Will The Twins Ever Hit Again?

Despite not having to face Price every night, the Twins still managed to have one of the least potent lineups post-break. Hits are frequently a precursor to runs. Runs, as the rules would have it, are needed to win baseball games. After scoring 4.3 runs per game in the first half of the year (ninth place), they have struggled mightily to push players across the plate as of late. Through 17 second-half games, the Twins have averaged almost one full run less (3.4 per game) in that time.

One of the cornerstones to the team’s first-half success, timely hitting, has all but disappeared. The Twins hit a robust .283 with runners in scoring position prior to the Midsummer Classic (4th in MLB) and have dropped to .218 (26th) since. The ability to accumulate hits at a clip higher than the norm is frankly unsustainable and one of the reasons the team outperformed expectations early on, but now the hits are not coming in any situations -- men on, men off, night, day, home or road. Nothing. Following a night in Toronto in which the soft-tossing Marco Estrada limited the lineup to just two hits resulting in a solitary run -- on a sacrifice fly, no less -- the Twins second-half batting average slipped to .213, the lowest in baseball.

This series was supposed to matter. The Twins were desperately clinging to the last wild card and starting a four-game set against an opponent that was looking to steal that ticket from them. To show how serious they are about October baseball, the Blue Jays armed themselves to the gills, preparing for all- out war. So far, it appears that the Twins have brought a knife to a bazooka fight. A rubber knife. That a dog has chewed on. Now, in a whimper of a dog missing its rubber knife, the Twins find themselves on the outside looking in on the postseason.

Without some efforts from the offense, there is little hope of getting that spot back.

That sort of decline is expected out of a lineup that is loaded with young, unpolished hitters but the Twins’ most notable area of offensive weakness comes from the three professional, veteran hitters at the top of the order.

In the beginning of the season the Twins’ top three hitters -- a combination of Brian Dozier, Torii Hunter and Joe Mauer -- scored an average of nearly two runs per game (1.6) thanks to a steady mixture of collecting hits, getting on-base and Dozier popping dingers. Now the Twins’ top of the order throng has been effectively shut down. Dozier can’t find any real estate when he puts the ball in play and far too often he isn’t even able to do that, striking out in over 30% of his plate appearances. Hunter has regressed significantly over the month of July, batting .193/.230/.351 over his last 61 plate appearances. Mauer, meanwhile, had put together a string of strong games heading into the break but seemingly lost his plate awareness, taking more defensive swings or watching strike three whistle past.

What makes this development particularly damning is that it effectively renders Miguel Sano, the lineup’s most tactical weapon, useless. While onlookers celebrate Sano’s patience and zone recognition (a fantastic skill set to have, by the way) the bigger picture is missed. The purpose of the cleanup hitter is to drive in runs. Sano proved that he could do that in the minors and hit the ball really hard in his arrival to the majors. Once he showed he could do unforgivable things to fastballs, opposing teams quickly rationed those pitches. With no one regularly on base ahead of him nor anyone behind him in the order able to contribute, teams happily throw the big man sliders away and let him trot to first base instead of around all of them.

The Twins had an opportunity to upgrade some of the underperforming positions in the lineup at the trade deadline but chose not to. Which is fine. The Twins want to dance with the date they brought to the party, for better or worse. If they expect to regain their playoff slot, they need big contributions from the top of the order.