It’s sunny, warm and a bit muggy as the Minnesota Twins prepare for game two of this three-game weekend set against the Detroit Tigers at Target Field. A pair of righties with unsightly ERA marks will do battle in this one, as Kyle Gibson (6.29 ERA/5.74 FIP in 87.1 innings) takes the ball for the Twins while Wisconsin native Jordan Zimmermann (5.58 ERA/5.54 FIP in 101.2 innings) toes the rubber for the Tigers.
More on that in a bit.
The Twins are celebrating the 30th anniversary of the 1987 World Series team this evening. Fans will want to be at their seats right away for the “scheduled” first pitch, however. Not only are they giving away commemorative beer steins to the first 10,000 fans 21 and older, but they will also have an on-field program starting at 6:00 p.m. First pitch is expected around 6:35 or so, according to team president Dave St. Peter.
Here’s how the Twins will line up against the Tigers and Zimmermann:
Here’s how the Tigers will counter:
Gibson may be in the midst of a particularly difficult season, but is coming off one of the more encouraging outings of his season. That probably says more about how tough his season has been though, as he allowed four earned runs in six innings in Houston on July 16 with six strikeouts and four walks. The Twins lost 5-3, but Gibson pitched into the seventh inning for just the fourth time all season. Furthermore, of those four times, Gibson has recorded an out in the seventh just once. Gibson was absolutely throttled in his previous start against the Orioles, and his month of July has not been pretty: 7.02 ERA in 16.2 innings, .866 OPS against and 11-8 K/BB ratio.
He’ll have the benefit of not facing Miguel Cabrera in this one, but he’ll need more than that if he’s going to get his mojo back. Gibson has been especially bad at home this season, posting a 7.20 ERA, 1.012 OPS against and 1.98 WHIP. In short, that means he averages allowing two baserunners per inning in home starts so far this season. It’s not hard to see why that won’t work. He also doesn’t really have platoon splits this season — and again that isn’t a good thing. Righties have an OPS of .912 against Gibson this season, while lefties are a mite better at .929. What’s strange is that Gibson easily has the physical talent to survive and perhaps even thrive at this level. He throws a low-90s fastball with ample sink and a decent slider. Command is the issue at times, as is nibbling around the strike zone. Working ahead is paramount for Gibson — just like any pitcher — as he allows an OPS of 1.113 after 1-0 and .731 after 0-1.
Zimmermann is having a similarly difficult season for the Tigers, which is problematic in that the big part of his contract hasn’t even kicked in yet. He’s due $74 million over the following three seasons, and has given the Tigers just 207 innings of 5.22 ERA ball to this point over his two-year deal.
Last season, injuries were an issue as Zimmermann posted a 4.87 ERA in 105.1 innings. This year, he’s been healthy, but not particularly good. He put together a solid month of June (3.82 ERA), but has otherwise seen his ERA at or around 6.00 for each of the other three months of the season. He’s also been much, much worse on the road (6.29 ERA, 1.62 WHIP, .941 OPS against) than at home (4.75 ERA, 1.33 WHIP, .799 OPS against). So…something will have to give between him and Gibson in that respect.
Zimmermann did post a strong start out of the break, shutting down the Royals with 6.2 solid innings. He allowed an earned run on seven hits with seven strikeouts and zero walks. However, the Royals have been one of the worst offenses in the game all season long, and started the second half in a deep funk. This game has all the makings of a 10-9 outcome….so it’ll probably be a 3-2, 2-1 pitcher’s duel that is done in a tidy two-and-a-half hours.
Baseball is weird, guys.
Injury Updates
Byron Buxton will not head out on a rehab stint with Rochester as previously expected. The Twins decided it was too much travel and turnaround with minimal to be gained from him playing in a game or two down there. Instead, he’ll travel with the Twins and be activated in Los Angeles when first eligible.
Glen Perkins pitched a scoreless inning for the GCL Twins on Saturday. He threw eight pitches, fanned two batters and mixed fastballs and sliders, Molitor said, adding that the lefty touched 90 mph. He came out of the appearance feeling good, and will probably make one more appearance with the team before sliding over to join the Fort Myers Miracle. Molitor added that as far as he was aware, this appearance starts the 30-day rehab clock for Perkins to make his return to the Twins.
Hector Santiago is headed to Rochester on Sunday, and will pitch two innings (30-35 pitches) on Tuesday against Indianapolis. He’ll throw again on Saturday — three days of rest — with a 50-pitch limit at Toledo before the next step is addressed.
Justin Haley is slated to return to the Twins on July 26 — once his 30 rehab days are up — and manager Paul Molitor said the most likely situation is that he’ll be reinstated to the big-league roster then. As a Rule 5 pickup, he has to remain on the MLB roster or be offered back to the Red Sox. He’s been working as a starter with the Red Wings on his rehab stint, but Molitor said he’s most interested in looking at Haley as a long reliever — something the MLB roster doesn’t currently have. Haley has a 3.86 ERA in four appearances with the Red Wings, including a 9-3 K/BB ratio in 16.1 innings and an opponents’ slash line of .270/.303/.429.
Bye bye Burdi (almost)
Ken Rosenthal of Fox Sports reported on Saturday that the scuttled deal between the Twins and Atlanta Braves for left-handed starter Jaime Garcia fell apart due to the medical concerns of right-hander Nick Burdi.
Burdi was cruising down at Double-A Chattanooga before his season was waylaid by the righty needing Tommy John surgery in late May. Burdi had a 0.53 ERA and 20 strikeouts in 17 innings and may have surfaced at Target Field sometime this season if the season had continued on that path.
A Burdi-for-Garcia swap would have made sense for both sides. Burdi is a high-end relief prospect and Tommy John surgery has become stable enough in recovery that the biggest issue now is the timeline to full recovery more than anything. Garcia has battled arm injuries throughout his career but at age 31 appears to have settled in with the Braves. A look at his numbers might give him the tag of “reliable back-end starter” but he’s been anything but, at least health-wise, over his career. He hasn’t thrown 180 innings since 2011 when he was a fairly well-touted youngster with the Cardinals, though he did bounce back from missing huge chunks of 2013 and ‘14 to pitch 129.2 innings in 2015 and 171.2 last season with St. Louis.
Since the beginning of 2016, Garcia has a 4.52 ERA (4.35 FIP) over 284.2 innings with 7.4 strikeouts per nine innings, 3.1 walks per nine and a WHIP of 1.35. What Garcia brings to the table — like most starters with Cardinals fingerprints — is the ability to generate grounders. Garcia has a career worm burner rate of 56.4 percent, including around that mark over the last two seasons. Those types of pitchers tend to carry a little less risk than fly ball guys due to grounders rarely resulting in extra-base hits.
Garcia’s numbers might not make the socks of fans roll up and down, but compared to Gibson — whom he’d probably replace in the rotation — it’s a net fWAR gain of 1.6 wins. Teams have won postseason games in recent seasons starting pitchers like Edinson Volquez, Marco Estrada and Chris Young. It’s not impossible to envision having success with some combination of Ervin Santana, Jose Berrios and Garcia. For now, though, the deal has stalled if not outright died. His outing against the Dodgers on Friday night — including hitting a grand slam against Alex Wood — may have re-calibrated his market a bit.
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Notes
- The Twins are expecting 34,000 fans on Saturday night.
- Friday’s loss was the 400th in Twins history against the Tigers (423-400-1). The tie game came in 1967, as the teams tied 5-5 when a game was halted due to rain in the ninth inning and never restarted (h/t TwinsTrivia.com).
- Brian Dozier has a seven-game hitting streak out of the All-Star break.
- Per the game notes, Eduardo Escobar is hitting .328 over his last 35 games. He’s starting at shortstop, as Molitor said the position is a bit of a “hot hand” situation right now.
- Sunday will be Armed Forces Appreciation Day at Target Field. The Twins are going to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the 34th Red Bull Infantry Division and the 10th anniversary of the return of the 1/34 Brigade Combat Team from a 22-month deployment to Iraq, per the game notes.
- Molitor estimated that reliever Matt Belisle probably would not be available until Monday’s game in Los Angeles after throwing a season-high 36 pitches on Friday night. Belisle threw 30 pitches on May 28 — two scoreless innings with four strikeouts — and then came back the next day and threw 17 against the Astros (three earned runs in 0.1 innings). Astute Twins fans might remember that May 29 game for other reasons, such as Twins relievers allowing 14 earned runs over the final two innings in a 16-8 loss.
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