After multiple April series, we joked on the podcast about opposing teams — and especially opposing infielders — short-circuiting defensively against the Twins in blooper-worthy ways that all but handed them several wins. It's no longer even a joke at this point, because it keeps happening.
I started thinking about this again while watching the Twins pull off the sweep in Boston over the weekend, due in part to the Red Sox's messy defense. They were charged with four errors and three unearned runs in three games, but that's not even close to representing the number of misplays that benefited the Twins.
For most of MLB history, "opposing teams have played terrible defense versus the Twins" would have remained largely an unprovable hypothesis, but the beauty of modern baseball is that we can quantify damn near everything. And that includes season-long defensive performances against specific teams.
Before delving into the numbers, know this: Your eyes have not deceived you. In fact, not only have the Twins' opponents played awful defense against them this year, the league-wide data from Baseball Savant and Baseball-Reference suggests it's probably been a lot worse than you — or at least I — had imagined.