Ok, with Denard Span being sent down to AAA and Joe Nathan being inked to a 4 year, $47 M payday, the Minnesota Twins opening day roster is rounding into shape. Here are my predictions for the upcoming season. The opening day lineup will look like this:
1. Carlos Gomez, CF
2. Joe Mauer, C
3. Michael Cuddyer, RF
4. Justin Morneau, 1B
5. Delmon Young, LF
6. Craig Monroe/Jason Kubel, DH
7. Brendan Harris, 2B
8. Mike Lamb, 3B
9. Adam Everett, SS
The best case scenario is that Carlos Gomez becomes Jose Reyes, Joe Mauer and Justin Morneau play like they did in 2006, Delmon Young plays like Torii Hunter did last year, and the 7,8,9 spots can get at least 3 combined hits a game. Worst case scenario is that Carlos Gomez bats .232 like he last year with the Mets, Joe Mauer and Justin Morneau play like they did in 2007, Delmon Young is still a couple years away from being a superstar, Craig Monroe remembers that he is old and Jason Kubel continues to deliver nothing on the hype that I have heard for the last 4 years, and our 7,8,9 batters consistently give the Twins only 18 outs to outscore our opponents who are getting 27 outs to play with.
How about the pitchers. It looks like the Franchise is going to start the year on a rehab assignment, and Baker will be given as much time to get up to speed as possible; so here is how I see the opening day rotation:
1. Livan Hernandez
2. Boof Bonser
3. Kevin Slowey
4. Nick Blackburn
5. Scott Baker
Eventually, however, the rotation will look more like:
1. Francisco Liriano
2. Scott Baker
3. Livan Hernandez
4. Boof Bonser
5. Kevin Slowey
Either way, the prospects for keeping opponents under 5 runs a game don’t look good. Blackburn and Slowey are essentially unknowns at this point. They are both regarded by those outside of the Twins organization as decent pitching prospects. To put it into perspective, the Rays didn’t want Slowey or Blackburn for Delmon Young, they wanted Matt Garza. So expecting either of them to be better than Matt was would be irresponsible. Boof and Baker both showed signs of dominant pitching last year, but those signs were all too often scattered in between 4 inning outings. The same goes for Liriano. He made the all-star game in 2006 after arriving on the baseball landscape like he was shot out of cannon. Unfortunately, it’s almost impossible to know how his elbow will respond to the Tommy John surgery, not to mention the complete transformation of his delivery mechanics. To me, it looks like the smart bet would be that Liriano will get back to peak form by the end of spring training next year.
As you can probably tell, I see the rotation as the biggest question mark. One which could sway the Twins performance this year by 40 games or more from best-case scenario to worst-case scenaro. If the starting rotation is a high yield junk bond, rife with risk, the bullpen is more like an index fund; solid performance with less risk exposure. Joe Nathan is a top 5 closer in the league, Neshek was a top 5 set-up man before he had to take all of his innings and Jesse Crain’s innings the second half of the year. Speaking of Crain, he is coming back healthy and will be able to spell Neshek and keep him fresh throughout the season. Blackburn/Perkins/whoever else will be decent long-relievers for those times when the starters show their inevitable inconsistency.
So, here comes a prediction. The way I see it, we will be good enough to win 25% percent of our games against Detroit, Cleveland, New York Yankees and Boston. So that gives us 10 wins in 38 tries against the Detroit/Cleveland and 3 wins in 12 tries against NY/Boston. I think we are good enough to play .600 baseball the rest of the way in the 112 remaining games against the NL teams in interleague play and the non-elite AL teams. So this would give us 67 more wins in 112 tries. Therefore, my prediction for the overall season is 80 wins, 82 losses. Unfortunately, 80 wins in the AL Central is probably only good for 3rd, depending on if the White Sox can come back to form and pass us. This is by no means gospel, so if you have any thoughts/opinions/arguments/gripes we would love hear what you think!
20 responses so far ↓
1 hahahah // Sep 3, 2008 at 2:09 pm
could you have been more wrong about everything!!! hahaha you are an idiot
2 Ben The Professor // Sep 5, 2008 at 9:10 am
The year’s not over yet, hahahah. Are you talking about the 80-82 record? Let me list what I was right about (please note that I predicted this in MARCH when it was still snowing!):
1. Opening day starting rotation was perfect except they chose to start Perkins in place of Blackburn to start the year, and, funny, Blackburn is better than Perkins, so I was right about that.
2. Opening day lineup was close, except that I had Mauer in the 2 hole and Gardy started the season with Brendan Harris batting second.
3. I predicted that Garza would be better than any of our pitchers this year, and he is BY FAR better than anyone we have.
4. We would only win 25% of the games against AL east and AL west powers (see last series vs. Toronto). We’re lucky if we have won 1/4 of those games this year.
Things I was wrong about:
1. Livan was worst than expected, although if you look closely I had him falling in the rotation by the end of the year.
2. Boof was WAY worse than expected!
3. Currently our winning percentage is higher than I predicted, but let’s let this one play out. I picked us to take 3rd, we are currently in 2nd, and if we keep playing like this Cleveland will catch us fast; we don’t have the predicted 80 wins yet..
So, there you have it. I invited others to post their predictions before the season started, so unless you make better predictions than me, with analysis, in March I don’t want to hear about it.
p.s. I really hope that I was wrong and the Twins win the division.
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