Twins

Baseball hasn't always been the paragon of parity, with teams like the Cardinals, Braves, and Yankees constructing dynasties that spanned the better part of a decade, but this year is unlike any we've seen in recent history. No American League team is more than 10 games out of a playoff spot with two full months of the season left. It's parity to the utmost: Every team is in it if they want to be.

From a general baseball standpoint, this is phenomenal. Even as the Royals run away with the AL Central, the other four playoff spots are all still very much up for grabs, and it virtually guarantees meaningful baseball will be played well into September.

As you may have heard from other places on the internet and quite possibly on this very website, the Twins' top prospect, Byron Buxton, has joined the team in Texas and the assumption is that he'll make his debut on Sunday.

Signup has begun for the Touch 'Em All Pub Crawl, sponsored by Proximo Spirits, and you can join us by clicking on this link. Tickets are $60. The event starts August 23rd at noon and includes a $27 Twins ticket, a t-shirt, and a whole lot more as described below. Last year was legendary and we expect a much bigger crowd this year. Grab your tickets right now.

It seems a little inappropriate to call Kennys Vargas “Little Papi”. According to Baseball Reference he is an inch taller (6’ 5”) and weighs thirty-five pounds more than Mr. Ortiz. One can assume that this comparison has more to do with their skills with a bat than their impressive physical stature. They may not be the quickest nor the best when it comes to flashing the leather but they do both possess an important skill, one that Jeremy Clarkson of Top Gear fame deems the most vital, though his reasoning pertains to motor vehicles: Power.

Over the last thirty days Kennys has put himself among some very impressive company thanks to his prowess with a baseball bat.

This is the third and last, but not least, segment in this series. You can find the first segment (fixing the bullpen) and the rationale for the series here, and the second segment (fixing the outfield) here. I think that the most important (and at times the hardest, or the easiest) thing to fix for the Twins is the team attitude.

A great article was written this week by Jonathan Judge and published at The Hardball Times, " FIP in Context." This introduces an new metric, called cFIP, or contest-adjusted FIP that attempts to "estimate the pitcher’s true pitching talent during a particular season".

At first read, the title of this series sounds very much like A Midsummer Night's Dream: Do I dare suggest that the team that went from 99 to 96 to 96 to 92 losses the past five seasons needs to do only three things to compete? The next number to that Arithmetic Progression up there is between 88 and 92 and that is not competing by any means. Let me explain my train of thought here, before the nice kind people in white come and take me to warmer climes:

A couple of days after the All-Star Game, the Twins find themselves nine games above .500, and in the midst of a competitive season. The fact that the Twins are competing might be a surprise to some, but from what I had seen in spring training, this team had all the making of a competing team, and I even compared it to the 1987 team.

This week on the podcast we are joined by the great Rob Neyer (https://twitter.com/robneyer (@robneyer),http://robneyer.com/, http://www.foxsports...-a-bit-outside) a real baseball writing celebrity. Also on this episode is Eric's potty mouth. You've been warned.You can download the new Talk to Contact (@TalkToContact) episode via iTunes or by clicking here.

I have followed the Twins since they moved to Minnesota from Washington. In the early days, the Twins excelled in hitting home runs. They had plenty of power at many positions, led by perennial home run king Harmon Killebrew, who led the league in homers six times. However, since Mr. Nixon said "I am not a crook", and Harmon got old, the Twins have had a severe power shortage.

Last year, Ricky Nolasco signed what is easily the largest free agent contract ever for the Twins. While not every Twins fan was happy, the consensus was that the Twins had opened their wallets wide to get a guy who would guarantee them innings and competitive starts. In other words, while Nolasco's ceiling wasn't thought to be that of an ace, his floor was thought to be competence or better.

Thursday afternoon, after the Minnesota Twins defeated the St. Louis Cardinals at Target Field, Twins GM Terry Ryan found himself having some technical difficulties. It seems Ryan’s America Online account had been compromised in some way, leading to rampant speculation.