Section 219: Selective viewing and what comes next

I'm grateful for the distractions of September. Like I'm grateful for a fantasy football league in which I was able to draft Tom Brady, Andre Johnson and Matt Forte in the first three rounds despite having the 9th pick among 12 teams.

To be honest with you, I spared myself and hardly watched the Twins over the weekend. Too much to do to watch the ship come careening toward the dock with its inexperienced crew. If I want to watch a wreck these days, I'll watch NASCAR ... or the Gophers.

I'll be selective in my viewing over these final few weeks. I'll be interested in watching the rookie Liam Hendriks when he pitches against the Royals on Wednesday. He could be an interesting part of the Twins future, as opposed to the guys who may be candidates for fourth outfielder or fifth infielder or long reliever in 2012. I'll be more interested in guys like Joe Benson when they looks more ready for the majors. Maybe he's further along than I think, but I'll leave that to others to figure out.

In other words, the mystique of watching guys with numbers in the 60s doesn't do much compared to being in a title race or getting ready for October baseball. Some of my blogger friends find more excitement in parsing the Bensons and Chris Parmelees of the world than I do, and that's fine. Just don't expect to read much about that stuff here.

I have tickets for a couple of more games. If the weather is nice, I'll go.

I'm making several assumptions that will guide me toward 2012:

*Most of the young players who are seeing lots of playing time now are not auditioning for starting spots in 2012. Hendriks may be the exception, but I'm just not expecting the Twins to try to sell me on the rest of them. Otherwise, I'm afraid we'll be looking at another season of battling Kansas City for fourth place. (Yes, right now I'd be pretty disappointed if the Twins tried to sell me on Ben Revere as a starter in 2012. And you all know where I'm at on the Nishioka thing.)

*The front office will be on notice that more of its decisions have to be better ones. Aside from personnel in the minor-league system I have to think that Bill Smith and his staff are on the shortest leashes within the organization -- and will be under the most pressure to produce or perish. After all, none of them have seven years remaining on their contracts.

This could sound naive to you, but I'm willing to consider 2011 a bad blip on the results chart. The Twins weren't prepared for the problems they faced and things pretty much got out of hand. Against the backdrop of division titles, I can handle a wretched season. And because of the unfamiliar terrain, I can have some sympathy for the Twins in their mishandling of assorted situations.

If 2012 goes the same way as 2011, however, I suspect they'll be testing our loyalty more than is reasonable.