Everything was lined up for this to be a Lance Lynn revenge game.
He was facing his former team for the first time — the only team he’d known before the Twins.
Virtually everyone he was facing was a teammate of his at one point.
The opponent on the mound — Miles Mikolas — was Lynn’s replacement in the rotation.
Sure, things had been ugly entering Wednesday’s matinee with the Cardinals — Lynn had a 7.34 ERA with nearly as many walks (25) as earned runs (28) through seven starts — but this is a guy with a career ERA of 3.51 in over 1,000 innings. Things have to turn around, right?
To be sure, that’s still more than likely what will happen with Lynn, who is far too good to keep pitching like this. But that turnaround didn’t happen on Wednesday at Target Field.
Here’s what we saw from our vantage point
Lynn struggled again, and now has an ERA reminiscent of a commercial jet airliner
Lynn was pounded around again in Wednesday’s start, allowing three earned runs on four hits with four walks to push his season ERA to 7.47. There’s plenty of reason to expect Lynn to get better — he says he’s healthy, and he’s been damn good for a long time — but it’s just unclear when exactly that will be.
The big issue, it appears, for Lynn is the time missed in spring training while he was waiting to sign with a team. His command has been really, really spotty to this point, and that’s important for a guy who relies so heavily on his fastball.
And on the positive side, like Ron Gardenhire would say, he did throw the fire out of the ball. On Wednesday, Lynn threw 61 fastballs and 21 pitches that were, uh, not fastballs. Actually, check that, he threw 11 cutters, too — and those are technically fastballs as well.
So it was 72 fastballs and 10 others — two changeups and eight curves. The four-seam fastball peaked at 96.2 mph and averaged 94.5, and the two-seamer peaked at 95.1 and averaged 92.7. Those are both good marks for Lynn, who has readily acknowledged in previous interviews that he constantly adds and subtracts, and leaves some in the tank for when he really needs it.
In short, he’s still doing the things that made him Lance Lynn in the first place, but his command just isn’t to where it has been in the past. With just 46 strikes in 82 pitches and nine of 16 batters started with first-pitch strikes, this doesn’t seem like that big of a disconnect to try figure out.
Fixing it, however, is the tougher task.
Logan Morrison’s numbers are starting to look more respectable every single day
Nobody’s going to lose their mind over a first baseman/designated hitter batting .206/.306/.373, but the numbers resemble the beginning of a return to form for Morrison, who was absolutely dreadful in April.
Morrison has raised his batting average 24 points since the end of the White Sox series, and it’s worth noting that April is his worst month OPS-wise of his career (.636), while May is his second-best month (.861 OPS).
The short answer is this: He’s moving in the right direction, and it’s a long season, friends.
The Cardinals took out their offensive frustrations on an old friend
The Twins came in dominating the series by a 17-2 aggregate score, but then put the hurting on Lynn with eight of the 16 batters he faced reaching base.
How bad had it been for the Cardinals in the series? The eight baserunners allowed by Lynn in his three innings of work on Wednesday matched the number of total hits by the Cardinals in the first three games of the series.
They didn’t go easy on Lynn or any of his bullpen mates, as a few guys in deep skids exorcised their demons. Matt Carpenter broke an 0-for-23 skid with a single and a pair of doubles, while Dexter Fowler snapped an 0-for-9 drought with a pair of hits as well.
The final damage was seven runs on 13 hits with six walks for the Cardinals, who are slated to take on the resurgent Philadelphia Phillies and Jake Arrieta on Thursday.
Mikolas wasn’t particularly good, either
It was his shortest outing of the year — 4.2 innings — and he allowed nine baserunners despite giving up just two earned runs. Mike Matheny decided he’d rather go to his leaky bullpen, however, and take his chances there with the likes of Brett Cecil, Matt Bowman, Jordan Hicks, Greg Holland and finally, Bud Norris.
The Cardinals got by, but it wasn’t by as wide of a margin as Matheny might have liked.
More than anything, the Twins just ran out of time offensively…
…or perhaps more accurately, ran square into the waiting (right) arm of Norris, who cooled their bats over the final five outs. Between the departure of Mikolas and Norris entering, the four relievers who worked in the interim tossed 2.2 innings and allowed three earned runs with one strikeout, three walks and three hits.
It wasn’t pretty, as Morrison took Bowman deep and the Twins, in general, littered the bases while going 3-for-8 with runners in scoring position on the day.
The Twins seemed primed to get back into the game once more in the eighth, as they pushed across a run against Holland, who gave way to Norris with the bases loaded and one out. Norris, however, put that fire out by striking out Eduardo Escobar swinging and getting Gregorio Petit to ground to shortstop for the final out of the frame.
The ninth inning was a breeze for Norris, with Joe Mauer hitting a comebacker, Brian Dozier striking out swinging and Eddie Rosario lifting a lazy fly to left as the Cardinals salvaged a split before heading home following a 3-3 road trip.
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Notes
- The loss dropped the Twins to 18-21 on the season, though they did win the season series, 3-1.
- Lynn has allowed nine first-inning runs this season.
- Rosario is hitting .400 (24-for-60) in May.
- Max Kepler snapped an 0-for-17 streak with a first-inning RBI single.
- Up next: the Twins take on another NL Central foe in the Milwaukee Brewers starting Friday at Target Field. Probable pitchers are Brent Suter-Kyle Gibson on Friday (7:10 p.m.), Freddy Peralta-Fernando Romero on Saturday (6:10 p.m.) and Junior Guerra-Jake Odorizzi on Sunday (1:10 p.m.).
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