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Early on Gomez was on pace to shatter Brett Butler's single-season record for bunt hits, but ended up finishing a dozen shy of the mark and will have to settle for becoming just the fifth player since 1959 to bunt for at least 30 hits in a year. Along with the league-leading totals from Gomez and Casilla, the Twins also got at least one bunt hit from each of Nick Punto (7), Denard Span (4), Joe Mauer (4), Matt Tolbert (4), Matt Macri (2), and Mike Lamb (1).

Bunting for a hit is a great skill to have for someone with Gomez's speed and he successfully reached on 45 percent of the bunts he put in play. However, that means Gomez hit just .232 when not laying one down, which isn't a good sign for his actual hitting ability. By comparison, Casilla hit .265 on non-bunts. Gomez totaled 149 hits and 48 of them (32 percent) failed to leave the infield, which tied Ichiro Suzuki for the MLB lead. As a team, the Twins had 178 of their 1,572 hits (11 percent) stay in the infield:

                    IFH     HIT     IFH%
Carlos Gomez         48     149     32.2
Matt Macri            3      11     27.3
Alexi Casilla        26     108     24.1
Denard Span          14     102     13.7
Nick Punto           13      96     13.5
Matt Tolbert          4      32     12.5
Michael Cuddyer       7      62     11.3
Delmon Young         17     167     10.2
Joe Mauer            14     176      8.0
Mike Lamb             4      55      7.3
Randy Ruiz            1      17      5.9
Mike Redmond          2      37      5.4
Brendan Harris        6     115      5.2
Jason Kubel           6     126      4.8
Justin Morneau        8     187      4.3
Adam Everett          1      27      3.7
Brian Buscher         2      64      3.1
Craig Monroe          1      33      3.0

Every guy on the team with more than 20 plate appearances got at least one infield hit and not shown above is that Livan Hernandez's lone hit was of the infield variety. Delmon Young had zero bunt hits, yet still managed to rank third on the Twins with 17 infield hits. That may seem odd at first glance, but Young runs relatively well and had the third-highest ground-ball rate in the league at 55 percent. He put a total of 262 balls in play on the ground, so it makes sense that he'd beat out a fair number of them.

Of course, while Young hitting the ball on the ground 55 percent of the time helped him pile up infield singles, it's also why he remains a poor bet to develop into the power threat that he was misguidedly hyped as when the Twins acquired him. Young hit 262 ground balls and struck out 105 times, which means that he had zero chance of homering in 64 percent of his at-bats. At 22 years old he's certainly still young enough to develop more power, but it simply won't happen without a change in approach.

YEAR      BB     RNK
2002     439     3rd
2003     402     2nd
2004     431     1st
2005     348     1st
2006     356     1st
2007     420     2nd
2008     406     1st

Anderson deserves plenty of praise for annually coaching an entire staff of strike-throwing machines, but limiting walks was already a Twins staple when he arrived. Under former pitching coach Dick Such the Twins issued the AL's fewest walks in both 1997 and 1998, and haven't ranked worse than third in walks allowed since 1995. An amazing run for sure, although it's frustrating that they do such a great job developing pitchers who limit walks without seeing the same value in their hitters drawing walks:

YEAR      BB     RNK
2002     472    10th
2003     512     7th
2004     513     7th
2005     485     7th
2006     490     8th
2007     512     8th
2008     529    10th

What's amazing about the Twins drawing just the 10th-most walks in the league this year is that Mauer and Justin Morneau ranked among the AL's top dozen in individual free passes and Span had the AL's 15th-best walk rate among hitters with 400-plus plate appearances. That trio combined for 210 walks in 1,755 PA while the rest of the team managed just 319 walks in 4,576 PA. Or put another way: Mauer, Morneau, and Span drew 40 percent of the team's walks in 27 percent of the team's trips to the plate.

Early in the season, when the Mets' lineup wasn't providing him with much run support and the Mets' bullpen was consistently coughing up late-inning leads, far too many people made far too big a deal about Santana's supposed "struggles." When the dust settled he had a spectacular first year in New York, leading the NL in innings (234) and ERA (2.53) while ranking second in strikeouts (206). He was just seventh in wins with 16, but that's due to the bullpen blowing seven potential victories for him.

Give Santana some decent bullpen support and he wins 20 games, the Mets make the playoffs while his late-season heroics become legendary, and he receives a ton of first-place votes for the Cy Young award. Instead, thanks to factors largely beyond his control Santana will probably finish no higher than fourth in the voting while becoming the first NL pitcher to ever lead the league in both innings and ERA without winning the Cy Young.