Has Ron Gardenhire Cursed The Twins?

The Minnesota Twins are off to a rough start -- a really rough start -- and City Pages’ Peter Schilling thinks he might know why ...

It would be easy to chalk their current streak of futility to offense and defense, crunching numbers that prove one theory or another. But I’d rather crunch numbers to come up with some mystically bizarre ailment that may have nothing to do with anything. Thus, the Curse of the Manager of the Year Award.

Since 1996, teams whose manager has won this prestigious award have dropped an average of 13.4 games the following season. Using even more advanced mathematical equations, I’ve concluded that this would result in roughly 80 wins this season for the Twins.

There’s one reason to embrace this analysis, and one reason to reject it.

We embrace this analysis because it confirms a fondly held bit of knowledge: What goes up, usually comes down. Otherwise known as the Plexiglass Principle. Manager of the Year Awards usually go to managers of teams that greatly exceed expectations ... and teams that greatly exceed expectations usually decline the following season, largely because their luck turns.

We reject this analysis because -- as Schilling points out -- Gardenhire has finished second in the Manager of the Year balloting five times. Granted, I don’t know which years those were, but there must have been some fine seasons after those, if only because most Gardenhire’s seasons have been fine.

Still, when almost any team wins 94 games -- as the Twins did in 2010 -- we should expect them to win fewer games in the next season. Granted, maybe not 13.4 games fewer ... but the projections for the Twins showed them winning approximately 85 games this season. Their 6-12 start is certainly a surprise. But it shouldn’t be all that surprising if they fail to reach the playoffs.