Three in a row

Happy happy joy joy happy happy joy

Three games isn't much, especially given the travails of the opponents involved. The White Sox were playing, if anything, worse than the Twins, and the Red Sox had their pitching staff blown apart in their previous series.

But ... as I said in commenting on Liriano's no-hitter, results matter, and so does process. And the process that I'm  noticing here is:

• Alexi Casilla is playing second base
• Ron Gardenhire says he's keeping Michael Cuddyer in the outfield
• The Twins turned seven double plays in the three games

I've long chafed at the broadcaster boilerplate about teams "lacking an identity" or "finding their identity." This Twins team is making me reconsider. Gardenhire appeared to enter the season with the idea that the Twins were going to be an offensive machine: Speed at the top and bottom of the lineup, power in the middle.

It didn't happen in April. Injuries, illness, just plain ineffectiveness got in the way. And in trying to make the offensive juggernaut happen, the defense got stretched too far, especially with a low-strikeout staff.

Maybe the Twins have found their way back to what they've been. Or maybe this is a small-sample size mirage.