It's mid-April and the vibes with the Twins, as the kids might say, are not immaculate.

A lot of fans came into the season grumpy and looking for reasons to be pessimistic about a franchise that skidded to a 12-27 finish in 2024, did very little to upgrade its roster in the offseason and found a potential sale of the franchise stuck in neutral at best.

In other words, the Twins desperately needed a fast start. Instead, they have obliged the haters and brought worst fears to life through 17 games.

The baseball has been bad enough for me to daydream up a wandering soliloquy about billions of years of evolution and the Twins, which I shared on Tuesday's Daily Delivery podcast.

But here, let's switch gears and look for a little hope. While everyone else is piling on, let me find some reasons that the Twins glass can still be viewed as half-full.

  • Twins starting pitchers rebounded from a rough first 10 games and have posted a 0.96 ERA in their last seven starts. In normal times, that would be enough to catalyze a team and start a winning streak. The Twins are, um, 2-5 in those games. But let's isolate on that starting pitching. Stare at it. Don't look anywhere else.
  • Sure, their 5-12 record is tied for the worst mark through 17 games in franchise history. But slow starts don't have to spell doom for a team. The 1991 Twins started 2-9 before finishing with 95 wins and a World Series title. Last year's Twins started 7-13 but were eventually 70-53 later in the year. Nobody remembers what happened in the last 39 games.
  • Yes, Monday night's crowd of just over 10,000 was the smallest non-Covid announced attendance in Target Field history. But that just means fewer people had to watch a bad game in lousy weather. Imagine if 40,000 people had been there. That would be four times as many mad people!
  • Matt Wallner already has as many triples this season (two) as he had in his entire career before this season. Who doesn't love triples?
  • The Twins are on an 81-win pace (1-1) since demoting Jose Miranda for his baserunning blunder. We might look back on that as the turning point in the season.
  • Yes, Twins pitchers have committed six errors this season — twice as many as any other staff in the majors entering play Tuesday. But once they start practicing throwing to first base, things are going to get better.
  • While it's true that the Twins are in the bottom five of the major leagues in almost every offensive category, including batting average (.203) and OPS (.601), they might lead MLB in candidates to bat No. 6 in the order. Sure, they lack a true 1-5 hitter at this point, but anyone from Wallner to Carlos Correa to Byron Buxton to Trevor Larnach to Ty France to Willi Castro to Edouard Julien can be penciled in confidently at No. 6 on a given night.

I think if you take all that in, you'll realize that things could be worse.