Minnesota Twins Preview

In 2004, the Minnesota Twins won the AL Central for the third consecutive year. Then, they were bounced from the playoffs by the New York Yankees after Corey Koskie’s double bounced two feet too high and Juan Rincon channeled George Frazier. Unfortunately, many people looked at that performance and thought, “Well, they don’t have much of a payroll, so they shouldn’t be frustrated with the loss.” This, of course, overlooks the fact that the team was seven outs away from the ALCS, and, at the very least, five outs away from forcing a rubber match in which they would have the edge in starting pitching.

At the beginning of the off-season, Jason Kubel had his leg explode leading to an unfortunate chain of events. The loss of Kubel meant Jacque Jones needed to return to play right field. Bringing Jacque Jones back meant that the team would not have enough money to resign Corey Koskie. Not resigning Koskie meant that Michael Cuddyer would be the new third baseman. Starting Michael Cuddyer at third base meant that Luis Rivas would still have a shot with the team. Thus, a player with just sixty-seven career plate appearances above AAA may have been the most important person in the team’s offseason moves.

Catcher: Joe Mauer

Sadly, I will begin my entry on Mauer by noting that his backup catcher this year will be Mike Redmond. With that out of the way, Joe Mauer exceeded my wildest expectations with his 2004 performance during the time he was healthy. After returning from his first knee injury, he quickly hit his way into the third spot of the lineup as the team’s most dangerous hitter. He solidified his reputation as an extremely patient hitter by working the count in nearly every at bat, but he also displayed much more power than was expected of him at this stage in his career. Entering the 2004 season, Mauer had hit 9 homeruns in over 1000 professional at bats; then, he slugged six homeruns in just 107 at bats with the Twins including a memorable three-run homerun of Esteban Yan to win a game against Detroit in June.

Mauer complied just a 182/210/263 line against left-handed pitching, so Ron Gardenhire should be use him as a platoon player simply to help rest his knee. Speaking of the knee, I doubt anybody really knows what to expect from Mauer both in the short-term and long-term because his knee always seems to flare up right when he is performing his best. Attempting to find some humor in the situation over at the DTFC Twins Forum, Craig in MN wrote the following exchange between the Twins beat reporters and their readers:

Reporters: "Knee! Knee! Knee! Knee!" Twins Fans: "Oh, ow!" Reporters: "We shall say 'knee' again to you if you do not appease us." Twins Fans: "Well, what is it you want?" Reporters: "We want... a shrubbery!"

First Base: Justin Morneau

Consider these two players:

Age 22: Player A: 329/384/628 at AA 268/498/344 at AAA 226/377/287 at MLB (OPS+ of 73)

Player B: 336/486/458 at AA 313/563/389 at AAA 205/299/275 at MLB (OPS+ of 63)

Age 23: Player A: 306/615/377 at AAA 271/536/340 at MLB (OPS+ of 122)

Player B: 332/585/438 at AAA 266/474/385 in MLB (OPS+ of 131)

Player B has more plate discipline, but Player A has more power. Player B is Jim Thome. Player A is Justin Morneau. I’ve made this comparison several times, but with each passing season the players have remained fairly similar in their development. I cannot think of a single Twins fan that is not salivating at the thought of having the next Jim Thome in the middle of the team’s lineup for the next few seasons.

Defensively, Morneau earned a reputation as a poor player, but that seems to be a case of the Twins looking for a reason to justify keeping Mientkiewicz around and seizing upon the only skill in which he was obviously similar. Morneau had some difficulty tracking pop-ups down the first-base line, but he has pretty good footwork around the base and good hands. Tom Kelly, a notorious stickler for defense, has been touting Morneau’s defense around the base all spring, so I expect this is the last we will hear of his defensive deficiencies for awhile.

Second Base: Luis Rivas

Fun Fact #1: Rivas has been remarkably consistent in his time in the Majors. His OPS+ for his four seasons are 79, 86, 80 and 82. Of course, some Twins fans see that as progress.

Fun Fact #2: According to Baseball-Reference.com, the second most similar player in baseball history to Rivas through his age-24 season is Joe Morgan. Pete Rose and Lou Whitaker are also among his top ten comps. That means Rivas might be the AL MVP in 2011 and 2012, might be banned for life, or might end up ridiculously underrated – I’m holding my breath to discover which one.

Fun Fact #3: Rivas actually slugged .432 last season – higher than both Jacque Jones and Matthew LeCroy.

Fun Fact #4: While Rivas has absolutely no range to his left, he does an excellent job at turning the double-play. In fact, he averaged turning a double-play every 11.5 innings while Michael Cuddyer participating in a double-play every 19.2 innings.

Third Base: Michael Cuddyer

Michael Cuddyer found himself starting playoff games in the outfield at the age of twenty-three. He promptly hit 385/500/462 in that series which was enough to get benched for the next round. The next season, he was the Opening Day starter but found was sent back to the minors after three weeks. He finally returned to a Major League roster for good the next season, but as a utility player seeing playing time at five different defensive positions. All of that, in the span of twenty months.

So, after jerking Cuddyer all over the field and from Rochester and Minnesota several times, the Twins seemed to finally accept Cuddyer as their second baseman. He even started Game One of the ALDS and helped participate in the record five double-plays turned that day; an achievement he called his highlight of the season. Then, in the offseason, the team promptly moved him back over the third base after Corey Koskie was lured back home to Canada.

When the team finally began showing confidence in Cuddyer last season, his performance really picked up. After the All-Star break, he hit 287/487/378 and cut his strikeout to walk ratio from nearly three to one to almost one to one. The Twins can probably pencil him for about twenty homeruns this season, adequate defense at third base and a batting line a tick below what he did in the second half of last season.

Shortstop: Jason Bartlett

A month ago, I would have written Juan Castro’s name in this section. After handing him a two-year guaranteed contract, it seemed virtually guaranteed that the job would be Castro’s in spite of the team’s proclamations about it being an open competition. However, Castro has been booting the ball all over the field (seven errors already this spring) while Bartlett has displayed good range and a strong arm. Like Morneau, the team seems to be sending out bad messages about his defense because it is the only skill at which Castro is superior. However, if Castro continues to play sloppy defense, that excuse might disappear.

If Bartlett does make the team, I would expect some doubles power with a decent on base percentage. In fact, something along the lines of 275/380/350 should be a reasonable expectation. If he does make the roster, this would be the seventh straight year in which the Twins shortstop has been acquired through the Chuck Knoblauch trade. Add in six years of league average starting pitching (Eric Milton and Carlos Silva), a scrappy and injury-prone middle infielder (Nick Punto) and about fifteen months of lefty-mashing (Brian Buchanan), and the trade just keeps on giving.

Left Field: Shannon Stewart

Stewart was acquired at the All-Star break in 2003 in exchange for Bobby Kielty in a trade that was denounced by many as unnecessary. Of course, Kielty immediately fell off a cliff after leaving the Twins and Stewart has been a calming presence in Minnesota whenever healthy. According to some of the players, most notably Torii Hunter, the team benefits from having Stewart in the lineup simply because his patience wears off on the team. The fact that Hunter is now twenty-eight years old and still needs a veteran to remind him to be patient is slightly uncomforting.

Anyway, Stewart has struggled with injuries the past few seasons. Last year, planter fasciitis in his right foot sapped his speed and forced him to the Disabled List early in the year. His range in left-field is now below average, and his throwing arm, while accurate, is not particularly powerful. Still, he playing left field keeps him more involved in the game, so he asks to play there rather than be the designated hitter despite his defensive deficiencies.

Center Field: Torii Hunter

Hunter exchanged his fantastic 2002 season for a big contract extension to cover his arbitration years as well as two years of free agency. Unfortunately, rather than build upon his 2002 season, he has regressed with the bat and slipped slightly defensively. Try as he might, Torii just cannot continue to lay off of sliders down and away – he’ll either swing and miss, try to hold up his swing and have the first base umpire call it a strike anyway, or get on top of the ball and hit a grounder to the shortstop. In fact, only three players hit into a higher rate of double-plays last season and not one of those three stole a single base.

Hunter, on the other hand, really worked on his base stealing in the second half of 2004. After the All-Star break he stole sixteen of nineteen bases successfully. In fact, he began getting such good jumps that he would not even draw a throw from the opposition. On July 23, 24 and 25th last year, he stole a base in all three games the Twins played in Baltimore and didn’t draw a single throw on any of the attempts. It was exhilarating. The Orioles knew he was going to steal, they would throw over to first several times, yet he would still get such a good jump that the Baltimore faithful (and, Mr. Angelos, the four percent of the crowd from Washington, DC) had no choice but to boo their own squad.

Defensively, Hunter has excellent range - especially tracking down fly balls into the right-center gap. His one weakness is his tendency to rush a throw back into the infield with very little effort. He will field a ball (typically a single) and pick it up right away and lob it back towards the cut-off man. A few times, most notably against the Royals, an aggressive opponent has been able to steal an extra base that way. Still, it’s a minor quibble for all the extra outs that Hunter’s range provides.

Right Field: Jacque Jones

The most frustrating player on the team. He is the player most likely to strikeout with the tying runner in scoring position in the late innings of a close game. Also, he is the player most likely to hit a homerun his next time up to tie the game or push the Twins ahead. The aforementioned scenario happened in the second game of last season. Similarly, in Game One of the ALDS, Jones did not come within three feet of a Mike Mussina pitch in his first at bat and then promptly homered and hit a warning track fly ball in his other two times up against Mussina.

Defensively, he again is an all-or-nothing player. His arm is extremely strong, but he has an extraordinarily difficult time with his release point. He is as like to hit the target as he is to throw the ball into the backstop behind home plate or, in the case of Game Two of the ALDS, six hop it into the infield. This year, expect another up-and-down year for Jones, but with a few more peaks and a few less valleys than last year’s disappointing season. The writing is on the wall for Jones, so he is playing for his 2006 paycheck this season in an open audition for the other twenty-nine teams while Jason Kubel rehabilitates his knee to succeed Jones in right field.

Designated Hitter: LEW!

LEW! started last season with Rochester, but was called up to Minnesota before he could see any action with the Red Wings. He was fantastic in April filling in for Torii Hunter slugging 419/710/471. In fact, he kept hitting so well that the team was forced to find ways to sneak his bat into the lineup even when the whole team was healthy. His power dropped in the second half of the season, but he countered that loss with an increase in his already exceptional on base skills. In short, LEW! provides Shannon Stewart’s production with the bat, but for about one-twentieth of the cost.

Defensively, LEW! is a far superior player to Stewart as he possesses above-average range and an accurate, and slightly more powerful arm (but still below average). I will always contend that LEW! would have caught ARod’s double in Game Two simply because I need to cling to the belief that the Twins should have won that series. Perhaps the best description I have heard regarding LEW! is that he is “a little bundle of energy”. Not a bad return, for twenty outs of Hector Carrasco.

Bench:

Matthew LeCroy is basically designated hitter 1-A this season. LEW! will probably be spelling all of the outfielders on a regular basis, and LeCroy will be the player asked to pick up the extra at bats. He also will be able to give Justin Morneau rest against some tough left-handed pitchers; if the team is feeling daring, he can squat behind home plate for a game or two. LeCroy keeps getting screwed out of starting jobs, so this is probably going to be his role for the duration of his Minnesota tenure. He also is a solid weapon to have off the bench because he demolishes left-handed pitching. Last year, he also tied the Major League record by hitting a homerun in three consecutive pinch-hit at-bats.

Some people called Henry Blanco the MVP of the 2004 Twins. I call those people morons. Mike Redmond will be replacing Blanco as caddy to Joe Mauer and hopefully will never have to catch more than two games consecutively this season. Redmond will provide more offense than Blanco simply by not chewing up outs seventy-five percent of the time he comes up to bat. Defensively, all the young pitchers on the Marlins loved throwing to him, so I do not expect to hear any complaints from the Twins staff. At least, not until he starts watching Marlins games in the locker room while playing poker. He also has already announced that his slump-busting skills have traveled with him to Minnesota, and that he will not hesitate to rely on that practice if the team finds itself in an extended period of sucking.

Since I am hoping that he will not be starting everyday at shortstop, Juan Castro must fill a spot on the bench. It is shocking that the first season of his two-year guaranteed contract has not even started, yet it already looks like a mistake. Nick Punto and Augie Ojeda can serve as backup middle infielders who cannot hit for a fraction of the cost of Castro (the exact fraction is somewhere in the neighborhood of five-twelfths).

Terry Tiffee and Eric Munson are battling for a spot as the backup corner infielder and third baseman. Munson seems to have a head-start in the competition simply because he was a veteran and left-handed. However, he has not set the world on fire this Spring and has opened the door for Tiffee to make the squad. Plus, defense is not Munson’s strong suit (neither is making contact), and the Twins pride themselves on their defense. Frankly, I would prefer Tiffee simply because he would cost $350,000 less, but there is no reason to get all bent out of shape over the twenty-fifth spot on the roster. This position might not even exist in a week, however, depending upon how the shortstop - middle infield situation shakes itself out, so stay tuned.

Finally, Michael Restovich was the favorite for the fifth outfielder position at the break of camp. Unfortunately, his shoulder has still been bothering him after a grilling accident and has prevented him from playing in the field. His bat has been slow as well in camp, so the team now seems to be sending out feelers about using him as trade bait. He is out of options, so the team either needs to hope he sneaks through waivers (unlikely), or that they can find a team willing to exchange him for a low-level prospect.

This predicament is maddening because Restovich and Jacque Jones would have been a solid platoon in each of the last three seasons, but the organization let Restovich’s development stagnate while also exposing Jones’s inability to hit left-handed pitching. Now, the values of both players have dropped considerably since 2002, and the organization might not have the rights to either of them in 2006 without receiving a single thing in return.

The Twins also have a lot of players who can play all over the field, so the final look of the roster might be confusing. For example, they could decide to drop Restovich and not keep a fifth outfielder. In this scenario, LEW! is still the backup at all three spots, but Nick Punto and Jacque Jones are the extra centerfielders while Michael Cuddyer can back up LEW! in the corners. However, this means that either Terry Tiffee or Eric Munson needs to stick around to replace Cuddyer at third base unless the Twins want to place Castro there and completely punt offense at an offensive position. Basically, for every move the Twins make, there is a resulting need to keep another player on the roster to cover the newly opened hole. The Twins have all the pieces (and a few extra) for the jigsaw puzzle, so it will be interesting to see how the team assembles its bench.

Starting Pitchers

Johan Santana had a pretty good 2004 season. He should continue to be dominating in 2005, but not quite at the level he was at the last three months of the season. He has to be the odds-on bet to lead the AL in strikeouts. Plus, while he reached a career high in innings, Ron Gardenhire was very careful with not overworking Santana and even created a plan for how to handle games in which he had pitched at least seven innings and not allowed a run. If you have not seen Santana set up a hitter with two fastballs before throwing a disappearing changeup, you are missing out.

Speaking of changeups, Brad Radke enjoyed his best season last year while winning just eleven games. Radke upped his strikeout rate to a level it had not approached in over five years while maintaining his impeccable control. During his first six seasons in the Major Leagues, Radke never finished worse than fifth in walks per nine innings in the American League averaged 2.0 BB/9 IP combined during those seasons. However, since 2001, he has improved that rate to just 1.2 BB/9 IP – a decrease of nearly forty percent.

His improved control after already establishing a reputation as one of the top control pitchers in the game is a pitching equivalent of Barry Bonds going from one of the top hitters in baseball and becoming head-and-shoulders better than everyone else. Obviously, what Bonds did is slightly more remarkable, but Radke’s development has been stunning – I did not even notice it had occurred until just now. As it is, Radke is the active leader in fewest walks per nine innings ahead of Jon Lieber and Greg Maddux.

Carlos Silva was acquired in the Eric Milton trade last season and ended up as the third starter providing better production in 2004 than Phillies received from Milton. He somehow managed to walk two fewer batters in 2004 than in 2003 despite pitching 115.2 more innings. Silva does not strike anybody out and is very reliant on his defense.

In fact, Silva is eerily similar to Joe Mays, who is returning from Tommy John surgery. A month ago, I did not expect anything at all out of Mays this season as his rehabilitation has featured numerous set-backs. Plus, he was not that good to begin with. Still, it is hard to determine how much of Mays’ putrid performance in 2003 was based on his arm injury since he did not fess up to it until the end of the year. When he is healthy, Mays relies on getting ground balls from his sinking fastball much like Derek Lowe. He will never approach his 2001 level again (it was aided by pitching one third of his games against Detroit and Kansas City), but he can be an asset rather than a liability as a fifth starter if healthy.

After a god-awful season in which he butted heads with management, Kyle Lohse won his arbitration case and returns to the team in 2005. This will be a very important season because the Twins have a lot of young pitching on the rise, and he is about to get very expensive. Lohse took a big step back with his control last season and the team had a worse defensive efficiency (turning balls in play into outs) behind than the other three starters. The talent exists for Lohse to turn an ERA below 4.00, but it is becoming more likely that it might occur for another team after he prices himself out of the Twins plans.

The Twins also have an unbelievable amount of extra starters lying around in the farm system ready to claim a job in the next few seasons, so I will talk about the two most likely to start games for the 2005 Twins.

Scott Baker, the team’s second round pick in 2003, has been exceptional this Spring and has probably moved to the front of the line in case of an injury. He is not overpowering, but he throws four pitches for strikes and is very calm and controlled on the mound drawing comparisons to Brad Radke. His polar opposite is fellow prospect J.D. Durbin. Durbin can be very demonstrative at times and has rubbed a few people the wrong way with his intensity, confidence and cockiness. Of course, he promptly lost his confidence (and the strike zone) this spring and will be going back to Rochester to await a call-up later this season.

Bullpen

In two of Ron Gardenhire’s three seasons as manager (2002 and 2004), the bullpen has been the biggest question mark for the Twins as the dawn of the season. In both of those years, he coaxed excellent production out of the unit relying both on replacement level players (Tony Fiore and Joa Roa), rebound years from known pitchers (LaTroy Hawkins and J.C. Romero v. 2004) and an All-Star effort from a new closer (Eddie Guardado and Joe Nathan). In fact, I began monitoring Gardenhire’s bullpen usage and discovered that he did a very good job of funneling the high leverage innings to his top three relievers – Joe Nathan, Juan Rincon and J.C. Romero.

After leading the National League in relief victories in 2003, Joe Nathan joined the Twins as part of the A.J. Pierzynski trade and was installed as Eddie Guardado’s replacement as a closer. After a rough start, Nathan was unhittable for four months as he worked his ERA all the way down to 0.82 on August 18. In fact, he was charged with a run in just one out of fifty appearances from April 15 – August 18. Nathan uses a fastball in the upper nineties and a big, sweeping curveball to keep hitters off balance. He should regress from last season, but that is just a way of saying that he will not be one of the top five relief pitches in baseball. He was signed to a two-year contract extension earlier this month with an option year for 2008, which provides cost certainty for the team and also makes him trade bait in a year or two.

The primary set-up man does not typically receive much glory, but Juan Rincon earned accolades last year simply by vulturing his way to eleven wins. Rincon was fantastic as he struck out 106 batters in just 82 innings and was the primary bridge between the starters and Nathan. He neutralizes left-handed batters just as well as righties, so he prevents Gardenhire from getting himself too involved in late inning match-ups. He also keeps the ball in the park (Ruben Sierra, notwithstanding) and has the endurance to go two or three innings at a time.

J.C. Romero serves as the main left-handed pitcher out of the Twins bullpen. He allowed 21 out of 45 inherited runners to score last season which makes his 3.51 ERA look a little less impressive. Of, if you add those twenty-one runs to his stats, raises the ERA all the way up to 6.05. Obviously, not all of those runs were his fault (entering a game with no outs and a runner on third, for example), but he still was the worst pitcher on the staff at cleaning up after others. Romero relies on a herky-jerky pitching motion that gets knocked out of whack fairly easily. In those cases, he will suddenly lose the strike zone for several batters at a time and overcompensate by adjusting himself at an unimaginable rate. His struggles down the stretch last season forced Ron Gardenhire to lose confidence, and directly led to a fatigued Joe Nathan pitching to ARod in Game Two.

The fourth hard-throwing option in the Twins bullpen will be Jesse Crain. In his minor league career, Crain averaged 11.5 strikeouts per nine innings and accumulated an ERA of 1.94. He was called up to join the team in August and pitched very well down the stretch. Pitching coach Rick Anderson had Crain work on spotting his fastball by taking little velocity off of the pitch. This strategy caused his strikeout rate to plummet, but he allowed very few hard hit balls. In fact, according to The Hardball Times, only Mariano Rivera and Bret Prinz pitched more innings in the American League with a lower line drive rate than Crain. This year, I expect Crain to pick up more strikeouts and eventually supplant J.C. Romero as the seventh inning option.

Grant Balfour will hopefully have a spot in the bullpen this season, but he is currently sidelined with a forearm strain. The management has butted heads in the past with Balfour regarding his health, so it would not surprise me to see this incident escalate into an eventual trade. Last year, Balfour hid an injury during Spring Training and did not fess up to it until right when the season started, which frustrated the team. This spring, the team has criticized him for being too cautious about his forearm. Mixed messages are being sent, so Balfour must be confused about how the team wants him to handle the problem. Knowing that he is also pitching with a partially torn labrum, Balfour might be facing a lost year. When he is healthy, he relies primarily on a hard fastball with some late movement. At this point, the Twins have several pitchers with that exact same repertoire in the organization (Travis Bowyer, for one), so they may just not find him worth the headache.

Terry Mulholland is old. Last year, the Twins used him as the fifth starter down the stretch and still managed to run away with the division. This year, I fully expect Scott Baker to get the fifth starter job if anybody gets hurt – Mulholland might start one game in a pinch, but the team should be ashamed of itself to trot him out there every fifth day if they are in a pennant race. Still, Mulholland has value to the team in that they can throw him out there to pitch several innings at the end of an extra inning game or have him throw one hundred pitches in mop-up duty while protecting the younger, more valuable arms.

Two other left-handers are competing for the final spot on the staff. Ryan Rowland-Smith was selected from the Mariners in the Rule V draft. He is a big left-handed pitcher who throws four pitches. Plus, he’s Australian so that’s always fun. It seems that he might be boxed out of a spot on the staff (and that is not always the worst thing that could happen when a team is competing for the playoffs), so expect the Twins to try to work out a trade or eventually offer him back to Seattle. C.J. Nitkowski has had a solid spring, but he is still C.J. Nitkowski. The odds of him holding a spot in the bullpen in August are minimal.

Conclusion

The Twins look to be a solid bet to keep on trucking and win another ninety games this season. Terry Ryan continues to assemble a squad with the intention of winning the American League Central first, and has admitted that he does not even think about the post-season. Only two position players, Torii Hunter and Luis Rivas, remain at the same positions from the 2002 AL Central champs while Jacque Jones has slid across the outfield to right field. After this season, Jones is most certainly gone and Rivas will only remain if the search for the incriminating photos he owns continues to be fruitless. Each season, the Twins lose a few players, plug the holes from within, and continue to churn along at a ninety win pace. With the upcoming rise of the Indians, it would not surprise me in the least to see Terry Ryan begin to set the bar a little higher at the start of the season, but it is hard to fault a strategy that has placed one team in the ALCS and another seven outs away in the past three years.

2005 ZiPS Projections

Name          ERA   W   L   G  GS     INN    H   ER   BB    K  HR 
Santana*     3.15  14   6  36  29   183.0  150   64   50  223  18 
Nathan       3.17   6   3  74   0    71.0   57   25   27   86   5 
Rincon       3.49  10   5  69   1    85.0   71   33   36   94   5 
Crain        3.65   5   4  56   0    69.0   59   28   28   80   6 
Radke        3.99  11   9  32  32   201.0  220   89   26  120  24 
Balfour      4.08   4   3  44   5    75.0   67   34   32   85   9 
Baker        4.20   9   9  26  26   163.0  167   76   49  126  18 
Romero*      4.25   4   4  76   0    72.0   66   34   39   65   4 
Silva        4.34   7   7  45  21   164.0  187   79   32   67  16 
Korecky      4.65   4   4  53   0    62.0   65   32   21   47   8 
Gassner*     4.69   9  11  30  25   163.0  185   85   36   94  24 
Lohse        4.75  11  12  34  33   195.0  213  103   63  123  25 
Kemp         4.79   6   7  56   0    77.0   79   41   38   53   7 
Nitkowski*   4.82   3   3  50   3    71.0   71   38   36   46   7 
Guerrier     4.88   7   8  28  24   144.0  159   78   36  106  26 
Hodges       4.90   7   8  31  17   123.0  131   67   49   85  15 
Durbin       4.97   6   9  26  25   145.0  153   80   62  105  19 
Eyre         5.11   5   8  38  15   118.0  124   67   60   82  13 
Mulholland   5.15   4   6  40   9   110.0  131   63   33   50  16 
Liriano*     5.27   7  11  28  28   152.0  149   89   86  143  22 
Mays         5.34   6   9  26  20   118.0  143   70   34   46  18 
Strange      5.53   5  11  33  19   135.0  146   83   69   84  20 
Schoening    5.56   4   8  32  16   110.0  122   68   47   80  20 
Wolfe        5.68   4   6  34  15   114.0  139   72   35   51  21 
Bowyer       5.86   3   7  47   0    83.0   78   54   78   74   5 
Miller       5.90   4   9  21  21   119.0  138   78   53   67  21 
Bonser       6.04   6  13  28  28   155.0  167  104   90  131  29 

Name         P    AVG   OBP   SLG   G  AB   H 2B 3B HR   R RBI  BB   K SB CS 
Morneau*     1b  .275  .344  .539 145 542 149 30  1 37  85 106  55 103  1  1 
Ford         cf  .301  .378  .448 140 522 157 32  3 13  87  67  57  69 16  4 
Hunter       cf  .271  .329  .477 147 558 151 36  2 25  81  89  45 105 16  8 
Kubel*       rf  .308  .367  .465 142 497 153 24  3 16  87  75  43  68 13  8 
Jones*       rf  .280  .328  .448 148 558 156 29  1 21  75  80  36 115 11  8 
Stewart      lf  .296  .366  .433 120 497 147 31  2 11  70  59  52  55  6  4 
Restovich    rf  .257  .319  .442 142 513 132 29  3 20  84  72  43 136  6  4 
West         lf  .261  .310  .436 140 498 130 34  1 17  64  72  32 117  3  3 
Rodriguez#   2b  .278  .348  .361 129 504 140 28  1  4  70  47  51  49  3  4 
Munson*      3b  .234  .325  .480 116 394  92 21  2 24  47  65  50 100  1  1 
Tyner*       lf  .291  .346  .340 128 477 139 15  4  0  63  37  36  44 19  9 
Tiffee#      3b  .280  .320  .419 123 453 127 28  1 11  57  61  23  43  1  1 
Mauer*       c   .316  .373  .404 108 386 122 17  1  5  59  47  33  39  2  0 
Cuddyer      2b  .276  .351  .458 113 369 102 21  2 14  58  52  41  85  6  6 
Ryan*        rf  .236  .306  .433 125 432 102 25  3 18  66  61  41  95  5  3 
Jones*       1b  .243  .283  .431 137 473 115 24  1 21  60  68  23 117  8  5 
Rabe         cf  .260  .319  .368 131 470 122 24  0  9  65  52  38  82 17 11 
Bartlett     ss  .273  .340  .364 114 440 120 20  4  4  77  37  43  62 17 14 
Rivas        2b  .266  .310  .404 120 406 108 17  6  9  58  42  24  57 14  5 
Williams#    3b  .245  .299  .445 102 375  92 20  2 17  55  55  26  78  3  1 
LeCroy       c   .284  .337  .461  99 317  90 17  0 13  35  51  23  70  0  1 
Abernathy    2b  .258  .318  .373 110 407 105 22  2  7  59  44  33  36 14 11 
Dunwoody*    cf  .248  .282  .407 103 359  89 26  2  9  47  45  14  76  7  5 
Punto#       ss  .262  .361  .319  92 298  78 10  2  1  48  22  46  55 14  6 
Ojeda#       ss  .232  .312  .310 116 358  83 17  1  3  53  27  39  36  6  3 
Miller       c   .214  .296  .354  97 308  66 19  0  8  35  36  32  58  0  0 
Castro       2b  .253  .287  .386 108 293  74 19  1  6  32  33  15  51  1  1 
Tomlin       cf  .218  .256  .256 135 481 105 13  1  1  64  29  21  67 18  7 
Fox*         2b  .235  .312  .310 100 268  63 10  2  2  32  22  26  62 10  5 
Redmond      c   .283  .325  .363  78 223  63 15  0  1  20  21  14  27  1  1 
Bowen#       c   .210  .283  .341  90 267  56 11  0  8  29  28  26  80  1  1 
Rios*        rf  .251  .311  .361  78 219  55 10  1  4  20  25  17  39  2  5