Minnesota Twins Best in Baseball After Hot Start: Temper Your Enthusiasm

Going into Sunday's game against Kansas City, the Twins have an awful lot to boast about:

• The very successful opening of Target Field. 

• The long-term signing of the reigning American League MVP, batting champion, and hometown hero Joe Mauer.

• The most wins and highest winning percentage in Major League Baseball.

• Four straight season-opening series wins, with the first two on the road.

• Third in the American League in home runs, with six players having hit at least two homers.

• John Rauch is 6-for-6 in save opportunities.

Life is good in Minnesota. Even the weather gods have smiled upon the Twins with temperatures 20 degrees above normal for the opening week of Target Field.

This must be what baseball utopia feels like!

Don't start popping the champagne bottles just yet. Go ahead and enjoy the Twins fast start and revel in outdoor baseball, but let's put some perspective into it.

The winning percentage of the four teams the Twins have faced is a lowly .369 with a combined record of 17—29, a full 12 games under .500.

The usually strong teams of Los Angeles Angels and Boston Red Sox have started the season slowly. Both find themselves at, or near the bottom of, their divisions. Only the dismal start of the Baltimore Orioles keeps Boston out of the AL East cellar. 

Perhaps the Angels' loss of Vladimir Guerrero to Texas and Chone Figgins to Seattle have had a bigger negative impact than anticipated for AL West powerhouse.

The Twins other opponents have been the Chicago White Sox and Kansas City Royals. Against the White Sox the Twins have won eight of the last nine series going back to July of 2008. As for the Royals, the perennial cellar dwellers of the AL Central, no more needs to be said.

Could this be a mirror image of 2009 where the Twins started slow and did not rise three games above .500 until August? Is there a meteoric fall waiting somewhere midsummer?

What happens when the first tough stretch hits this team? How quickly will they be able to pull out of a slump?

So far Rauch has not been tested. What happens after the first blown save?

When the weather heats up this summer and the jet stream swings out of the south will it help the Twins left-handed power hitters more than it hinders the starting pitching?

The answers to these question, unfortunately, will be revealed slowly as the course of the season unfolds.

Check back on Friday, May 21 when the Milwaukee Brewers come to town. It will be on the heels of a nine-game road trip at New York, Toronto, and Boston.   

If the Twins are still dominating after that, go ahead make plans for the inaugural playoff series at Target Field. If the baseball gods are still smiling, who knows where it could lead?