The 2019 Twins were a title-winning team that deceived us all

It is sometimes hard to remember exactly what life was like as recently as 2019 given all that has transpired in the last four years, so you'll have to believe me that this really happened:

The Minnesota Twins that year hit 307 home runs, a Major League Baseball record, and won 101 games.

That was Rocco Baldelli's first year as manager; it was Derek Falvey and Thad Levine's third year in charge of personnel decisions. It seemed like they were pushing all the right buttons.

But with each passing day and game pushing that season further into hindsight, the 2019 Twins seem more like a random outlier than anything else.

Yes, the Twins repeated as AL Central champs in 2020, feasting on bad AL and NL Central teams in empty stadiums as we all pretended it was somewhat normal.

Overall, though, there's this: Take away 2019, and the Twins are a sub.-500 team during the Falvey/Levine era and during Baldelli's tenure.

And as Patrick Reusse and I talked about on Monday's Daily Delivery podcast, the smash-and-lift approach that led to that record-breaking season in 2019 simply does not work as well in 2023.

The ball isn't as lively, and the pitching is too good. But the Twins haven't deviated from their plan, or if they have tried to they aren't very good at adjustments.

The result is a team that still ranks fifth in the AL in home runs but has been held to two or fewer runs in 36 of 91 games (40%) at the All-Star break, including all three games of this weekend's home sweep at the hands of Baltimore.

A promising start to the year and a dominant starting rotation have been constantly undermined by a slumping offense, to the point that the Twins have fallen below .500 and out of first place in the comically weak AL Central.

As a relevant aside, I just began re-reading Nassim Nicholas Taleb's "Fooled by Randomness," an excellent work of both research and philosophy that I first picked up a handful of years ago, certainly before 2019.

In it, among other things and certainly simplified here, Taleb argues that chance and randomness play a far greater role in our lives — and particularly in outlandish success — than we might care to admit.

Mitch Garver, Max Kepler and Eddie Rosario were three of the five Twins hitters who whacked at least 30 homers in 2019. None have hit as many as 20 in any subsequent season.

Here are four more things to know today:

*I appreciated Wolves coach Chris Finch trying to answer how the Karl-Anthony Towns and Rudy Gobert pairing could be more effective this season. But the answer he gave our Chris Hine in this Q&A didn't exactly inspire confidence that next year will be any better than last year.

*The Lynx went into this weekend's game against the Las Vegas Aces as one of the WNBA's hottest teams. But a 24-point loss was a good reminder of the tiers in the league this season. There are three excellent teams, with Las Vegas perhaps being the best, and then there is everyone else (including the Lynx).

*Stop the presses: Minnesota United got a lot of good chances but didn't capitalize on enough of them in a 4-1 loss.

*It sure sounds like this Northwestern football story isn't going away anytime soon.