It’s been heady times for Twins fans, as the team has kept even with the White Sox for the division title, and some young players have started to blossom. It’s all the more fun that it’s happening the season after Johan Santana and Torii Hunter left town. Here are the top five fantasy stories that have played a big part for the team this year.

1. The return of Francisco Liriano (and the lingering of Livan Hernandez). Going into this season, what fantasy owner wouldn’t want to take a chance on drafting Liriano? It didn’t seem outrageous to spend a speculative pick on the return of a guy who went 12-3 with a 2.16 ERA and 10.71 K/9 the last time he pitched in the majors, but an April implosion and demotion to AAA quickly ended that speculation. His long and successful stint in the minors (7-0, 2.73 ERA) made us all eager to see him in the majors again, and he has put together three pretty good starts since returning in August, going 3-0 with a 1.45 ERA and 15 strikeouts.

Meanwhile, the Twins couldn’t part with Livan Hernandez until August 1st, despite his plus-6 ERA, and some fantasy owners couldn’t be dissuaded from picking him up–hoping to win innings pitched categories, I guess? Hopefully fantasy owners released him long before the Twins did.

2. The young outfield. Twins fans may have been sorry to see Torii leave center field, but they perked up at the thought of Carlos Gomez taking his place. Gomez came to the team from the Mets as part of the Santana trade, and was made a starter from Day 1, despite his poor previous minor league numbers. He made enough dazzling plays in center and stole enough bases to keep people excited (hitting for the cycle on May 8th didn’t hurt, either), but his batting has been a struggle all year. What’s worse, he’s lately been less aggressive and less successful on the basepaths, hurting his value even more.

Luckily for the Twins and fantasy owners alike, Denard Span has emerged as a better version of Carlos Gomez. A home-grown talent who saw some playing time in April before spending May and June in AAA, Span has hit .318 this season (and .331 since his June 30th call-up) and has come to the plate with better discipline than Gomez (a 11.3% BB rate and 13.8% K rate, compared to Gomez’s 4.0% and 24.6%). Span has speed, too–if not quite to the extreme that Gomez has it, at least enough to have stolen nine bases on the season. With Michael Cuddyer’s season ended by a string of injuries, Span looks set to stay in the outfield for the rest of the season.

Of course, we can’t forget…

3. The Young outfield. For much of the season, we got to enjoy what seemed like a mythical bed-time tale about Delmon Young’s power, which was said to materialize at any time this year. It took him until the first week of June to hit his first home run, but at least in the meantime, he was posting excellent batting numbers (.321 in June and .330 in July) and a bit of base-stealing (13 SB so far this year). Now he’s hit three home runs since the start of August, despite batting .255 over the same span.

For the Twins and for future fantasy seasons, the bright side is that Young looks to be continuing his slow, steady development into a better and better player. For this year, the down side is not that he’s been bad, but that he’s only been very good in a few categories at a time, rather than the five we were hoping for. Here’s to continued improvement.

4. Justin Morneau - MVP Again? With the Twins in a division race and Morneau playing very well again, it has become time for the three big letters to be thrown out with his name. Morneau is hitting .305/.389/.894 this year, and has hit enough home runs (19) to suggest he might reach 30 or higher for the third season in a row. Morneau has 96 RBI, as well, which is considerably helped by Mauer’s good season (.325/.417/.876) immediately preceding Morneau’s in the batting order.

Morneau is starting to see some more intentional walks (six in the last month, bringing him to an AL-leading total of 14), which may affect his RBI total, but if he keeps batting well (and doesn’t suffer a .221/.310/.640 August + September like he did last year) and the Twins stay in contention, he’ll continue to be mentioned whenever those three magic letters are brought up.

5. The Brad Radke clones. Some friends and I were joking recently about the Twins’ penchant for what these friends called the “Brad Radke clones”–white guys who maybe don’t strikeout many batters, but show good control and quietly manage to put together respectable ERAs and win totals. This year, take Nick Blackburn (9-7, 3.71 ERA; 4.60 K/9, 1.53 BB/9), Kevin Slowey (9-8, 3.94 ERA; 6.22 K/9, 1.34 BB/9), Scott Baker (7-3, 3.91 ERA; 7.60 K/9, 1.96 BB/9), and Glen Perkins (10-3, 4.17 ERA; 4.40 K/9, 2.24 BB/9), who have put together a decent rotation despite the absence of Santana and shakiness of Liriano.

It gets to the point where fantasy owners feel good about picking these guys up for a spot start, and fantasy players and Twins fans alike feel that two or three of them could continue to develop into better pitchers next year and beyond.

I’ll resist the temptation to say the Twins are one of the most interesting stories in baseball this year (see also Rays, Tampa Bay), but they have consistently outperformed expectations both “hard” (e.g. their Pythagorean projections) and “soft” (e.g. the assumption they would only be “rebuilding” after losing Santana and Hunter). Morneau and Mauer have led the way again for the Twins and for fantasy owners, but contributions from deeper in the roster have kept the team in contention, and the fantasy waiver wire interesting. Now let’s see them win the division!