Minnesota Twins: Do They Have the Worst Pitching in the MLB?

“What the hell’s going on out there?”

Vince Lombardi might has well have been talking about the Minnesota Twins starting rotation. Manager Ron Gardenhire has had to have muttered that statement to himself once or twice this season. The Twins are 6-15 before heading out west for a road trip and are tied for the bottom spot in the AL Central with Kansas City. The Twins are sixth in the league in batting average, but with a lack of clutch hitting and terrible pitching they have made 2012 look more like 2011 than 2010.

The Twins by far have the worst pitching in the league. Numbers don’t lie and here are they are. These do not include totals from yesterday's game:

-          Last in the MLB in team ERA, 5.69.

-          The Twins starters have four quality starts, last in the MLB. Boston is second to last with six.

-          115 earned runs, most in the MLB.

-          Twins pitchers have struck out a league low 105 batters, 23 behind second to last Cleveland.

-          Twins opponent batting average is .290, the highest in the MLB.

Every stat shows just how bad the Twins pitching really is. The Twins have given up a league-high 32 home runs while only hitting 14 this season. That is not a good combination. It’s easy to blame the hitting, but the numbers are in support of the hitting. The Twins are sixth in batting average, 10th in on base percentage, and 13th in slugging percentage. It has to be the pitching numbers.

Those numbers point towards the Twins pitching being the worst in MLB and I can’t argue with them. It hasn’t been easy being a Twins pitcher. The team’s best starter from last year, Scott Baker, is out for the year, needing Tommy John surgery. Jason Marquis missed a large amount of spring training due to his daughter getting into a bike accident. Then of course there is Francisco Liriano.

Liriano came in and totally dominated spring training, having only one questionable outing. Liriano’s spring showed signs of 2006, but once the Twins got to Baltimore all of Liriano’s magic was gone. Liriano has only pitched 16.1 innings in four starts while sporting an 11.02 ERA.

This ineffectiveness has led the Twins to skip Liriano’s most recent turn in the rotation, in an effort to right Liriano’s sinking ship. Liriano isn’t the main reason the Twins' pitching is horrible, but his lack of a contribution does add on to the trouble.

The Twins know the pitching is going downhill.

After Minnesota was swept by the Boston Red Sox last week, Rick Anderson had a closed door meeting with the pitchers and both catchers. Many teams have closed door meetings throughout the course of a season, but one this early is alarming. Maybe it’s just a matter of confidence…

“Confidence is contagious. So is lack of confidence.”

Vince Lombardi said that, too. Even though he was a Packer, Lombardi might just know what he was talking about because the Twins pitching confidence is low and it might spread like wild fire.