Minneapolis – It looked like the Minnesota Twins were snapping out of their June swoon on Tuesday night when they were tied with the Seattle Mariners, 5-5, going into the top of the ninth. Jhoan Duran came onto the mound and got the first batter he faced down on a lineout to Brooks Lee at third.
However, things got dicey rather quickly afterward. Old friend Jorge Polanco came off the bench to pinch-hit for Mariners third baseman Ben Williamson. On a 0-2 count, Duran threw a curveball that brushed Polanco on the foot to put a runner on first with one out.
Two batters later, J.P. Crawford is at the plate with runners on first and second and wears one of Duran’s offerings, setting up a bases-loaded situation for Julio Rodriguez.
“It’s not easy because I don’t want to do a hit by pitch,” Duran said postgame. “I know I can control that. I practice every day to not do it. When that happens, I’m focused to get a ground ball and a double play.
“That’s what I think when I do a hit by pitch or base on balls.”
Duran limited the damage to a Rodriguez sac fly. Still, the Mariners took the last lead of the night, going up 6-5. Duran intentionally walked the hottest hitter on the planet, Cal Raleigh, rather than face him. However, he struck out the last two batters.
Going into Tuesday’s game, he had only hit one batter with a pitch in 37 appearances. It was the first time he had hit two batters in one game in his entire career, which warranted some concern. Still, Duran reassured everyone he’s right where he wants to be.
“I feel great,” he said. “The run they do to me, they do a soft ground ball. It’s tough like that. Base on balls, that’s something I need to work on. We can’t do something with a base hit because you don’t control that. Right now, I can control the base on balls. I’ll try to work more on that.”
The 6-5 loss brought Minnesota’s June run differential to 154 runs allowed, and just 97 runs scored against (minus-57). They went from having the fifth-best starting rotation ERA (3.42) in the first two months of the season to 17th in the league at 4.14.
To try and battle this rut, Twins pitching coach Pete Maki called a meeting with his pitchers ahead of Tuesday’s game. Going from one of the top rotations and bullpens in the league to now falling into the bottom half of the league was enough to warrant a discussion about what’s been going wrong for Minnesota’s pitchers.
“We’ve been looking a lot at what we can do better and where do we fall?” Maki said before Tuesday’s game. “We were leading the league in strikeout-to-walk ratio on June 1, and that is no longer the case. The past month, we’re kind of the opposite of No. 1. So, what’s leading to that?”
A few factors contributing to this are:
- An increase in opponent BABIP: .328 in June, the third-highest in baseball
- Walks allowed: 74, fourth-highest
- And hits allowed on two-strike counts, the latter of which was especially relevant during the Milwaukee Brewers series
Chris Paddack pitched on Tuesday night and brought up Maki’s pitcher’s meeting after his start. Although he allowed five runs in a bad third inning, Maki’s speech motivated him to turn things around.
“A lot of respect for Pete for calling that meeting,” said Paddack. “It kind of got us fired up for the game, got me fired up. I wanted to run through a wall after hearing him talk, so maybe he needs to host a meeting [for] every one of my outings.”
In their last turn through the rotation, all of Minnesota’s starters, except for Joe Ryan, allowed four or more earned runs in their outings. Since Pablo López was last on the mound on June 3, Twins starters have led the league in earned runs allowed at 71 and have brought their ERA to a league-worst 6.61 in 96 ⅔ innings.
While things have gotten away from Twins starters over the last 20 days, Maki is not overhauling their approaches. What worked for them in April and May isn’t working the same in June. Still, they are working to find a way back to where things were.
“Our message to our guys is like, we’re going to stick to our core values and core principles,” said Maki. “There are a few things we can sharpen up within our core principles, and we’ll talk about those. We have been talking about those. We meet with our guys and go over their outings, and you really have to view everything as its own separate event.”
For example, Paddack’s fastball velocity dipped to the lowest it’s been all season during his start in Cincinnati, averaging only 91.4 MPH. However, it rebounded to 94.1 MPH on Tuesday night against the Mariners, which was the result of the work he put in between his starts.
“We looked at some of the biomechanics, moving my center of mass down the mound a little quicker, staying in my back leg, trying to be explosive,” he said. “And it showed tonight. Velocity was back up.”
As Maki put it, Minnesota’s pitchers will not make adjustments solely based on their latest outing. For example, Maki highlighted Bailey Ober’s pitch to Rodriguez on Monday night, which turned into a three-run home run to put the Mariners up 3-0.
Ober located his changeup where he wanted it, down and away. However, Rodriguez (who “drives a nice car, too,” per Maki) made perfect contact and gave the Mariners the lead for the game.
It was the choice Ober wanted and a good one, but he didn’t get the results he wanted.
“You can make good choices with anything you do, right?” Maki said. “And it may not work out for you. But does that mean you should change the process to get there? That’s called resulting.”
The Twins are trying to avoid overreacting to the results as they work their way out of a bad stretch. It’s part of what Maki preached to his staff on Tuesday. Although Paddack and Duran had lousy results, they will break through soon.
“Keep the faith, Minnesota. We’re not going anywhere,” Paddack said. “We’re busting our butts every day. This little funk that we’re in, this little storm that’s happening, it’s going to go away, and things are going to happen good for the Twins here soon.”
