Twins

9/1: Buxton Back, Santana vs. Quintana and Injury Updates on May-Milone-Grossman

Santana looks to pitch the Twins to a win in the series opener against the Diamondbacks.

We’re primed for a wild night here in the Twin Cities, with the Twins, Vikings, Golden Gophers football team and the Saints all playing games at home with the Minnesota State Fair going on as well. So it’s probably fair to say the attention will be…..divided. We’ll just leave it at that.

A familiar face moseyed into the clubhouse as it opened for access to the media, as Byron Buxton strolled in to rejoin the Twins after an interesting 20-game stint down with the Rochester Red Wings. Buxton hit .257/.288/.514 at Triple-A with eight of his 19 hits going for extra bases, and an ugly 32-2 K/BB ratio. With a .359 BABIP, it’s possible to logically deduce that Buxton was at the very least putting some good swings on the ball, as also evidenced by him winning the International League Player of the Week award.

Apparently the plan was for Buxton to arrive sooner, but he had some trouble getting to Minneapolis, according to manager Paul Molitor. Nevertheless, he was in town and in uniform by 4:00 p.m., and will bat ninth in the lineup.

Buxton said he wasn’t sent out to work on anything specifically, but just to play his game and relax. And while the strikeouts were in ample supply, Buxton himself said he’s not all that worried about them. “It’s part of the game,” Buxton said. “Just going down there, (Rochester hitting coach Chad Allen) was like ‘Don’t pay any attention to anything else, just worry about yourself and go out there and do what you do.’”

And while nobody is going to mistake Buxton as the next Miguel Sano, he did pop four home runs in as many games from Aug. 24-27. “I put a few good swings on the ball,” Buxton said. “I still didn’t get to quite where I wanted to, but I feel pretty good, and confident, and ready to go.”

Buxton stopped short of calling his time at Rochester a mental break, instead saying that he just tried not to overthink. “I didn’t really think about (clearing my head) too much,” Buxton said. “I just went out there and tried to help them win. (Manager Mike) Quade and I talked, and he said just go out there and have fun and help us win, so that’s what I did.”

The Wings in fact did win while Buxton was down there — 14-9 record in that time frame — and now open a stretch of five games against Lehigh Valley (Phillies Triple-A). The Wings trail the IronPigs by 3.5 games, which means only a clean sweep will get Rochester that final playoff spot. That’s the difference between the Twins getting Triple-A reinforcements following the season finale on Sept. 5, or possibly as much as a week or two later.

It’s not the big leagues of course, but Buxton said he did enjoy his time chasing a playoff berth with the Wings. “It’s pretty fun, especially when all you need to do is win a few more games to get to the playoffs,” Buxton said. “That’s when things get nitty gritty, and you really want to go out there and play.”   

Molitor added that Buxton is excited to be back with the Twins, and that he saw some positives and some negatives on how Byron played while back in the minors.

“There’s been some positives and negatives about how he’s been playing, and I think he’d be the first to tell you,” Molitor said during his pregame media availability. “There’s the power that we saw — hitting homers in four consecutive games — but I think he’s still trying to find ways to have consistently competitive at-bats in terms of doing a better job of not missing pitches early and trying to fight with two strikes and finding ways to put balls in play.

Molitor also added that the Twins brought him up to fill a need, but that doesn’t mean he wasn’t coming up anyway. Furthermore, Molitor would like to find ways to play him every single day, but he’s also going to take into consideration matchups and other things to keep Buxton protected a bit. “I’d like to see him play a fair amount here,” Molitor said. “I’m going to try to give him a chance to be out there when I think he’s got good matchups, if I can. You can’t always do that.

Essentially, Molitor summed up the situation with Buxton that they brought him up to fill a need, but he was essentially due to come back in the very near future anyhow. With a short bench, a couple left-handed opposing starters and a roster featuring three left-handed hitting outfielders — Logan Schafer, Eddie Rosario and Max Kepler — the time was right for the move, Molitor reasoned.

Injury Updates

Molitor said he was told by head trainer Dave Pruemer that Trevor May and Tommy Milone came through throwing bullpens on Wednesday with no ill effects. The plan is to back them off for a couple days and then throw a second bullpen — sometime over the weekend — before thinking about throwing simulated games as the next step in their recoveries.

Molitor said that Robbie Grossman is still “a little banged up” and unlikely to be able to swing a bat for a few days. Grossman suffered an oblique flare-up in Cleveland in the last game he played on Tuesday, and didn’t appear in Wednesday’s loss against Corey Kluber.

Here’s how the Twins line up today:

The Twins are facing a familiar foe in Jose Quintana, who has been very good this year and is in the thick of things in a complicated AL Cy Young race. Quintana has an AL-best 2.77 ERA, and looks primed to throw 200 innings for the fourth season in a row. Quintana had a very nice first half of the season (3.21 ERA), but has been particularly amazing since the break, with a 1.81 ERA over those eight starts — all of which have been quality starts.

With Quintana, things begin and end with the fastball. He has exemplary command of it, and it’s been particularly devastating despite averaging a *somewhat* ordinary 92 mph on the gun. I’ve asked Molitor a few times what makes it so difficult and the answer is always the same — he just spots it so well. He also throws a curve (25 percent) and change (8 percent), but the money is made with the heater. Opposing batters have just an OPS of .641 against Quintana’s four-seamer, and just a .609 mark against his two-seamer. For some context, even pretty good fastballs frequently carry an OPS against of about .750-.800, if not higher.

For instance, Ervin Santana — who has a more than respectable fastball — has a .716 OPS against his four-seamer. This year, Chris Sale’s OPS against on his two-seamer is a solid .705 — and yet Quintana is better than both. It shouldn’t be understated just how good Quintana is. He’s like a cheaper version of Cole Hamels, who is damn good.   

The Twins will look to Santana to be a stopper, and outside of the Blue Jays start he’s shown an ability to do that. Even with the Jays start factored in, Santana has been money since the break: 2.65 ERA, 7.5 K/9 and a WHIP of 1.05. Remarkably, not much has changed for Santana velocity-wise in each half, as he’s picked up a half tick on his sinker but pretty much everything else is identical.

The changeup was a much better pitch for Santana in the first half (10 percent whiff rate) than it has been in the second (4.5 percent), but everything else has ramped up for him now since the break. None of the pitches have a standout jump, but it’s just steady improvement over the course of time — the kind of improvement that seems sustainable as opposed to being a flash in the pan. For the most part, it looks like Santana is keenly aware of this as well; he’s dialed back his changeup usage in the second half, and really leaned more heavily on a sinker. Surprisingly though, that hasn’t shown up in his groundball rates, which have steadily stayed in the 42-43 percent range virtually all year.  

Notes & Quotes

  • The Twins had a fantastic offensive month in August, hitting a collective .270/.328/.447. They were eighth in team wOBA and wRC+, and finished in the top 10 in batting average and slugging percentage, and 11th in on-base percentage.
  • The Twins had the worst pitching month in baseball in August, with an MLB-worst 5.14 ERA as a staff. Starters had an ERA of 5.58 (worst by nearly a half run), while the relievers ranked 25th with an ERA of 4.43.   
  • Only one Twins team has ever lost 14 games in a row. Ironically, that’s also the only 100-loss team in Twins history — the 1982 club.  
  • At their current winning percentage, the Twins are on pace to finish with a 60-102 record, which is identical to the 1982 club.
  • Molitor on the 13-game losing streak: “It’s a cruel game. There’s a mental aspect to competing at probably almost every level. It gets a little bit larger the farther you go on the ladder that you climb at the major league level. There’s a lot of vulnerability there, especially when you have a younger roster and some people who are experiencing things for the first time. So you can explain it. You could go back to where it began in Kansas City and some of those games, and how it unfolded here in the Tigers series, and in Toronto having a chance to win a couple games before they deteriorated late. It’s compiled into something that hasn’t been pretty by any means. I as much as anybody have had to try figure out ways to help put a stop to it as soon as possible. We just haven’t been able to put a game together and do it at this point.”
  • Molitor on Santana’s last start in Toronto: “Well, he gave us a chance to win the last game. He was pitching extremely well. He made the one mistake to Encarnacion that kinda gave them a little bit of life, but his pitching line suffered by bullpen runs allowed of his baserunners. That’s going to happen. It certainly tainted his overall line for that given day.”
  • Molitor on hitting the reset button: “We try to preach the message of resetting whenever you need to. For us, it’s been really frequently lately unfortunately. It is good to get back home. When you get swept on the road — which we’ve had to endure multiple times this year — you’re kind of anxious to get on the plane and get out of that particular city. That was the case with Toronto emphatically. Cleveland was kind of the same, although there was some better baseball played by our squad. But we’re coming home against the White Sox — a familiar foe and a familiar guy on the mound for us. I think there’s a better feeling, not only being back here at Target Field but knowing that Ervin is going tonight and you hope that he can continue the trend of finding ways to give your team a chance to win.”

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