Erasing July

I know I’ve been away for a while. I admit my attention has been focused elsewhere and I’ve been neglecting The Pond and our beloved Twins. I hope you can forgive me, but if you can’t I’ll do my utmost to win back your readership and page clicks by posting at least once a week going forward.

I’ve got another post in the works, but I wanted to ease back in by asking you, our loyal readers, a simple trivia question. Are you ready? No, that’s not the question … here we go: Which AL Central team had the best Win-Loss record during the month of July?

The answer, even if you haven’t jumped off the bandwagon and continue to follow the team on a daily basis, may come as a bit of a shock. It’s the Minnesota Twins. Unfortunately despite their 16-13 record and despite the fact that no other team in the division played better than 0.500 during the month the Twins didn’t pick up any ground. On July 1st they were 8.0 games back of 1st place and on August 1st that number remained the same. The only difference was the team they were trailing as Detroit moved past Cleveland.

While they didn’t gain any ground on first place, the signs were still somewhat positive. Minnesota had managed to almost recover from their 17-36 start by going 33-22 in June and July. Of course the first 7 days of August have not been kind to the team and they have dropped 5 of their first 6 this month. Huzzah …

My hope was already waning, but for a team with almost no margin for error, this past week has all but finished off their season. That really sucks since I’ve continued to believe in this team despite all the injuries and all the other evidence piling up. It’s been screaming in my face all along that Minnesota is not a contender this year, but I’ve refused to listen. Like most everyone out there, I don’t like to be wrong, but I really don’t like to be as wrong as I have been about the 2011 AL Central race.

If you’re curious, here are the July records for each team in the division:

• Minnesota Twins: 16-13
• Detroit Tigers: 13-13
• Chicago White Sox: 12-12
• Kansas City Royals: 13-14
• Cleveland Indians: 11-15

While the Twins haven’t lived up to what I thought they’d be this season, at least the Indians are doing their part* to make their way down the standings.

*No offense to Tribe fans out there but I picked the Twins first and the Indians last in our preseason predictions and I really need Cleveland to fall off quite a bit so I don’t feel like a complete dope!

On a positive note, this roster does not need to be blown up to be a contender in 2012. Adam took a look at some names to consider in his appropriately titled article Flat-Lining earlier today and even our division rivals recognize that the Twins will likely be a factor in 2012.

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If you can’t wait for my next article here on The Pond, you can check out my work over on FanSided’s minor league site Seedlings to Stars and also my semi-regular, weekly column over on Kings of Kauffman.