Series Preview: Brewers at Twins

The Twins play the Milwaukee Brewers at Target Field tonight. Here is Joe's pre-series report.

The Brewers are coming here this weekend to fulfill the Minneapolis portion of our annual home-home rivalry series.  The two teams are doing very similarly right now-3-2 in the last 5 games, and within a half-game of their division lead.  Of course, in the NL Central, it’s hard to get there-The Brew Crew are (8) games above .500 right now; in the AL Central, the leading Indians don’t even have a winning record.  Milwaukee is a less daunting opponent than the LA Angels that we split a series against, and a game and a half ahead of the Cardinals that we just beat in the season series, 3-1.  FiveThirtyEight’s baseball predictions currently favor the Twins narrowly in each game, so it seems appropriate to predict a 2-1 series victory.

Players to Watch
    On the Brewers side, the hottest hitters are Travis Shaw and Manny Piña.  The Milwaukee third baseman and catcher each have 8 hits in the last week, including 4 doubles and 3 dingers.
Minnesota’s bats haven’t been as hot as Milwaukee’s, but one has been even hotter-Brian Dozier’s.  The BullDozier has hit over .400 in the last week, with two homers. Eddie Rosario has cooled down a bit, but still matched Dozier’s pair of homers.  His other hits are limited to a trio of singles.
There are another two Twins that merit mention despite not doing as well.  The first is Bobby Wilson. He’s only played a little bit, as the third-string catcher.  However, the first-string Jason Castro is out for the season with a severely torn meniscus, so it’ll be worth seeing how he does, since he’s likely to play a lot now.  So far, he’s 2 for 15, with 6 strikeouts. The hits are a double and a home run. The second player is Logan Morrison, our offseason acquisition from the Rays. He had an awful start to the season, but is doing more average now-he’s almost at the Mendoza Line.  More recently, he’s in the upper .200s. The reason he’s a must-watch is that Minnesota’s success has largely hinged on his performance. He’s had some clutch hits, but he also made an error against the Mariners that allowed the game’s only run.
The middle game features our new superstar Fernando Romero, who is still pretty good, despite no longer having an ERA of 0.00.  The scouts of Major League Baseball are most likely going to figure out (eventually) how to get past Romero’s superstardom, so watching him this week could be a good gauge of how long that’s going to take.  Hopefully, it’s later rather than sooner.

Game Previews and Starting Matchups

Game 1: Kyle Gibson vs. Brent Suter.  7:10 PM.
The Twins haven’t faced Brent Suter a lot, but they’ve had mild success.  Jason Castro has a single and a walk in 2 plate appearances. Lance Lynn has a walk in 1.  Nothing else to report.
Kyle Gibson has faced a few more of the Brewers.  Most notably, he’s held Lorenzo Cain (who played for our division rival Kansas City) to an outstanding 6-for-32, (.188)  albeit with 3 walks. All six of those hits are singles, too! In fact, no current player on Milwaukee has any extra base hits against Gibby.  The only real threat is Nick Franklin, who’s 4-for-11, but he’s currently on the Disabled List because of “quadriceps strain.” If he can keep the walks down (no guarantees there), Gibson should be able to shut the Brewers down.

Game 2: Fernando Romero vs. Freddy Peralta, 6:10 PM.
    This is Fernando Romero’s second straight start against an MLB rookie.  The tables have turned, though; Romero is now the one with some Earned Runs.  Freddy Peralta has one game so far, a 5.2 inning shutout performance against the Rockies.  He only allowed one hit and two walks. Romero’s went 5 innings, allowing 1 run on 4 hits, in the Twins’ eventual 2-1 loss to the Angels.  He’s 2-0 on the season, as Zach Duke took the loss in that game. Hopefully, the Twins can establish Peralta’s performance as luck, and Romero’s as skill.

Game 3: Jake Odorizzi vs. Junior Guerra, 1:10 PM.
    Junior Guerra did in fact pitch just down I-94 for the White Sox in 2015, and 25% of his innings that year were against Twins.  That’s just 1 out of 4 innings, though, a short relief appearance.. Here’s a quick rundown of that inning: Buxton singled. Dozier homered.  2 Earned Runs. Shane Robinson grounded out. Chris Hermann struck out. Trevor Plouffe grounded out.
    If you paid attention to that, you’ll notice two things: The three outs came from players who are no longer on the Twins, and the two hits and runs came off the bats of those who still are on the Twins.  That means that the current Twins team has a 1.000 batting average and a 2.500 slugging percentage against Junior Guerra. As I type this, I hear everyone saying “Yeah, but that’s a small sample size.” To that, I say, so what?  It can’t hurt to be optimistic. I’m sure Brian Dozier and Byron Buxton aren’t thinking about sabermetrics, they’re thinking about that bomb that Dozier hit off of him 3 years ago.
    On the other side of the matchup, Milwaukee is right at the Mendoza Line against Jake Odorizzi.  Lorenzo Cain is 3-for-16 against him, with 3 walks and a double. Travis Shaw is 4-for-14 with 2 doubles.  The only other Brewer to face him a lot is Christian Yelich, who is 0-for-8 with 5 strikeouts.

Shoutout to Baseball-Reference.com for all these wonderful stats and recaps!

And, as always, Win Twins!

Go Twins!