Very Well Then

If you could alter Twins history — what would you change?

Joe Posnanski recently listed his “Top Ten Sports Code Moments” – ten hypothetical ‘do overs’ from the sports world.   His inspiration comes from the movie, “Source Code,” where Jake Gyllenhayll is the subject of a military science project that sends him back to recent history to learn things that could alter the future.

For Posnanski’s “Sport’s Code” moments, the basic concept is you can’t change the outcome of events, only the inputs leading up to the event.   You can’t know how the situation will play out, but you can make a few tweaks in hoping the situation plays out differently, at least.

I finally saw the movie on Netflix, no wait …Qwikster, no wait …Netflix, and I was expecting a slightly different premise based on Posnanski’s “Sports Code” premise.  Oh well.  Each are a bit different.  In the “Sports Code” premise you can go back in time and change things.  However, you can’t change the outcome of events, only the inputs leading up to the event.   You can’t know how the situation will play out, but you can make a few tweaks in life’s source code in hoping the situation plays out differently, at least.

Posnanski came up with ten Sports Code moments for sports generally.  I’m going to present 5 Twins Source Code moments — historical rewrites to change the history of the Minnesota Twins.*

* After this lost season, I’m not the only one whiling away my time playing what-if games about Twins history.    Check out Nate Gilmore’s excellent Twins’ hypotheticals.

1)  Kirby’s bean ball.   Moments before Dennis Martinez threw the last regular season pitch ever to Kirby Puckett, I’d somehow induce Kirby to call for a timeout.   I’d tinker with the source code to allow for just a few seconds for everyone to regroup themselves, Martinez to regrip the ball, Kirby to refocus.  With my source code change, I believe Kirby would finish that final game of the 1995 season and be in great shape to start out 1996.

Kirby and the Twins have always formally insisted that Kirby’s subsequent onset of glaucoma was not a result of the beaning.  But it’s not an explanation that sits well.   During a pressbox visit in the late 1990′s, Kirby himself allegedly slipped off the official party line when he said, after watching a batter avoid an inside pitch, something like, “if I would have ducked, I’d still be playing.”

Twins fans got cheated out of several more years of quality Kirby time.  I’m especially disappointed in not seeing him play beside Paul Molitor in 1996 when Molitor had a revival year returning to his hometown.

Mind you, Kirby likely would have continued in the fade from his peak years – who knows how fast?  Twins fans did avoid the pain many fans feel when seeing their heroes hold on when the magic has dissipated.    Of course, there was plenty of pain in seeing Kirby’s life unravel in the years after baseball was taken away from him.   I can’t help but feel it would have all played out much better had Kirby ducked.

2)  Tony Oliva’s Knee Injury

My memory of Tony Oliva was mostly that of a rickety designated hitter that everybody said: “you should have seen just a few years ago.”    The culmination of this memory of Aching Tony was the brief and woeful experiment in the spring of 1976, where Tony served as the leadoff hitter in the first few road games.  He would bat once and get replaced by a pinch-runner should he reach, and then walk over to the first base coaching box to take up coaching duties for the remainder of the game. Tony reached base only once in the four times the experiment was used.

To get a longer-lasting Oliva, I’d have to rewrite June 29, 1971 — the day that Tony wrenched his knee late in a game against the A’s.  I guess I’d get Ron Perranoski to throw something different to Joe Rudi, so Rudi wouldn’t have lined one to right field, where Tony stumbled on the wet turf.  After missing a few weeks, Oliva returned to hold onto his batting title for the 1971 season, but he was never the same player after that.    After missing most of 1972, he returned as the Twins first DH when the AL adapted the rule in 1973.

3)  The Strike

As a baseball fan, the one great avoidable tragedy  of my lifetime was the 1994 strike.  There probably aren’t enough software programmers in the world to reprogram all the egos that collectively accounted for the 1994 strike, but I’d try.  For the Twins – well they weren’t going anywhere that season (final record: 53-60) – or anytime soon.   Knoblauch was on his way to a phenomenal season – on pace to challenge the double record.   We all would have gotten more Kirby-in-his-prime.  Shane Mack had a great season, but with the strike, would take his talents to Japan.

After the strike, the economics of baseball changed and the small-market/crappy-stadium Twins were going to be buried for a while.

4) Morneau’s Slide

Justin Morneau was wonked on the head by the knee of Toronto shortstop John McDonald* on July 7, 2010 and his career has been in the hazy fog of a severe concussion ever since.   Justin was having his best year yet, carrying an underachieving team through the first half of the 2010 season.  The 2010 Twins would carry on fine without him for the remainder of the 2010 season, but his major bat was missed in the playoffs and he’s had another lost season for the floundering Twins of 2011.

My source code change?  I’d send some signals from the bench on that day in Toronto – send Justin on a hit and run, perhaps – something to alter the arrival at second base.  The routine play would remain routine.  Justin might have another MVP.  The 2011 Twins might not have been so wretched.  And the future of the Twins would be so much more in focus.

* I beam with pride in seeing my baptismal name in major league box scores – even if the box scores don’t look too pretty.

5) Mauer

As a final piece of source code edit, I’d go back to 2001, Joe Mauer’s first season as a minor leaguer.  There I would reprogram the minds of the Twins think-tank to reposition Mauer as an outfielder.     I fully believe that Mauer’s best “value” to a baseball team is as a catcher.  But one of the fun things about programming is that you can tinker with some code, run the experiment and then re-program and re-run the code, over and over again.

And I’m just so curious as to how this would go.

There is no guarantee that he’d stay healthy as an outfielder (just ask Kubel or Oliva), but could a career in the outfield mean a real shot at seeing Mauer make a run at .400?   At the very least, it would be a joy to see a fully healthy Mauer applying that sweet lefty swing more predictably.    Of course, with a healthy Mauer, Souhan would have to find another reason to get up in the morning.

Those are my five rewrites.   What are yours?

My Twitter feed: Very_Well_Then

Harper’s magazine begins each issue with a list of number-oriented factoids called Harper’s Index.   Below is VeryWellThen.Com’s second annual series of number-oriented factoids about the Twins baseball season.   Here on the Twins-ernet, such a list has to be called “Brian Harper’s Index.”

[It’s said that baseball’s 162 game season isn’t a sprint, but a marathon.  For the 2011 Twins it was a triathlon.   The Twins almost drown in the opening “swim “stage (the first 54 games), cranked it like Lance Armstrong with a tail wind in the middle “bike” stage, and stumbled like a hamstrung Molina in the homestretch “run” stage.   Reflecting this triathlon of inconsistent quality, several stats from this season’s “Brian Harper’s Index” are divided into thirds.  ]

Brian Harper’s Index:

Assorted Numbers on the 2011 Twins Season

Twins wins in each third of season: 17/33/13

How each third of season would project in wins over 162 games: 51/99/39

Percentage of games started by season opening rotation for each third of season: 96/93/60

Games per third with Joe Mauer available: 9/41/33

Games per third with Justin Morneau available: 54/1/18

Days of season not spent in 4^th or 5^th place: 3

Positions played by “Utility Player” Joe Mauer (listed by Baseball-Reference.com as “UT” rather than meeting site standard for single position) : 4

Twins Rank in AL of Catcher OPS in 2010 : 1

Twins Rank in AL for Catcher OPS in 2011: 14

Number of positions where Twins finished last in MLB by team OPS: 3 (C, 2B, LF)

Number of positions where Twins finished in top ten in MLB by team OPS: 2 (1B and P (in 20 At Bats))

Number of RBIs for Delmon Young as a Twin (84 games) compared to RBIs as a Tiger (40 games) : 32/32

Games Started at Second Base for Tsuyoshi Nishioki : 6

Number of players in MLB history named “Rene” : 8

Probable number of put-outs in MLB history from one Rene to another Rene: 1 (Tosini to Rivera (7-2 putout) on August 30⁾

Number of hits given up by Carl Pavano: 262

Total salary paid to all pitchers who earned one or more of Twins’ 32 team saves: $19.45 Million

Final team OPS for the Twins 2011 (Really!) :  .666

Twitter : Very_Well_Then

I propose a nickname for Glen Perkins.

“The Wolf.”

As in Harvey Keitel’s character in Pulp Fiction: Winston “the Wolf” Wolfe.

You might remember the Wolf showing up for a little Sunday morning crisis management in the film.

“I’m Winston Wolfe. I solve problems.”

Matt Capps left another mess tonight, not dissimilar to the Travolta/Jackson mess from Pulp Fiction.  A two run lead was halved by one pitch to B.J. Upton.  A single, two deep outs and a walk later,  and for the third Capps appearance in a row, the save no longer belonged to Matt.

Thankfully, Gardy has been willing to do what he’d do in any other inning – take the ball away from an ineffective reliever.    The manage-for-the-save mentality would usually mean it’s the closer’s game until the bitter end of the ninth inning.   But with Capps imploding on Saturday, Gardy gave Capps a short leash on both Sunday and Tuesday and Capps ran to the end of it in short order.

Perkins has revived his career as a calm, cool force out of the bullpen, ready to take on any high-leverage situation presented to him.   His ERA is down to 1.78 with particular effectiveness against lefties.  He also possesses the last two Twins’ saves.

Saturday vs. the Brewers: two on, one out, two run lead.  Time for the Wolf.

Tuesday vs. the Rays: two on, two outs, one run lead.  Time for the Wolf.

Here’s the scene on the mound with Perkins relieving Capps, as Tarantino might imagine it:

The Wolf:  Matt, I’ll take the ball. Boys, let’s get to work.

Capps:  A please would be nice.

The Wolf: Come again?

Capps: I said a please would be nice.

The Wolf: Get it straight buster – I’m not here to say please, I’m here to tell you what to do and if self-preservation is an instinct you possess you’d better f***ing do it and do it quick. I’m here to help – if my help’s not appreciated then lotsa luck, gentlemen.

Mauer: No, Mr. Wolf, it ain’t like that, your help is definitely appreciated.

Capps: I don’t mean any disrespect, I just don’t like people barking orders at me.

The Wolf: If I’m curt with you it’s because time is a factor. I think fast, I talk fast and I need you guys to act fast if you wanna get out of this. So, pretty please… with sugar on top. Let’s get out of this f***ing inning.

It was either 1971 or 1972.    The local TV station* in Bismarck, North Dakota would show about a half dozen early season road games to whet the appetite of regional Twins fans for the upcoming season.   It was a Saturday afternoon.   In the kitchen, on the high counter ledge there was a small black-and-white TV with grainy reception.  On it was this stocky right handed hitter that my brother identified in that big-brother-as-teacher sort of way (as in, “you really ought to know who that guy is”), as Harmon Killebrew.

*It was probably KXMB, but if that guess is wrong, then it was KFYR.  Yes, kids, I spent the first fifteen years of my life with just two TV stations.

That is the first memory I have where I was aware of the Minnesota Twins.    I’ve dug around Baseball-reference trying to figure out what game that was — my best guess is April 10, 1971 @ the White Sox.    I know I was not aware of the Twins when they made the playoffs in 1970.  So, with my first memory being 1971 or later, The formative years of my Twins-fandom was all about longing.  There would be nothing as rewarding as a playoff game until 1987 — which made that 1987 October so grand.

Also, therefore, I never saw Harmon at his Killer-fiercest.    I’d kill for a 28 home run season from a 2011 Twin, but it was one-notch down from his almost-all-amazing previous dozen years.     Four years later on the same black-and-white TV, I’d watch Harmon in a Kansas City Royals uniform making his incongruous final season.

But I revered him.  I protected his memory from friends or brothers who would soon be calling him Harmless Harmon.  By revering him for his greatness that came at a time before I remember, I had already hooked into baseball’s ability to form tradition.  What could tradition be to a six year old?  Yet, I already had my link to the Twins first decade.

And that first baseball image on a black-and-white TV projects forward to — it has led to 40 years without missing a box score.

Thank you for all that you linked me back to and all that you led me to, Harmon.

As the injuries accumulate for the Minnesota Twins and injured Twins struggle to make it back to the lineup effectively, plenty of questions have arisen regarding the medical care and oversight given to the Twins by their training staff.   VeryWellThen.Com recently got a chance to sit down and ask some probing questions with one member of the Twins training staff, Theodoric of York, Medieval Twins Trainer.*

*Nothing was more required viewing for Monday morning pre-bell discussions in my junior high home room than Saturday Night Live episodes, especially those hosted by Steve Martin.  [Original Video]

VeryWellThen:  Thank you for agreeing to talk with us today, Theodoric.

Theodoric of York:  Thank you for having me.

VWT:  Before we discuss the numerous Twins injuries, I’d like to ask you a little about your background.   According to the Twins’ press release, your medical credentials come from Yorkshire Tri-County Barber School.  Is that correct?

TofY: Yes.   As you may know, for much of the past millennia, medical services have been provided by barbers.  I’m sure they told you back in grade school that the iconic red and white striped barber pole symbolizes the blood and bandages used in the profession.   That’s pretty much what we’ve got here in the Twins’ clubhouse – blood and bandages (laughs).

VWT:  Yes.  Lots of them.  Well, let’s start off with the injury most on the minds of Twins fans — that of Joe Mauer.

TofY:  Oh.  Yes.  Joseph, son of Jake the Coach.    Yes, a fine lad.  Coming out of spring training, we were concerned whether his bodily humors were properly balanced for a full season of playing catcher and we did some tests on Joseph.   We used a Caladrius Bird – an important diagnostic tool with an uncanny ability to detect illness.   It first looked at Joseph’s face indicating that he did not need to go on the Disabled List, so we authorized Joseph to start the season with the team.

VWT:  And do you feel you made the correct diagnosis?

TofY: Well, as it turns out, the bird may have been inadvertently attracted to the smell of Head and Shoulders Shampoo, causing it to turn its head the incorrect way.    When we re-tested Joseph, the humors were clearly out of balance – “black bile-ateral weakness” was our revised prognosis.

VWT:  How do you think that condition was exacerbated by Joe’s bout with a virus.

TofY:  Actually, we intentionally introduced what you refer to as a “virus”.    We of the medical arts refer to it as a “phlegmatic and coleric temper rebalancer.”  We put it in his protein shake.  We formulated it to shock the proper tempers so as to elevate his weaker humours to bring him into better balance.

VWT:  So why did the flu-like symptoms pass through the clubhouse?

TofY:  How were we supposed to know that Delmon, brother of Dmitri the Firstbaseman and Justin of the Northern Land would drink Joseph’s milkshake?

VWT:  Okay.  You brought him up.  Let’s talk about Justin Morneau.

TofY:  Well, when Justin of the Northern Land first came into the training room last July, we – consistent with the latest studies in the doctrine of signatures –  ordered a poultice made of the seeds of skullcap to alleviate Justin’s head discomfort.

VWT:  Do you think your efforts hastened what still ended up being a rather long recovery time?

TofY:  Look, we do everything humanly possible, but we trainers are not gods. Medicine is not an exact science, but we are learning all the time.     Why, just ten years ago, we would have told Justin to “suck it up” and “get back in the game” and that “it’s all just in your head,” but now we know better.   We now know that Justin’s concussion was caused by a hex put on him by a Canadian warlock in retaliation for Justin competing against his homeland team — the warlock’s beloved Blue Jays.

VWT:   Oh, yes, the slide into second base did take place in Toronto.  And how have you been able to break the hex?

TofY:    How did we “reverse the curse”?  Is that what you’re asking?  Well, we weren’t able to bring back Big Papi – a proven spell-breaker.   We’ve tried a few approaches suggested by some of the Caribbean players, but they didn’t seem to have any effect on this particularly Canadian version of a hex.   We’re not sure, but we believe the hex lifted due to the warlock’s concentration being re-focused on a new anger — things started to turn for the better right about the time that Justin Bieber lost the Grammy Award.

VWT:   Interesting.  Let’s turn to Joe Nathan.

TofY:  Yes.  Joseph of the A.J. Trade.   I have to say, I’m a little embarrassed about his treatment.   We used a procedure that I fear reflects badly upon the profession.   A totally barbaric method, outright early-medieval.   It consists of taking a tendon from the patient, drilling holes in his elbow and weaving the tendon through the elbow.   Talk about unenlightened.  I guess this was perfected on another gentleman allegedly from York, — a ‘Tommy John’ — though I had not heard of him nor of his father.

VWT:  What was your preferred approach for Joe?

TofY:  I had advocated for the much more modern idea to bury Joseph overnight up to his head in the on deck circle, but I guess it’s against the Collective Bargaining Agreement.

VWT:  Let me go through a series of other injuries and you tell me what you have proposed for treatment.  Ready.

TofY: Ready.

VWT:  Delmon Young

TofY: Blood letting

VWT:  Kevin Slowey

TofY: Blood letting.

VWT:  Jason Repko

TofY:  Blood letting.  And suppositories of calomel and jalap.

VWT:  Suppositories?  For a quadricep injury?

TofY:  Oh….now….Who’s the barber?

VWT:  Fair enough.   Jim Thome

TofY:  Oblique Injury.  We’ve tried blood letting.  Leeches.  A worming.   Nothing worked.  I’ve talked to trainers on other teams – no one has any clue what to do about that.

VWT:  Tsuyoshi Nishioka

TofY:  We’ve got him up on the gibbet – sort of a rack – twice a day to stretch out his bones.  He’s probably going to come back too tall to play second base.  The Timberwolves appear interested, however.

VWT:   All interesting remedies.  But I have to say all very unorthodox.    With all the injuries and unexpectedly long recovery time, I need to mention that there have been some rumblings about the job that the training staff has been doing for the Twins.  Any comments?

TofY:  Wait a minute.  Perhaps our critics are right.  Perhaps we have been wrong to blindly follow the traditions and superstitions of the past.    Maybe we trainers should test our assumptions analytically, through experimentation and “scientific method.”   Perhaps this “scientific method” can be extended to other fields in the baseball endeavors.    Perhaps someday pitching staffs can be managed for optimal effectiveness instead of for contrived stats like “wins” and “saves”.  Perhaps individual batting performance can be measured by more meaningful values like the ability to avoid an out rather than team-dependent stats like RBIs.  Perhaps I could lead the way to a new way of thinking, an age of rebirth, a Renaissance!

….(pauses)…

Naaaaah!

The Twins are off to a poor start.   The A Team is suffering from unilateral fibula weakness, bilateral leg weakness, multilaterial stomach sickness.

To address ever-changing conditions and just to shake things up, Gardy has been announcing daily role changes with the Twins, sometimes many changes in a day.

• Joe Nathan is no longer the closer — Matt Capps takes over that job.
• Cuddyer is wearing all sorts of Twins caps — taking on additional roles of first base and second base, in addition to his usual right field.
• Jim Hoey is the new right-handed setup guy.
• Eric Hacker is in as the new long-relief guy.
• Steve Holm is the new catcher guy.
• Tolbert plays first, as in the position where you usually put your most feared hitter.

Over on the internet, the public is demanding that when Joe Mauer comes back he should play first base, third base and center field.  And if I understand the Tweets correctly — all at the same time.

So a little shaking-things-up and the Twins rolled off a season high two (Yes, TWO!!!!!) game winning streak and then got rolled 11-0.

So shaking up led to a couple of wins and has proved to be inadequate, all at the same time.    The Twins are thrashing about right now, both literally (as in Delmon’s and Alexi’s hitting approach) and figuratively.   And this is major league baseball — you might get by hacking at everything for a little bit, but it won’t bring good things for long.

But what the heck.  The Twins are either tossing up the post-game spread and/or causing nausea amongst the fan base.  So let’s just keep the wheel of Fortuna in spin and see what happens.  Here is some fictional changes, mostly which won’t be tried by the Twins any time soon.  Except in the case of emergencies.   Feel free to suggest others:

• Carl Pavano and Drew Butera will remain battery mates, but Butera will now pitch and Pavano catch.
• Jason Repko will go from fourth outfielder to fourth second baseman.
• It is said that all relief pitchers are frustrated closers.  And after enough lost-wins all starting pitchers must be frustrated with the relievers.  So in a move designed for everybody to understand each other better, Twins relievers will all become starters and the starters become relievers, for one turn through the rotation.
• Francisco Liriano will switch from a left-handed pitcher to a right-handed pitcher.    Bert Blyleven, Twins announcer, applauds the switch, saying “That’s how I pitched in my day.”
• Alexi Casilla will move to “rover” and bat tenth.
• Superblogger Aaron Gleeman will replace Bill Smith as general manager on an interim basis.   According to Smith, “things aren’t working out right now, and I take full responsibility for the results.  So I am going to see if I can contribute more effectively as a blogger and critiquer and let Aaron take on the day-to-day franchise management, at least on a temporary basis.”     Smith has indicated that he will move into Aaron’s mother’s basement.  It is unclear at this time if Bill’s mother will displace Aaron’s mother from the upstairs or if Mrs. Gleeman will move into the upper concourse of Target Field above Aaron’s new office.
• Twins engineers are exploring whether they can get Minnie and Paul to switch sides of the Mississippi River in the Target Field sign.
• Gardy announced that he will fill in for Wally the Beer Man, who himself has changed roles to become a celebrity bartender at nearby Sneaky Petes.  Gardy will continue to manage while selling beer, except during pitching changes when Rick Anderson will pick up the beer sales.  Given the crappy start of the Twins, underage fans with fake IDs should really not challenge Gardy, I’m just saying.

As I write this, the Twins stand 3-6.   The team is hitting horribly (team OPS = 0.527 — dead last in the majors, including those teams that have pitchers hit.)   No one is off to a blinding start with the bat.

That wasn’t the case in 1972.

One of my earliest baseball memories was the red-hot start from the Twins 29 year old rookie center fielder Bobby Darwin.    Fresh on arrival from the Los Angeles Dodgers, Darwin began his Twins days on a tear – hitting 5 home runs in the first 8 games to start the 1972 season and his career as a starting center fielder.

That spring, I was a fledgling little Twins fan.  My Twins Cities relatives had come for a visit to Interior Dakota and in that group was my cousin Bobby – the first real die-hard Twins fan I had ever met.     Bobby loved to talk about the Twins and that spring we were both sharing our enthusiasm for the new rookie who shared his first name.  My untempered enthusiasm was that of an innocent 7 year old.  Cousin Bobby, being 3 years older and a bit more jaded told me, “yeah, every year some Twin starts off really hot, but then they cool off.”

He was teaching me an important baseball lesson – what the statheads would later inform me is called “regression to the mean.”

I didn’t believe it.  Bobby Darwin was going to keep hitting home runs all year I figured.  But sure enough, just as cousin Bobby predicted – Bobby Darwin cooled off.  He hit his sixth one in the 12^th game of the season, but didn’t hit his 7^th one until the 45^th game.    By then he fell off the league leader charts that occasionally provided filler in the local newspaper’s sports page.

In the end, it was a nice little debut season by Darwin.  He ended up tied for ninth in the league with 22 home runs (those were tough days for hitters)  and posted an OPS+ of 123.    Darwin lasted 3+ years with the Twins, when he was shipped off to Milwaukee, perhaps because the Twins tired of his high strike out totals.

So now its 2011.  And I  had planned on giving some Twin a Darwin Award — as in Bobby Darwin — this Spring for the best start in the first week to ten days of the season.

Then the Twins go and put up offensive offensive numbers.    But I was so clever in thinking up this award that I have to pick someone, I guess.

Well, it’s not going to come from the offense — Span leads the team with a 742 OPS.    It’s Ruthesque in comparison to the rest of the Twins offense, but not league-leading and even below Denard’s career OPS.

So I’ll look over to the pitching side.

Joe Nathan has three saves in three attempts.  One was shaky, but he’s done everything asked of him.   All three team victories nailed down by Joe.  He’s even on ESPN’s top-5 in saves.

But I like Nick Blackburn’s start a bit better.   He’s on the AL leader board with an 0.77 ERA for qualified pitchers.   Two starts, both winnable.    Nothing dominating in his appearances (only 11.2 innings and 4 Ks), but Nick’s not a dominating-type pitcher.

The Twins are not off to an inspirational start.  And it was exactly an inspirational start I was looking for in giving out this prestigious self-invented award.    I don’t imagine any young Twins fans dreaming about these stats when they fall asleep in their Twins pajamas.   But I’ll remind them of the lesson I learned years ago — that there is “regression to the mean.”    The Twins hitters will get better this season.  They have to.

Hopefully before they are naturally-selected out of the AL pennant race.

So, I present the inaugural 2011 VeryWellThen.Com (Bobby) Darwin Award for the best start of the season for a Twins player to… Nick Blackburn.

I’ve always felt sorry for the AL East’s “other” teams – Tampa, Toronto and Baltimore.    They have to compete for limited playoff spots against the financial power of the Yankees and Red Sox.

Plus, in the “unbalanced” schedule,  they can’t even demonstrate how much more worthy they might be when compared to AL Central or West contenders – their record carries the damage of so frequently fighting hard inter-division battles.

This year the Twins will be a de facto AL East team early, at least for six weeks.  Their early record might reflect it.

Consider this:

• 15 of the Twins first 20 games are on the road – all road games against AL East teams.
• By May 15, the Twins will have played 25 games against AL East opponents, 26 against the rest of the league.

If it seems like the Twins are fighting a headwind this season, it just might have to do with a prevailing wind from the East in the first part of the season.

Of course these things do even out, more or less.  The sailing should be smoother later for the Twins than for Detroit (only 14 games against the East by May 15) or the White Sox (12 games against the East by May 15).

I can’t tabulate the psychological impact of fighting from behind all season – if that’s how things set up in the early stages of the season’s race.     As an agnostic to psychological factors – they may exist but they are unknowable  –  I’d like to think that it just won’t matter by Judgment Day of September 28 (season’s end).

BTW,  I’m only now realizing that the new schedule is WEIRD.  Opening Day is a Friday.  The final day is a Wednesday.    Did I get the memo on this?

And one last gripe on the schedule – as a Pacific Northwest based fan, I’m not happy (or any other dwarf except probably Grumpy) about the fact that there are only two games scheduled in Seattle this season, both on a weekday.    Curses, MLB schedulers.

Tough schedule or not, bring it on.

Courtesy xkcd

There’s a story I once heard, surely apocryphal, about a college philosophy final exam with one question:

“Prove that you exist.”

According to the story, some daring student stapled to the exam a parking ticket that she had received that morning.   Adding nothing else she handed it in.  She got an ‘A’.

As an engineering graduate I was annoyed by this story — philosophy majors can get full credit for the correct answer without showing their work?   But to the extent this student exists (she didn’t prove it to me), I have to hand it to her.  I think she got it just about right.

It’s not the big things in life that really define our existence.   Love and Death and Tragedies and Winning Lotteries – we call these things “dreams” or “nightmares”, because there is something surreal about them.  These are our memories hallucinogens – or the places we can’t bear to look.

But a sure way to knock yourself out of any solipsistic mindset is all those frustrating little things or even the tepid pleasantries that there’s just no way you think up if the world is just a figment of your imagination.

So, to the management of the Minnesota Twins this past offseason – thank you for proving that I exist.

I’d have to ask if I was dreaming if the Twins had landed Cliff Lee or Zack Greinke.   But Alexi Casilla, starting shortstop – a dream for no one other than Alexi.  Dusty Hughes (a reliever not even wanted by Kansas City) claimed off waivers– there’s no way that I’m fantasizing about that.  In fact, let me staple the entire bullpen card to a philosophy exam.*

*At this point I’m considering the loss of Billy Bullock only to be a parking ticket type of life-confirming annoyance.  If he shall someday blossom as the next Mariano Rivera, then perhaps this offseason has been merely a bad dream.

It was an offseason of Cuddyer’s wart, Mauer’s Head and Shoulders commercial, Morneau’s persisting unease.    It was a winter to prepare oneself for 200 plate appearances by Drew Butera and a future without Nick Punto.

The only really intriguing move all winter was the acquisition of Tsuyoshi Nishioka from Japan.    He is one of only two projected 2011 Twins starters that hasn’t seen action as a Twin (Dusty Hughes being the other).    But Nishioka’s addition led to musical bases, with J.J. Hardy being the odd middle-infielder out,* and I don’t think that’s an overall plus.

*After J.J. got traded, I was really hoping that Nishioka would win the shortstop position.   Not based on any optimal defensive arrangement, but because I wanted to hear John Gordan make a double-play call as ““Roku-Cuatro-Three”.  I might have to settle for a call of “Seis-Shi-Three,” which is kinda okay, but not as cool.

It was just that sort of off-season.  Nothing gawd-awful, nothing special.   A few paper-cuts.  A move here or there that, as my uncle might say, is “better than a sharp stick  in the eye.”  Things that I can turn to if I ever feel life is just too vivid to be real.

But I have to keep in mind: paper-cuts and improvements-over-eye-poking-sticks aside,  this is a team that won 94 games last year.      If the moves seem pedestrian, I do get to root for a realistically-contending team again in 2011, for the eleventh year in a row.     Try convincing the childhood me – the one whose baseball memories  began with the Not So Good Twins Years, Version I (1971-1986)  – that I’m not living a dream.