Minnesota Twins: Two Negatives, Two Positives After First Four Games

Another day, another game lost for the Minnesota Twins.

After a weekend series sweep to the hands of the Baltimore Orioles, the Twins played their first game of the year at Target Field and lost to the Los Angeles Angels 5-1.

It’s obviously too early to declare this team dead, but a 0-4 start wasn’t what anyone wanted or probably expected.

Many things so far this year weren’t expected. First off, the positives:

Justin Morneau is hitting the ball. He is currently .308 with two doubles while manning the DH position for the first four games. These aren’t the most impressive stats in the world, but no one really knew what to expect out of Morneau coming into the year.

Josh Willingham has been as advertised. He crushed a home run in Baltimore, crushed another one in the home opener, and in his next at bat was feet away from smoking another one out of the park.

Granted, Willingham has made some blunders out in left already but on the other hand he threw a runner out at home in Baltimore.

He wasn’t singed for his defense but his power—he’s shown that thus far. Not to mention he’s hitting .385, which is the team lead through four games.

Now for the not-so-positives:

Half of Jamey Carroll is great and, thus far, half of him is not so.

Jamey Carroll has flashed some leather these first four games, showing the Twins what they were missing last year with the likes of Tsuyoshi Nishioka and Trevor Plouffe manning short.

The problem is that through four games, Jamey Carroll doesn’t have a single base hit.

He has 13 plate appearances and has not yet got a hit. He has walked three times but that is it.

Carroll wasn’t brought in for his bat but he isn’t helping shed the stigma of a black hole in the two spot in the order for the Twins.

Michael Cuddyer is gone and the clubhouse leader now has to be Joe Mauer, who hasn’t really run with that role on the field too well. 

Defensive wise, Mauer has split time between catcher and first, committing an error at first—that can be accepted.

What can’t be accepted is the fact Mauer only has two hits so far. Mauer has 14 at bats, three strikeouts and two walks. Its only game four but this team will only be as successful if Mauer is hitting the ball.

One crazy thing: The injury bug has already bitten the Twins this year.

Liam Hendricks was supposed to start on Sunday in Baltimore but was out due to food poisoning. It’s not exactly an injury but it’s another crazy thing making a Twin miss time. It reminds everyone that 2011 wasn’t that long ago.

Hendricks flew into Minneapolis on Monday and shouldn’t miss an extended amount of time.

I know it’s way too early to have any solid conclusions about this team, but it’s just alarming to see.

The Twins as a team have only scored five runs (last in the MLB) and are hitting .163 (28th in the MLB). There is a whole lot of baseball left to be played but it’d be nice if the Twins could get rolling.

April is brutal for the Twins: two left of this Angels series, three with Texas, four at the New York Yankees, three in Tampa Bay, three with Boston and three with an up-and-coming Kansas City Royals team.

A positive with this schedule is that it should all be easier for the Twins after this brutal month of April. A negative is that the Twins might dig themselves too deep of a hole to get out of.

Even with a healthy Mauer and Morneau.