Sorry, but I vehemently disagree with your condescending, self-righteous rhetroric. Get off your high horse: there’s more than one way to be a fan.

PS: If it’s “all about the injuries, stupid”, how do you explain our healthy pitching staff having the 2nd worst ERA in the league?

Catcher? The Twins signed not one, but TWO free agents that at least had MLB experience. I’m not exactly sure what kind of MLB-level catching talent people think the Twins should have been able to stash away for a “contingency”. Oh wait… they were supposed to keep Morales (who was out of options and would have had to be released if he didn’t stick AND is not a good defensive catcher) or they were supposed to not give up Ramos for Capps (of course, THEN people would have been more than happy to whine about the lack of “contingency” plans when Nathan wasn’t ready to close).

Middle infield: Again, just what kind of great-hitting middle infielders were out there that could have been stashed at AAA? Tolbert and Hughes WERE the contingency plans, but I suppose the Twins were supposed to plan for having both of their middle infielders not work out (one due to a broken leg and the other to lack of productivity). A lot of us wanted to keep Hardy but he’s just now coming off the Orioles’ DL, so chances are he just would have been one more guy on the Twins DL, too. Plus, if you keep him, you don’t have one (or more) of Pavano, Thome, Nishioka, for financial reasons.

Outfield: Revere, Tosoni, et al, WERE the contingency plans. With all the yakking about how great these guys are and how the Twins needed to dump Cuddyer and Kubel to make room for them, guess what? They’re getting their big chances and they aren’t doing the job. But can you imagine the screaming from certain corners if the Twins had signed a FA like Melky Cabrera (which I advocated for)? OMG how DARE the Twins “block” Revere, Tosoni, Benson, Hicks and whoever else?

And let’s not forget, the Twins also had to sign a couple of career AAA first basemen so they would have a “contingency” for Morneau, if he wasn’t ready in April.

If you can stock your AAA team with Big League ready “contingency” players, you’d have the greatest AAA team in history.

Nobody has that kind of talent just waiting for half a dozen starters to be unable to perform for significant stretches all at the same time.

b) I’m kind of with Topper here. I’m ALWAYS optimistic because that is the beauty of baseball – it’s not played on paper and tomorrow’s game is always a different lineup than today’s. However, MANY of us looked at the off-season actions and saw that depth was an issue and couldn’t believe they were leaving us so weak in the middle infield and catcher positions. So the fact that we’re struggling a bit here isn’t really a SURPRISE just something to be tolerated and worked through. Just how it goes.

Obviously there were contingency plans for every situation. Sadly, most haven’t worked out. What I’m sure they didn’t imagine was how many contingency plans they would need.

Some seasons are like that. This too shall pass.

I think the Twins had to know that there was no true contingency plan for Mauer being on the shelf for longer than a week or so, and no real Plan B to the Casilla/Nishioka experiment. That’s what’s most disheartening. Anyone could have surmised that by looking at our roster and our AAA team.