A very, very small part of my job is to read the comments on Star Tribune dot com stories. I do this so you don't have to. I also do this to pick out one particularly good, interesting or representative one every day, for use in the newspaper on Page 2.
For as much as "don't read the comments" has become a running joke, it is among the most direct feedback we get from readers — in addition to giving an insight into the minds of fans. This might be a skewed sample since the majority of readers don't post comments and those who are compelled to do can tend to be on an extreme end of the story, but it's a base nonetheless.
The comment snippet chosen for Thursday's paper was this one, which came on a story about Joe Mauer's improved play of late. Not all heroes wear capes is how I will describe wading into the fray of a Mauer story, but this comment was interesting from brooke511b:
"Not just picking on Mauer but how can things so dramatically change? Dozier just fixed his swing since the ASG? … So sick of the 'since this date blah blah blah so and so had a great BA or ERA.' Totally angry that they weren't ready to go in April."
Again, this is just one person's opinion. But it's interesting to me because I had *assumed* that in spite of it being too little, too late to matter in the standings the Twins were changing the narrative on their season by playing better after a dreadful start. Using that dreaded word here, the Twins are 29-23 since starting out 20-48.
But while that might be true for some fans — and the Twins might still sway others like brooke511b if they keep this up — there's also an undercurrent of annoyance with all of this winning. For a small handful it has to do with blown draft position, though the "burn it all down and play for next year" crowd that permeates the NFL's unforgiving 16-game season doesn't show up nearly as much in MLB fandom.
More than anything for some fans, it seems that the Twins' winning lately only reinforces that they should have been winning sooner. I'm not sure if those same fans would be even more upset if the Twins had kept losing at an historic pace, but maybe they would have?
We could also conclude the Twins earned this damned if you do/don't position by being so dreadful over the first 2.5 months of the season, but mostly I just found this trip into the mind of a fan interesting.
