It's entirely possible that the 2020 version is the best Minnesota Twins team ever assembled. It's virtually certain that it has never mattered less.
Josh Donaldson upgrades the highest-scoring offense the Twins have ever had, and tightens the infield defense. Rich Hill, Homer Bailey and Kenta Maeda give the Twins a luxury they have rarely enjoyed — competent depth in the starting rotation. In Tyler Clippard, manager Rocco Baldelli now has a true specialist in retiring tough lefthanders.
They've upgraded virtually every facet (with the exception of team speed) to a roster that won 101 games last year, in other words.
"I can't think of any team I've been involved with, ever, that's more talented than the group we have this year, I really can't," Baldelli said on the eve of the Twins' 60th Opening Day. "You can't have more talented — physically, mentally — a more talented group than what we're able to put out there. We're very fortunate."
Their timing is very unfortunate, though, because COVID-19 has wrecked their chance to prove Baldelli right, and robbed them of the setting that rewards that advantage. Their depth, their experience, their chemistry and leadership, all of it designed to flourish over a normal 162-game marathon, has been trivialized by the sheer randomness of a 60-game sprint.
Perhaps that's fitting, since the idea of playing baseball itself has been trivialized by the suffering inflicted by the coronavirus this spring and summer. MLB intends to play an improvised runt of a season, however, amid the chaos of a raging pandemic, factors that surely magnify the capriciousness of the outcome.
That's always been true of the postseason, which the Twins know firsthand: recently via an unfathomable 16-game October losing streak, but also through the World Series banner hung by the 1987 Twins and their ninth-best record. Now the regular season itself will be a helter-skelter blitz in which superior talent is advantageous but not necessarily decisive.
The Washington Nationals, after all, were just 27-33 after 60 games last season, but they recovered and won a World Series.