Hello, SBG fans and welcome to the second edition of Eight Pack.  The Twins have played 16 games, approximately 10% of their schedule.  Let's go to the numbers.

In the past 8 games, the Twins scored 41 runs, or 5.125 runs per game.  That's one more run than the first eight games, and the Twins are averaging just over 5 runs a game.  Scoring is up league wide, however.  But, the Twins are pretty much in the middle of the pack, slightly below average.  So far, an improvement over last year.

Last time, I mentioned that the Twins' fundamentals were weak.  In the first eight games, the Twins hit just .255/.301/.423/.724.  Clearly, the team cannot continue to score five runs a game with a team .724 OPS.  This time around, the team hit .279/.353/.382/.735.  Amazingly, the Twins had an anemic .735 OPS, almost identical to last time around.  But, look at the difference in the components.  The Twins OBP jumped from .301 to .353, while the slugging percentage dropped from .423 to only .382.  Given the choice between the first numbers and the second, I'm taking the second set.  But, damn the Twins had just 5 home runs, compared to 11 the first eight games and now have exactly one per game.

OPS is a much better number in terms of correlation to runs, than, say, batting average.  However, OPS tends to undervalue on base percentage.  The Hardball Times has this to say about OPS: "a crude but quick measure of a batter’s true contribution to his team’s offense. See GPA for a better approach."  Well, GPA or gross production average is (1.8*OBP + OPS)/4.  In the first eight games, the Twins had a GPA of .241.  Blecch.  In the second eight games, the Twins had a GPA of .254.  Still not great, and still not enough to keep the Twins at a pace of 5 runs a game, but much better.  Of course, we've only played 16 games and those 16 games have been against some good teams.  We'll know more as we go on, but right now, my feeling is that we need to see some improvement, although damn, that OBP is great.

And now our best and worst of the last eight games.

The best:

1.  Top Jimmy bemoaned his injury on Friday and I think he overstated the case a little, but he's definitely an important player.  The winner of the best hitter of the last eight games, Luis Castillo, hit .542/.593/.625/1.218.  Obviously, he's no slugger, with an isolated power of .083, but he gets on base.  For the season, he's at .404/.456/.468/.924 (iso power of only .064).  He gets a lot of infield hits and I worry about that, but hell, what an upgrade.

2.  You have to love this guy.  Mr. Clutch.  For the last eight games, he's hit .286/.412/.786/1.197.  Yes, second place goes to Michael Cuddyer.  His OPS was almost as high as Castillo's and he hit two of the five homeruns.  And one of them was pretty big.  But, he doesn't get the top spot, only because he didn't get as many at bats.  Hey, did you see him playing in the infield Friday night?

3.  I read in the paper today about Gardy platooning in right field.  All of these years, we've all wondered why in the hell he wouldn't platoon Jacque Jones.  Now, he's platooning two right-handed hitters.  I wrote yesterday that I liked the outfield lineup of Michael Cuddyer, Torii Hunter, and Lew Ford.  Lew-Lew hit .318/.423/.545/.969.  He had 22 at bats in the last eight games after only four in the first eight games.  It would be nice if we got the Lew of 2004 back.

And now, the worst.

1.  Guess who?  We need this guy to get it turned around, and fast.  If he hadn't been hit by a pitch, Rondell White would have a lower OBP than batting average.  In addition to his putrid batting average, White has zero walks this year in 62 plate appearances.  That's incredible.  Juan Samuel would be so proud.  Anyway, for the eight games, he "hit" .138/.138/.138/.276.  And that's better than last time around.  Hoo boy.

2.  The Chosen One had a rough eight games.  Joe Mauer did nothing with a 4-22 line and no RBIs, despite hitting behind Castillo.  Mauer's line: .182/.357/.182/.539.  He did get on base, but the Twins got nothing out of the three hole and Mauer is off to a slow start, with a .265/.362/.306/.668 line.

3.  I wrote a piece last year about how if you took one week out (the first week of June) of Torii Hunter's season, he really had a terrible year.  That met with a little resistance, as some people accused me of distorting the numbers to make Hunter look bad.  Well, if you are expecting consistency out of the $10.75 million man, forget it.  Hunter is a bad hitter most of the time, with a few hot streaks that bring his numbers up.  Yep, they all count, so in total, Hunter is an above average offensive center fielder, but boy, when he's bad, he's bad.  And right now, he's bad.  For the eight pack, he hit .156/.206/.375/.581.  For the first 10% of the season, he's hitting .206/.254/.429/.682.  That's about what he hit for all of 2005 except for that one week.  Hey let's try something.  Let's take out that second game of the season.  Without that monster game, Torii's at .155/.210/.310/.520.

Finally, how about a little T-Bat update.  Through 10% of the season, #77 is hitting .288/.383/.481/.864 after a .286/.412/.321/.733 eight pack.  What a strange stretch.  He had five walks and one extra base hit, a double.  He's had a nice start.

Come back in about, oh, say, eight games for another update on the offense.