Here's some mindless fun with stats.

The Twins are 29-29 since starting the season 6-16 and they are 19-12 in their last 31 games including tonights game against Detroit. (question here is can 1 or 2 more starting pitchers push us to the next level as our hitting, defense, and bullpen seem good enough to contend)

Gray has a 4.08 era and most bloggers can't wait to get rid of him, but take out his worst appearance and he has a 2.80 era and 5 vulture wins.

Waldrop tied Butera in K's this evening.

which player is this Valencia or Parmelee: 100AB 19H 5 2B 1 3B 1 HR

The Twins could actually have 6 players with 10+ stolen Bases on the team by the end of the season. When was the last time the Twins had that many Pirahnas? (I don't know that answer) but here are the candidates: Revere and Casilla with 10+ already and Span, Caroll, Dozier, and Mastroianni.

A fun exercise: Rank the Twins starting pitchers from best to worst and beyond....

1. Cole Devries

2. Brian Duensing

3. Anthony Swarzak

4. Francisco Liriano

5. Jason Marquis

6. Carl Pavano

7. PJ Walters

8. Liam Hendriks

9. Nick Blackburn

10. Scott Diamond

Tyler Robertson pitched in 5 of his first 6 games after being called up. The Twins are taxing their bullpen.

One last thought should the Twins go to a 4 man rotation and bring up a 9th reliever? or go to a 14 man pitching staff at some point to help the bullpen with some of their workload?

6-16 isnt the right stat as they lost 5 of the next 6....since starting 7-21, they 28-24, which is a .538 winning percentage---same as the White Sox (who everyone says is a below average team).

Another fun stat....Texas leads the major leagues with a .617 winning %.

If the Twins, with 82gms left, play at that pace....they finish with 86-76 record. As bad as CHI has been to lead the division, if they play ONLY this bad in 2nd half, they also finish with 86 wins.

Winning the division is out of question IMO.

A few things with this blog:

1. If you are ranking the SP's in your list by performance this year, Diamond should be first, then probably Liriano, DeVries, Walters, Duensing, Swarzak, with all the other pitchers behind them.

2. The listed stat line is are the same for Parms & Danny V.

3. While the Twins have next to no chance of winning the division this year, they have a solid shot of doing so next year if they can figure out one really good or two above-average free agent starters on the market this offseason. Their lineup and bullpen is good enough (as long as they don't burn the bullpen out this year waiting for better starting pitching) that they could seriously compete if they could just figure out what to do with their starting 5.