It’s dreary, overcast and the rain is coming down pretty good as the Minnesota Twins prepare to open a three-game weekend set against the Kansas City Royals at Target Field. Both teams will not hit on the field as they wait for the weather pattern to pass, and the Pioneer Press’ Mike Berardino — a frequent guest on our Midwest Swing podcast — reports that the Twins have not hit on the field since Tuesday during the Astros series.
It’s a pair of right-handers doing battle this evening, as the Twins send Kyle Gibson (4-6, 4.86) to the mound against young flamethrower Yordano Ventura (7-9, 4.64). More on that in a bit.
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Injury Updates
Twins manager Paul Molitor did not have any updates on lefties Tommy Milone or Buddy Boshers. Boshers was placed on the disabled list with left elbow inflammation following working game one of Thursday’s doubleheader.
The corresponding move for Boshers was to add lefty Andrew Albers to the 25-man roster rather than opting to use him as the 26th man for game two of the doubleheader. Albers wound up throwing a team-record 108 pitches in relief of Milone, and as a result will be out of commission for the next few days. It wouldn’t be surprising to see the Twins move him back to Rochester in exchange for a fresher arm, but that move isn’t on the front burner as of yet.
Molitor did admit the length of his bullpen wasn’t ideal, but he thought they’d be “OK for tonight.” He added that he has been talking with interim GM Rob Antony about things they can do to lessen the stress on the bullpen, including but maybe not limited to adding another arm from Rochester. The buzz around twitter from Berardino and a few others was that Pat Light — acquired just under two weeks ago from the Red Sox in exchange for Fernando Abad — was the player scheduled to come up when flight plans out of Syracuse were scuttled. Then Light ended up working for Rochester Thursday night, allowing a three hits and a run but striking out the side to earn the save in a 5-3 win over the Chiefs.
The move to replace Milone on the roster — as he was placed on the disabled list with left biceps tendinitis Friday afternoon — was to get Pat Dean back up from Rochester as an extra lefty out of the pen. Dean last worked on Tuesday, and it did not go well: 2.1 innings, six earned runs, 10 hits and a pair of strikeouts on 61 pitches. To say it’s been a rough go for Dean down there since the Twins sent him back in mid-June would be accurate:
Molitor did have an update on Trevor May, and it was that the next step would be to get a bone scan down at Mayo Clinic in Rochester. Molitor said the diagnosis from the clinic is that the issues with May in his back are muscular, but they simply have to rule other things out as well. Molitor wasn’t positive when the scan would take place — either Saturday or on Monday.
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Mauer Sits, And Subsequently Hits
Since the All Star Break, Joe Mauer has started 22 of a possible 27 games for the Twins. While it’s impossible to know for sure, it seems like that extended amount of time off has paid dividends for the Twins, as he’s hit .307/.402/.511 with as many walks (14) as strikeouts in 102 plate appearances. That’s pretty close — actually, a bit better — to vintage Joe, who had a career line of .323/.405/.468 up until the 2013 concussion that took him out from behind the plate.
Molitor said he tried to devise a plan over the break to keep from grinding certain guys into the ground in the second half, and Mauer was one of those guys. “As much as I ran Joe out the first half, I just decided I was going to look for more opportunities to give him a chance to recharge,” Molitor said. “It’s coincided somewhat with the fact that he’s been swinging it a bit better. I can’t really speculate on how much those things are tied together, but when he had his legs under him, it makes a big difference in his swing. His quickness, and he trusts himself a lot more. That’s a big part of what Joe needs to do to be a successful hitter.”
Molitor also praised the effort of Kennys Vargas over at first as he’s gotten a bit more exposure there with Joe’s days off the position. “Kennys OK,” Molitor said. “He puts time in. Obviously mobility is not high-end, but he works at it. I think his hands are fairly trustworthy. He seems to catch balls he gets to. We work on him making sure pitch-to-pitch that he stays focused; sometimes the games get long defensively for him because he hasn’t been out there all that much. It’s just one of those things where you stay on him. I think he likes to play the position and I think he works at it. I can’t think of any real glaring misplays that he’s had out there.”
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Despite getting his scheduled start washed out against the Astros, Ervin Santana will stay on regular rest and start Tuesday in Atlanta.
Santana said it doesn’t really matter to him at all that both starts are coming against former teams and teammates, especially a Royals team that has quite a few players left from his time there. “I don’t worry about that,” Santana said with his trademark smile and cool demeanor. “It doesn’t matter too much.”
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Part of the fun fallout from Thursday’s tough day was that Eduardo Escobar pitched a clean ninth inning in game one. Escobar threw 16 pitches (10 strikes), pumping a fastball that reached 92 mph in addition to a curve. Brooks Baseball said that Escobar threw a cutter, but Eduardo himself giggled at the notion and said it must just have been the glove-side run he was getting.
“He’s doing well,” Molitor said of Escobar’s condition the day after. Escobar is not in the lineup, but joked that he told Molitor he was “good to go” if another go-round from the mound was needed. “I was nervous,” Molitor said. Molitor added that he and Escobar have talked about him pitching in the past, and as the game went on and the Twins cut into the lead late it looked less likely he’d be needed. Escobar said that Molitor first brought it up in the eighth inning, before the Twins scored.
But when Taylor Rogers gave up a couple runs and didn’t record an out in the ninth, Molitor said he figured he might as well just go for it. “He looked a little nervous actually, when I went out there and it was really going to happen,” Molitor said. “That’s understandable.”
Escobar said that Molitor told him basically to just not get hurt. “He said ‘Hey Esky, be careful and throw easy,'” Escobar noted. “But if I’m gonna throw, I’m gonna throw hard.” The Houston feed (Root Sports) showed Escobar grinning from ear to ear as Molitor gave him instruction, and Escobar confirmed that he was pretty excited to get back on the mound.
Escobar was a star pitcher and center fielder in his native Venezuela before he signed — “I never even played shortstop back then,” he said, until the scout who signed him (fellow countryman Amador Arias) told him he’d get to play in the big leagues if he learned to switch hit and play shortstop — though he did mention that he did get to pitch a bit down in the minors. Baseball Reference shows him tossing 2.1 scoreless innings with just one batter reaching over two appearances back in 2006 in the Venezuelan Summer League when he was part of the White Sox organization as 17 year old.
“Yeah, yeah I was excited,” Escobar said. “It’s fun. It was my first time throwing from a big league mound. It was nice. The guy in the corner has been teaching me the curveball.” As Escobar said that, he gestured towards the locker of Kurt Suzuki, arguably his best friend on the team as the two are a constant source of bickering that is frankly, quite hilarious.
Ultimately, Escobar chalked it up to his willingness to do whatever it takes to help the team. “I’m here for him,” Escobar said of Molitor. “If he needs me to pitch, or catch, or whatever….I’ll do it.”
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Here’s how the Twins line up today:
Gibson’s up-and-down season has continued into August, as he’s made a pair of starts this month with mixed, at best, results. Gibson hasn’t recorded an out in the sixth inning in either, though he did allow just two earned runs last time out against the Rays. Still, he needed 107 pitches to complete five frames and walked twice as many batters (four) as he struck out (two). That’s never a good sign.
A lot of Gibson’s rates are similar to his rather solid season last year, but where he’s falling short is that he’s inducing fewer grounders (his bread and butter), issuing a few more walks and allowing a few more home runs. Add to that a 20 point BABIP increase, fewer swinging strikes and fewer chased pitches out of the zone, and it’s easy to see why it has been a tough season for the tall righty.
Ventura’s overall season numbers are also iffy. His 4.64 ERA is backed by a 4.81 FIP, which suggests he’s basically been rewarded with the results he deserves based on his secondary statistics. His groundball rate has dropped three percent and his walks and strikeouts have started to converge — which is never a good thing. Basically speaking, all the positive steps he took forward last year as a 24 year old have fallen off.
Now with all that said, Ventura’s last six starts have been pretty good: 3.26 ERA, .657 OPS against and 28-15 K/BB ratio in 38.2 innings. That’s basically what good Ventura looks like; the raw stuff doesn’t match the results necessarily, but it’s still pretty good. Of course, it was bound to happen, but Ventura’s velocity is down a bit this year. It’s not much — about a half mph on his two-seamer and rarely-used cutter — and he’s compensated by ratcheting up the changeup usage this year (up from 11.7 percent to 19.3 percent).
For all the love Ventura gets for his fastball, the curve is the pitch to watch. Not only has he allowed a .407 OPS against it this year, but it’s also inducing a solid 12.8 percent swinging strike rate.
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Notes and Quotes
- Brian Dozier is two home runs shy of 100 for his career.
- The Twins are hitting an incredible .312/.368/.554 in August, ranking second, second and first in each of those categories and first in MLB with a team wRC+ of 146 for the month. Here’s some context: that’s the same wRC+ as Kris Bryant and Nelson Cruz this year. That’s pretty great company.
- The Twins are just 1-5 against Kansas City, but did win the most recent meeting by a 7-5 score at Target Field.
- Former Twins shortstop Jason Bartlett will be inducted into the Rochester Red Wings Hall of Fame in a pregame ceremony on Friday night. Bartlett’s career average of .323 ranks sixth all-time in Wings history.
- Molitor on Jorge Polanco slowing the game down, as well as finding himself in the lineup on an (almost) daily basis: “He’s doing well. Some of it I think is comfortability. Being up here and getting more of an opportunity, and not feeling a lot of pressure as to whether he’s going to play a lot, one way or the other. Defensively, we talked before he got here. You have to try to project where a guy might fit. It changes; injuries/things happen/trades. We’re giving him a fairly extended look here. I think when I watch his physical approach to defense, he’s cleaned some thing up in terms of footwork and his throwing mechanics, which have gotten a bit more efficient. I think his philosophy is good, in that he’s trying to keep it simple, and make that accurate throw. Yesterday he got a little sped up on one particular play, but for the most part he’s made the plays, so he’s going to continue to get a chance.”
