Twins First Road Trip

The Minnesota Twins completed their first road trip of the season last night, and the results were fairly disappointing. Disappointing because after splitting two games with the White Sox and taking two out of three against the Royals, the Twins twice blew late-inning leads and lost two games at Detroit, finishing the road trip with a 3 - 4 record that coulda should been 5 - 2. We'll get to the Detroit series later, first let's take a look at what went right.

Staritng pitching was undoubtedly the high point of the entire road trip. Back to back shutouts at Kansas City and early inning leads at Detroit showed that the Twins starting rotation is playing more to their talent than their lack of experience. That bodes well for thinking the team will at least stay competitive for the season. Offensively, Justin Morneau and Delmon Young started to heat up, and Denard Span showed flashes of being able to hit at the major league level while filling in for Michael Cuddyer. The surprise of the season continues to be Matt Tolbert, who simply hits every time he's in the lineup.

But the Detroit series highlighted what we knew going into the season. This is an extremely young team that still needs to learn how to win, and there's going to be a lot of growing pains along the way. The big disappointment against Detroit was not that they lost, it was just a matter of time before Detroit's veteran lineup started hitting, but that the Twins bullpen, which should be one of the teams real strengths, blew substantial leads each night. That and untimely errors, something the Twins are generally known for not doing, made the two losses against the Tigers especially tough for Twins fans to take.

Oh well, they're back home now and have a chance to make up for it a bit against Tampa Bay. The real key to this season is going to be watching the young players develop, and making mistakes is something that's going to happen along the way. We'll just have to hope the players learn from experience, and don't keep making the same errors over and over again.