The Olympics are here, the Minnesota Twins are playing well, the Minnesota Vikings are showing promise and as of yet we don’t have Brett Favre on our team. Things are looking good.

As Winston Churchill once said about the U.S.S.R., our Twins are a “riddle wrapped in an enigma.” Perhaps it’s because they are a young team and really have no track record.

An interesting statistic came up the other day. As of Aug. 1, they have only 10 holdovers from last year’s roster. Talk about turnover. That’s 60 percent in one year. A large business would have difficulty putting out a product with that kind of employee loss. That’s not so, with our team. It’s the Twins way.

The constant moving of expensive veterans out with new cheap players coming in. It’s frustrating at times, but at times can be fun to watch. The team is difficult to judge because of all the new players. You can take a snapshot of the team on a given day, but who knows if the players will be consistent with that day.

Is there another way to get a feeling for our team? Well yes, let’s try comparing them with another “come out of nowhere” team. The World Champion 1987 Twins. How do the two teams compare? The ‘87 team looks better at first glance, as most teams would with Kirby Puckett on it. The quartet of Puckett, Hrbek, Brunansky and Gaetti are tough to match. Certainly they had more power and a Hall of Famer in Puckett. The current Twins edition can counter with Morneau and Mauer, both possible future Hall of Famers. Adding Jason Kubel doesn’t help that much.

Our older Twins hit 196 home runs. In 110 games the present team has hit 76 and will be lucky to crank out 125 this season. No comparison, right? Let’s dig a little deeper. The ‘87 Twins scored 786 runs. The 2008 Twins have 540 and are on a pace to plate 610. How did they do that? Well, they’re hitting in the clutch and their batting average is .278 as compared to ‘87’s .261. And perhaps, as much as I applaud Kent Hrbek, Justin Morneau has been a superb clean-up hitter. In fact, I think he is the best in the majors at this time. Morneau is headed for another MVP year.

OK, but how about the pitching? Do the Twins have the staff to measure up to Blyleven and Viola? Not yet, is the answer. If they had either one of the two, I’d feel a lot more comfortable about the ultimate success of our 2008 Twins. However, at this juncture they do have an effective quartet and there is a possibility that with the addition of Liriano, the quartet will become a quintet. Unheard of in modern day baseball.

That would be nice, but we started out trying to compare the two staffs. All right, let’s again look at the statistics. The ‘87 team pitching had an earned run average for nine innings of 4.63. The 2008 team staff is 4.26, almost half a run less per game. That looks good for the 2008s. Now if we can only get an ace to step forward. How good would Santana look at this time. Of the present staff I’ll put my money on Scott Baker or even possibly Francisco Liriano to step forward.

Defense played an important role on both clubs and because of the youth on the 2008 team I’d have to give the nod to the ‘87s. The 2008s are learning on the go, but their enthusiasm and hustle are making up for a lot of mistakes.

It appears that 2008 Twins version is, at least statistically, the equal if not better than the World Series champs of 1987. Now if we can just get Lady Luck on our side for this year’s team.