Minnesota Twins: Be happy with 2015, expect even more in 2016
Torii Hunter and I don’t agree on a whole lot of things. What he told to Mike Berardino of the Pioneer Press on Saturday is an example of this.
Hunter on falling short: "We did everything we possibly could."#MNTwins
— Mike BerardinoNDI (@MikeBerardino) October 3, 2015
Hunter said this about his Minnesota Twins team that was officially eliminated from playoff contention with the loss to the Kansas City Royals on Saturday afternoon. The problem is that the Twins didn’t really do everything they could.
Just to list a couple things off the top of my head: Glen Perkins could have been a serviceable arm in the second half of the season, Brian Dozier could have played like he did in the first half and Hunter himself could have not decided to take a good portion of the second half of the season off, too.
So there is a couple things specific players could have done. Throw in the fact that the front office could have called up Jose Berrios and cut bait with Mike Pelfrey, yeah, things could have been done better.
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I don’t like thinking that way. We really shouldn’t be thinking about the Minnesota Twins season that way.
The simple fact is that the Twins overachieved to the highest degree in 2015. At the beginning of the season, I predicted higher than almost anyone in thinking what the Twins’ record would be. I said 82-80. The Twins will finish with at least 83 wins.
Minnesota is well ahead of schedule and we can’t forget that. 2015 was destined to be another 90-loss season or, at least, damn close to that. The Twins were not supposed to be playing meaningful baseball in October, but they did.
I will always say that the Twins have no one to blame but themselves for missing the playoffs this season with the dropped games they had in the last couple weeks of the regular season, but that doesn’t take away from the fact that they over succeeded.
Twins fans should be happy with the result from 2015, but have high expectations for this team in 2016 and let them know if they don’t reach those expectations.
Next: No bat flips around the Twins!