Twins

5/27 GAME NOTES: Twins Top Rays on Late Dozier Homer

The Minnesota Twins matched the Tampa Bay Rays inning for inning, run for run through the first seven frames on Saturday afternoon before breaking through for three runs in the pivotal eighth inning of a 5-3 win.

Home runs by Eddie Rosario and Brian Dozier spurred the Twins’ offensive effort, with a sacrifice fly from shortstop Ehire Adrianza getting the scoring underway in the second inning. Byron Buxton — who entered the game as a pinch-runner in the seventh inning — also added an RBI single in the eighth, as he plated Joe Mauer, who had just doubled on a ball that ate up Colby Rasmus in left field.

Buxton’s hit was the third in a row for the Twins off Rays reliever Tommy Hunter, who entered in relief of Danny Farquhar with Chris Gimenez standing on third. Farquhar walked Gimenez on four straight pitches to open the inning, with the Twins catcher reaching third on a sacrifice bunt and an Adrianza grounder to first. Gimenez was the second run that scored on Dozier’s home run.

The Twins didn’t get much going against Rays starter Jake Odorizzi, aside from the Adrianza sac fly and the Rosario home run, as the righty mixed and matched splitters and high fastballs to strike out four Twins in 5.2 innings of work. The Twins waited him out though, running his pitch count up to a season-high 118 pitches before he departed in the sixth.

Twins starter Adalberto Mejia was very deliberate on the mound and danced in and out of danger all afternoon, as he allowed eight baserunners in five innings but skated by with just two earned runs allowed. Mejia fanned six batters, threw 55 of 91 pitches for strikes and lowered his season ERA down to 4.64. He did, however, struggle to work ahead, as just 10 of the 22 batters he faced were started with a first pitch strike.  

After a 1-2-3 first inning, Mejia got into trouble in the second. The red-hot Logan Morrison led off the inning with a double to deep right — something Max Kepler might have caught if he weren’t in center, but Robbie Grossman could not corral — and moved to third on a passed ball. After a Steven Souza Jr. walk, Mejia rebounded to strike out Kevin Kiermaier before walking Rickie Weeks Jr. Derek Norris singled home the Rays’ first run of the game, but Souza was out at the plate when he tried to score on a wild pitch. Gimenez sprung out of his crouch, located the ball and calmly delivered a good throw to Mejia covering the plate for the second out of the inning. Mejia then bore down to get Peter Bourjos to ground out to Adrianza to end the threat and strand two runners in scoring position.

The Rays stranded a runner at second base in the third inning, and pushed across their second run of the game in the fourth on a sac fly from Norris. That run was answered by Rosario’s home run, a tape measure blast of 423 feet. Mejia stranded another runner at second in the fifth, but danced out of danger again with a pair of grounders to Adrianza — who was kept busy all day — at short.

Twins relievers Tyler Duffey and Taylor Rogers combined to throw three scoreless innings with two strikeouts, one walk and a hit allowed, while Brandon Kintzler allowed a single run in the ninth for his 13th save of the season, as Rasmus homered with two outs and the bases empty in the ninth to bring the Rays within two. Kintzler bounced back to strike out Tim Beckham swinging on five pitches to seal the win, and move the Twins to 26-19 on the season.

BOX SCORE

Here’s what we saw from our vantage point:

Mejia labored, but ultimately gave the Twins just enough against a tough Rays offense

Mejia worked in and out of trouble and at times pitched at a glacial pace, but he also got a solid nine swinging strikes on his 91 pitches and for the most part was able to limit damage against a Rays team that came into the day leading the AL with 71 home runs. Mejia’s best swing-and-miss offering on the day was his slider (three whiffs on eight swings), and overall both the slider and four-seam fastball got three swinging strikes, while the changeup got two and the two-seamer got one.

Mejia sat 91-92 mph with his fastball early, but heated up as the day went on. He got as high as 94.6 mph with both of his fastballs, though it seems like maybe he works best when he varies his speeds on the pitches to keep hitters off balance.

Odorizzi was good, but the Twins made him work — particularly Kennys Vargas

The pitch manager Paul Molitor suggested Odorizzi could exploit against the Twins was the high fastball, and he was able to do that at times on Saturday as he mixed it with a very good splitter as well as a cutter. Odorizzi got 14 swinging strikes on his 118 pitches, though 10 of them came on fastballs — mostly elevated. It’s not a particularly firm fastball either, as he averaged 92.9 mph with a peak of 94.4. He just sets it up very well and can throw anything in any count. His splitter got three swinging strikes, but works well as a changeup as part of his diverse repertoire.

Vargas saw 22 pitches on the day, but 13 came in his final plate appearance against Odorizzi in the fifth inning. Odorizzi threw 21 pitches that inning, so in other words more than half of them were in the Vargas plate appearance. Also oddly enough, but all 13 of them were four-seam fastballs. That’s right, 13 straight four-seam fastballs in the same plate appearance…and nothing else.

In our humble opinion, the bunt in the eighth inning from Rosario was a dubious decision…

Gimenez opened the eighth with the game tied 2-2 by taking a four-pitch walk. That brought Rosario up, and the left fielder promptly laid down a bunt to move Gimenez to second. It’s not so much about how Rosario was hitting to that point, as he was 2-for-3 with a home run and a single. After all, Rosario is hitting just .257/.280/.410. What made less sense was that Farquhar was unable to locate the entire plate appearance to Gimenez, and the Twins just handed him an out one pitch later. Furthermore, it set up Adrianza with a runner in scoring position. Adrianza came into the game a career .227/.301/.319 hitter.

So the move perhaps becomes more defensible if the move there was to pinch-hit with say….Jorge Polanco. Instead, Adrianza grounds out to first base and in the span of three pitches, the Twins have gone from a runner on first and no one out to a runner on third with two outs. According to Tom Tango’s run expectancy matrix, a team with a runner on first and no one out was expected to score 0.859 runs on average. A team with a runner on third with two outs will score an average of 0.353 runs. That’s a huge dropoff.

Similarly, a team with a runner on first and no one out will score a run some point in the inning 41.6 percent of the time. A team with a runner on third and two outs will score a run sometime in the inning just 25.7 percent of the time. Don’t get me wrong, it panned out because Dozier absolutely obliterated a baseball. But I don’t think it was the right line of thinking.

…that didn’t matter much as Dozier jumped the yard on Tommy Hunter to put the Twins in position to win

Nevertheless, all our talk about process and results got blown up by the fact that Dozier hit an opposite-field home run. According to Fangraphs, just three — including this one — of his 124 career home runs have gone to right field. A rare feat, indeed!

The reaction in the dugout from Rosario and pals was pretty hilarious for Dozier’s homer:

That wasn’t all the craziness of Dozier’s day, either. In the ninth inning with two outs, Kintzler gave up a long home run to Rasmus. Fans egged the man who caught it to throw it back, and initially resisted before giving into peer pressure. However, unlike usual pegs from the stands, this man’s throw reached where Dozier was standing at his position near second base, but with his back to the situation. Dozier reacted with a jump and pirouette as the ball just missed grazing him, and the man was reportedly ushered from the stadium.

Here was Dozier’s diagnosis of his wild day:

Rosario had a good day offensively, posting his first multi-hit game since May 5

That was the day Rosario went 2-for-4 against the Red Sox in the game started by Eduardo Rodriguez at Target Field. Rosario doubled off Rodriguez in the fifth that night but was stranded at third, and tripled in the seventh to come around and score the team’s third run of the night. Kintzler blew a save that night, but Mauer hit a walk-off — or carry-off, if you prefer — home run that set off one of the most raucous celebrations in Target Field history.   

Rosario got the scoring going for the Twins with a home run in the fourth — an absolute bomb to right-center.

Here are the specifics:

…and here are just some cool pictures of it:

Miguel Sano getting the day off wasn’t enough to keep his slump from being prolonged

Sano pinch-hit for Vargas with flamethrowing lefty Jose Alvarado on the mound, which prompted Rays manager Kevin Cash to go remove him for Farquhar. Sano fell behind 0-2, managed to work a full count and then struck out swinging. That marked Sano’s eighth straight at-bat which ended in a strikeout. Molitor didn’t have any qualms with Sano’s approach in that at-bat, as he noted that Sano went down swinging on a 3-2 changeup — a tough pitch. The changeup is a big-time swinging strike pitch for Farquhar this season (21.4 percent whiff rate).

Tyler Duffey was — again — very, very good

Duffey threw two scoreless innings with a hit and a walk, but also struck out a pair of batters and got six swinging strikes on 30 pitches — good for a 20 percent whiff rate. Duffey came in with a swinging strike rate of 11.6 percent on the day — far better than the 8.5 percent mark he posted last season in the rotation. That’ll be on the upswing with Saturday’s performance, while the rest of his numbers are trending down. With his Saturday performance, Duffey lowered his season ERA to 2.13 (2.70 FIP) and brought his groundball rate up to a solid 47.8 percent. Basically, Duffey is nailing the three basic tenets of a successful pitcher: strikeouts (9.2 K/9), limiting walks (1.8 BB/9) and keeping the ball on the ground. This has been a very, very good transition for Duffey.

Notes and Quotes

  • Dozier’s hitting streak was extended to eight games with his home run in the eighth inning. Vargas extended his streak to seven games with a single in the second. Vargas is 10-for-22 (.455) over that streak, per the game notes.
  • All four of Rosario’s home runs this season have come at Target Field.
  • The teams were a combined 3-for-19 with runners in scoring position.
  • The Twins improved to 12-14 at home on the season and have won five of their last six games.
  • The win pushed the Twins to seven games over .500, tying their high-water mark for the season.
  • Dozier on Saturday’s win: “All in all it was a must-win, as far as the pressure building to win at home for us. We have a chance to win the series. Good teams find ways — even down early. Rosario with the big hit. Manufacturing runs late in the game. It’s a big win and we have a chance to win the series.”
  • Dozier on winning at home: “It doesn’t really both us to be honest with you, because we keep doing well on the road. But you have to win at home. Over the course of a long season, you have to stack up wins at home. We’ve failed to do that. Obviously, we’re playing well on the road, but we don’t let that get to us.”
  • Dozier on the ball thrown from the stands: “It almost did hit me. It was about an inch or two from hitting my foot. We’ve got a Henry Rowengartner. Sign him up. I heard they escorted him out. I hate that. We should give him a free tryout!”
  • Mejia on how he felt: “I felt good. I was a little tired from flying in yesterday, bu I felt good.”
  • Mejia on if he was trying to be more efficient: “No. I was just trying to spot my pitches. I was trying to go outside and inside. I thought my pitches were moving a lot, and that was the reason some of them missed the zone. But it was the same thing as always.”
  • Mejia on if he liked any of his pitches specifically on Saturday: “I think the fastball and changeup inside are the pitches I had the best feel for.”

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