Considering that piss-poor 66-96 baseball clubs don't make the postseason, the Twins' influence on this year's playoffs was negligible -- but still existent. Nine former Twinkies populated six out of 10 pennant contenders, enough to -- you guessed it! -- field a team.
Among them: Joe Nathan (Texas); Lew Ford, Jim Thome, J.J. Hardy (Baltimore); Pat Neshek, Grant Balfour (Oakland); José Mijares (San Francisco); Kyle Lohse (St. Louis); and playoff hero Delmon Young of the Detroit Tigers.
Several of those Minnesota castoffs made sizable contributions, too. Outfielder Ford, who skipped between Japan, Mexico and the U.S. over the past five years, hadn't played in the MLB since leaving the Twins in 2007. At 36, his unlikely return to the bigs prompted a New York Times profile and galvanized his fellow Orioles. Ford posted a .375 batting average in four playoff games, a whopping 192 points better than his season average.
Lohse's 4.88 ERA through six forgettable seasons didn't endear him to any Twins fans. After bouncing around the league, his career took off with St. Louis in 2008. The starting pitcher, 33, enjoyed a true breakout this season this year, going 16-3 with a 2.86 ERA.
That domination continued into the postseason, with Lohse allowing only four runs through his first three starts. His campaign ended on a grim note, however, when San Francisco blasted him for five runs in two innings come Game 7 of the NLCS.
The deepest, most twisted dagger in the heart of Twins fans has to be Delmon Young. It cost two serviceable starters in Matt Garza and Jason Bartlett to net him from Tampa Bay in 2007. The return? Three and a half seasons of inconsistency at the plate and reprehensible defense in left field.
Young didn't exactly set the world on fire once he got shipped to Detroit for peanuts last year (he did get arrested for drunkenly yelling anti-Semitic slurs at a New York City cop this past April). That all changed in the ALCS, where Young smacked an MLB-record four game-winning RBIs while hitting .353 in a sweep of the Yankees; he was named series MVP. Now it's World Series time for Young, and continued cosmic injustice time in Twins territory.
