Twins

7/21 PREGAME NOTES: Santana vs. Sanchez, TK Statue, '87 Reunion and Injury Updates

The Detroit Tigers are in town, and it’s fitting because the Minnesota Twins are in a celebrating mood. They’re celebrating the 30th anniversary of the 1987 World Series team — a team which toppled the Tigers to get there — and they also unveiled the eighth statue in Target Field history.

That is, that of manager Tom Kelly, who led the team not only to the ‘87 crown but another in 1991. He’s the winningest manager in Twins history, and helped usher in the era of winning baseball before departing following the 2001 season. A lot of the young players on his last teams were key parts of the next winning culture in Minnesota, such as Torii Hunter, Jacque Jones, Corey Koskie, Brad Radke, Doug Mientkiewicz and many, many others.

Here’s TK addressing the media and a large throng of Twins fans outside Gate 34 as his statue was unveiled prior to Friday’s game:

Kelly gave a long thank you to a number of the 1987 players in attendance, as well as executives and team staffers from years gone by. He had some fun at the expense of Wayne “Big Fella” Hattaway and even had a few quips about the size of his statue. “I probably shouldn’t say this,” Kelly said. “But I guess I managed during the Steroid Era, but I’m not sure if I took any!”

As for Friday’s on-field action, it’ll be a pair of grizzled righties doing battle, as the Tigers are sending Anibal Sanchez (6.08 ERA/5.58 FIP in 50.1 innings) to the mound against Ervin Santana (2.99 ERA/4.77 FIP in 126.1 innings) for the Twins. More on that in a minute.

Here’s how the Twins will line up in the series opener:

Here’s how the Tigers will counter:

Santana has hit the skids a little bit more of late, but to his credit still has an ERA under 3.00 (2.99). After posting a 6.03 ERA in June, he’s been solid in July with back-to-back starts of allowing two earned runs (2.40 ERA over 15 innings). Home runs have been a bit of an issue for Santana, as he’s allowed 1.35 per nine innings this year — just over the AL average — with 11 of the 19 he’s allowed this season coming in the eight starts he’s made since June 1.

Still, Santana’s manager isn’t terribly worried about his veteran righty.

“I don’t worry about Erv,” manager Paul Molitor said. “He’s had a couple stretches where the outings maybe weren’t what we’d seen early in the year. But it’s inevitable that during the season you’re going to have a bit of ebb and flow to it. I don’t think he gets rattled by those things; I think it just makes him commit to working harder and trusting what he does. As of late, I think the command has come back on the slider. The fastball has been there for the most part. It’s one of those things. You get 130-140 innings into the season, and you’re going to have some periods where you’re going to have to pitch a bit more with adversity. I think he’s in a good place right now.”

Sanchez has been all over the map so far this season, with five games started and six games finished among his 16 appearances this season. He’s gotten his fair share of strikeouts (8.4 per nine innings) and kept his walks in check (2.3 per nine), but opposing batters have absolutely tattered him this season to the tune of a .288/.336/.546 line. Righties have particularly been strong against Sanchez (.942 OPS), though lefties (.823 OPS) haven’t exactly been held in check, either.

It is, however, worth noting that Sanchez has been much, much better as a starter this season (3.99 ERA, 0.99 WHIP, .681 OPS against) than as a reliever (9.00 ERA, 2.05 WHIP, 1.107 OPS against), so we’ll see what side he falls on this time.

Injury Updates

Hector Santiago threw a bullpen on Friday, and Molitor said it went very, very well. “I heard it went really well,” Molitor said. “The discussion is whether we want him to face hitters or just go out. I talked to Neil (Allen) and Eddie (Guardado) about what he did, but I haven’t finalized with Dave (Pruemer) what we want to do next.” The trouble with facing hitters live at Target Field is that the team departs after Sunday’s game, and it’s unlikely Santiago will be quite ready for that. So he’ll either head out on some sort of a rehab stint, or maybe the Twins will send him to Florida for a quick stop over to face some live hitters before doing that.

Byron Buxton (groin) went through a pregame routine of hitting, running and shagging fly balls. If all things went well, Molitor said, the plan was for him to head out to join the Rochester Red Wings over the weekend. Buxton is eligible to return on Tuesday. The Red Wings wrap up a home series against the Toledo Mud Hens on Sunday before hitting the road for a seven-game road trip against Indianapolis and another matchup against Toledo.

Notes and Quotes

  • There remains no resolution in a possible Twins-Braves deal for Jaime Garcia. Garcia is slated to start for the Braves on Friday night against the Los Angeles Dodgers. That game is slated for a 9:10 p.m. CT first pitch.
  • The next loss in the series for the Twins will be their 400th to the Tigers. The Twins are 423-399-1 in the all-time series.
  • The Twins are just 2-4 in the season series — 1-2 at home and on the road.
  • Eduardo Escobar is two doubles shy of 100 for his career.
  • Taylor Rogers’ next appearance will be the 100th of his career.
  • According to the game notes, the Twins are 8-5 in their last 13 games at Target Field. Prior to that stretch, the Twins were just 14-24 at home.
  • The Twins have the No. 4 walk rate as an offense in MLB (9.6 percent). The Twins have the 13th-highest strikeout rate (21.9 percent).
  • Molitor on TK: “I think it’s great when teams honor clubs like the ‘87 team, especially for players, coaches or managers who are old enough to remember those times, and had a chance to be a witness to watching that championship unfold. But the Twins today, in honoring TK with a statue, it’s the right thing. Personally, I’m someone who is indebted to TK for what he did for me as a manager — being able to coach for him and be around him the last couple decades. He’s just had as big of an influence on this organization — especially the championships — as anyone you can think of. I’m looking forward to watching the former players have a bit of a celebration, but I think the statue will top of the weekend for me.”   
  • Molitor on the potential of adding talent, buying: “It’s delicate. Circumstances, as they are…the fact that no one has really taken off in our division. The two Wild Card spots…there are a lot of teams that are bunched that are kind of in the hunt. Derek and Thad are going through this the right way. There’s a lot of conversations and teams out there feeling each other out as potential matches, one way or the other. I’ve been kept abreast of that for the most part, but I know it’s a process before anything is going to transpire.”  
  • Molitor on TK’s influence outside of World Series wins: “It’s hard for me to say exactly, because I think each guy takes something a little different from his experience with TK. On one end, I came in here as a guy who had played 18 years and he allowed me to do what I did as a player at the same time. He taught me a lot about how to manage a game and work a team together. When to play guys and when not to in order to give them a chance to be successful. On the other end, I think some of the young guys….he forces you to play the game the right way. You come up through the system and hopefully you learn some of those things. He makes you understand how important the little things of the game are, and you build from there. Somehow, if everyone can get in the same mindset, you begin to pull together and have a chance to win.”
  • Molitor on trade talk in light of record/lack of large disparity between Twins and Tigers in standings: “Comparing to the Tigers…they’ve had a nice run here. They’re not far away. They’re a good week out, right? They’ve peeled off one piece as far as I know. They still have a lot of good pieces. A lot depends on players and where they are in their careers and free agency and so on. Our guys…we’re very open-minded about different scenarios that might unfold. We’re trying to be smart about it. Rumors are out there. I saw the paper this morning, all those types of things that are going on. That’s just kind of the nature of how this thing goes as you get under the wire. I think the longer this thing continues to have the same type of shape…I think we’ve all kind of waited for it to go one way or the other. We’ve kind of stayed neutral in it, in that we’ve played relatively close to .500 ball for a couple months. No one seems to be doing much more than that, whether it’s in the division or in the Wild Card scenario. The longer this thing goes on, the more my confidence grows it won’t be about subtraction.”

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