Written By Brandon Warne
During pregame festivities on Monday, Torii Hunter talked about how he’s seen teams get off to tough starts or play through similar stretches to what the Minnesota Twins are going through now. In fact, he slipped up and said he had seen 1-6 stretches from teams many times before, before correcting himself when he realized the Twins came into Monday’s action 1-5.
And while he was being unintentionally prophetical about his team’s chances against the unbeaten, defending AL champion Royals, he was ultimately right, as the Twins again stumbled through an ugly game that featured multiple failures in each facet.
Nobody was harder on himself postgame than Hunter, who is now the MLB’s active leader by virtue of having played 17 straight home openers. From team-specific comments — “Bad News Bears baseball, I guess” — to harsh criticism upon himself — “(The missed cutoff) was a bad throw, and I accept responsibility for that” — it’s clear Hunter is taking his role as a clubhouse pillar seriously. Not only is he the go-to man for reporters pre- and postgame, but the hope is that he can be that kind of go-to guy for teammates who are struggling as well — something of which there’s clearly no shortage.
Hunter no doubt knows what it takes to win; he made the playoffs twice in five years with the Angels and in both seasons with the Tigers. And at the same time, he has to be troubled not only by the team’s play — in a word, dreadful — but also by the fact that everyone else in the division either loaded up, or was very good to begin with.
Torii himself admitted it’s taken some time to get to know the guys this time around with the Twins. Only Glen Perkins and Joe Mauer remain from Hunter’s previous time with the club, and Hunter also noted that it was different his first time around with the club, as he and players like Jacque Jones, Corey Koskie and others had come up through the ranks starting at Double-A New Britain.
Only time will tell if Hunter has bitten off more than he can chew with this bunch. In some ways, it has to gnaw at him a little bit to see a team that pursued him heavily in the offseason — in addition to the Orioles, Rangers and Mariners — throttling his team in the season opener.
But it’s a long season, and we needn’t forget that. A year ago today, the Twins were 6-6, and the Royals were 4-7. We all know how that panned out.
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By the Numbers
- J.R. Graham came into Monday’s action as the Twins hardest thrower via PITCHf/x data housed at Fangraphs.com. Graham’s average fastball checked in at 94 mph, a couple ticks above Mike Pelfrey. Graham reached 95 with regularity on Monday — his fourth outing in seven team games — and at times flirted with 96.
- Something to monitor as the season wears on will be Tommy Milone’s pitch repertoire. Milone threw more cutters than ever in his win over the White Sox, and that might end up being his go-to pitch if he can develop a significant feel for it. The lefty threw the pitch 28 percent of the time in his first start after not using it particularly frequently over the past few seasons. He did throw it more often in 2012, when he went 13-10 with a 3.74 ERA and a career-high 190 innings with the A’s.
- Want a feel for how bad Trevor May’s defense betrayed him on Monday? FIP (fielding independent pitching) is a statistic that is scaled like ERA, and is designed to remove everything a pitcher cannot control to give you an idea of what his ERA should be based on a number of different factors. May’s raw ERA was 8.44, while his FIP was a much more palatable 4.50. That seems to paint a pretty good picture of the youngster’s season debut, where he was pretty solid despite getting by with no help from his friends.