WARNE: Twins Win, Snap 13-Game Skid

WARNE: Twins Win, Snap 13-Game Skid

Sep 2, 2016 | Cold Omaha

Written By Brandon Warne (ColdOmaha.com)
Photo Credit: Brian Curski

Ervin Santana’s accuracy was scattershot, and as a result his pitch economy was not very good, but he did just enough to be the stopper the Minnesota Twins so desperately needed in an 8-5 win at Target Field on Thursday evening.

Santana lasted just five innings, as so-so command (102 pitches, 61 strikes) combined with 11 hits and a pair of walks led to an early shower despite him allowing just two earned runs with six strikeouts. The Twins jumped all over Santana’s mound counterpart Jose Quintana, a contender for the AL Cy Young award as they pummeled him for seven earned runs in just five innings. It started early, as a bleary-eyed Byron Buxton got to him for a three-run home run in the second, while Trevor Plouffe essentially chased him in the fifth to give the Twins a comfortable cushion as manager Paul Molitor handed the game over to his bullpen.

The bullpen — Taylor Rogers, Ryan Pressly and Brandon Kintzler — was shaky, but effective enough as they combined for four innings or relief with three earned runs, five strikeouts and two walks, capped by Kintzler’s 13th save of the year.

Here’s what we saw from our seats:

A paucity of first-pitch strikes

Santana was the only Twins pitcher to throw first-pitch strikes to more than half the batters he faced, and he was still just 15-of-27. That’s a 55.6 percent rate, still below the AL average of 60.6 percent among fellow starting pitchers. It was mostly death by singles for Santana, as just three of the 11 hits he allowed went for extra bases. Despite all the contact made against him, Santana appeared to have good stuff. He induced eight swinging strikes on 39 sliders, and finished with 14 swinging strikes total on 102 pitches — a 13.7 percent rate well above his season rate of 9.6 percent.

Buxton announced his arrival with authority

Molitor dropped a hint in his pregame availability that Buxton had experienced some difficulty getting to the park, but not to the degree that was described following the game.

As a result, Buxton barely got into the clubhouse in time for BP — he met with the media at 4:00 p.m. after unpacking a couple boxes — but ultimately didn’t appear to feel any ill effects in his first plate appearance. Quintana worked ahead of Buxton 0-2 in the count, before Byron took a ball, fouled a curve and then absolutely hammered a follow-up curve to the second deck in left field.

That home run meant that Buxton has now homered twice this year — both times on breaking balls — in the big leagues.

There are also a couple interesting context notes on Buxton. That was the 62nd plate appearances this season in the big leagues in which Buxton had fallen behind 0-2. For the entire year, Buxton had just six hits in those situations — a batting line of .102/.131/.186. Incidentally, his other home run came in a count where he’d fallen behind 0-2 as well.

Buxton also had taken 39 plate appearances this year which resulted in some form of a 1-2 count. On 1-2 pitches this year, Buxton had a .051/.051/.128 line — and incidentally, the home run against Weaver came on a 1-2 pitch. All of this may or may not represent progress; it’s still just three plate appearances in which he went 1-for-3 while seeing 11 pitches. But he didn’t strike out, and didn’t make any egregious mistakes on a day in which was was obviously dog-tired.

Rogers got bit by Jose Abreu, but had been better against righties of late

A big knock on Rogers coming into the season was that he maybe profiled more as a LOOGY — lefty, one-out guy — based on the fact that even when he was fantastic in the minors last year, right-handed hitters still crushed him to the tune of a .326/.374/.457 line. Those things don’t tend to get better as a pitcher moves up the latter — barring significant changes — and for this year, he’s still allowing righties to hit .296/.349/.436 coming into Thursday’s action.

But it seems as though Molitor has trusted Rogers more of late to get multiple outs — including righties — and with the new splits finder at Fangraphs, I was able to suss out that it’s been for good reason:

And while the Abreu home run still happened — frankly, about a minute after that tweet was sent — there’s no real shame in giving up a home run to a mauler like that. This year hasn’t been pretty for Abreu against southpaws, but for his career he’s hit them to the tune of a .277/.350/.478 line. He’s also homered against Dallas Keuchel this year. Keuchel is having a down year, but he’s still one of the better lefties in the game.

Kurt Suzuki came up with another hit on a high-velocity pitch

I suppose I started really keeping an eye on this when he homered against Aroldis Chapman at Target Field back in June, but it sure seemed to me that Suzuki has more than held his own against high-end velocity this season. Those wheels started spinning again when Suzuki turned around a 96.2 mph fastball from White Sox reliever Tommy Kahnle into an RBI double to right-center.

With a data assist to Daren Willman of MLB.com/Baseball Savant/Statcast, I found that Suzuki really has put together a nice season against higher-end velocity. Coming into Thursday’s game:

Suzuki finished 2-for-4 on the night, driving in two runs while running his season line up to .278/.320/.421. Barring something completely unforeseen, he’ll finish the season in a Twins uniform. If he were to be traded now, he wouldn’t be eligible to play in the postseason. His playing time will be something to monitor, especially since it’s almost certain that John Ryan Murphy will be recalled when Rochester’s season is over. Murphy, who has split time with Mitch Garver behind the plate down there, DH’d in Thursday’s game as he’s been hitting better of late.

Quintana had a weird night

This marked the fifth time this year he’d given up multiple home runs in a game, and the seven earned runs set a new season-high for Quintana. But he also settled down after the Buxton home run, and finished with seven strikeouts and no walks for a strange 7-7-7-0-8 line in the box score.

In the end, the Twins’ mastery of him felt a little bit like how Chris Sale fared against them last year. Sale, who finished fourth in the AL Cy Young balloting last year, couldn’t get past the Twins at all last year, as they posted an .828 OPS against him and saddled him with an ERA of 7.36 in six starts. For what it’s worth, the Twins will miss Sale this time around, as he’s slated to face Justin Verlander for the second straight start on Labor Day.

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Notes

  • The win snapped a 13-game losing streak which threatened to tie the club record, dating back to the 1982 season.
  • Santana won for the first time since Aug. 16 in Atlanta. Including that game, the Twins were 2-13 to close out the second half of the month.
  • This marked the 50th win of the season for the Twins. Last year, the Twins won game No. 50 on July 17. That’s 47 days later in the year.
  • Eddie Rosario extended his hitting streak to a modest seven games.  
  • Plouffe is hitting .284 in 23 games since returning from the disabled list. His batting line is now up .261/.298/.411 for the season.  
  • The Rochester Red Wings won 1-0 over the Lehigh Valley IronPigs to start the five-game, season-ending series. The Red Wings need to sweep the series to make the playoffs, and this particular game featured ample drama in the ninth, as Edward Mujica — who is likely Twins-bound after the season ends — was called on to preserve the lead with the bases loaded and two outs. Mujica struck out Darnell Sweeney on three pitches, moving the Wings to within 2.5 games of a playoff spot with four to play.