Surprise — Twins are winning!

The days of drawing 40,000 fans to Target Field, at least for now, appear maybe to be a thing of the past, but if you haven’t noticed, the Twins are winning again. After starting 1-6, the Twins are 18-14 and hitting home runs. They are 12-5 at Target Field, which is good.

They are hardly a finished product, but they have been slugging and scoring runs at home at a clip of nearly six per game. Three times already they have won games by 10 runs or more.

Hall of Famer Paul Molitor, in his first year as manager, has made a difference, and his coaches are doing a good job also. The Twins are among the hottest teams in baseball. They have won nine of their last 11 and are 17-8 since April 13.

It appears that every hitter has a plan at the plate when they step in the batter’s box, and that impresses me. Torii Hunter leads the Twins in RBIs with 19 and is tied with Trevor Plouffe for the team lead in home runs with five. The Division features two talented playoff teams, Detroit (19-13) and Kansas City (20-11), so the improvement from within has the Twins in early May in the race.

As we are reminded, MLB is a marathon, not a sprint. Winning Division games is so important because you play each Division team 19 times. So far the Twins are 13-12 vs. Cleveland, Detroit, Kansas City and Chicago.

The Twins are 5-2 outside the Division against Seattle and Oakland. They appear to be a better, well-rounded club, still very young but with proven veteran stars like Hunter, Joe Mauer, Kurt Suzuki and Brian Dozier.

Scoring lots of runs is important. The team batting average of .261 is the fourth-best in the American League. The 141 runs scored is the fourth-best in Major League Baseball, and the pitching, which is always key, is seventh in the American League with a team ERA of 4.07.

Obviously they have a long, long way to go. They have played only played 32 games, but what I’ve seen impresses me because I can see the continued improvement every game. And that is an early sign of a potentially good team.

Larry Fitzgerald can be heard weekday mornings on KMOJ Radio 89.9 FM at 8:25 am, on WDGY-AM 740 Monday-Friday at 12:17 pm and 4:17 pm, and at www.Gamedaygold.com. He also commentates on sports 7-8 pm on Almanac (TPT channel 2). Follow him on Twitter at FitzBeatSr. Larry welcomes reader responses to info@larry-fitzgerald.com, or visit www.Larry-Fitzgerald.com.