It’s more than two hours before first pitch and it’s a steamy 83 degrees with nearly 60 percent humidity as the Minnesota Twins look for a series sweep against the Miami Marlins. It won’t get much better over the weekend as the Twins welcome David Ortiz and the Boston Red Sox; the forecast calls for temps in the high 80s-low 90s all weekend with the chance for thunderstorms. The longball has been the story for the Twins in the series, as they’ve hit seven home runs in the first two games of the series.
It’ll be Ervin Santana (1-5, 4.50) on the mound looking to snap a personal funk against right-hander Tom Koehler (3-6, 4.50), who has faced the Twins once in his career — on June 26, 2013 at Marlins Park.
This was the Twins’ starting lineup that day:
- Clete Thomas CF
- Brian Dozier 2B
- Joe Mauer C
- Josh Willingham LF
- Oswaldo Arcia RF
- Trevor Plouffe 3B
- Chris Parmelee 1B
- Eduardo Escobar SS
- Scott Diamond SP
The Twins scored three runs in the first against Koehler on a pair of singles and an RBI groundout, but were held scoreless the rest of the way. Ryan Pressly also worked 1.2 innings in that game, allowing a home run to Placido Polanco, and Justin Morneau pinch-hit in the ninth inning, striking out swinging against then-Marlins closer Steve Cishek.
Koehler only lasted four innings in that game and did not figure in the decision, as the winning pitcher was another name Twins fans will remember — Kevin Slowey.
More on the Santana-Koehler matchup in a bit.
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Speaking of Parmelee, he made his New York Yankees starting debut — he’d gotten in as a defensive sub four times previous to that — Wednesday night as he was added to the active roster after Mark Teixeira was placed on the disabled list. It was a debut to remember, as Parmelee went 3-for-5 with a pair of home runs — one off Jered Weaver, one off Greg Mahle who was subsequently demoted — and a double. The only other Yankee to ever home twice in his starting debut with the team? According to Elias Sports Bureau, it’s none other than Roger Maris.
By the way, former Twin Anthony Swarzak was the winning pitcher for the Yankees on Wednesday.
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Another old friend is on the go as Justin Morneau inked a one-year, $1 million deal with the Chicago White Sox on Thursday afternoon. Morneau was immediately placed on the 15-day disabled list, but may be an option for the Pale Hose before too long. The White Sox came into Thursday’s action with the second-worst team OPS in the AL (.693) and have been starting guys like Avisail Garcia, Jimmy Rollins, J.B. Shuck and even the recently DFA’d Jerry Sands at DH in recent days. That would seem to be Morneau’s role if he can get healthy in short order. Morneau’s market never materialized on the offseason, and it was later revealed that he’d undergone surgery in December to repair a tendon in his left elbow.
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Daren Willman is the creator of BaseballSavant.com, which has become the hub for MLB’s StatCast data. There he tracks velocities of pitches, and since 2008 the Twins have only thrown four pitches 99 mph or more — three by J.R. Graham and one by little-known reliever Juan Morillo, who was with the Twins for a brief spell in 2009. You can recreate the search query here, and if you dial back the search terms to 98 mph, you’ll find a few more Twins listings.
Graham dominates the search with 24 pitches 98 or higher and Morillo had 13 total. But also on that list is Ryan Pressly, who hit 98 over the weekend against Brad Miller of the Tampa Bay Rays and has now done so three times in this series — twice against catcher J.T. Realmuto in the same at-bat and once against outfielder Marcell Ozuna on Tuesday night.
That’s quite a feat for Pressly, who prior to this year had only seen 97 mph six times — four last year and twice in 2013 when he was the club’s Rule 5 pick. It’s even more impressive that he’s done so now after tearing his lat and missing a large portion of the 2015 season.
Pressly credited all the work he had put in during the offseason toward finding that extra velocity, and specifically credited Lanning Tucker — the team’s assistant athletic trainer and rehab coordinator — as instrumental in his recovery. Pressly said he wasn’t sure how he’d respond after such a brutal injury for a pitcher — it derailed the once-promising career of former Twins farmhand Stephen Pryor when he was a highly-regarded Mariners prospect — but he suggested that the hard work and help from the staff made it happen.
Speaking of help from the staff, Pressly also had an interesting reasoning for why he’s pitched better of late. After posting a 6.28 ERA in May, Pressly has allowed just one earned run so far in June with a season-high 10.1 strikeouts per nine innings. Pressly said bullpen coach Eddie Guardado moved him from the third-base side of the rubber to the middle, or perhaps ever so slightly shaded to the first-base side but still mostly in the center.
Pressly said that has helped him start throwing the ball down and in to left-handed hitters more effectively, and that’s been a huge key to his success. He also added that he feels he’s at a point where he can locate all three of his pitches for strikes, which makes his breaking balls outside of the zone more likely to be chased. That would likely explain the spike in strikeout rate.
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Here’s how the Twins line up today
Going for the Twins is Santana, who has seen his ERA rise from 3.13 to it’s present-day mark of 4.50 in the span of just three starts. The raw stuff has been pretty good — he’s got double-digit swinging strike marks in two of the three starts — but the execution has been poor, as he’s allowed five home runs and 14 earned runs total in that 16.2 inning time frame (7.56 ERA, 1028 OPS against).
BrooksBaseball.net says Santana threw some cutters last time out, but those were likely backed-up sliders that mean a slider isn’t biting the way a pitcher might like. Given Santana’s postgame comments after his Rays start, that would be accurate. It was a backed up slider that Santana tried to bury against Evan Longoria that resulted in a key home run last time out. As Santana’s slider goes, so goes he; it’s his primary swing-and-miss pitch (16.6 percent), and if it’s backing up he’s usually in trouble.
Koehler has struggled this year just throwing strikes, as he’s walking a staggering 5.4 batters per nine so far this season in 11 starts. He’s never had the best command (3.6 career BB/9), but this is off the rails. He doesn’t throw particularly hard — 91.9 mph average fastball velocity — and he’s got the classic curve (though his is a knucklecurve), slider, changeup repertoire to go with it. He’ll mix in a few two-seam fastballs but it’s mostly four-seamers, and he’s typically right around league average in terms of groundball rate.
His slider and change have been his best swing-and-miss pitches, but he’s thrown them far less than the fastball and even the knucklecurve. Both of those pitches are below 6 percent in terms of whiff rate, so this is a guy the Twins should be able to punish via walks and solid contact.
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Notes and Quotes
- Oswaldo Arcia has more strikeouts (42) in 107 plate appearances than Joe Mauer has (40) in 247 PAs.
- A win Thursday would move the Twins over .500 (4-3) on this 10-game homestand with a three-game set against Boston looming.
- Glen Perkins is expected to throw his third bullpen at Target Field on Friday. Depending on how he feels, he’ll either throw another bullpen or maybe head out to face hitters in Fort Myers to prepare for a rehab stint. He has not pitched for the Twins since April 10 in Kansas City.
- The Twins have four picks in the first 74 selection in the MLB Draft which starts tonight at 6:00 pm Central. The Twins are slated to pick 15th, roughly around 7:20 p.m.
- The Twins bullpen has a current streak of 10 scoreless innings. They have also not allowed a walk in that time frame.
- Paul Molitor on possibly sweeping the Marlins: “I think of it more in terms of putting together a good run, not necessarily a winning streak per se. You just want to play baseball over a period of time where the wins start coming a bit more frequently. When you get a chance to sweep, I always look at it in terms of like a hitter who gets the first couple hits, and you get greedy and want to add on the third and fourth ones if you can. We’ve had a couple of nice wins here, and we’ve got an opportunity to go ahead and finish off a three-gamer here against the Marlins. We’re counting on Ervin to give us a good start and a chance to do that.”
- Molitor on what Santana needs to do to snap his personal funk: “Ervin’s a smart guy. I think he knows how to make adjustments. Sometimes when you’re not locating your pitches, it’s not so much that you don’t have a plan. It’s just sometimes your pitches don’t go where you want them to do on a certain day. He’s having a little trouble with his slider as far as its consistency; when it backs up a little bit it becomes a good pitch to hit. The changeup — which is an important pitch for him — hasn’t been a very big part of his mix the past couple games. He’s watched these guys hit the last couple nights and that should give him a good plan of what works and what doesn’t. Hopefully he can execute.”
- Molitor on if he’s spoken to Kevin Jepsen today on his role change: “No. The conversation took place a few days ago. He knows where we’re at with that. He’s doing fine (with the decision). He’s a prideful guy who has had consistency most of his career, whether it’s been as a set-up man or in this little stint as a closer here. The one thing in his past that has been a hiccup has been his control at times; it hasn’t been that as much as not having ability to throw all three pitches like he needs to in order to be successful.”
