The Twins Aren't the Only First Place Team to Fall This Season

2020 has been a wild year and it has been no different in baseball. For example, the Orioles and the Marlins seem likely to sneak into the playoffs at this point. Who saw that coming? We have seen the Twins, a team thought to be the favorite for first place, fall to third in their division. We have also seen two other elite teams, the Yankees and Astros, fall much further than the Twins. What happened?

New York Yankees: 21-21, third in ALE, lost 5 in a row

The Yankees missing the playoffs could be the best thing to ever happen to the Minnesota Twins franchise. After losing 5 in a row and not looking very competitive lately they find themselves with a .500 record and just a 0.5 game lead over Baltimore for the final playoff spot. Their offense has the 17th highest WAR and 14th highest OPS. The pitching has the 20th highest WAR and the 13th worst ERA.

Just like last season, this is largely due to an insane amount of injuries. Out of the 42 games played, Judge has missed 24, Stanton has missed 28, Torres has missed 12, LeMahieu has been hurt, and it just doesn’t get better. On the pitching side they have been without Luis Severino, Cole has a FIP of 4.64 and Paxton has an ERA of 6.64 so things aren’t going great there either.

The Twins have certainly had their share of injuries, but what the Yankees are going through is unbelievable. Judge and Stanton are always hurt and the rest of the team just hasn’t performed and yet I do not feel bad at all. I really hope they miss the playoffs to the Baltimore Orioles.

Houston Astros: 22-21, 2nd in ALW, lost 7 of their last 10

I think everyone in America is happy to see the Astros struggle this season. After coming off an offseason where the organization was exposed for cheating and very little punishment was given out, no one is an Astros fan outside of Houston.

Like the Yankees, Houston has had a couple of their star players hit the IL with Alex Bregman on the 10 day and Yordan Alvarez out for the season. Besides that, the offense hasn’t performed well with only three players having an OPS over .800 and Altuve not doing well at all. He has fallen to a .606 OPS and a 69 wRC+ this season. George Springer and Carlos Correa haven’t been as bad, but they are definitely below expectations. They lost both Gerrit Cole and Justin Verlander so their starting pitching was doomed from the start.

We like to look at the Twins “fall” out of first place but they’re still a very good team behind two teams who are red hot. At least we aren’t watching the Yankees or Astros 2020 implosions because that seems painful. As we always say, thank goodness we’re Twins fans and not Yankees fans! It’s so much easier.

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