Would the Cullens beat the 2001 Mariners?
I spent way too much time analyzing the Twilight baseball scene.
There have been countless articles to come out over the last week since the inauguration asking smart questions about where we go from here; This is not one of them. Instead, I am going to take a look at how good the Cullens would be if they put together a baseball team.
It is no secret that Twilight’s baseball scene is THE cinematic moment of the last two decades. Some would say that it is the best sports scene ever to be shown on the big screen. My only complaint about the scene is that it is only two minutes and not two hours. It might be tough to answer this because we don’t know the full skillset of every player involved, but I want to know if the Cullens could beat the 2001 Mariners in a seven-game series.
For those that aren’t familiar, we have seven members of the Cullen family, which is not enough to field a full team, so we’re adding Bella, despite her not playing in the game and just rolling with eight players for the season. It seems easiest to talk about each player with their corresponding gif, so let’s get into this incredibly stupid exercise!
I don’t even know where to start with the issues with Alice’s windup here. As we’ll see later, she is dreadful at holding runners on base. That leg kick is fine with no one on base, but it is an absolute liability when someone is trying to steal. This is a four-second gif, while the average time from the start of the pitch to release by the average major league pitcher in 2020 was 1.4 seconds. This means that Albert Pujols, the slowest base runner by a wide margin in 2020, would be able to steal second with relative ease if he timed his jump right. Now imagine someone like Byron Buxton trying to steal. It’s a wrap if she allows anyone to get on base.
As Rosalie crushes this ball, now would be a good time to mention that Alice does not miss a single bat. Every single person- err- I mean vampire- who swings hits the ball. I don’t understand the managerial decision to leave Alice on the mound while she pretty clearly wasn’t on her game. With a full team, there’s no way she is taking the hill in crucial situations. She can maybe take the sixth inning here or there, but she’s only starting in the most dire situations.
This is an excellent swing path from Rosalie. She gets great lift on the ball and barrels it up. She showed more on offense than anyone else we saw. I’ll get to the full lineup at the end, but she seems like a crucial part of the team. She appears to lift her head a bit before contact, but that could also be the editing in the bad movie from 2011.
Terrible break on the ball from Edward here. The ball is already over his head when he starts to move. If he read it correctly off the bat, he might’ve had a chance to make a play on it. He was able to make up for it because of his superhuman speed, but it is definitely something that we will work on in practice. Also, Edward has the ability to read minds, which you think would give him a considerable edge, yet he somehow didn’t think to back up before Rosalie crushed this, so I’m not so convinced.
He makes up for the bad break with his ridiculous arm strength. That’s gotta be at least a 300-foot throw with ease. Clearly an 80-grade arm. On the flip side, terrible baserunning from Rosalie. She knows how good Edward’s arm strength is and decided to test it when the ball is in the air before she even gets to third base. Her speed comes into question here too. A better third base coach would stop her at third and count on the next batter to drive her in.
I love the intensity from Rosalie after Bella calls her out. According to my research (talking to my group chat that inspired this whole newsletter), this was the same look that she gave her abusive fiance before murdering him. This is the type of intensity we need on our team. She is someone who isn’t afraid to hypothetically throw behind someone if they’re crowding the plate a bit. If she hits a late go-ahead home run, you already know that she is topping José Bautista’s bat flip. Rosalie is the Fernando Tatís Jr. of our team.
I can’t get over Carlise’s launch angle here. For someone born in 1660, I expected him to be more of a baseball traditionalist, but there’s no way he creates that kind of loft without being open-minded to the analytic revolution. He has power to all fields too. His swing gives me major Carlos Correa vibes.
I don’t know what Emmett and Edward are going for here. All they have to do is step back a few feet and wait for it to fall. But no, they both decide that they would rather be a highlight on ESPN than make the routine play. Terrible communication by both of them, with neither of them calling it. This is the second time Edward’s defense has worried me. His arm is too good to take him out of the outfield, but his poor decision making will undoubtedly cost us at least a few games. We’re basically dealing with the defense of Nelson Cruz with the arm of Ichiro. If the Rangers went with the defense AND arm of Nelson Cruz with the World Series on the line, then I can trust Edward (although it didn’t work out for them).
If you squint hard enough, you might confuse Jasper Hale’s swing with Ken Griffey Jr’s. Just an incredibly smooth swing. He drops down a notch because he fought in the vampire confederate army (Stephanie Meyer, what were you doing when you wrote this?) I know he has grown since then, and he’s a vegetarian now, which should do wonders for his body during the long 162 game season, but I just can’t have a former confederate Major lead our team. It is also clear that he doesn’t hit the ball nearly as far as Rosalie or Carlisle.
I think the worst part of this movie (other than the 121 minutes that they weren’t playing baseball) is the fact that we never saw Emmett on offense. He shows off his absurd athleticism here. I can only think of one other player that could make this play, Bo Jackson. In the books, Emmett stands at 6’5, roughly the same height as Giancarlo Stanton. I can’t help but think that Stanton would be the most apt comparison for Emmett, just from looking at how both of them are built. I have to question why he isn’t pitching. Obviously, he is an athletic marvel in the outfield, but Alice is only 4’10” and can’t get the downhill plane the way Emmett would be able to. Emmett is our starting pitcher when I’m the manager.
Look at Carlisle running free as Alice is in her motion. I can’t do it. Maybe with the right coaching, she can return to the mound, but she is just grooving fastballs right down the middle of the plate—meanwhile, Rosalie with another absolute laser. Look at our MVP thriving.
It is tough to project exactly what each player looks like on the other side of the field, but we can try. Based on his speed alone, I think Edward would be a solid leadoff guy who would be a terror on the basepaths. Alice’s pitching style makes me think that she would be a slap hitter that would fit nicely into the bottom of the lineup. I am going to assume slightly above average defense for everyone we didn’t see because, at the end of the day, they are vampires. Bella is the biggest mystery, but considering her step-dad played minor league baseball for the Jacksonville Jumbo Shrimp (a real team!) I am going to say she can hold her own, but she won’t be outstanding.
Now to answer the actual question, could the Cullens beat the 2001 Mariners in a playoff series? Notice how it says playoff series and not World Series because despite winning 116 games in the regular season, the Mariners could not even reach the World Series. I don’t know why I root for this team :( The ’01 M’s were led on offense by Ichiro, Edgar Martinez, and the criminally underrated Mike Cameron. Freddy Garcia and Jaime Moyer led the pitching staff, with Kazuhiro Sasaki locking down the 9th inning.
The Mariners’ offense will keep up with the Cullens. They led all of baseball in 2001 in runs scored. Although I do not doubt that Emmett will rob his fair share of home runs, the offense was middle of the road in the long ball. They should produce runs at about the same clip, potentially even better considering Alice isn’t the answer on the mound, and we don’t know exactly how good our other options are.
The deciding factor of this series will be how good Emmett and Edward are on offense. The two obviously have excellent genes and have shown ridiculous athleticism, but I don’t know if I can trust them. Edward’s ability to read minds will obviously help to know what pitch is coming, but baseball has likely cracked down since the Astros cheating scandal, so he won’t be able to help his teammates. The Cullens also have to face a Mariners pitching staff that allowed the fewest runs that season.
On paper (that is the only way to play this series, considering one team last took the field 20 years ago and the other team is full of fictional vampires), it seems like the team of immortal vampires would have the edge, but I beg to differ. I think it would be a very tight series, definitely going seven games, but at the end of the day, I think Ichiro and Edgar are just too much to handle, and the Mariners offense does enough against the Cullens shaky pitching staff. That’s right, the 2001 Mariners can beat a team of superhuman beasts but can’t win more than one game against the New York Yankees in the ALCS.
Thank you for indulging me in this ridiculous and pointless exercise. I probably should not admit how much time and research went into this project. I’ll be back to a more normal format next week when I take a look at the two Euphoria special episodes. They are available to watch on HBO and HBO Max now.