The Twins might already be out of the race two weeks into MLB season
The Twins are 0-8 this season. They've already created a massive hole for themselves, and history suggests climbing out of it will be close to impossible.
By
Mike Axisa
•
5 min read
Last season the Twins were an unexpected contender. Many pundits, myself included, pegged them to finish last in the AL Central. They instead won 83 games and were still in the postseason race in late September. They far exceeded expectations.
Thanks to that strong 2015 season, many folks -- again, myself included -- figured the Twins would again be in the hunt in 2016. Were they AL Central favorites? Of course not. But there is no dominant team in the AL and Minnesota looked like as good a bet as any to make a run at a Wild Card spot.
Instead, the Twins lost for the eighth time in eight games Thursday night (CWS 3, MIN 0), and they're already six games back of the division leading Royals and Indians. They've been outscored by 20 (!) runs in three games. To say things are going bad for the Twinkies right now would be a massive understatement.
What's going wrong, exactly? Well, a lot. A lot of things have to go wrong to start a season 0-8. And, of course, the 0-8 start has already put the club at a big disadvantage in the postseason race. The Twins have dug a huge hole for themselves.
The offense has been dreadful.
The Twins have scored a total of 13 runs in eight games. The pitching actually hasn't been awful -- they rank 13th in ERA (3.69) and 15th in ERA+ (110 ERA+) among the 30 teams -- but they're simply not scoring. They've yet to score more than three runs a game, and heck, they've only scored three runs in a game twice.
Exactly two players are pulling their weight offensively: first baseman Joe Mauer and shortstop Eduardo Escobar. Mauer is hitting .393/.486/536 (196 OPS+) in the early going while Escobar owns a .367/.406/.500 (161 OPS+) batting line. Also, Eduardo Nunez is 4-for-6 (.667) off the bench. The rest of the team? Yikes. Look:
| 2016 Twins: Season to Date | |||||
| Player, Position | PA | AVG/OBP/SLG | OPS+ | HR | K% |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Kurt Suzuki, C | 22 | .105/.182/.263 | 27 | 0 | 13.6% |
| Brian Dozier, 2B | 35 | .172/.294/.310 | 75 | 1 | 25.7% |
| Trevor Plouffe, 3B | 28 | .185/.214/.333 | 55 | 1 | 25.0% |
| Eddie Rosario, LF | 28 | .154/.185/.231 | 19 | 0 | 35.7% |
| Byron Buxton, CF | 25 | .167/.167/.250 | 18 | 0 | 52.0% |
| Miguel Sano, RF | 30 | .125/.300/.125 | 30 | 0 | 43.3% |
| Byung Ho Park, DH | 24 | .143/.250/.286 | 55 | 1 | 50.0% |
Reminder: a 100 OPS+ is league average, and the bigger the number, the better. Those seven players are all far below the league average. The outfield in particular has been abysmal. Rosario, Buxton, and Sano have combined to hit .149/.217/.202 with a 43.4 percent strikeout rate in 83 plate appearances. Sano has three total bases. Three. Woof.
The scary thing is the Twins can't change much to try to get the offense going. They can send Buxton to Triple-A and give fellow top prospect Max Kepler playing time in center -- Kepler has been on the bench the last few days -- and they could give John Ryan Murphy regular reps behind the plate instead of Suzuki. That's about it though. There aren't any other changes to make.
For now the Twins are stuck waiting for some of these guys to break out. Dozier and Plouffe have long track records that show they're far better players than what they have been these first eight games. Sano last year showed he can do major damage. Until those three players in particular get going, the Twins are going to have major problems scoring runs.
Their postseason odds have taken a huge hit.
The baseball season is a marathon, not a sprint, and it is still very early in the 2016 season. (The Twins have played 4.9 percent of their schedule.) That said, these eight losses are in the bank. If it takes 87 wins to get the second Wild Card spot -- it took 86 last year -- the Twins now have to go 87-67 the rest of the way to get there. That's a .565 winning percentage, or a 92-win pace across a full season.
Needless to say, Minnesota's playoff odds have taken a big hit already this season. Look at the numbers:
| 2016 Twins: Postseason Odds | |||||
| Opening Day Postseason Odds | Postseason Odds After 0-8 Start | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SportsLine | 30.0% | 1.9% | |||
| FanGraphs | 14.6% | 4.3% | |||
| Baseball Prospectus | 17.3% | 7.1% | |||
The Twins were hardly a sho0-in for the postseason to start with. They were a bubble team, a team that could qualify for the playoffs if some things broke right. Buxton has a big year, Mauer bounces back, Park has an impact after coming over from Korea. That sort of thing.
None of that has really happened, so the Twins have already dug themselves a very deep hole early in the season. As the postseason odds show, climbing out of that hole is going to be mighty difficult.
History is not on their side.
Difficult does not equal impossible, of course. The second Wild Card makes it easier to qualify for the postseason than ever before, the Twins still have 154 games to play. After all, the Mets and Astros both lost seven games in a row at one point last season, and it didn't sink their seasons.
Generally speaking though, an 0-8 start tends to result in very bad seasons. I mean very, very bad. The Twins are the 19th team in history to start 0-8 -- the Braves are also 0-8 this season, by the way, but they're in the middle of a massive rebuild -- and not one of the prior 17 teams rallied to make the postseason.
The 1983 Astros are by far the best success story following an 0-8 start. They got their first win in their ninth game, and they rallied to go 85-77 on the season. The '83 'Stros did not qualify for the postseason, but they would have been the second Wild Card team had the system been in place that year.
Aside from the 1983 Astros, no other team has ever rallied from an 0-8 start to finish even .500. Those 17 clubs averaged a .378 winning percentage, which is a 61-win pace across a 162-game season. The 1997 Cubs, 2002 Tigers, 2003 Tigers, and 2010 Astros are the only other teams to start 0-8 in the divisional play era. None went on to win more than 76 games.
The season is still very young and the Twins should continue to tell themselves that. What else are they going to say? That said, history suggests that when a team goes 0-8, it's because they are truly a bad team, not an unlucky team. Right now, the 2015 Twins look more like the 2003 Royals than some sort of sign Minnesota is ready to contend again.
