Twins notes: Hunter fails at steal of home

KANSAS CITY, MO. – Torii Hunter almost landed in the Twins record book in the second inning Wednesday — but he ended up running the Twins out of a potentially big inning.

With two outs, the Twins loaded the bases against Royals starter Mark Guthrie. Hunter doubled, then Joe Mauer and Brian Dozier drew walks.

With Kennys Vargas at the plate, Hunter took off from third before Guthrie released his 0-1 pitch. It was an attempted steal of home.

"I just saw a weak link right there,'' Hunter said. "He has a slow windup, but he sped it up and kind of short-armed the ball and threw it in the dirt, but it was right there. If he throws that ball up any kind of way, I'm safe."

Hunter was tagged on the foot by catcher Salvador Perez for the third out. But wait, the umpires huddled for a minute. Twins manager Paul Molitor was on the field and felt Guthrie might have released the ball before putting his front foot down, which is illegal. After a few moments, the umpires ruled Hunter out and the inning over.

Molitor had nodded at Hunter to indicate he had the option of taking off for home if he wanted to. It didn't matter if Guthrie was on the ropes or not, there was an edge Molitor wanted to exploit there.

"That's kind of my mind-set,'' Molitor said. "It's something that's not very typical, given that the bases were loaded and you have a guy like Kennys up. It didn't hurt us in the long run because the runs weren't up. Sometimes you take a shot.''

The last pure theft of home by a Twin was by Rich Becker, who did it Sept. 27, 1997, at Cleveland.

This can't be written without homage paid to Rod Carew, who stole home five times for the Twins.

One of the mysteries of the early season is the decline in Tim Stauffer's velocity.

Two years ago, his fastball averaged 91.7 miles per hour, according fangraphs.com. Last year, it was 90.6. In spring training, Stauffer was barely reaching the mid-80s with his fastball, forcing the Twins to check his history with building arm strength in camp. They were told that Stauffer's velocity usually is down during camp.

Now that the regular season has begun, Stauffer is averaging 88.2 mph with his fastball — more than 2 mph down from last season and more than 3 mph down from two seasons ago. And Stauffer has a 9.00 ERA in five appearances this season, suggesting that the fastball might not be his only problem.

Vargas has been a constant at early hitting sessions this week.

Molitor worries that Vargas works too hard on his swing.

"He really, really is hungry to get consistent," Molitor said. "He is always trying to repeat swings to where he can take it into the game. He's a strong enough man to handle it, but when you talk about swings over the course of the year, it is going to add up, so sometimes he will have to back off."