The hail you say

More hailstones than hits for the Twins at Target Field.

Another embarrassment for the Twins on Tuesday night. So many things going wrong this season ...

I'm going to set aside Francisco Liriano's failure for now, because his stats won't change in the next few days, and focus instead on Michael Cuddyer, because his stats may.

This seems an improbable stat, but it's still true: Cuddyer has three home runs and just four RBIs. He has driven in exactly one of his teammates, and, according to Howard Sinker of the Star Tribune, that came on a groundout.

According to Baseball Reference this morning, he has 62 plate appearances on the season with men on base -- 55 official at-bats, six walks, one HBP. He has nine hits for a .162 batting average with men on base, and none of those hits have driven in anybody. He is just 3-for-29 with men in scoring position -- .103 batting average, .103 slugging percentage.

Cuddyer is not, never has been, a huge offensive producer. He drove in more than 100 runs one season, more than 90 another, more than 80 in two other seasons. That's not particularly impressive for a right fielder/first baseman who generally hits in the middle of the lineup. Still, combined with his non-statistical contributions as a team leader and his willingness to shift positions, he's been a valuable component of the Twins for the past decade.

But this is improbably bad.

Problem spot: Power

As I write this, Baseball Reference has yet to update with the results from Monday. Inasmuch as the Twins had just 10 singles in 11 innings Monday — not a single extra-base hit in Fenway Park — it hardly undermines the premise.

The Twins had a total of five extra bases hits in their
four-game series in Boston.

The Twins' slugging percentage through 32 games: .323. That's last in the American League; only Seattle — a team without the established hitters the Twins have — is within 30 points.

The Twins are also last in the AL in batting average and on-base percentage —they're last in runs scored on merit — but I want to focus on the lack of power here.

It's not that surprising that the Twins aren't hitting home runs; even last season, when they were fifth in the AL in run scored, they were below average in homers. But while Target Field limits homers, it yields doubles and triples (the 2010 Twins led the AL in three-baggers and were third in doubles, just one two-bagger out of second place).

This year? Last in homers, second worst in doubles, 10th in triples.

Jason Kubel is doing his part. Denard Span is doing his job in the leadoff spot, which doesn't include a lot of extra-base hits. But between the injuries and the slumps, nobody else is producing up to par. Not counting Trevor Plouffe and his 10 at-bats, the second highest slugging percentage on the team is .375 (Jim Thome, currently on the disabled list). The AVERAGE slugging percentage in the AL in 2010 was .407.

Can this turn around? Logically, it should. Taking J.J. Hardy and Orlando Hudson out of the lineup shouldn't take almost a hundred points off the slugging percentage.

But ... Justin Morneau's clearly not where he was before his concussion. Thome's 40 and wasn't a real good bet to replicate 2010. Danny Valencia's minor league record suggests he overproduced last season. Michael Cuddyer and Delmon Young have never than all that consistent. Nobody knows when Joe Mauer will be back.  Lord knows why anybody pitches to Kubel at this point.

And that's the pop. The rest of the roster is, as hitters, not designed to garner extra base hits. They;re supposed to get on base, run and help keep the Twins starters in the game. How well they're doing that is another matter.

Problem spot: Infield defense

This dropped fly ball in left field by Ben Revere
was one of three errors charged against the Twins
Sunday. There were other unmade plays, not
scored as errors, that hurt their chances.

A basic rule of thumb: Shuffling middle infielders in and out of the lineup is bad for the defense. Double play combos thrive on familiarity.

So it shouldn't be overly surprising that that the Twins have had poor middle infield defense this season. They've played five different men at second base (Tsuyoshi Nishioka, Luke Hughes, Michael Cuddyer, Matt Tolbert and Alexi Casilla) and three different men at shortstop (Tolbert, Casilla and Trevor Plouffe).

Plouffe is supposed to be the regular at short for now -- at least until Nishioka is ready to play, and maybe beyond. But his play afield Sunday was somewhat less than airtight.

Not that he was alone. Consider the third inning, in which the Red Sox scored four runs and took a 5-3 lead. All four runs were earned, but the Twins had numerous opportunities to get out of the inning. (I should note here that  I saw none of the disaster; I was, at that point, following the game on the radio and hence a hostage to the observations of Gladden and Gordon; this is less than optimal.)

Carl Crawford triples. The radio boys suggested that Denard Span might have been able to catch the ball but instead settled for trying to play the carom instead. Said carom got away from him, allowing Crawford to reach third. So Span passed on the risky play of trying for the out, then failed in the fallback position of holding Crawford to a double.

Jason Varitek grounds to first, scoring Crawford. In an alternative universe in which Span catches Crawford's ball, there are now two outs; in the one in which Span holds Crawford to two bases, Crawford advances to third.

Jacoby Ellsbury singles past Plouffe.The radio boys and Joe Christensen of the Strib agree: This could have been ruled an error on Plouffe. (The ruling of single extended Ellbury's hitting streak.) Hsad this play bene made ... it could be the third out in one scenario, or it could have scored Crawford in another, or it could have left him at third. I'll assume it would have scored Crawford. But at least there'd be two outs and nobody on.

Ellsbury steals second. Of course he did; Pavano is notoriously poor at holding runners. In a cleanly played inning, of course, there's no steal because he's not on base.

Dustin Pedroia walks. No defense for the base on balls. Adrian Gonzalez singles. Ellsbury scores, Pedroia to third.

Kevin Youkilis grounds into a force out. Gordon's initial call anticipated an inning-ending double play, but Plouffe and Casilla couldn't turn it. Pedroia scores.

At this point there have been multiple ways out of the inning. Maybe Span catches Crawford's triple. Maybe Plouffe snares Ellsbury's grounder. Maybe the double play is turned. Maybe the Twins yield one run, maybe two. Instead, they've yielded three, and the inning is still alive.

And it goes on to include two more singles and a throwing error by Drew Butera trying to pick Youkilis off. The wonder isn't that they gave up four runs in the inning, but that it was only four runs.

Pic(s) of the Week

Twins fans at the final game of the Kansas City series.
Minnesota lost that game 10-3  and was swept by the Royals.

Two photos for you this week, because I decided not to decide between them.

What a difference two days make. Above, traveling Twins fans comment Sunday on the play of their team.

Below, a mere two days later, Francisco Liriano and Drew Butera celebrate Liriano's no-hitter.

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.

The catcher shuffle

With Joe Mauer on the shelf, the spring training question of "who is the Twins No. 3 catcher" has taken an importance that wasn't fully appreciated in March.

Rene Rivera was the
Mariners' 2nd-round
draft pick in 2001,
the same year the Twins
signed Joe Mauer.

It also, it would appear, wasn't correctly answered.

The answer the Twins came up with in Fort Myers was Steve Holm. The 31-year-old career minor leaguer got the call, went 2-for-17 and failed to throw out a basestealer. He started five games; the Twins lost four of them and gave up double-digit runs in the last two.

To say that Holm wasn't the correct answer to the question implies that there was a correct one. Rene Rivera is getting his chance now; there's little reason to believe that he's any better than Holm.

Of the three upper level catchers who got serious looks in spring training, the one who has the best chance of carving out a career in the majors is Danny Lehmann, who is younger and less experienced than Rivera and Holm. And Lehmann profiles as a Drew Butera type — a catch-and-throw guy without much to offer at the plate.

The Twins this spring made a pair of moves — Pat Neshek to the Padres and trading for Scott Diamond's Rule V rights — designed to open a pair of spots on the 40-man roster. The catcher moves have filled both those slots — Holm remains on the 40-man roster— and that seems a high price to pay for misjudging the quality of Holm as a hitter. Ron Gardenhire said Holm "can swing it," as assessment that had to have been based on 15 spring training at-bats rather than totality of his record.

Problem spot: Carl Pavano

(This was originally set up to publish early Wednesday morning.  But then Francisco Liriano threw his no-hitter, and I pushed to back a day. Then the Twins won again on Wednesday, and I decided,  hey, let's not post "problem spot" pieces the day after a Twins win. So here it is, the day after an off day. Hey, it had to go sometime.)

Carl Pavano after his bat-swinging attack on a dugout trash can on Sunday:

"The (bat) wouldn't break. I couldn't break a bat in the dugout and I couldn't break any out there (on the mound). It was embarrassing."

An illuminating comment, that: It raises the notion, which I should have thought of earlier, that breaking bats is a way those who "pitch to contact" gauge their effectiveness.

Pavano's strikeout rate after five starts is 4.1 K/9, which is down some from last season's K rate and down sharply from his 7.2 K/9 with the Twins in 2009. The 2009 rate was a bit of fluke; Pavano's career rate is 5.7. (Stats line here.) Last season's decline is why I would have preferred to see the Twins let Pavano sign elsewhere during the winter.

Pavano was, as we know, effective last season (3.75 ERA in 221 innings) and ineffective so far this season (5.84 ERA). That's a two-runs per nine innings swing, which is pretty significant.

Without question, part of that swing is explained by the deteriorating Minnesota infield defense. But I suspect that part of it is that Pavano isn't breaking bats — which means batters are hitting more line drives against him, and fewer pop-ups and weak grounders.

Pavano is never going to be a high strikeout guy. He's got to keep the ball off the sweet spot of the bat. This is something I'm going to start watching for with Pavano — and, for that matter, Nick Blackburn and Brian Duensing, two other Twins starters whose strikeout rates are either subpar (Blackburn) or just barely acceptable (Duensing).