The Twins won 85 games and earned a Wild Card berth in 2017 in large part because their offense was above-average for the course of the season and superb in a sprint-to-the-finish last two months.
Their starting pitching was not what anyone would consider "good," but it was at least markedly better than it had been during the disaster of 2016. In that 103-loss season, the Twins ranked last in the majors in ERA among starters. In 2017, they crept up to No. 19 — again, not good but at least in the neighborhood of OK.
The strategy going into 2018 seemed to be to take the foundation of that relative improvement — a very good year from Ervin Santana, a promising year from Jose Berrios and a good finish from Kyle Gibson — and add to it with Jake Odorizzi and Lance Lynn.
Santana hasn't pitched yet and Lynn has had an extremely slow start, but I would maintain that when healthy, that's a worthy starting five. But it's also a starting five with a seemingly well-defined ceiling: maybe good enough to squeeze out a few more wins than 2017 and grab another Wild Card, but not really good enough to compete with the big arms of Houston, Cleveland and Boston or to tame the bats of the Yankees in the postseason.
The true hope for anything more for these Twins rests on a few key developments: Berrios taking another step forward, plus the arrival of highly touted young arms Fernando Romero and Stephen Gonsalves.
That's a trio of 23-year-olds capable of missing a lot of bats and inducing a lot of weak contact — playoff essentials against the best offenses.
Berrios has been up and down this season, but he's gone at least seven innings without allowing a run in three starts already. His ERA (3.98) should start to go down once he figures out damage control, and he's allowed just 32 hits and eight walks in 40.2 innings.
Romero and Gonsalves, though, have been the real show stealers so far in 2018.
