No, the Vikings season didn't start early this year. The Twins offense just decided that if the defense was going to keep allowing field goals, they would just have to get touchdowns.

But seriously, if you are not watching the Twins right now, you might want to. No, they aren't winning a lot yet thanks to their best pitching prospects not having made it to the big leagues, but the young position players are really starting to show their talent.

The focus of the game highlights will be justifiably around Eduardo Escobar, who had a career-best 5-hit game with a three-run HR and a triple*. He even was nice enough to throw in a couple of errors to give Gardy something to complain about.

(*Escobar has a mind-boggling high number of doubles on the season and he comes up a double shy of a cycle. Stuff like that is why I love baseball)

Escobar's great game aside, what should excite Twins fans is the play of the three 23-year-old players on the team. All three had an extra-base hit in the six-run second inning, although Kennys Vargas' double should have been a single and an error when Ian Kinsler dropped a throw on what should have been an easy tagout of Vargas at second base. The three players combined for 7 hits, 5 for extra bases; 7 RBIs and 8 runs scored. So three players now have the three best OPSs on the Twins.

And with the offensive explosion, the Twins are officially an above-average offense. They moved past the White Sox and Orioles into sixth place in the AL with 4.31 runs per game on the season. And the Twins now lead all of MLB in runs scored and OPS in the month of August and it really isn't close. The Twins' OPS in August is .797. They Royals are second at .749. It might be a coincidence, but Vargas' first game was Aug. 1.

Hopefully, the Twins management is paying attention. The team went young and the players are responding. The Twins first tried to bring in Jason Kubel (.607 OPS) and Kendrys Morales (.584) to DH before finally letting Vargas (.895) have a shot. The Twins also tried Jason Bartlett (.250) as an OF when Hicks was struggling and then got hurt before being forced to try Danny Santana (.828) as a CF.

And while Pedro Florimon wasn't exactly a veteran, he also has been around long enough and is old enough (27) that it should have been obvious that he wasn't going to hit before the Twins allowed him to have a negative OPS in 86 plate appearances. The Twins finally figured it out and gave Escobar (.737, age 25) a shot. Remember, the average AL OPS this season is .710.

The thought of adding Byron Buxton and Miguel Sano to the mix has me really excited for the future potential of this lineup.