A fire sale for the Twins this summer felt inevitable when they started the season 4-11. However, Minnesota has since gone 13-9 with a +29 run differential and ranks in the top half of the American League in an array of pitching and hitting stat categories in that timeframe.
Why the Minnesota Twins are better than what their record shows and have a good shot at making the postseason
The Instagram caption below perfectly describes why Minnesota is a playoff-caliber team. Since the post, the Twins beat the Orioles 5-2 to claim the series over Baltimore.
The Twins' pitching staff has actually been the best in the American League over the past few weeks according to fWAR. Pablo López and Joe Ryan have sub-3.00 ERAs. Since his disastrous opening-day start while battling an illness in St. Louis, Bailey Ober has an outstanding 2.00 ERA in six outings. Simeon Woods Richardson and Chris Paddack have also been pretty solid as of late. And if anyone gets hurt or regresses, there are three major-league-ready arms in Triple-A St. Paul: Zebby Matthews, David Festa and Andrew Morris.
Additionally, Minnesota's bullpen ranks 6th in MLB in fWAR (1.8), 8th in FIP (3.37) and 2nd in xFIP (3.52). As a whole, the Twins' pitching staff has what it takes to make a deep postseason run.
Besides a few bad starts and late-game Griffin Jax implosions, pitching was never the main concern for the Twins. It was the offense that was holding the team back.
As TwinsCenter stated in its Instagram caption, the Twins sat in the top 8 in the American League in AVG, OBP, SLG, wRC+, home runs and runs after defeating the Orioles on Tuesday. They still do one win later.
Through the Twins' 4-11 start, their offense ranked 26th in AVG (.208) and OBP (.278), 24th in SLG (.335) and runs (55), 25th in wRC+ (76) and 22nd in home runs (12) across MLB. Players who struggled mightily at the beginning of the year, like Byron Buxton, Ryan Jeffers and Carlos Correa, have played a big part in the Twins' recent turnaround with improved offensive production.
Also, Royce Lewis is back and healthy, and Luke Keaschall and Matt Wallner are still waiting to return. The fact that the Twins have done well without those three hitters and will have all of them back at some point (barring more injury troubles) suggests the offense has the capability to be one of the best in the majors.