If you’d left the Minnesota Twins for dead, you’d better start digging.
The Twins have won five straight games, capping a three-game stretch of wins against the hapless Chicago White Sox with a much, much more impressive two-game thumping of the St. Louis Cardinals at Busch Stadium.
BOX SCORE (Mon.)
BOX SCORE (Tues.)
Even after losing two straight, the Cardinals are still in first place in the NL Central, so this was an impressive stretch — albeit short — for the Twins.
The Twins not only started their own five-game streak, but halted the one the Cardinals were on, as they had come in fresh off a three-game sweep of the Chicago Cubs.
All facets of the game were on point for Minnesota in St. Louis, as the pitching was lined up perfectly, the offense was clicking and the Twins were clearly the superior defensive team.
Here’s what we saw from our vantage point:
Fernando Romero is a bad, bad man
Romero cut through the Cardinals like a hot knife through butter, tossing six shutout innings with three hits, three walks and nine strikeouts. He threw 97 pitches (57 strikes) and induced 14 swinging strikes along the way.
Romero averaged 97 mph on his four-seam fastball and 96.8 on his sinker — 98.2 and 99 mph peaks, respectively — and got six swinging strikes on his slider (25 percent), four on his four-seamer (13.8 percent), three on the sinker (8.1 percent) and one on the changeup (14.3 percent). His changeup was as high as 93.1 mph on the gun and averaged 91.7, and he even threw a slider as fast as 90.2 mph.
He’s obviously going to have to throw strikes to be successful, but it’s hard not to be enthused about his potential after these first two starts. He’ll start this Sunday against the Angels.
Jake Odorizzi was utilized perfectly
One of Odorizzi’s biggest bugaboos with the Tampa Bay Rays was his inability to get through a lineup three times. In fact, these are his career splits when facing lineups in terms of times through the order:
His career splits paint a fairly good picture, and in recent years those differences have become starker. For whatever reason, he’s just not good when facing the same lineup more than twice.
So on Tuesday, Odorizzi faced exactly 18 Cardinals batters. Now, it took a 1-2-3 fifth inning to get him through five and he threw 93 pitches, but still, with the bullpen going the way it has, it lined up perfectly for the Twins. Odorizzi wasn’t flashy — one earned run on two hits with three strikeouts, a pair of walks and a homer allowed — but the Twins will take that all season long.
It likely means Odorizzi won’t work deep into games, but if the Twins can get 32-35 starts like that from the righty, he’ll probably be good for an ERA around 3.50 and 160 innings.
That’s very valuable.
We’ve said it before; we’ll say it again — this bullpen is good when lined up properly
It’s easy to line up a bullpen when a team is winning, but it’s a self-feeding cycle when not only the team is having success, but starters are going fairly deep into games while the offense is doing its part as well.
After Romero cruised through six innings on Monday, Trevor Hildenberger threw about the best inning a reliever can, with all eight of his pitches going for strikes. He then handed it over to Matt Magill, who has been really, really good since coming up from Triple-A Rochester. Magill blew away the Cardinals for two innings, and is looking like a shrewd pickup this offseason. Through seven innings with the Twins, Magill is averaging 95.4 mph on his fastball according to Fangraphs.
The bullpen was especially dominant on Tuesday
Odorizzi gave up two hits — a home run to Jose Martinez and Francisco Pena single in the third. That was it for the Cardinals hits-wise, as Odorizzi completed the rest of his start and handed it off to the trio of Ryan Pressly, Taylor Rogers and Phil Hughes, who combined for four perfect innings with four strikeouts.
Overall for the series, the Twins bullpen tossed seven shutout innings with seven strikeouts, zero walks and just one hit allowed.
Now add in an off day and no usage of Fernando Rodney or Addison Reed in those games, and the Twins bullpen heads into Anaheim in prime shape.
Logan Morrison batting leadoff was weird, but completely defensible
He came out of the game hitting just .183/.274/.337, but in all honesty, I still think he was a perfectly fine choice to hit leadoff. The leadoff man’s primary job is to get on base, and that’s something Morrison has done quite well of late.
Over his last 15 games, Morrison is hitting .268/.349/.482 — the Brian Dozier special, really — with six extra-base hits an in general just the type of production one would be OK with the big first baseman achieving. With Joe Mauer — the Zone Coverage-endorsed leadoff hitter of choice (ha) — taking a day, Morrison was a perfectly reasonable choice to lead off.
This Max Kepler breakout feels real
We’ve said it in this space before and we will again — Kepler’s success will be carried by how well he fares against lefties. In the low minors, he was helpless against southpaws. When he won the MVP in Double-A, he crushed them.
Through two full seasons with the Twins, he was again not good against them. This year, he’s already done quite a nice job:
It’s still an enormously small sample size — he’s 9-for-27 (.333/.400/.593) against lefties this year — but it’s a huge, huge step forward. He’s a bonafide star if comes even close to this over the full season.
Eddie Rosario and Eduardo Escobar are in a race to see who can have the hotter stretch
The two Eds have jockeyed back and forth for the team lead in homers, and the Twins have benefitted in the meantime. They’re tied at seven apiece, but the competition is comical with Escobar’s affinity for the carinvorous restaurant Fogo de Chao and Rosario simply being red-hot over the last week or so.
For the record, here’s how sizzling these guys have been lately:
- Rosario (last 12 games): .396/.407/.811, 12 of 21 hits for extra bases
- Escobar (last 15 games): .367/.433/.757, 14 of 22 hits for extra bases
Robbie Grossman’s season numbers are still not good, but he’s picking up steam…
He’s hitting just .213/.282/.347 on the season, but over his last 11 games, he’s hitting .316/.378/.526 with six of his 12 hits going for extra bases (five doubles and a homer). That coincides with a spike in playing time, which can be a big deal for players trying to get their swings back after a rough start.
…at the worst possible time for him
….but with that said, Grossman is about to lose playing time as it appears Byron Buxton’s return from the disabled list is imminent. That’ll shift Kepler back to right, with Morrison taking the lion’s share of the time at DH. If Morrison’s bat had stayed dormant as Grossman’s heated up, a case could be made for him to steal some playing time there. But Grossman’s resurgence has coincided with Morrison’s pretty much step by step, so it appears Robbie will have to be content as the outfielder off the bench.
It also probably means that Ryan LaMarre will head back to Rochester, though the Twins haven’t announced a move yet. It’ll either be LaMarre or a pitcher.
Notes
- After Wednesday’s day off, the Twins will take on the Angels for four games. The Angels haven’t announced their starters for the series yet, but the Twins will stay on schedule with Jose Berrios, Lance Lynn, Kyle Gibson and Fernando Romero in that order before coming home for a one-off game against the Seattle Mariners on Monday. There’s potential of a Romero-Shohei Ohtani matchup on Sunday, so stay tuned. Game times for this weekend are 9:07 p.m. on Thursday and Friday, 8:07 on Saturday and 3:07 on Sunday.
- The Twins open a nine-game homestand over 10 days with that Mariners game, as the Cardinals, Brewers and Tigers will come to Target Field over that stretch. It will be Ron Gardenhire’s first visit to Target Field as manager of the Detroit Tigers.
- Nothing is official yet, but don’t be surprised if Zone Coverage has on-site coverage for the Kansas City series at the end of this month.
- Royce Lewis has been red-hot in Low-A Cedar Rapids to start the season, hitting an absurd .373/.416/.434 through 20 games. He may not be long for the Midwest League, as a move to Fort Myers might not be too far off. Fellow first-round pick — from the year before — Alex Kirilloff is having a good start to the year with the Kernels as well. He’s hitting .291/.327/.524 with a league-high 12 doubles. According to Baseball Reference, Kirilloff is 1.3 years younger than the average MWL player, while Lewis is a full year younger than that.
- Only 12 teams are striking out less frequently than the Twins (22.2 percent) this season. Only 10 teams are walking more often (9.4 percent).
- No team has been better at running the bases this year than the Minnesota Twins, according to metrics from Fangraphs. They’ve been worth five runs as a team on the bases.
Listen to Brandon on Midwest Swing
