I rarely indulge my interest in sports in this space, knowing that this site’s readership is skewed heavily female and the interest in the topic is inevitably limited. I will make an exception because I’d like to clue as many of you who care into the analysis of longtime Twins blogger Aaron Gleeman, now available on Minn-Post.com.

Gleeman’s statistically based (but not number-obsessing) take on Minn-Post is a particularly welcome middle ground for those of us fans who care enough to want the why, but can’t digest tables of stats and newly invented acronyms every day.

Gleeman’s posts, which I have only regularly perused this year (I lumped him in with many of the homer-bloggers who engage in weepy baseball swoons and see Babe Ruth and Bob Gibson in every fresh-faced minor league player at Fort Myers), recently included a debunking of the organization’s approach to hitting and its image as a defensive juggernaut. I find him lacking in caution about the potential of minor leaguers (a chronic disease in this town, our goofy preoccupation with “the kids”), but otherwise offering a nice balance between skepticism and enthusiasm, with little evidence of stenography.

And we need more Gleemans. Unlike the Vikings, T-Wolves, Gophers, and Wild, who are aggressively and thoroughly dissected by the Star Tribune, the newspaper’s baseball coverage is extraordinarily thin. Joe Christensen and LaVelle E. Neal are nice guys, but their work is workmanlike at best, and exceedingly cautious.

Perhaps the mental strain of, and access issues presented by, having to be around players and management for nearly 200 games from February to September (October is not in the cards this year, trust me) has made them gun-shy around an organization that can be sensitive, I hear. After all, this is a newspaper that often values access over insight.

The duo’s coverage is characterized by frequent bursts of optimistic hype seemingly generated by the organization’s front office, an inability to deliver powerful statistical analysis, and an over-reliance on hoary clichés about the Twins’ pluck. Columnist Pat Reusse is the only consistently skeptical voice on baseball, so his recent shot at sports bloggers seems particularly ironic. (To be fair, Reusse has taken several thinly veiled pokes at Neal and Christensen this season. I suspect he might harbor some of my concerns.)

My mantra is that baseball teams with the most loyal and deep fan bases are those whose fans and media expect the most and can be the hardest on their teams. It’s a sign of success, really, because people care deeply. It would be nice if the Strib could employ the kind of rigor with which it approaches football and hockey in its baseball coverage. It has the inches, but does it have the players?

(Disclosure: This website’s parent company publishes the Twins Magazine under contract to the Twins.)