Twins Week in Review: March 31st-April 5th

Three Reasons to be Happy
1. Trevor Plouffe has started out well
We've learned from years past to not overreact to hot starts. I did last year with Correia and looked like an idiot. But Plouffe is taking the ball the opposite way and not just trying to hit homers. He still looks dazed and confused about what he needs to do at third base, but hey, you can't have everything.
2. Chris Colabello has been excellent
Colabello is a similar case. Just like Plouffe, he's taking the ball the opposite way, and also like Plouffe, he doesn't play defense. His six RBI game was impressive, and going the opposite way on that homer yesterday was even more so.
3. Paul Konerko didn't completely destroy the Twins 
Okay, I'm really grasping at straws here, but Pauly has been relegated to pinch hitter for the White Sox. You're probably confused about this if you aren't a big Twins fan, but Konerko is on a coveted list of players who completely kill the Twins, along with Curtis Granderson, Jim Thome, Jose Bautista, SNS, (that's an acronym for "Stupid Nick Swisher") Marcus Thames, Craig Monroe and literally everybody on the Yankees.
Three Reasons to be Frustrated
1. Good god.....The bullpen
Were these guys really among the top of the league last season? At the moment, their ERA is 11.37, including a complete meltdown on Friday night and a blown save by Perkins. At least we won't be needing them as much because of all the new starting pitching help we got this offseason with Nolasco and Hughes right?
2. The new starters haven't been particularly impressive
Right now Nolasco and Hughes both have ERAs north of seven. They were supposed to come here to solidify the rotation. That hasn't worked out so well. Heck, I'm expanding this to the entire rotation. There is exactly one person with an ERA below five in it. Maybe we should call up Diamond. (Checking...) Never mind.
3. Joe Mauer
Notice the wording at the top. "Reasons to be Frustrated" I'm frustrated with Mauer's hitting, but I'm not freaking out about it. I'm not particularly concerned with how he's done so far or throwing out weird theories like "Moving to first base has thrown him off" It's early in the season, it's not as if he's never gone through a slump like this. If he goes 4-4 today, which everyone knows he is completely capable of doing, he'll be back over .300. He just needs to hurry up.
Telling Stat of the Week
7
Number of pitchers with an opponent batting average above .315. I know I said above that it's never good to overreact to things at the beginning of the season, but at the moment this staff is about 100 times worse than last year's. I'm not overreacting, I'm just....um..... pointing this out.
The Dan Gladden Stupidity Award of The Week
In which we examine one moronic thing Dan Gladden said while announcing Twins games
For this week, we'll go all the way back to opening day, when Gladden was talking about the Pirates and how decorated they were with awards. I don't remember exactly what he said but it went something like this: "I had forgotten that Francisco Liriano won comeback player of the year last year, so he's gonna get that, and Clint Hurdle is gonna receive the Manager of the Year award from Jim Leyland, and Andrew McCutchen is gonna receive his MVP from Barry Bonds," In typical Dan Gladden fashion he used the word "gonna" as often as he could, but that's fine, here's the real problem with that sentence. The Pirates aren't "gonna" do anything! The game had already happened! But what do you expect from Dan Gladden, do you really think he'll bother to do his research? At least they don't have John "I am incapable of speaking and watching the game at the same time so I'll just say things like 'Oh my!' and explain to you what happened after the play is over" Gordon anymore. One out of two is pretty decent. Too bad we can't say the same about the Twins so far.