Reverse jinx time!

Let's see here.

Stumble out of the gate with a poor record, big free agent acquisition breaks his leg, bullpen is shakier than Michael J. Fox on a vibrating bed, franchise player being paid the GDP of a small country going on DL...I should officially be at DEFCON 3 on the Twins season.  But oddly, I am not.

Maybe it's the lingering bitterness from the hockey game that shall not be named a week ago distracting me (still have about 3-4 moments a day where I well up with rage and want to punch something, yet no punches thrown to date, feel I deserve credit for this, would've taken the news that I had inoperable brain cancer better than I took that game).  Maybe it's the fact that the Twins always seem to find a way around this stuff.  Could be the start of the NHL playoffs blunting the force of these early shots, or perhaps I've just been beaten down by all the losing.  Whatever the reason, it's an unlikely place for me to find myself, and although it's far from the start we'd hoped for, it's still April and there's no reason to panic...yet.

Now I don't want to go down the road of countering every negative item from the first two weeks of the season with a piece of optimism, because there's been a dangerous negative precedent set in that regard.  Way back in July, I tried to quell the gnawing doubts that were accumulating about the Vikings season by offering points of hope.  We all know how that turned out, so I shan't tempt fate by going down that path again.

But I will bring up the one salient stat here that requires no analysis to back it: 6 out of 9

That's the Twins performance in winning the Central Division since 2002.  Not to mention that one year they lost in a one-game playoff.  Now we can debate how much those division titles are actually worth, and I'd readily admit that there's no reason to believe the postseason will hold better prospects this year, but the bottom line is things have been worse and ended up better in years past.  Again hearkening back to last summer, I gave up the team for dead on July 16th.  They then proceeded to run away with things.

So perhaps that's all that required here, and the Twins are simply the yin to the Vikings yang (please, no Visanthe Shiancoe jokes).  As we've all seen, the Vikes never collapse until even the most hard-bitten and fatalistic fan (that being me) is roped into believing.  They thrive on raising you up before they crush your spirit into smithereens.  Could it be that the Twins are their polar opposite, and won't turn on the jets until they've been written off?  If so, I'll do my part, there is no way the Twins will win this division.

Not enought juice there?  Okay, once more with feeling:

THIS TEAM STINKS!  THEY CAN'T HIT, HAVE NO BULLPEN, AND THEIR TWO FRANCHISE PLAYERS ARE CHINA DOLLS!  ANY MEMBER OF THE PITCHING STAFF COULD GET SHELLED AT ANY TIME, AND OUR "ACE" HAS ALL THE FOCUS AND MENTAL TOUGHNESS OF A TEENAGE GIRL!  THE ONE THING TO LOOK FORWARD TO THIS SEASON IS SHEDDING $32 MILLION WORTH OF GARBAGE NAMED NATHAN, CAPPS AND CUDDYER!  IT'S OVER, TRADE EVERYBODY AND REBUILD!

That should do the trick.