Was That All it Took?

The Minnesota Twins are insanely good this year.  No one is more surprised than myself as at the beginning of the season, I was scratching my head wondering who half these guys were.  But almost by magic, rookie manager Rocco Baldelli has taken this rag tag bunch of players and turned them in a juggernaut.

The transformation is insane.  The Twins lead the major leagues in home runs (Home freaking Runs!!!) at 156, runs (471), total bases (1446), RBI's (453), team batting average (.271), and they lead slugging percentage by a mile (.498).  They're third in hits (787), 4th in doubles (169), and are 6th in on base percentage (.337).  [stats as of 10 PM on 6/30/19]

This...THIS from a team who has been known as the small ball capitol of baseball.  The Twin's legacy against power began under Tom Kelly and continued through Gardenhire and Molitor's regimes.  They were so committed to hitting only singles and doubles they gave David Ortiz to the Boston Red Sox for a bag of pebbles.  They literally were angry he kept hitting the ball out of the park.  You would've thought the shame of that bad decision would've changed things up, but it wasn't until the complete gutting of the team after last season did we finally get a major shift in coaching.

It'a almost as if Rocco has just told these guys "you see that fence out there.  Hit it over that!"  I'm at a complete loss for anything else which can explain this offensive explosion.

Well not entirely.  I think the mentality of where the Twins have been for the last 15 or so seasons has a lot to do with Joe Mauer.  The Twins fell in love with Mauer the minute they drafted him.  They conceived of a marketing strategy which placed Joe in the center of their universe as the sun, and everything else orbited around him.  Mauer was a great player, but their desire to keep him as the "best Twin" caused the organization to play a style of baseball which sacrificed the talents of many; as long as the shine never went off the Mauer apple.  Anytime a hot hitting player started to get some traction in the fan base, they suddenly were in a different uniform.  If Mauer was primarily a singles and doubles hitter, then sure as heck no one else could be hitting home runs.

I know some people will scream that's not true, many players had big hitting years with the team.  Yeah, and where are they now?  The reason the 2019 roster was a bushel of "who?" is because any player who started to garner some of the Mauer praise for themselves found themselves shipped off to another team.  The removal of the overachieving player wasn't instant, but it was consistent.

Now, with Mauer retired, and along with him the Mauer doctrine, players are coming out of the shadows and swinging for the fences. There are eight Twins with 10 or more homers by late June! Jorge Polanco is hitting .320. Six regular players are hitting .270 or better.  Eddie Rosario has 60 RBI's, Max Kepler has 53, C. J. Cron 52!  This team came out of nowhere and if the bats keep working for them, they will play deep into October.

Swing for the fences!  Was that all it took?  Apparently, yes...well that and the removal of the Mauer handcuffs which were on the rest of the Minnesota Twins.