No Longer Cellar-Dwellers, the Division-Leading Minnesota Twins Are Using Their Young, Inexperienced Talent to Make a...

Is it really possible? Is it really true? Have the Minnesota Twins escaped the clutches of contraction and emerged as a contender--if not more--in the American League Central?

It’s still not clear how serious baseball is about eliminating one or two teams at the end of this season, but this much is certain:

It would be very difficult to fold a division or wild-card winner, and here are the young, lowly paid Twins--with no new ballpark on the horizon and still sentenced to the cold, gray Metrodome--spitting at competitive disparity and leading the Central on the first day of May. After losing 93 games and finishing in the division cellar last year, 26 games behind the champion Chicago White Sox, the Twins are 12 games over .500.

Suddenly, people are buying tickets again in the Twin Cities, talking about Torii Hunter and Corey Koskie almost as much as Kevin Garnett, Daunte Culpepper and Jesse Ventura. Suddenly, as General Manager Terry Ryan said Monday while noting that the Twins have not had a winning season since 1992, “A lot of the people who had good reason to stay away,” are now coming back and, “That’s the most gratifying part of this. There’s room on the bandwagon.”

Can they sustain the parade, or was April an illusion?

Did they simply catch lightning in a bottle, or is this the result of several years of patient development--lab work amid a tight budget?

“We have a lot to prove, a long way to go and a lot of obstacles to overcome,” Ryan said. “We’re going to have stretches where we pay a price for our youth, but if our kids can keep their heads straight and our pitchers continue to throw strikes and, of course, we stay healthy, I think we have a fair chance to continue to play well.”

Fair? Ryan has good reason to be cautious.

Having replaced Andy MacPhail as general manager in September 1994, he has faced the distasteful task of assembling a replacement team of short-order cooks in the spring of ‘95; losing his bellwether, Kirby Puckett, to glaucoma in the spring of ‘96; acceding to Chuck Knoblauch’s trade demands at the end of the ’97 season, only months after the Twins had signed Knoblauch to a $30-million contract and building from within while retaining one of the lowest payrolls.

Fifteen of the 25 Twins are products of the team’s farm system. Only four are over 30: catcher Tom Prince, 36; relievers Bob Wells, 34, and Hector Carrasco, 31; and second baseman Denny Hocking, 31.

Owner Carl Pohlad, who acknowledged turning a small profit last year while receiving almost $20 million in revenue sharing, gave Ryan permission to raise the payroll from $16.5 million to just under $25 million this year, and the Twins have judiciously signed eight core players to multiyear contracts, among them pitchers Brad Radke and Eric Milton, shortstop Cristian Guzman and third baseman Koskie.

Those deals have inspired confidence among the young Twins that their performances will be rewarded. However, the Central leader’s average salary is still less than $1 million in a year that the major league average is $2.1 million. Then again, money is not always an accurate measure of maturity. The Twins are now a team of good pitching, speed and defense, with an offense that has been opportunistic--seventh in the league in runs, sixth in batting and first in slugging percentage.

“No matter what your situation is, I think you go into every season with a degree of hope,” Ryan said. “Realistically, there have been seasons here where we just had to hope for growth. Now we’re hoping for more. We want to be playing meaningful games in September, and we think we have the pitching to do that. We have four or five guys in our rotation who give us the chance to win every night, and we have some veteran presence in our bullpen.”

LaTroy Hawkins, 28, is a veteran of almost six seasons, a failed starter who moved to the bullpen last year and has become a reliable closer, reviving Minnesota memories of Jeff Reardon and Rick Aguilera. Hawkins was second in the league with eight saves through Sunday and the Twins were 12-0 in games they led after seven innings. The big three of Radke, Milton and Joe Mays has helped the bullpen stay rested. They are a combined 11-2 after Radke pitched a complete-game, 2-1 victory over the New York Yankees in the opener of a three-game test Monday night.

Although the focus has been on farm development, Ryan landed Milton, now one of the league’s best left-handers, and Guzman, his standout shortstop, in the Knoblauch trade with the Yankees, also acquiring a much appreciated $3 million in the process. Mays came from the Seattle Mariners for Roberto Kelly. With pitching the foundation of their surprising start, the Twins have turned “SportsCenter” into “TwinsCenter,” but it remains a largely anonymous team that has colored itself with nicknames.

The outfield of left fielder Jacque Jones, center fielder Hunter and right fielder Matt Lawton is known as “the Soul Patrol.” The infield of Olympic hero Doug Mientkiewicz, a Floridian; Luis Rivas, a Venezuelan; Guzman, a Dominican; and Koskie, a Canadian, is known as “the League of Nations.”

By any name, the Twins probably had to get worse before they got better. The often laconic Tom Kelly, in his 16th year as manager, had a team meeting before the final game of the 2000 season and told his young players that their on-the-job training was over, that it had come time to play as established major leaguers, focusing on every swing, pitch, catch and throw.

The message seems to have carried over.

“One of our major objectives coming out of spring training was to get off to a good start,” Ryan said. “Confidence tends to snowball, and with our youth, the franchise situation, the unbalanced schedule, playing our division rivals right from the start, all of that played a part in our approach. Most of all we wanted to get people here interested again, to get them back in the building, and to do that we had to get off to a good start.”

The Twins drew a club-record 3,030,672 in 1988. They drew 1,059,715 last year. The per-game average was up 5,802 going into the Yankee series and will continue to climb over the next few homestands, but uncertainty still prevails. The state legislature recently killed another ballpark-financing bill, and Ryan thinks it unlikely the situation will be addressed again until a new collective bargaining agreement is signed and there is assurance of continuing play.

In the meantime, the Twins have emerged as the biggest surprise of an opening month in which the surprising Chicago Cubs and Philadelphia Phillies also emerged with division leads.

“It’s rewarding to be able to talk about the team and the players instead of the payroll and stadium, subjects that aren’t very attractive,” Ryan said. “Our focus now is strictly on winning games, and I think there are a lot of people, even many in the industry, who appreciate the approach we’ve taken to turn this around. We know a lot of people are rooting for us, and that’s a good feeling.”

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First Things First

The end of April saw teams in unfamiliar spots--first place.

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DIVISION TEAM RECORD LEAD PAYROLL** NL WEST DODGERS*** 15-10 1 1/2 games $97 million NL CENTRAL CHICAGO 15-9 1 game $39 Million NL EAST PHILADELPHIA 14-10 3 games $36 Million AL WEST SEATTLE 20-5 9 games $55 Million AL CENTRAL MINNESOTA 18-6 3 1/2 games $18 Million AL EAST TORONTO 16-9 0 games* $54 Million

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*tied for first with Boston. **Figures supplied by Major League Baseball. ***last time the Dodgers were in first place at the end of a month was August 1997, when they were 78-60.