The Weekly Minnesota Sports Survey

#-1: Lynx (Last Week: -1).  Doesn't matter that they trounced Atlanta at home and then beat Tulsa on the road.  I'm worried about how they got outscored 23-10 in the fourth quarter on their way to a 83-61 beatdown at Los Angeles Tuesday.  How is this important?  Right now, there still is a huge gap (about 3 1/2 games) between the top three teams and the bottom three teams in the Western Conference.  Candace Parker just returned for the Sparks; she scored 18 points, hauled in 13 rebounds and was a +23 in her first game back in their win.  So that shows that, though it's theoretically possible that they could jump that chasm, it's becoming much more likely regardless that L.A. will be that fourth team that makes it into the playoff to face the Western Conference champion in the first round of the WNBA Playoffs ... which will probably be Minnesota.  And if that game is any indication, the Jynx have the ability to get blown out, especially with a bench that remains very vulnerable.  I'm telling everyone that there is still something very, very wrong with this squad.

That makes the Sparks' return game at Target Center Sunday evening very important.  That game is sandwiched between a roadie against Phoenix two days before and a home date versus San Antonio two days after.

#-2: Twins (Last Week: -2).  You know what really pisses me off?  When the Twins started their series against Toronto on Ontario's Civic Day Monday, the club was a game ahead of the Blue Jays for American League Wild Card 2.  Yet everyone just believed that the Twinks were sitting ducks and that the BJs were the inevitably better team.  You could feel that belief in the humidity.

And you know what?  That sentiment is totally right.  This (Thursday) evening they play at Rogers Centre one final time to avoid a four-game sweep at the hands of the much better Blue Jays and stop a losing streak that has reached four games.  They are 2-5 for the week.  And, oh, they've fallen out of ALWC2.  There's no way they're going to get that back, and everyone knows that, even Twinks fans.

And this comes on the heels where they simply were lucky to salvage a split against the Seattle Mariners at Target Field over the weekend.  Unlike Toronto, Seattle is below .500 and are a worse team (at least in the standings) than the Twinks, and yet they storm into Minneapolis and take two-of-four.  Nothing's working right now: The lineup has no pop, Miguel Sano has slowed down, Joe Mauer is back in a funk, the relief corps has completely fallen apart to the point they were as bad as I thought they would be when the season started, and now the starting rotation isn't pitching well.  Combine that with a Blue Jays squad with the best offense hands down in the A.L. and the recent acquisition of ace David Price, and of course the Twins were going to be the Blue Jays' bitch this week.

Don't overlook the fact that Toronto was very aggressive in getting a lot of good players before Friday's trade deadline.  Did the Twins do that?  Of course not!  Their only new get was a reliever from the Tampa Bay Rays named Carly Rae Kevin Jepsen, and he basically shit the bed the first time on the mound in a Minnesota uniform.  So other contenders fortified their teams and Minnesota did not, therefore the Twinks are going to blow their lofty perch and wind up fizzling through the rest of the year.

And you know what?  I'm not worried.  Well, let me take that back ... the Twinks should not have been active traders at the deadline Friday.  Because let's face it: They're not winning the World Series this year.  The goal should have been to not be so awful as to lose 90 games.  Right now they're back on a pace to do just that, so maybe you should concentrate on avoiding that.  In the meantime, there are, at least on theory, good places that are going to get better as they get older -- Eddie Rosario, Byron Buxton, Sano, this Jose Berrios kid, some other Pitchers in AAA and AA, etc.  Assuming they are the studs that Baseball America says they will be, they will be World Series contenders later.  That is when you fortify your lineup with that magic players that'll turn everything around.  Not now.  Trading now is incrementally increasing your chances of getting to the Play-In Wild Card Game while mortgaging part of your future.  General Manager Terry Ryan did that, in a minor way, while trading for Jepsen.  Ryan gave up two A Pitchers, one of which, Chih-Wei Hu, projects to be a decent hurler, and someone that could really help the big-league team in three or four years, when the Twinks are supposed to be really, really good.  But he's gone now, traded for a guy who so far hasn't done his job of helping this team today.

There are a lot of people pissed at Ryan for not being more active to help the team now.  Fuck those rubes.  They're just nihilist, selfish people who can't take the long view of anything.  But I do understand the anger.  No one took this team seriously when they were in playoff position, even fans, and we stand utterly helpless as the Twinks are free-falling down the standings.  I don't feel good at all that my hunches about this team are going to be right.  But guess what?  All those rubes upset that the team didn't make any moves and are now losing would be mad if they did make moves and were losing.  In fact, they might be even more livid in that case because then the franchise would have traded good young players that could have helped them in the future.  And that's what people don't seem to understand: We are mad at the Twins right now because they're losing, period.  We should be upset at them for not winning; whether they traded at the deadline or not is irrelevant.  So if you want to get pissed at the team for sucking and choking on ALWC2, have at it.  They deserve it.  But at least give credit to Ryan because he hasn't given up the organization's hope for the future.

Meanwhile the present is going to be painful.  And it's a different kind of pain -- one that trades in the dull boredom of loss for blown potential.  After leaving Toronto tonight, they go to Cleveland for a three-game series over the weekend, then come home to start a trio vs. Texas on Tuesday.