarzak has been a great fill-in for Francisco Liriano over his last two starts. And Scott Baker has looked much more comfortable in recent weeks than he has in the last couple of years. With the starters pitching better and pitching deeper into games, the bullpen has been less and less needed. In situations where we'd usually see Gardy bring in the pen, we're seeing him stick with his starters a bit longer, which I absolutely love! Bullpens are the most overrated thing in baseball, and many teams, not just the Twins, are too dependent on their bullpens, rather than letting starters work out of jams in the middle innings. When the starters are pitching better, it's easier on the bullpen. But, that's not the only reason the team is playing better.
What this series against Kansas City showed is that the Twins can get back to playing "Twins baseball." It may not be much, but going into this series, the Twins had stolen a base once in every 2.2 games. They stole four bases during the series, and had been caught three times. That's a total of seven stolen base attempts, which shows me that the team has begun to be a bit more aggressive on the base paths. This is something that, with the speed the Twins have, they need to be doing far more of. Guys like Span, Casilla, Revere, Tolbert, and Repko need to be turned loose on the bases in order for this team to generate more runs. Gardenhire can't be afraid to have runners thrown out. With the speed this team has, the results will be far more favorable and worth the risk.
Extra-base hits have also been something very difficult to come by for this team this season. Before this series, only 27% of the Twins hits this season were extra-base hits. That percentage was improved in this series, with the Twins having 33% of their hits this series (14 of 43) be of the extra-base variety. When you couple that with the increased activity on the bases from the speed guys, and you can see how the Twins started generating their runs, and thus generating a four-game sweep. These things will need to continue when the play this next series against the first-place Indians in Cleveland.
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