Let's be honest: You didn't think the Minnesota Twins would be this good. Not running-away-with-the-division good. Not best-team-in-the-American-League good. Not best-team-in-franchise-history good. Yet they are all of those things and potentially much more.
The early stories about Minnesota's breakout season have centered around their home run bashing. It's not hard to understand why. In a season marked by a coming tidal wave of new home run standards, the Twins have hit more than any team in baseball. Their 157 home runs through Monday already rank 16th in the history of a franchise that is in the midst of its 119th season. The season is barely half over. They are on pace to become the first team to top 300 homers in a season.
Yet if all you know about the Twins is their prolific long ball hitting, you're only getting a sliver of the story. This is a team that set about getting better in ways that go far beyond the payroll register or the transaction wire.
"It really goes back to my time in Cleveland," said Twins chief of baseball operations Derek Falvey, who was reared in the Indians organization, "where we felt like a big part of the success for a mid-market team was to develop the talent that you have. Over time, I've really spent a lot of time thinking about talent development and some of the work that's being done [in that area]."
The thinking has paid off. The Twins own the AL's best run differential. In fact, their run profile currently gives them the best expected winning percentage (.622) in franchise history -- Washington or Minneapolis. Minnesota has gone from a fringe preseason playoff contender to a club that FiveThirtyEight currently gives a 95% shot at the playoffs, an 87% chance to win the AL Central and an 8% chance to win the organization's third World Series crown since the Senators became the Twins in 1961.
During the offseason, the Minnesota front office, led by Falvey and general manager Thad Levine, targeted medium-cost veteran bounce-back candidates who could bolster the immediate outlook on short-duration deals. At the very worst, this group could point in the right direction for a younger core of talent that should have been entering a winning phase but had collectively taken a step back in 2018.
In short, it's almost like the Twins ignored what actually happened last season in favor of what should have happened, and they planned accordingly. Doing so not only led them to some team-friendly arrangements with incoming players, but also imbued the roster with a hidden degree of upside that most projection algorithms missed. As academic as it sounds to describe Minnesota's first-half success in that fashion, the end result is a team that is having all kinds of fun on the field -- and off of it -- and a fan base that is gradually becoming activated for what promises to be a memorable season.
"There's a guy who wrote a book, friend of mine named Dan Coyle, who talks about the development of talent," Falvey said. "It's a really well-written book. The whole idea behind it is that the ceiling is kind of unknown. We use the term 'ceiling' a lot in baseball. I just don't accept it."
The problem with outperforming projections is that the future has a way of reclaiming its equilibrium. Despite the Twins' overpowering first half, the same glossy projections outlined in those FiveThirtyEight odds continue to insist that the New York Yankees and Houston Astros will emerge as the AL's best teams by the end of the season. Las Vegas agrees.
That Minnesota's offseason gambit has outraced all reasonable expectations is a great story. But it's the first week of July. The rules of statistical regression tell us that even if the Twins remain a fixture in the playoff picture, their eventual postseason outlook is muddy. How much of this early success can be maintained?
"It's been a great experience to be doing this with our group in the clubhouse," upbeat first-year manager Rocco Baldelli said. "We've had a lot of people step up and do some really, really good things for us. Watching guys grow and watching guys succeed is, I think, even though I've only been doing this a short period of time, probably the best part of the job."
Nevertheless, here is something the algorithms cannot account for: The progress up and down the roster -- whether it's young players finding their next level or veterans rediscovering theirs -- is not an accident. It is by design that the Twins have emerged during baseball's golden era of self-improvement to become the most improved team in the majors.
How sustainable is that design for the long haul? That is the key question from here on out, one that is perhaps best approached by considering the decisions that have turned the Twins into 2019's breakout team. Let's take them in a rough chronological order:
At the end of the 2018 season: Kept paths clear for under-30 core players -- SS Jorge Polanco, 3B Miguel Sano, LF Eddie Rosario, CF Byron Buxton, RF Max Kepler, C Mitch Garver, SP Jose Berrios, SP Jake Odorizzi, CL Taylor Rogers.
This is where it started for the Twins -- reminding themselves that the group mostly responsible for a surprise wild-card berth in 2017 still had plenty of room for growth.
Polanco missed the first part of last season with a PED-related suspension, and by the time he was reinstated, the Twins were 10 games under .500. Early in spring training this year, he signed a five-year, $25.8 million contract extension. Sano followed his outstanding 2017 season with an injury-riddled .199/.281/.398 campaign in 2018. Last year, Buxton hit .156, was limited to 28 games by injury and unhappily finished the season in the minors in a service time ploy. Kepler hit .224 in 156 games, leaving him at .233 over his first three full big league seasons. Odorizzi struggled to a 4.49 ERA. Some teams might have been tempted to turn over the roster.
Yet the Twins coming off bad seasons, and the others who didn't struggle in 2018, like Berrios, Garver and Rosario, were retained as a group to solidify Minnesota's foundation. Falvey and Levine didn't panic, didn't shake things up, didn't tear things down. They built on what they had. It seems like an obvious choice now, but all of these players were at least three or four years into their careers when they took a step back. The Twins' collective ages were above the MLB average for both hitters and pitchers last season; it was not a green group.
"I think there is a baseline of talent for every guy in that room, no question," Falvey said. "But I would say that talent can be grown, it can be better. I don't think we know what a guy's peak is and say that's it. He can only be that good. He can be better than that, if we put the right resources into it and that person has the appropriate mindset around continuing to develop. And a willingness to fail, to some degree, and struggle to get better.
"We try to identify guys from an external standpoint of, to first assess the talent. But then recognize if we think if this is a player we think can improve over the course of his career."
Since end of 2018 season: Stick with young veteran pitchers -- SP Kyle Gibson, SP Michael Pineda, RP Trevor May, RP Tyler Duffey.
The Twins have seemed like prime candidates to splurge on a free-agent starter or two (such as Dallas Keuchel) during each of the past two offseasons. Sure, Berrios looked like an ace and Odorizzi had at least mid-rotation stuff, but what did Minnesota have after that? Gibson had an excellent 2018 season, but his ERA had been 5.07 in each of the two previous seasons. He was a regression candidate.
The bullpen seemed even more devoid of quality options, at least beyond talented closer Rogers, especially after veterans Fernando Rodney and Ryan Pressly were dealt last year, with the latter morphing into one of baseball's best firemen with the Astros. The Twins ranked 22nd in both rotation and bullpen ERA last season.
Once again, the Twins decided to build on what they had, around the foundation of Berrios and Odorizzi, but also Gibson and Rogers. Gibson has retained most of his gains from last season, while Rogers has become a next-level reliever. Pineda, who missed last season, has been a decent source of innings, if not at his pre-injury level, but he seems to be trending upward. Duffey has bounced back from a poor season, and May has built on his solid 2018 performance.
But these are all results-based observations, based on this snapshot in time: The Twins have improved from 22nd to fifth in ERA, and they've done it with mostly the same cast of characters as last season. As with the decision to build on their young core, the Twins' approach to this season was measured, even passive. But underscoring that was something we couldn't know would happen: The Twins were remaking the systems in which these players worked.
In keeping so many of the same pieces, the Twins weren't standing pat. They had decided to follow the path of some of baseball's other top organizations of the moment. They had decided to take what they had and make it better.
Oct. 25, 2018: Twins make Rocco Baldelli baseball's youngest manager.
The remaking of the Twins' big league staff began before last season's World Series champion had been decided, when they made Baldelli the youngest manager in the majors. After his playing career was prematurely clipped by chronic injuries, Baldelli had learned his trade in the Tampa Bay Rays organization in both instructional and strategic positions. If any organization knows the value of getting more out of what you already have, it's the Rays.
"Everything I know, basically I learned as a member of the Tampa Bay Rays," Baldelli said. "That's in a lot of different parts of the organization, in scouting and player development and on the field, playing and coaching. I owe a lot to that organization, even the conversations that we had. Everything we do here in Minnesota, a lot of that is what I learned in Tampa Bay."
Baldelli has settled in well as a first-time skipper who replaced Minneapolis icon Paul Molitor in the Twins dugout. Baldelli very much fits the paradigm of a 2019 manager, who is largely an extension of and voice for organizational processes that have been established by what ostensibly seems like a front-office baseball think tank. As a former (and recent) player, he not only relates to his players in the clubhouse, but is able to fuse analytical precepts from above and, along with his coaches, turn them into digestible morsels for players both young and old.
"I do think that over here, we're to create our own culture and own environment," Baldelli said. "And create the best situation for our guys to go out there and succeed. I think a lot of our players here were well on their way to becoming good quality players in the major leagues or really good players at this level. Really, our goal is just to create the best environment that we can. A learning environment, a place of growth, and where our players feel comfortable."
We're talking a half-season here and we can't know for sure how this is all going to pan out for Baldelli, though at present, he has to be at the forefront of the AL Manager of the Year race, along with another skipper very much of his ilk, the Texas Rangers' Chris Woodward. Right now, at the very least, you can say that Baldelli has helped foster a good working environment with his players. His message is getting through, which will happen when you get to 25 games over .500 by the All-Star break.
"He's taken care of everybody," said Nelson Cruz, who, by the way, is older than Baldelli. "He keeps everybody fresh, makes sure everybody has the information the night before if you're going to play or not. As a player, you can't ask for anything else. He earned respect from everybody. Not only from us as the players, but the whole league. He's been a leader."
Nov. 15, 2018: Twins hire University of Arkansas pitching coach Wes Johnson.
According to Baseball America, it had been 40 years since a big league team plucked a coach from the college ranks and installed him directly as its pitching coach. However, anyone paying attention to how the Michigan Wolverines and Vanderbilt Commodores came to be squaring off in the recently completed College World Series can see that while Johnson might be the first recent coach to jump from the NCAA to the MLB, he might not be the last.
The Twins' collective improvement this season is a prime example of why: Making players better is a crucial aspect of winning in today's MLB.
"That's probably why I'm here," Johnson said, when asked if he is surprised about how development is being done these days at the big league level. "In the college game, where I was for the last eight to 10 years, that's how you do it. That's how you have to do it."
The same technologies that we have written so much about in recent years are now must-haves at powerhouse NCAA programs. Coaches such as Johnson have to be able to communicate in the languages of analytics and biomechanics, because their players already are when they come out of high school.
"To think that there is not a next level for every player, it's like I tell our pitchers," Johnson said. "You never arrive. What if you throw a no-hitter. You're pretty good, right? Well, there's a guy named Nolan and he threw seven. There's always a next level in everything you do. Each day our job is to get a little better."
If you can't meld the new tech that has risen around the game at all levels with the time-honored ability to coach, it's tough to succeed in high-profile college baseball. Which makes successful NCAA coaches such as Johnson (and Cincinnati Reds pitching coach Derek Johnson, who helped build Vanderbilt's program) ideally suited for current big league pitching programs.
"I started with biomechanics in 2011," Johnson said. "We were one of the first schools to have TrackMan in college. No, man, that's why I'm here, probably. I used all of those tools in college.
"The college players, especially the younger ones, that's what they grew up on. They know it. And a lot of your big leaguers do now too. But [young players] have been born in it. If you look at what these young men do, they're 16 years old and playing in Atlanta, Georgia, in Perfect Game tournaments and TrackMan data is running on the scoreboard. And it's been that way for a couple of years now."
Dec. 2, 2018: Twins name James Rowson as hitting coach.
Coaches simply do more than they used to do and, more than ever, a manager's job is almost as much about managing his coaches as it is managing his players. If it sounds like the contemporary big league coaching staff has taken on an NFL-like structure, that's because it has.
"That's definitely how our hitting coach views the world," Falvey said. "How do I create offense? And so it's not just through the swing, not just hitting. It's creating a mindset around how you score runs, and how your team scores runs and not just the individual.
"I think it has changed. The pitching side is the same way. There is an overall defensive coordination. Probably a little less than like the offensive side, in the sense that your pitching coach is more focused on the pitching than he is on infield defense and outfield defense. But your manager's job is to try to wrap all of that together, for sure."
No one embraces this more than Rowson, the hitting coach, who actually likes to refer to himself as an offensive coordinator.
"The game has changed to where, when you're on offense," Rowson said, "the goal is to score runs. It's not necessarily to get hits. I think sometimes when I think of the term hitting coach, you're only talking about one part of it. But ultimately, it's about offense, about hitting, it's baserunning, it's about finding ways to create run production."
Rowson's work in aiding his players to find, or rediscover, better versions of themselves has already been well-chronicled. Here's a year-over-year look at how the top 10 Twins hitters by plate appearances this season have fared:
Now, you can't give Rowson, Baldelli or the front office all the credit here, and the pragmatist would point out that this kind of collective leap almost certainly will lead to some second-half regression. So far, however, the performance of nearly all of Minnesota's regulars has improved by degrees ranging from impressive to stunning.
"I think it's important, the coachability side," Rowson said. "I also think it's equally important to have growth and development on the coaching side. It's been a transition for both. I think the players have to try to understand that there are more things available to them now and different ways of getting better quicker. At the same time, I think the coaches have to do a good job of learning each of their individual players."
Free-agent signings:
-- Dec. 6, 2018: Signed 2B Jonathan Schoop as a free agent.
-- Nov. 26, 2018: Claimed 1B C.J. Cron off waivers from the Tampa Bay Rays.
-- Jan. 2, 2019: Signed DH Nelson Cruz as a free agent.
-- Jan. 30, 2019: Signed SP Martin Perez as a free agent.
-- Feb. 25, 2019: Signed IF/OF Marwin Gonzalez a free agent.
-- At various times: Relievers Mike Morin, Blake Parker, Ian Krol, Cody Allen and Carlos Torres.
As we focus on instruction, it's easy to lose track of the distinction between instruction and regression. Cron, Cruz and Gonzalez all signed on with Minnesota on reasonable deals to keep doing what they do. Schoop and Perez were more buy-low acquisitions, players coming off horrendous seasons that the Twins felt were outliers, not evidence of permanent decline. In both cases, the Twins were right.
The five key free agents Minnesota signed are on pace to post a combined 13.6 bWAR for the season, for which they will be paid a combined $38.3 million. If you value the current cost of a win at $8.5 million, the Twins will be getting more than $115 million in value for these players. Cruz leads the way with 1.8 bWAR to date, which ranks eighth on the roster. All seven ahead of him are among those core foundation players listed above.
"Everyone wants to improve," Baldelli said. "Not everyone wants to change what they're doing. It doesn't mean changing everything. It doesn't mean top-to-bottom overhaul. It means making educated decisions, talking to the right people, figuring out what adjustments you need to make and making them."
The Twins would not be where they are if the foundation players hadn't improved as a group. But those foundation players wouldn't be leading the charge to a league-best record if the roster had not been stabilized with this group of veteran free agents, who have been as valuable in the clubhouse as they have been on the field. And that vibe is readily apparent to anyone who comes around the Twins.
"It's helped a lot," Polanco said. "We're very young, and adding guys like Nelson has been very important for us. He's a guy that's always positive, always mentally strong. He tries to tell us to keep grinding and keep it positive."
Since the beginning of 2019: Promote from within to fill roster gaps -- UT Willians Astudillo, UT Luis Arraez, OF LaMonte Wade Jr., SP Lewis Thorpe.
This isn't related to the Twins' offseason strategies, but for any emerging contender, the ability to fill roster needs during a pennant push from within the organization is huge. Minnesota has been able to do that even though the higher spots in its organizational prospect rankings are dominated by players who are too young to be involved at this point.
Astudillo, who truly does swing and connect with nearly every pitch he sees, is one of baseball's great joys, even if his 2019 production wavers around replacement level. Stylistically, his high-contact, ball-in-play style complements the Twins' power-heavy offense; and because he can play several positions, including catcher, he has given Baldelli a lot of flexibility when working through injuries. Wade (who was only up a couple of days) and Thorpe (an Aussie who pitched well in his MLB debut on Sunday in Chicago) are the latest call-ups, who might or might not impact the pennant chase the rest of the way.
But one player who almost surely will is Arraez, whose name remains under the radar yet he is nonetheless already one of baseball's most unique talents. Over his first 67 big league plate appearances, Arraez is hitting .411/.493/.418. OK, those percentages aren't sustainable, but his style is. Arraez has struck out just four times while drawing 10 walks. His contact rate (91%) would rank second in the majors if he qualified, behind the Los Angeles Angels' David Fletcher. (Astudillo would rank ahead of him if they both qualified.)
"He's incredibly impressive," Rowson said of Arraez. "His bat-to-ball skills are just off the charts. He goes up there and has a really good eye at the plate, No. 1. Then add the fact that he squares the ball up so well. Early on, he's been really good. The goal right now for me is to get the information, find out what he does and really just try to continue his same routines."
Arraez isn't that fast, he has so-so power potential and his arm isn't that great, but he can bounce around several positions in both the infield and outfield, all while providing the offensive profile of a first-division infielder from the 1950s. Like Astudillo, he is not just a weapon the Twins otherwise would lack; he's a weapon almost every team lacks.
"The balance in our lineup, when we have our normal group running around," Baldelli said, "or really any of our guys, the balance makes all the difference. Having hitters that can do different things forces the pitcher to do different things too. Arraez, this is a .330 hitter since the day he signed. This isn't anything that is a flash in the pan or that he's just hot. If you watch the at-bats, he forces the pitcher to make really good pitches."
Midseason and beyond: ?
The Twins have put themselves in a position of strength as we approach the All-Star break and a few weeks after the trade deadline. They seem to have all the position player depth they need -- perhaps too much. It's tough to see how a healthy roster can accommodate both Astudillo and Arraez, and it's not as much fun if they aren't both around. Still, that's a good problem to have.
The bullpen in front of Rogers has held up well enough, but it needs more, especially as we look ahead to October. Given Minnesota's work in helping players get better, the flier the front office took on Allen after he was released by the Angels is worth tracking. The rotation has been remarkably stable, but clubs that can make it through a campaign with 150 starts out of five core starters aren't too common any more. At least one more veteran as a depth piece would provide security.
Not for nothing, the Indians have managed to pick up a couple of games, and Cleveland's eight-game deficit in the AL Central is far from insurmountable. After all, the Indians have won the division three years running, and they entered this season as heavy favorites to win it again. Any notion the Twins might have had about going into cruise control can be dismissed. Minnesota will be tested in the months ahead. Their growth will have to continue. Whether or not that happens, don't expect Baldelli to tighten the reins or amp up the intensity around the clubhouse.
"What we've talked about since day one," Baldelli said, "is that I think when players are relaxed and comfortable in their clubhouse, they have the best chance of playing well."
As if they need a rallying cry, the All-Star rosters might remind the Twins of the respect they've yet to receive on a national stage. Only two Twins -- Polanco and Odorizzi -- will be making the trip to Cleveland, barring injury replacements. That's fewer than the Chicago White Sox, who trail the Twins by 13 games in the Central.
Perhaps more than anything, the second half presents a lot of uncertainty for a team that entered waters we didn't think they could reach. They have not been through this as a group, though some of those new veterans have been on teams that played well into October. And the Twins are led by a manager, a hitting coach and a pitching coach all holding those positions for the very first time at the big league level.
What does all that mean? The great thing is that with a record-setting pace over the season's first three months, the Twins are in position to find out. Baldelli and his team will get the chance to see what it feels like to be a front-runner.
"I don't know. I haven't been doing this long enough to be able to say [what that will be like]," Baldelli said. "And I mean that. For me to sit over here and try to explain it to you, as if I feel very certain about it, I can't really tell you.
"Regardless of how you're playing, I think you should approach what you're doing the same way. Our guys have done that from the beginning of the year, when we started out no wins, no losses, until today. I have not noticed anything different from the way guys prepare for their games. That's all that I can -- I think we can -- ask for."