Three Easy Pieces

After squeaking a couple of wins out from Cleveland this weekend, it appears that the ol' Karma Wheel has swung back in the Twins' favor for the time being. It was only natural to expect that we'd finally be on the winning side of a few of those close games after so many that would have been decided by one or two key two-out hits or the ability to lay down a good bunt, but there still has to be something to account for the maddening inconsistency of Twins hitters in these situations besides the mystic cosmic force that doles out justice based on positive and negative acts.

This team can be divided into two very distinct camps of regular players - for promotional purposes, we'll call them "Sharks" and "Piranhas." The Sharks are the real major-league hitters, with the guns to put the ball over the fence: Morneau, Cuddyer, Hunter, and, for the purposes of this exercise, Kubel. The Piranhas are the well-publicized slap-hitting bookends of the lineup: Castillo, Bartlett, Punto, Tyner, L-Rod, and Redmond. You'll notice that I left Joe Sideburns off both of these lists: he has qualities that put him into both and neither camps at once, which I will go into in a moment. But first, we take a look at the Sharks:

What we have in this category are four players with the ability to put up pretty good power numbers. I include Kubel here because I still believe that he has the upside potential to be a big part of the team if they can only find a place for him to get regular at-bats. These guys all have hot and cold streaks, but they tend to be pretty independent of one another. While one or two are slumping, the others might be knocking the cover off the ball. For example, in the last four games, Justin Morneau has gotten at least one hit (and two hits in three of those) and, despite not hitting any home runs, he has driven in four runs in that time and raised his batting average to .297. In that time, Torii Hunter has gone 1 for 14, and 1 for 17 if you go back one more game. The big and obvious effect of having Cuddyer on the DL is the simple lack of a guy who, on the day he was injured, went 4 for 4 and looked about to start on a hot streak of his own. Add to this Ron Gardenhire's insistence on benching Kubel to "protect" him against lefthanders (What is he protecting him from? Beanings? Getting eaten? I think the no. 1 thing we should be protecting against right now is starting Jason Tyner at DH), and right now we only have two legitimate power bats in the lineup and can only reasonably depend on one of them being reliable at any given time. Even when they're all healthy and in the lineup, it's like flicking on and off random light switches to find your way through a dark house: Only the right combination at the right time is going to do you any good.

Which brings us to the other, larger chunk of the lineup that is the Piranhas. In contrast to the independently streaking Sharks, these guys tend to play as a cohesive unit. No one in the game feeds off of each others' energy as our plucky group of utility infielders does. No one is more thrilling to watch during a rally, with their collection of bunt hits, coaxed walks, seeing-eye singles, and squib doubles down the line can make a pitcher break down and give up a four or five run lead. At the same time, no one is more depressing to watch when the energy once again vanishes as mysteriously as it came and we're back to infield popups and strikeouts after failing to put down a sacrifice bunt. To continue with the dark house analogy, this is like having one big switch that turns on all the lights at once; either it's there or it isn't.

So what happens when Sharks meet Piranhas? In nature, probably something pretty damn cool, the underwater equivalent of Monkey vs. Robot or something like that. On the baseball field, at least this year, not so much. Though this approach was essentially perfected in a game I was at one year ago today and continued throughout the playoff run of late summer 2006, it seems like we've never been able to get the offense going where both parts are using their parts harmoniously. It seems like the middle of the order all this year has been either an island, with good production but not nearly enough to carry the rest of the lineup, or a black hole, where singles rallies go to die at the hands of a sharp grounder to second, 4-6-3.

And where, you ask, does one Joseph Patrick Mauer fit into all this? Well, he pretty much just holds the keys to the whole offense. As the guy right before the Sharks, it's his job, if Castillo and/or Bartlett fail to get on base, to get on so the RBI guys have a chance to bring someone around. And as the figurative "tail"-end of the Piranhas, he also has a responsibility to keep those singles rallies going, and often to put a little more business behind his swing to maybe knock in a couple. So Joe is the vital swing man between little and big, bloop and blast, "swing and a miss" and "SWIIIIIIIING and a miss", and he's the perfect man for the job. He doesn't get dragged down by the low points or jittery and hacktastic during the hot streaks and big moments; all he does is go up there and hit.

So while we probably have the pieces in place to make a run similar to last year's, all this has been a long way of saying that it would take a lot to come together in the right way again for that to happen without adding another consistent bat to the lineup to serve Mauer's purpose on the other end of the order, where the Sharks end and the Piranhas begin once again. And while Twins Geek's take on Terry Ryan's idea of "divine intervention" made me laugh on the outside, it also made me cry a little on the inside, because Jason Tyner hitting one home run that wouldn't have even gone out in the Metrodome is exactly the sort of thing that TR would point to when insisting that we have all we need right here. With just about 24 hours left until the trading deadline, all I can say is, "Prove me wrong, Terry...prove me wrong."


(EDIT: Yes, I know that the movie is "Five Easy Pieces"; obviously, no one understands the subtle symbolism of Jack Nicholson playing a piano on the back of a truck to the 2007 Minnesota Twins. Also, did anyone notice the crowd shots of the Cleveland game on Sunday? To sum up the experience, they kept going to shots of this toddler who had to be the ugliest baby in Ohio, which has to be something akin to naming the most pretentious Carleton student or the gayest Brady Quinn picture - it takes a little something extra.)