Good pitching, or are the Twins terrible?

The White Sox haven allowed one run in 27 innings against the Twins this week.

This isn't to take anything away from Philip Humber, or Zach Stewart, or Jake Peavy. It's certainly not meant to take anything away from a bullpen that's been nothing short of great this year.

But the Twins? They suck.

Honestly, it kinda feels good to say that knowing karma won't come back and bite me for it in the form of 200 soft singles by Nick Punto or Lew Ford. The Sox are out of it, but the Twins are more out of it. The Sox are buzzed, the Twins are passed out in the corner with an empty bottle of Wild Turkey still in their grasp.

Entering Tuesday, only two teams had a worse wOBA than Minnesota: Seattle and San Francisco. For added perspective, the Twins' .294 team wOBA is tied with San Diego. The San Diego Padres. You know, the team everybody defaults to when they think of bad offense.

Joe Mauer was booed Tuesday, symbolizing the frustration that's been boiling in Minnesota with this 2011 team. A true homegrown product, a guy who is fawned over, a guy who has been the rock of the franchise for the better part of the last decade gets the Adam Dunn treatment. That was shocking, but at the same point, actually kind of understandable.

Mauer, Rene Tosoni, Danny Valencia, Rene Rivera, Luke Hughes and Joe Benson all went hitless against the Sox on Tuesday. Given the Twins' offense this year, little of that last sentence should be surprising.

[Gordon Beckham also pulled an 0-fer, which is equally as unsurprising and about as disappointing to the Sox fanbase.]

Humber essentially faced a Triple-A lineup in his return to the majors Monday afternoon. He did fine, posting a line like the Humber of May and June, which was encouraging. But let's see what he does against more successful offense like the Tigers, Royals or Blue Jays -- hell, even the Indians are much better than the Twins -- before handing him a theoretical spot in the 2012 rotation.

The same goes for Stewart, who had previously been lit up in his two prior starts before taking a perfect game into the eighth inning Monday night. Hopefully it wasn't the start of a lifetime for the young Stewart, but it was a perfect combination of Stewart's slider looking fantastic against a bad lineup that looked to have no interest in being at the park that evening (can't blame them, either).

And then Peavy, who has gone through about six dead arm periods this year, came out and struck out nine in 6 1/3 despite having an average fastball velocity of just over 90 mph. It was like he was a Twins starter facing the White Sox in years past, what with the right-handed velocity and annoying level of success.

But this trio of pitchers -- Humber, Stewart, Peavy -- are the three biggest question marks heading into 2012, save whether Gavin Floyd or Mark Buehrle will be back and Chris Sale will be in the rotation (okay, those are big question marks). But for on-the-mound performance, those three have an opportunity this month to get a few good starts (or, in Stewart's case, a great start) under their belts to possibly build off of heading into next year.

These starts against the Twins are a good beginning, but they're not reason enough for optimism for next year. Not when they're coming against the Twins.

Comments

[SteveWinwood]

Twins suck. Stupid Twins.

[JRFegan]

Hey! Just stopped in to say those 4 runs in the 3rd were entirely the fault of you and your blasphemous Lew Ford-baiting. How many people have to die, JJ? How many?