5 Thoughts: Randy Dobnak to the rescue

Early Cy Young favorites: Gerrit Cole, Randy Dobnak, Shane Bieber

This column presents 5 Thoughts on the First Place Twins.

1 - Happy Check the Standings Day!

This weekend officially* marked Check The Standings Day around Major League Baseball, and the Twins were sitting pretty. In typical seasons we institute a policy that we don’t talk about the standings (how many games up?) until June 1, which then became known as Check The Standings Day. In a short season, we had to recalibrate, and it turns out that the day now falls on August 14.

The Twins were ahead of the rest of the A.L. Central, and notably up on the Cleveland Indians, who just optioned two of their best pitchers off the MLB roster after they violated the team’s COVID protocols. Here are the standings for Aug. 14:

Source: Google

I thought that “last 10” parity was interesting. As pointed out by this week’s podcast guest, the 2020 Twins have a better winning percentage than those magical 2019 Twins. Their current rate of winning baseball games equates to 103 wins over a full season.

Important…