Minnesota Twins: 5 Goals for the Twins as the Season Winds Down
By Otto Johnson
Minnesota Twins September Goal No. 5: Finish the Season with Less than 90 Losses and avoid the American League Central Basement
This may seem like a fairly arbitrary goal, but avoiding the 90 loss mark would be a small consolation for a team that was expected to win 90 games this season. The final record and place in the division won’t matter in the long haul, but it’ll provide optimism going forward.
The Minnesota Twins need to win one of their final twenty-two games in order to avoid the 100 loss mark, so the team should easily avoid 100 losses for the fifth straight year. Avoiding 90 losses for the fifth straight year would be gravy.
The Twins are already too far ahead of the Pirates, Diamondbacks, Orioles, and Pirates, so a Top 4 pick isn’t realistic. The difference between picks 5 and 10 isn’t that different like the NFL, NHL, and NBA, so tanking for a better draft pick really isn’t necessary.
As for avoiding the AL Central basement, finishing third after back-to-back division titles is far less embarrassing than finishing the year behind the Detroit Tigers and Kansas City Royals. This is all within reach too.
The Twins need to go just 11-11 the rest of the way to avoid 90 losses. That’s extremely possible and with the way the team is playing, it can fall under the likely category. Passing both the Tigers and Royals is the taller order.
Kansas City sits just one game ahead of the Twins, so I don’t expect the Royals to keep ahead. On top of that, the Twins play the Royals six times the rest of the way, so if the Twins take most of those games, we’re looking at a team that’s in fourth place.
Detroit is a little further out. The Tigers currently sit 3.5 games ahead of the Twins, but the Tigers are 16-19 over their past 35 games, so it’s realistic to believe that if the Twins finish hot, they could pass the Tigers and finish just a few games back of fading Cleveland. This isn’t a tough goal, but the team can make fans feel like there’s optimism for next year with a solid finish to the year.