Jose Berrios didn’t have his best command, yet for the most part kept it together in completing five innings as the Minnesota Twins fell to the Houston Astros 7-2 at Target Field on Tuesday night. Facing the best offense in the AL, Berrios threw just 11 first-pitch strikes to 23 batters faced, and allowed four earned runs in five innings with five strikeouts and four walks.
Berrios threw 104 pitches with 63 strikes, and saw his ERA jump to 2.70 through four starts.
The Twins offense pushed across two runs in the first inning, then fell dormant for the rest of the night as Astros starter Mike Fiers and a pair of relievers held them down the rest of the way. Fiers came in sporting a 5.21 ERA (7.57 FIP) and had allowed a major-league worst 18 home runs in just 46.2 innings of work, but held the Twins offense at bay as all five hits he allowed in his six innings of work were singles.
The Twins had just one extra-base hit on the night — a ninth-inning double from Jason Castro against Astros reliever Michael Feliz. Feliz and Devenski combined for three shutout innings in relief of Fiers, with no strikeouts or walks and just a pair of hits allowed.
Joe Mauer singled on an 0-2 pitch to center with one out in the first and was erased on a fielder’s choice off the bat of Robbie Grossman. Max Kepler followed with an infield single, and both runners moved up on a wild pitch. Jorge Polanco followed with a four-pitch walk, with Eddie Rosario following suit with a five-pitch walk of his own. Byron Buxton — who reached three times on the night — followed up with an infield single, and the Twins manufactured a pair of runs more or less without a ball leaving the infield.
Fiers buckled down after that, and retired the Twins in order in the second, third and fifth innings. Devenski followed by retiring six of the seven batters he faced, with the only hit he allowed being a Polanco poke off the glove of Carlos Correa in the shift. Feliz allowed a couple hard-hit balls — including a Buxton drive to the track in right-center — but ultimately shut the door on the Twins in the ninth.
The Astros struck for single runs in the third and fourth, and in all honesty, things could have gotten worse if Berrios didn’t dance out of danger in both frames. In the third, Berrios worked ahead of Marwin Gonzalez before hitting him on the foot with a 1-2 breaking ball. Yuli Gurriel followed with a double over the third base bag, and suddenly the Astros were in business with a pair in scoring position. Alex Bregman moved both runners up with a sac fly to score Houston’s first run of the game, but then Berrios got George Springer swinging for the second time in the game and got Josh Reddick to fly to left.
In the fourth, Berrios gave up an infield single to Jose Altuve and an eight-pitch walk to Correa. With two on, Berrios got to a full count with Carlos Beltran before also losing him for a seven-pitch walk to load the bases with none out. Pitch coach Neil Allen visited the mound, and Berrios started the next batter — Brian McCann — with a 3-0 count before getting a 4-6-3 double play off his bat. One four-pitch strikeout of Gonzalez later, and Berrios completed a second tightrope act while holding the Astros to just two runs over those two innings.
That’s pretty impressive when considering five batters reached over those two innings.
The fifth inning was no kinder to Berrios, as seven men came to the plate and four reached base. After a Gurriel grounder to third — a nice pickup by Adrianza and a good play by Mauer to come off the bag and make the tag on the other end — the next four batters reached. After the dust settled, there was a Bregman single, a Spring single, a Reddick walk and an Altuve single and two more runs were in, closing the book on Berrios’ day with the Twins trailing, 4-2.
The Altuve single to left was a bit contentious — especially with Dan Gladden on the radio broadcast — as Adrianza played it off to the side, with the ball skipping past his glove into left to allow Bregman and Spring to come around to score. Of Berrios’ 104 pitches on the night, 32 came in that fifth inning — essentially sealing his fate as finished for the night.
After a clean sixth inning, Buddy Boshers gave up a home run to Bregman on the fourth pitch of the seventh inning before rebounding to get the next three batters he faced. After Boshers departed, 26-year-old lefty Jason Wheeler made his big-league debut. Wheeler made quick work of the Astros in the eighth, and got the first two outs quickly in the ninth before running into a bit of a road block. Springer reached on an infield single when Wheeler couldn’t handle the throw from Mauer when covering first, with Reddick following with a walk, Altuve with an infield single and Correa with a single to left to cap the scoring at 7-2.
Here’s what we saw from our vantage point:
Berrios battled
Berrios said after the game that he didn’t have his best command and didn’t have a good feel for his changeup, but that his head was in the game the whole time and he felt he competed well. Manager Paul Molitor said he was proud of Berrios for how he battled on a night where things could have easily gone sideways against a powerful lineup, especially considering how things did go sideways on Jose at times last year as he posted an ERA in excess of 8.00.
Ultimately, Berrios still managed to show fairly good stuff on a night he wasn’t 100 percent. His four-seam fastball touched 96 on a couple occasions and got six swings and misses, and his curve and two-seamer combined for four more. Ten whiffs on 104 pitches on an off-night against baseball’s best offense? Not bad for a guy who turned 23 just over the weekend. He’ll get the Mike Trout-less Angels this weekend.
You might say this is a good Astros offense….
…when they hide someone like Bregman in the No. 9 spot. Bregman went 2-for-3 with a home run, and is hitting ninth as a 23-year-old more than holding his own in the big leagues. He’s hitting .261/.323/.415 on the season, playing fairly good defense at third base and is a solid line mover for an offense that came into Tuesday third in runs, first in wRC+, second in lowest strikeout rate and second in batting average.
If there’s any player who is a semblance of an easy out in the Astros lineup, it’s Gurriel, who has good pop but dreadful plate discipline. He’s hitting just .262/.299/.396 on the season, but other than him, there isn’t an easy out in the bunch. Losing the first two games with their best two starters going is certainly suboptimal for the Twins, one might say.
No matter what you may think, big-league debuts are cool as heck
Wheeler is a six-year minor-league veteran who was added to the 40-man roster, taken off and exposed to the Rule 5 draft but ultimately stuck with the Twins throughout. He’s thrown 809 innings in the team’s system — almost solely as a starter — and was rewarded for his efforts with a call-up on Memorial Day. His family was able to join him, and they were very excited to see him debut.
Wheeler too said he had some nerves, but once he got the first batter out, he was good to go. It doesn’t hurt that the first batter he got out will probably have a bust in Cooperstown when all is said and done. That, of course, is Mr. Beltran — the only batter Wheeler got out twice in his two innings of work.
Fiers was a mess coming into the game, but he shoved on Tuesday night
Fiers came in with a 5.21 ERA and a higher slugging percentage allowed than Berrios was allowing as far as total OPS. And yet, he effectively mixed low-90s fastballs high in the zone with a curveball the Twins couldn’t touch all night to stymie them for six innings before giving way to a sturdy Astros bullpen. Fiers fanned eight batters and allowed just five hits — all singles — for his first appearance of the year where he didn’t give up a home run.
Not bad for a guy who was just filling in for Charlie Morton, who had to be placed on the disabled list, huh? Fiers threw 43 fastballs, with the Twins swinging at 20 and missing nine — a pretty ridiculous rate when he barely cracked 90 mph (90.1) on average with the pitch. But a well-located fastball up in the zone can be a good pitch, and Fiers proved it Tuesday night. It also helps with eye levels, as he also mixed in a curve that got four swinging strikes and no hits against.
Ultimately, Fiers got 16 swinging strikes on 95 pitches — a kingly sum for any pitcher, let alone one who had been bombed as badly as he had coming into the night.
The Twins offense was listless…
Fiers and friends had stretches of eight, six and six straight batters set down at various points in the night, and again as noted, did not allow an extra-base hit until Castro golfed a double into the right field corner with one out in the ninth. On a night where Miguel Sano was scratched from the order due to illness — Molitor said he was ultimately sent home around the seventh inning — it’s worth wondering just how contagious it was with the offense’s overall performance. Hitters 1-3 combined to go just 1-for-13 on the night, and the Twins oddly hit a ton of weak grounders to first base and back to the pitcher. Six of the Twins’ outs on the night were to first base unassisted or back to the pitcher.
Even Polanco struck out twice on the night — something he’d only done twice all season (April 9 against White Sox (Quintana); April 12 against Tigers (Fulmer)).
…except for Buxton, who had a pretty nice night
He would have had three hits, and extra bases if his hit in the ninth would have fallen, but Springer made an incredible play:
Instead, Buxton had to settle for a pair of singles and a walk. Days like this have been few and far between — he’s still hitting just .199/.283/.279 — but the encouraging part was that he was no worse for the wear after slicing his finger in Monday’s game and that he put together some better plate appearances on a night when the rest of the team looked pretty bad.
Twins fans might not know much about Devenski — but he’s nasty
Devenski worked as a swingman last year with fairly solid numbers, but his strikeout marks have jumped off the charts this season (14.6 K/9). In fact, Tuesday was his 18th appearance of the season and was just the third in which he did not strike a batter out. Devenski boasts a four-seam fastball that sits around 94 mph with a good slider and a nasty changeup. His swinging strike rate this season is 19.7 percent — a mark exceeded only by Boston’s Craig Kimbrel among 106 relievers with at least 20 innings pitched.
Entering play Tuesday, the swinging strike rate on his changeup was an obscene 29 percent, while the fastball (12 percent) and slider (14.8 percent) were merely excellent. Not bad for a guy who was a 25th-round pick and a “player to be named later” in a deal for Brett Myers nearly five years ago, huh?
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Notes and Quotes
- Brian Dozier saw his 10-game hitting streak go by the wayside with an 0-for-5 night. He made the final out of the night on a comebacker to Feliz.
- The Twins have lost five straight games to the Astros.
- Per the game notes, the Twins induced three groundball double plays for the first time since Sept. 27, 2016 in Kansas City.
- Houston has won six straight games — its longest streak of the season.
- Altuve has hit nearly .500 (.491) in 13 career games at Target Field.
- Berrios on his effort: “I think I battled out there. I didn’t have command of my offspeed pitches, but I tried to do my best job with every pitch in every inning.”
- Berrios on when he doesn’t have his command: “I didn’t feel great with my changeup. So I went with the fastball and slider, but the slider didn’t go well, too. I tried to pitch and compete. I feel great, because I did my best job out there. I’m happy right now.”
- Berrios on Molitor saying he was “proud” of him: “Sometimes you don’t have your best night, so you have to compete with what you have. I feel great. I feel like I’m a competitive guy. When I go out there, I want to win every game. Today that didn’t happen. I feel bad that we didn’t win, but otherwise I feel great.”
- Berrios on the Houston offense: “They’re pretty good right now. That’s why they’re first in the division. They have a pretty good lineup. They did a lot of good things today. They don’t have a lot of power hitters, but they do it with getting guys on base. I walked a couple guys, so that was part of the damage tonight.”
- Berrios on facing Altuve: “You have to throw strikes to him and let him make outs. You can’t be too perfect with him.”
- Berrios on not throwing first-pitch strikes: “Yeah, it’s tough with a lineup like that. But I never lost my confidence. I tried to be confident pitch by pitch and to compete. It was one bad night. It’s done. Time to get ready for the next one.”
- Wheeler on his MLB debut: “It was fun. It’s good to get the first one over with. My heart was racing a bit more than normal. But it was good to get the first one out of the way.”
- Wheeler on when his nerves calmed: “Getting the first out was nice. Beltran hit a slider. He hit it pretty well, but it was right at Rosario in left. After that, it’s the same old game.”
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