Twins Video
Have you ever played tennis against someone just one step worse than you? Not saying you’re Roger Federer and they’re Jerry’s tennis instructor on Seinfeld, but y’know, you have a real stroke to your shots, you can put some top spin on them, maybe you took some lessons at some point. And your opponent is just running around trying their best to block the ball back to you, using a racket they bought in 2006.
Anybody who’s played knows what happens: your good shots get returned back to you, and you keep hitting good shots back until you make a mistake.
You lock in and start trying to hit winners back since nothing that's being hit to you is hard to get to, at all.
You get one in, you feel vindicated. This is gonna be a breeze.
The next shot you hit is just out.
You hit another good one, but your opponent just gets to it and is able to lob it back to you.
You try an overhand smash and it goes right into the net.
You lose the match, or set, or whatever you’re playing. You tried your best, but you just made too many mistakes. It happens; tennis can be a random game sometimes. But the pain isn’t over. Your opponent doesn’t interpret the results that way. They beat you, which means that in their mind, they are a better tennis player than you.
Au contraire, you say! You try to explain why your own mistakes caused the result, but that sure sounds like sour grapes.
You then think, I can explain this by focusing on my opponent. They can’t say they’re a better tennis player than you when their serve goes 45 MPH. Again, sour grapes, and a little vindicating to your opponent, who now thinks they dominate the mental game.
But it’s true! You know its true! You put the time in to become an okay tennis player. They didn’t!
Maybe it doesn’t matter who’s better. Maybe we just need to enjoy the game and stop trying to evaluate the games of you and your friends like you’re trying out for Wimbledon.
But you’re not trying out for anything. You’re just a fan of the Minnesota Twins watching the Cleveland Guardians tap the ball back to you, their old-timey pluckiness and outsized confidence sucking all the joy you gain from sports, while kicking you repeatedly in the balls and making you doubt your soundness of mind, as the events play out like some George Will fanfiction:
“Of course the Twins choice to insert their closer into the eighth inning would backfire, as our hero José "the Prizefighter" Ramírez steps to the plate. They said the shift rule would never need to be enforced, but they never met Carlos Correa.”
I mean look, the Guardians have holes all throughout their lineup; their second-best starter has a torn UCL; and their best starter is out for the year for a torn UCL. Their best young pitcher has a torn UCL. Their best fielders don’t play premium defensive positions. They still don’t have much hitting in the outfield. Their center fielder is a shortstop just pretending. But they know how to beat teams with more talent than them. As I write this, Cleveland has just beaten the mighty Orioles 10-8, after their starting pitcher went three innings and allowed six runs.
Last year, the talent disparity almost felt a little closer than it does now, considering Shane Bieber was available the whole year. Naturally, the Guardians won the season series and put a scare into the Twins long after the division should have been decided.
The year before that, they won four or five games against Emilio Pagán alone. And that was before the Twins lost 19 players (approx.) to season-ending injuries.
(It’s quite the opposite of the Twins’ parlays with the Yankees over the years, in which it is pretty clear, in most years, that the Yankees are in another class of talent. But the Yankees don’t play tennis; they play Calvinball or something.)
It’s like when Homer Simpson rises to the top of the boxing world because his skull is so thick that everyone gets tired trying to knock him out. The Guardians keep fouling pitches off, extending innings and making nice defensive plays until they look up and the Twins haven’t scored a run in seven innings, and Will Brennan’s two-run tapper down the line in the fifth has won them the game. The Boxcar Twins fall again.
Is it fair? It’s more than fair; the Guardians are operating with about $40 million less in payroll than the Twins have.
Is it good for baseball? Besides José Ramírez’s contract depressing third base salaries for a generation, I’d say it's nice to have a different fundamental approach to the game than most other teams. The fact that they are actually successful means we may get another Michael Lewis book out of the deal. It's fun to see a powerful team like the Orioles or Yankees succumb to death by a thousand paper cuts. If I wasn't a Twins fan, Minnesota-Cleveland matchups would be the absolute best, in terms of pure baseball content. Power versus singles hitters. Athletic Specimen versus 5'7" Kinda Chubby Guy. Two goofy brothers versus three first overall picks.
Is it good baseball? It’s incredible baseball. It's a football team winning entirely because of special teams and turnovers. It's a little blue-collar. It’s Seve Ballesteros combined with Robert Horry. It will make little sense, until we can start quantifying Confidence+ on Fangraphs.
Furthermore, the rise of sports betting has created a certain arrogance in certainty that the Guardians fly in the face of. What passes for analysis these days is saying “Looking at the National League this year, there are thirteen teams that are close to the playoff picture, but it's the top six in the standings that have really impressed thus far.” Teams like the Guardians screw up that recent-results-based calculus, making betting experts and even MLB Network goons have to consider, “well, they are the Guardians.”
That’s beautiful. It would be even prettier if it stayed the [redacted] away from me and my own favorite team.
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