Photo: Jayne Kamin-Oncea/USA Today Sports

If you haven’t taken notice, the Minnesota Twins have been playing very good baseball this season. This shouldn’t have come as a surprise to baseball fans, they were even my pre-season pick to overtake the Cleveland Indians and win the AL Central this year. But they are playing much better than I imagined they would have. Currently they are 33-16 and lead the Central by 7.5 games over the Indians. The problem with the Twins is they are a small market team and you don’t hear about them nearly as much as you should. But let’s talk about them now. Are the Twins good enough to win the World Series?

When you talk about the Twins, you have to start with offense. They have been putting on an offensive show this season. Let’s throw out some quick stats for you:

Across the MLB

· 1st in runs scored (289), 5.9/game

· 2nd in hits (460)

· 1st in home runs (98)

· 1st in RBI (277)

· 2nd in avg. (.272)

· 1st in barrel rate (10.8%)

The team barrel rate refers to how often they square up the ball when they make contact, and their percentage is much higher than any other team in the majors. As you can see from all the other statistics, this team can flat out hit. As I type this, they just wrapped up a game against the Angels where they scored 16 runs and hit 8 home runs. They’ve already hit 5+ home runs in six games this season. Not much else needs to be said about their offense. They have the most dangerous one in the game.

When it comes to pitching, they are 8th overall in team ERA and 18th overall in opponent average. They don’t have the staff that some other good teams have, but they certainly aren’t bad in that department either. Jose Berrios, Martin Perez, and Jake Odorizzi are having nice seasons so far, while Michael Pineda and Kyle Gibson are certainly capable of good games. The question here is do they have enough pitching to make a deep playoff run. You’d also have to think they would seriously consider obtaining another arm by the trade deadline with the type of season they are having.

The biggest tell-tell stat for me when it comes to determining how good teams really are is the +/- run differential. The Twins are at a phenomenal +90 on the season, good for 2nd place, just behind the Astros. Those two teams are running away with that stat, with the next couple of teams in the +60s. And speaking of the Astros, they are the one team that poses the biggest threat to the Twins as far as reaching the World Series goes. You have to consider Houston the AL favorites right now with their abundance of talent and postseason experience. But with baseball you never know and I definitely think the Twins have enough to not only make it to the World Series this season, but win it. And like I stated earlier, if their success continues, they will just get stronger since they will be buyers at the trade deadline to make a postseason push. I always enjoy seeing new teams get in the championship conversation in all sports, so I would really like to see the Twins do some damage this October. Their offense would be a lot of fun to watch on the big stage.

Garett

How Good Are the Minnesota Twins?