Name: Your 2008 Minnesota Twins

Claim to Fame, Minnesota: after a slow start, they blossomed into a competitive, quality ballclub in the summer of 2008. An anonymous starting staff provided quality outings, players like Denard Span and Alexi Casilla fulfilled their potential, and elite players like Justin Morneau, Joe Mauer and Joe Nathan had All-Star seasons.

Claim to Fame, Everywhere Else: ESPN and the Boston/New York media markets were vaguely aware of their existence, and were pretty sure that that’s the team Adrian Peterson plays for.

Where They Are Now: circling the [redacted] drain. The bullpen, without Pat Neshek and a clearly unnecessary Chad Bradford (unless you want to go by pesky statistics), has been declared a federal disaster area, and hazed rookies will not be allowed to return for their Hello Kitty backpacks until basic services are restored. The lineup has had inopportune power outages against soft-throwing minor league call-ups. Michael Cuddyer has had injuries to both hands, a broken foot, scurvy, fiddler’s elbow, subprime mortgage of the collarbone, and is alleged to have spontaneously combusted on his rehab assignment in August*. After last night, it’s clear that Joe Nathan has been possessed by the demon spirit of Ron Davis, and sources say exorcists have been called in to see if they can help.

Glorious Randomness Cry for Help: yes, I understand that the Twins have already overachieved this year. Yes, I understand that they really are set up to have a dominant run over the next 4-5 years. But still. This last month has been brutal to witness. Ugh.

*Doctors won’t confirm this on the record, but Cuddyer reportedly overcame this through “grit” and “really getting after it.”

Proprietor update: Not to usurp our guy Stu, but Access Vikings will be going crazy soon with the news that Gus Frerotte will be starting Sunday. Childress must be reading those blogs.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 17th, 2008 at 11:44 am and is filed under Hunt Down, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.