It's almost impossible to overstate just how bad the Minnesota Twins have been at the plate so far this season.
Even saying the Twins have been historically bad somehow still feels like underselling the point. Minnesota is hitting .195 as a team, which is the second-worst team batting average in over a half century.
Things are getting dire, but one person who doesn't seem to be too worried about how things are going is the man in charge of the team's hitting. David Popkins drew some fire from fans last season when the Twins slumped hard over the summer and it's taken less than 20 games for him to once again make himself a target for blame.
David Popkins comments on Twins absolutely brutal offensive production
Amid the painfully slow start, Popkins is preaching patience. If the idea is that he doesn't owe Twins fans an explanation, he's delivering on that front when commenting on how the team is going to pull itself out of this funk.
“When you have these slower starts, guys start to tense up and everyone wants to fix it,” Popkins said. “You’ve just got to get back to just understanding it’s a very long season and we’re at mile 2 of this marathon.”
It's not all bad news.
The Twins are hitting .410/.468/.744 on all fastballs middle-middle, which is the only positive hitting statistic so far this season. Too bad pitchers don't offer up meatballs on every pitch, which is evident in how bad Minnesota on fastballs that aren't middle-middle, hitting an anemic .196.
Again, not great but not something Popkins seems to be too worried about. He points to the struggles Minnesota had last season and how the team was able to fix things then.
"We've been in this situation before," Popkins said, via Twins Daily. "This team was able to be resilient and overcome adversity before."
Talk is cheap when an offense is hitting this poorly. It's tricky logic to dabble in when you start deflecting from tangible things and start coming dangerously close to sounding like the best startegy is to wish hard enough for the offense to be better.
Rocco Baldelli has offered up similar thoughts, repeatedly saying that the season is young and the Twins will eventually start hitting. However, when the Law of Averages is a seriously discussed strategy for why things will get better, that doesn't seem like the type of thing that will calm down fans already frustrated with how poorly things are going.