The Minnesota Twins welcome their third team to Target Field in as many days, as they open a three-game weekend set with the Chicago White Sox. The Twins are just 1-8 against the White Sox this season, including 0-3 at Target Field. It’s right-hander Ricky Nolasco (4-8, 5.40) going for the Twins against Chicago’s Jose Quintana (8-8, 2.97). Quintana is facing the Twins for the third time this season, and is in search of his ninth win.
He’s won nine games in each of the last three seasons. More on he and Nolasco in a bit.
The big news around Target Field was the late-Thursday trade which sent All Star Eduardo Nunez to the San Francisco Giants with Triple-A left-hander Adalberto Mejia coming back the other way. The corresponding move on the MLB roster for the Twins was to recall infielder Jorge Polanco, who has been primarily playing second base and a little third base with the Red Wings. Mejia joins the Red Wings, and what is quickly becoming a lefty-heavy rotation down there with Jason Wheeler, Logan Darnell and Andrew Albers.
Manager Paul Molitor called shortstop — the spot vacated by Nunez’ departure — “probably Polanco’s third-best position” so it doesn’t sound like he’s going to play there much in the short-term. Most likely it’ll be Eduardo Escobar’s spot to lose, but don’t sleep on Danny Santana stealing some playing time here or there as well.
To Polanco’s credit, even though he has hardly played any shortstop this season — just one MLB game, none in the minors — he said he was ready to play there if the situation arose.
Polanco said he arrived as MSP Airport around 8 a.m. today, and got to the ballpark around 1:00, so there were fortunately no travel issues. “It’s good to be back,” Polanco said. “I’m ready to play the game, and just hope for the best and try to do my best.” He hadn’t yet spoken to Molitor about his role, but he said he’s ready to take one whatever role. Even if he isn’t an everyday player, he’s going to keep working hard until that’s the case.
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Trevor Plouffe took grounders at third base and worked on some baserunning as he continues to work back from a rib injury that has cost him nearly the entire month of July. Plouffe took live batting practice at Target Field on Thursday, and said he feels really good, and that the swing was in good shape as he went through basically his entire pre-game routine. “Excellent,” Plouffe said of how he came out of his workout feeling. “Everything went well. I feel ready to go.”
Plouffe told Cold Omaha he’ll head out on a rehab stint on Monday, where he’ll join the Rochester Red Wings.
Plouffe said the rehab stint will be “at least three days,” which coincides with the Red Wings playing Pawtucket from Tuesday to Thursday next week at home, before heading out on a six-game, seven-day road trip to face Lehigh Valley and Syracuse. After those three games, Plouffe said he and the team will reevaluate how he’s feeling, and perhaps almost as importantly how well he’s swinging before deciding when to activate him from the DL.
Plouffe last played on July 1.
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Here’s how the Twins line up today:
Nolasco is making his 20th start of the season for the Twins, but is in the midst of a particularly difficult month of July. He’s got a 5.79 ERA in July — his third with an ERA in excess of 5.00 after posting a 3.25 mark in April. Perhaps most notably, Nolasco’s stuff has gone flat in July, as he’s fanned just 3.6 batters per nine innings after fanning 7.8 in April, 8.6 in May and 6.1 in June. That’s….certainly not trending in the right direction. There’s a non-zero chance this is Nolasco’s last start as a Twin with starting pitching in high demand at this trade deadline, but it just doesn’t seem all that likely.
Nolasco’s velocity is down (90.8 mph four-seam average) from the previous two months, but it’s hard to put too much stock into that considering it was also down in April, which was easily his best month. As one might expect, the whiff rate on his four seamer has been almost completely zeroed out in July (2.0 percent after 6.7 percent in June), and his curve’s whiff rate has been halved this month over the past three.
This is also noteworthy: Nolasco has thrown 86 sinkers this month; none have generated a swing-and-miss. So….not great.
The Twins have seen plenty of Quintana this year, but he’s having a very nice season as evidenced by a sub-3.00 ERA. If you’re wondering what kind of pitcher he is, well, consider this from the last four years:
https://twitter.com/Brandon_Warne/status/757263719466500096
He’s basically Cole Hamels, but on a much, much more team-friendly contract. Nothing about Quintana stands out as plus-plus, but he puts the ball over the plate with a very, very good fastball that he’s running up to the plate at 92-93 regularly. For a lefty, that’s very good velocity. He throws the two- and four-seam fastballs a lot — about 66 percent combined with roughly twice as many four-seamers as two-seamers — and according to PITCHf/x data, they’ve both been very difficult to hit. Opposing batters have just a .608 OPS against Quintana’s four-seamer, and just a .641 against the two-seamer. For some context, opposing batters had a .703 OPS on Clayton Kershaw’s four-seamer before he got hurt.
So yeah, this Quintana cat is pretty dang good.
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Notes & Quotes
- Brian Dozier returns to the leadoff spot in the order in Nunez’ absence. Behind Nunez (66), Dozier’s 15 times batting leadoff ranks second on the Twins. Molitor said he wanted to go with someone who had some experience in the role, though he did to at least some extent consider Santana and Robbie Grossman.
- Molitor on Dozier leading off: “There’s not a lot of options really. My tendency was to go with a guy who has done it enough to where it won’t be an overwhelming challenge here as we transition to Nunez’ departure. Some other people might get a chance, but right now the way everybody is playing, I think it was fairly obvious for me to throw him in there.”
- This is the first game as an opponent at Target Field for Justin Morneau, who last played here as a Twin on Aug. 29, 2013 against the Royals. Morneau is in the lineup, batting fifth and DH’ing for the White Sox. Through 10 games with the club, Morneau is hitting .233/.324/.367 with a home run.
- Since starting the season 11-34, the Twins have gone 27-29 with a plus-2 mark in the run differential column.
- Quintana is the only White Sox pitcher to take a loss against the Twins this season (4-0 to Kyle Gibson at U.S. Cellular Field on June 28).
- The Twins are 13-10 in July, 11-9 in their last 20 games and 5-5 over their last 10.
- Molitor on preparation against a pitcher for the fourth time in the same season: “You certainly look at guys who’ve had the at-bats, and who has done well in terms of career as well as more recent history. (Quintana’s) pitched well against us. He’s had a nice year. I think his record isn’t particularly overwhelming, but if your ERA is under 3.00 in today’s game, that’s impressive. Less hits than innings pitched. He throws it over. We have young people, and hopefully they have recollection of how they were pitched, and they kind of review a little bit of some of the video. He doesn’t give up many home runs for how many innings he pitches, so you don’t want to sit there and wait for that one pitch to maybe do that with, as much as hitting line drives in certain situations.”
- Molitor on his shortstop plans: “We’re in a situation with Nuni being gone…Esco(bar) was obviously the starting shortstop to start the year. Santana might get a shot to run out there. He hasn’t played much as of late. Polanco, for me, that’s his third position. But he’s here, and we’re going to find ways to get him in there from time-to-time. I would say I don’t really want to predict how much Esco’s going to play as far as games per week, but I’m going to give everybody an opportunity to show what they can do over the last two months.”
- Molitor on how set he is with Miguel Sano at third base the rest of the way: “We talk about how it’s going to work out when Trevor comes back. I think Miggy will get a lot at third base. But Trevor’s going to get some at-bats at third base. I can have the option of putting Trevor over at first, where I’m a little more comfortable than Miggy right now. Down the road, who knows how that might play out. But you have Joe (Mauer) in the mix and Kennys (Vargas) is still around. So….I don’t have an exact set plan how it’s going to play out. We’ll get Trevor healthy and back here, and we’ll see how it works out.”
- Molitor on finding Polanco playing time: “It’s going to be challenging for him still. I know in his time here we haven’t found a way to get him a ton of at-bats when he’s come up when we’ve had injury issues and needed help in the short-term. Between the guys at third base and first, and Dozier playing at second….Danny and Esco at short. (Byung Ho) Park has a chance to be back here at some point. There’s a lot of people here that we’re going to try to find a way to measure a little bit about how they’ve come along this year. Polanco’s had a lot of at-bats down at Triple-A this year and has had a nice year. It could be a little challenging. You try to get people to understand if you’re not playing everyday — even if you’re accustomed to it — it’s kind of where we are.”
- Molitor on if he’d be “comfortable” putting Polanco at short: “I don’t know if comfortable is the right word. I don’t know if that’s where I’m going to try get him a lot of at-bats.”
