BATTER UP: MINNESOTA TWINS

Counting down the seconds till Opening Day, when life begins anew involves providing a "starting nine" of obscure trivia, fun facts, high points and low moments for all 29 major-league teams, and if there's time, the Tampa Bay Devil Rays too! Presenting: The Minnesota Twins.

1. Justin Morneau as AL MVP last year was a bit of a joke -- but he's Canadian! It's cool that the Twins' 130-RBI man (pictured) joined the NBA's Steve Nash and the NHL's Joe Thornton as reigning most valuable players from The Great White North, eh. That said, Twins catcher Joe Mauer and ace pitcher Johan Santana were both more integral to last year's division title-winning season.
   
   Why did Morneau win? Because sportswriters fetishize RBI and he had a lot of them -- thanks to the fact the hitters ahead of him, including Mauer, kept getting on base.
2. The Twins original owner was a bigoted A-hole. The late Calvin Griffith gave a talk in the late '70s where he said that he moved the Twins to Minneapolis-St. Paul from Washington, D.C., "when I noticed you had only 15,000 blacks here." Not long after, the team's star player Rod Carew asked to be traded from Griffith's "plantation."
3. Today is a sad day for Twins fans. It's the one-year anniversary of the death of Hall of Fame centre-fielder Kirby Puckett, whose died way too young of a brain aneurysm at age 45. Not to overdo it on the schmaltz, but current centre-fielder Torii Hunter says he learned a lot of lessons from Puckett as a young player, and he's passing them along to minor-leaguer understudy Denard Span. Span, who's one of the Twins' top prospects, is likely to start this season with the Triple-A Rochester Red Wings, who visit the Ottawa Lynx July 20-23 and again on Aug. 29-30.
   
   By the way, Torii Hunter is one of the top three Tories of all time -- the others are Amos and Churchill.
4. Rod Carew is not Jewish. The seven-time batting champion, contrary to Adam Sandler's song, has never converted.
5. Johan Santana is all that, and a bag of potato chips. You probably know that the Venezuelan lefty won the pitching Triple Crown last year, leading the league in wins, strikeouts and earned-run average. He still has two more seasons before free agency, but he's already due $13 million this season and wants a deal done now, now, now! Obviously, there's widespread speculation of what he might command on the open market.
6. Did they get away with letting Big Papi get away? One of the few moves that hasn't worked out for Twins GM Terry Ryan was declining to offer arbitration to David Ortiz after the Twins reached the ALCS in 2002. Ortiz signed with the Red Sox for a bargain basement $1.25 million and the rest is lightweight Drew Barrymore-Jimmy Fallon romantic comedy history.
   
   The Twins haven't got past the first round since. If it had been possible to take a flier a 26-year-old slugger with an injury history and no defensive position without cutting corners elsewhere on the ballclub have made a difference? Did losing Ortiz actually cost the Twins?
   
   It may have in 2003. Ortiz's Runs Created/27 outs was 8.02. The Twins primary DH, Matt LeCroy, posted a decent 6.02 RC/27. It's hard to say if that difference would not have earned the Twins the seven more wins they needed to avoid a first-round matchup with the Yankees, who eliminated them in four games. Ortiz hit two homers in the 2003 ALCS vs. the Yankees. If he had hit similarly well for the Twins in the first round, would that have been enough for them to win two more games? Doubtful.
   
   It did in '04. Ortiz put 8.47 RC/27. The Twins had no regular DH; 35-year-old Jose Offerman saw the most time at the "position" and LeCroy was bad. The Twins only needed one more win to get home-field advantage for the first round and face the wild-card Red Sox instead of the Yankees, who eliminated them in four games again. No one needs to be reminded what Ortiz did to the Yankees in October 2004. However, the Red Sox swept their first-round series, and there's no guarantee of what Ortiz would have done playing for the Twins in an ALCS against the Yankees. The Yankees could have pitched around him more easily than they could have with the Red Sox lineup.
   
   In '05, Ortiz (8.90 RC/27) was the reason Boston edged Cleveland by two games for the wild card. The Twins finishing 12 games back. Would Ortiz have made up those 10 wins the Twins needed? He had 22 Win Shares Above Bench, meaning he was worth seven more wins to his team than a backup would have been -- good, but not enough. Maybe those extra wins Ortiz would have brought the Twins would have come at division rival Cleveland's expense. Minnesota likely would have just finished a close third in the AL Central.
   
   As for '06, with Ortiz (8.90 RC/27) Minnesota wins 100-plus games instead of 96 and finishes with the AL's best record. They would have still faced Oakland in the playoffs since Detroit was the wild card and teams from the same division can't meet in the Division Series and the A's swept the series. Ortiz could not have won three games by himself.
   
   So really, letting Ortiz leave only cost the Twins one ALCS appearance, and possibly a wild-card spot. His salary was in the $5-7 million range in '05-06, and it's questionable whether the Twins could have absorbed that without weakening their team. As well, there's no knowing how much the change of scenery helped David Ortiz become David Ortiz.
   

7. Our Retro Cool Twin was baseball's most multi-tasking player, ever. Not only was César Tovar (infielder, 1965-72) the second player in major-league history to play all nine positions in one game, but according to Mike Shropshire's book Seasons in Hell he was also rumoured to be married to three women in as many countries.
   
   Tovar was top of the order table-setter on some pretty good teams -- the Twins finished one game out in 1967 and won the first two AL West titles in '69-70.
8. For future reference: Bench Twins hitters until mid-May in your fantasy league. The new ballpark that slated to open in 2010 will be open-air --- no roof like Toronto, Milwaukee and Seattle. Stock up on the brandy and longjohns!
   
   Hey, anything has to be better than the Metrodome.
9. Need-to-know about the Twins: They're good but always have to make allowances due to their payroll constrants. That means trying to scrape by with with poor production from two power positions, DH and left field, and complementing Santana in the starting rotation with kids or reclamation projects. Young starters Boof Bonser and Matt Garza are going to be living a fishbowl existence (on a Minnesota scale, granted), and what other 96-win team would put any hope in Ramon Ortiz or Sidney Ponson? In a nutshell, the Twins make the most of what they have, and can compete since their division doesn't have an Evil Empire.

That's all for now. Send your thoughts to neatesager@yahoo.ca.