If you are looking for some cold water to throw on the Twins' 23-22 record, ESPN.com (Insider) has you covered.

In a story with the headline and subhead, "Don't build like the Twins: Minnesota is a great example of how not to design a major league roster," writer Mike Petriello lays waste to a combination of a pitching staff that still continues to bring up the rear when it comes to strikeouts and an outfield defense that is also a mess of the Twins' own doing.

A couple snips:

They're treading into some particularly dangerous waters, because the roster they've assembled is the worst-case scenario: They have a staff full of pitchers who allow balls to be put in play in front of a defense that isn't particularly effective at turning those balls into outs.

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Defense can be measured a few ways, though none of them are without their issues over a small sample size. But when they're all generally saying the same thing -- that the Twins' defense is quite poor -- it's difficult to toss that data away.

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Teams can succeed without top-notch defense, as the Detroit Tigers have shown. They can get by without huge strikeout numbers if they have a good defense, as the Pittsburgh Pirates have the past two years. But there's almost no way they can live with both of those things combined.

Basically he's arguing that eventually this model will turn the Twins' record into something much worse than its currently respectable 23-22. Time will tell.