Greetings from chilly Target Field! It’s under 50 degrees and not bound to get much higher through the course of the evening as the Minnesota Twins will play a second straight cold weather game against the visiting Cleveland Indians.
The bats weren’t exactly hot on either side Monday night either, though Oswaldo Arcia sent the Twins faithful home with an exciting walk-off win in the ninth inning. Homering off Zach McAllister is no small task, either; it was the first he’d allowed this season, and he allowed seven all last year in 69 innings pitched with a solid 84 strikeouts. He’s a very good reliever. That longball put Arcia up to hitting .257/.333/.514 for the season. Not too shabby.
The biggest news of the day surrounds roster construction, most notably that the club called up uber prospect Jose Berrios and also found room on the roster for infielder Jorge Polanco, who is up in place of the roster spot of Ervin Santana, who’s back issue put him on the disabled list. Ordinarily there’s a 10-day wait for players sent down to the minors to return, but there’s an exemption to that rule when a player takes the roster spot of someone put on the DL. That’s at play here.
Adding Polanco will least help round out a bench that had just two bodies Monday night — John Ryan Murphy and Eddie Rosario — after the club called up Duffey to make a spot start in place of Santana in Washington, and sent out Max Kepler and Byron Buxton, both of whom will likely be in the lineup tonight as the Red Wings take on the Buffalo Bisons. That’s a roster ravaged by plenty of things, including player movement up to the big leagues. Tonight will be the second bullpen game in a row for the Red Wings, and that’s coming off an off day on Monday.
The other axe to swing here is that Kyle Gibson is headed to the DL with a right shoulder strain. He called it a weird feeling but isn’t too worried about it long term. There’s no structural damage to the labrum or the rotator cuff, so the hope is he can return in relatively short order.
For now, that means the rotation looks as follows:
Wednesday – TBA (Berrios is penciled in here)
Thursday – Off Day
Friday – Phil Hughes
Saturday – Tyler Duffey
Sunday – Tommy Milone (against Detroit’s Mike Pelfrey)
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Here’s a look at how the Twins line up today:
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Starting pitcher: Ricky Nolasco – 1-0, 2.66 ERA
The storyline no one’s willing to run with yet is how good Nolasco has been for the Twins through three trips in the rotation. Nothing about how Nolasco conducts his business is sexy, but he’s pitched into the seventh inning in all three starts, and has a stellar 15-3 K/BB ratio through 20.1 innings pitched.
How’s he doing it. He’s filling up the strike zone. Nolasco’s hitting the zone 56.2 percent of the time with his pitches via Fangraphs — the best mark he’s posted since 2008 with the Marlins. Quite frankly, his stuff isn’t any nastier than it used to be; he’s inducing swinging strikes 9.2 percent of the time. Last year? That mark was 9.3 percent. In fact, he’s inducing way fewer out-of-zone chases this year, but he’s allowing less contact inside the zone. It’s a good mix.
His average fastball this season has been 90.6 mph — lower than his career mark but the best he’s posted so far with the Twins. His slider has been very good — 18.2 percent swinging strike rate, .350 OPS against — but again it’s not better than it has been before with the team. It’s his only swing-and-miss offering, but when he’s pounding the strike zone and staying healthy, this is what the Twins get. It’s also what the team hoped for. He’s not going to pitch to a sub-3.00 ERA all year, but if he can come close to his present xFIP (3.55), that’s going to keep the Twins very happy.
Opposing Nolasco for the Indians is Cody Anderson (0-1, 7.53), who is off to a rough start. He’s not a strikeout guy, though he’s shown a bit more this year (6.3 K/9) in a limited sampling than he did in nearly 100 innings last year (4.3). He’s already given up five home runs this year after giving up just nine with the Tribe last year. When Anderson is right, he’ll rely on grounders and good control to get by. Part of what made him good last year was that he pitched to a flukishly low .237 BABIP last year, meaning his 3.05 ERA was not necessarily indicative of how he’d pitched (4.27 FIP, 4.58 xFIP). The long and the short of it is that this is a huge contrast from Danny Salazar on Monday night, and should be a good excuse for the Twins to get the sticks out. That was also true against Wily Peralta last week against the Brewers, and it didn’t exactly happen.
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The Twins released 7-foot-1 pitcher Loek Van Mil from Rochester on Monday. Van Mil had started the bullpen game on Sunday, and continued what was a troubling trend so far this season. The 31-year-old righty’s season with the Wings concluded with a 23.62 ERA. That comes out to 14 earned runs in 5.1 innings, with four strikeouts and six walks. That’s a 4.31 WHIP, or in other words four baserunners per inning.
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Notes and Quotes
Molitor on Ervin hitting the DL: “He hasn’t pitched since the last day against Milwaukee, and the fact that he was having discomfort yesterday just in playing catch….it’s April. All those things that we talk about with injuries here early, like Trevor’s situation. We’re trying to protect him and think a little bigger picture here. Optimistic about him being ready close to the day he’s eligible, which I think will be the off day in Chicago, so I think if we’re fortunate we’ll get Ervin back sometime that weekend. Kyle is a bit more….we’ll have to wait and see how his shoulder responds in the near term.”
Molitor on Gibson’s injury and when it cropped up: “There was nothing prior to his last start that we believe was there; it just kind of occurred that last start.”
Molitor on Arcia: “My observation is that he looks for a pitch to drive early. It might be left-center, it might be pull. With two strikes, it’s been a little bit more where we see the shift gets a bit more exaggerated, and I think he’s aware of that. If he knows he can put a ball in play over on that side of the field, he’s got a chance to get a hit. I don’t want him to try to push something over there very often early in the count; I want him to stay aggressive. I think he’s starting to get that feel that he doesn’t necessarily have to look to pull the ball to show extra-base power.”
Gibson on his injury: “Next day I felt a little bit more sore, and I tried to play catch on Sunday. It was clear that something wasn’t right. So I ended up getting an MRI just to get it checked out.”
Gibson on how he felt during his last start, and afterward: “There was never a time in the three innings where I was struggling that I thought I needed to take myself out. It never got to the point where it actually hurt that bad; it was actually a weird feeling. I’m not going to sit here and say that if affected the way I pitched because that’s not very professional. I don’t think it affected any pitch I threw or affected the results at all, it was more of a mental feeling. Something that was just a little bit different. I tried to be as up front and honest as I could, and when we found out it wasn’t going to feel better by Sunday when I was supposed to throw a bullpen, I said OK let’s get it checked out and see what it is.”
Gibson on how he felt after his last start: “I felt worse the day after I’d really only thrown 50 pitches. I think that’s what worried me more was that I had that much pain after feeling pretty good, other than the little bit of weird feeling on Friday. When I tried to play catch on Sunday and it felt like it did, there was something there.”
Gibson on the structure of his right shoulder: “They did all the strength tests. Even today, the strength tests I can pass. It’s just kind of an awkward feeling when I get a ball in my hand, really. It’s something that the doctor said should clear up pretty quickly because the strength tests are pretty good.”
“It feels a lot better today. With the sticky situation that we’re in as a rotation and a team, we’ll see….hopefully I’ll be feeling better before two weeks. We’ll do the 15 days and go from there.”
* Twins closer Kevin Jepsen will make his 400th big league appearance next time he’s called into action.
* On this day in 1986, the Twins versus Angels game at Metrodome was delayed for nine minutes when strong winds tore a hole in the roof of the stadium. That wasn’t the worst thing to happen to the Twins last night; the Angels rallied for six runs in the ninth inning in a 7-6 Twins loss.
*Only four teams have grounded into fewer double plays than the Twins this season (nine).
* Miguel Sano played in his 100th career game on Monday night. His career batting line (.264/.382/.504) through 100 games exceeds that of Miguel Cabrera (.275/.334/.501), of whom Sano frequently draws comparisons to. In Cabrera’s favor, however, was that he was just 21 when he played his 100th game. Sano is 22, and will be 23 in three weeks.
* Only four teams are striking out more frequently than the Twins so far this season (24.2 percent). The Twins are also fifth over the last week (24.7 percent).
