Greetings from Target Field, where it’s slightly overcast but an almost-perfect 73 degrees as of this writing. The Twins outfield contingent took some fly balls together, working on throws to bases, and wrapped it up with everyone in right field throwing to home.
Sano’s arm was a sight to behold. It’s not only in the conversation for most accurate based on today, but far and away the strongest. Nobody else was close — though Oswaldo Arcia’s arm looked very strong. New Twin Robbie Grossman — who is batting seventh and playing left in his first appearance with the team — looked to have an accurate arm, but perhaps below average strength-wise. That won’t matter as much if he plays a lot in left.
Thursday night’s loss put the Twins 20 games under .500 at 10-30. They had not been 20 games under since finishing the 2014 season 22 games under (70-92). They’re also in search of their first win in the last six tries against the Blue Jays. A four-game sweep of the Twins would get Toronto back to .500 at 23-23 before leaving town.
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Here’s how the Twins line up today:
Starting for the Twins tonight is Tyler Duffey. Many will remember that his disastrous first big league start — six earned runs in two innings — came against the Blue Jays at Rogers Centre last August. Duffey rebounded quickly, finishing the season with a 2.25 ERA in nine subsequent starts with nearly as many strikeouts (52) as innings pitched (56).
Duffey has again been excellent for the Twins this season. Through four starts he’s got a 1.85 ERA, and is again striking out batters in excess of eight per nine innings. He’s also cut his walk rate by more than one per nine innings. Duffey is throwing more curveballs this year (43.4 percent) than last (39.8 percent), and it’s without a doubt his best regularly-used pitch from a swinging-strike standpoint. Fangraphs calls it a knucklecurve, and opponents have hit just .223/.254/.289 against it this season.
Duffey is opposed by Aaron Sanchez, a highly-regarded youngster for the Blue Jays who is starting to show a bit more of the potential that made him such a formidable prospect. Sanchez is routinely in the mid 90s with his fastball, and he throws it nearly three-quarters of the time. He’ll mix in a curve and change, but it’s mostly fastballs — divided between a four- and his preferred two-seamer. The curve and two-seamer are especially heavy, and he’s used them to induce grounders in excess of 60 percent of the time in his career. By comparison, the Twins’ in-house groundball wizard is Kyle Gibson, who has a career rate of 53.7 percent.
His fastballs — like most pitchers — are his most hittable pitches. All four of the home runs he’s allowed this season have come on fastballs (three on two-seamer, one on the four).
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Notes and Quotes
- Blue Jays outfielder Jose Bautista leads the AL with 36 walks. Joe Mauer is second — 10 walks behind.
- Mauer needs one more double for 350 in his career.
- Gibson (shoulder) and Eduardo Escobar (groin) have joined High-A Fort Myers on rehab assignments. Escobar is batting second and playing short for the Miracle tonight against the Tampa Yankees.
- Byron Buxton remained out of the Rochester Red Wings lineup against the Durham Bulls tonight. He hasn’t played since May 14, and there was some optimism that he’d return to the lineup tonight.
- This is the first game Dozier has ever DH’d, according to manager Paul Molitor.
- Duffey on how the first and second looks at Toronto will be different: “Throwing strikes will be the main goal. I don’t think I did that very well at all (last season); I think I had three or four walks and when I did throw a strike it was right in the middle of the plate. After three months of pitching here, the nerves are now not an issue. It’s just going out and executing.”
- Duffey’s self assessment from that first start: “I was pretty bad. I was awful. I didn’t give myself a fair shake, didn’t show what I had to our staff or Twins fans. I came out and laid an egg. I’m looking forward to a second chance to pitch against (the Jays), but more so just giving myself a fair shake of doing what I’m capable of versus going out there and pitching like a guy who had just gotten called up and was freaking out, for a lack of a better way to put it. I’m looking forward to it.”
- Duffey on tightening his control between Rochester and Minnesota: “In spring training I took working on the changeup to the extreme. I didn’t work on fastball location or curveball location — things I’m normally really good about. That put me behind the eight-ball. So I went to Rochester and made a few starts. I was still missing a bit in the first one, but as I got settled in I started feeling really good and got called up here.”
- Molitor on Duffey: “He’s got a chance to face the Blue Jays again, and I’m hoping he doesn’t get overly amped just by the fact that he’s facing the club that kind of knocked him around in his first big league start. We all know about his passion and the competitiveness that he brings to the mound every time. It just seems like every pitch, every out and every inning he’s fully vested. It works for him. It doesn’t seem to tax him too much to be that type of personality on the mound. He’s still relatively young in his big league journey, but he’s showing a lot of signs that he’s the type of guy that can be a staple piece of your rotation.”
- Molitor on Arcia’s positioning from Thursday night: “All I can make of it is that we need to address it. I think the communication from the dugout was that we were trying to get the guys very deep…but that was too far.”
