Twins Won't Win - or at Least They Don't Deserve To | DugoutCentral.com's Blog

By Scott Jensen The Twins won???t win tonight against the White Sox. Well, I can???t guarantee that. Anything can happen after all. But here are three reasons why the Twins are unlikely to win. 1. Ron Gardenhire. Gardenhire is a great regular season manager. And I mean great. My measure for managerial greatness is how well a team does relative to its overall talent level. And thanks to ownership miserliness since Gardenhire???s hire in 2002, the Twins talent level has been far less than it should have been. Yet Gardenhire has been continually able to get good to great performance out of his team. Unfortunately, Gardenhire has a managerial form of the yips. He???s not a pressure guy. Witness Game 4 of the 2004 American League Divisional Series. Down two games to one in a must-win game, Gardenhire was sitting on a 5-1 lead after six, when he inexcusably removed ace Johan Santana ??? after just 87 pitches. Then Juan Rincon, Joe Nathan (used improperly in the eighth) and Kyle Lohse blew it and the Twins lost 6-5. Series over. Maybe Gardenhire has learned. I doubt it. 2. Nick Blackburn. He won 11 games in his rookie campaign and had a league average ERA. But I expect him to get hit hard tonight. Why? Second half ERA of 4.98; first half ERA of 3.65. Looks like a classic case of someone who had success because the league wasn???t familiar with him. My guess is that the White Sox get to him the second time around the lineup. 3. Karma. Hey ??? ballplayers are superstitious and believe in stuff like this, so why can???t I. If the Twins hadn???t traded Santana, they wouldn???t be in this situation; they would have won the division by five games. And then they would have been able to set up their divisional rotation with Santana number one and Scott Baker number two. It really doesn???t matter what the Twins do tonight ??? or possibly in the playoffs. Twins ownership has already won. They didn???t spend the money ??? again ??? yet were good enough to keep people buying tickets, tuning in and buying the merchandise. Their meal has been served. Anything else is just gravy for them. And yes, I???m willing to eat crow. I just don???t think it will happen.

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October 1, 2008 03:07 AM ET

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Well since the Twins did in fact lose, I'm glad Thome and Junior are going to get another shot at a ring, but realistically I don't think the White Sox have much of a chance. Who knows, it is October, anything can happen, and they did win three in a row to get in . . .