The Minnesota Twins had their current best pitcher on the mound today and by the current best pitcher, I mean by stats, and that’s RHP Randy Dobnak as he is 3-1 with a 0.90 ERA before he throws a pitch today.
The Royals have rookie RHP Brady Singer on the mound. He’s 1-1 with a 4.50 ERA and the 1 win was against the Twins for his 1st MLB Win. Does that mean anything to this Twins team? I don’t think his 1st Win is the problem. It’s any win against this team and they will look to respond in the next game overall and for sure in the next game against any pitcher who beat them at any point in the season. Going back to that game, on August 9th in Kansas City, Brady pitched 5 innings and allowed 5 hits, 2 runs/earned runs, 2 walks and he struck out 4. Only 1 of those hits was for extra-bases, an RBI-double from Max Kepler in the 3rd inning.
The lineup is the regular Twins lineup with Eddie Rosario back in left field but Alex Avila at catcher since Mitch Garver played in last night’s late game.
Twins Lineup:
RF Max Kepler
SS Jorge Polanco
DH Nelson Cruz
LF Eddie Rosario
3B Marwin Gonzalez
2B Luis Arraez
1B Miguel Sano
CF Byron Buxton
C Alex Avila
Royals lineup:
CF Whit Merrifield
2B Nicky Lopez
RF Hunter Dozier
DH Jorge Soler
1B Ryan O’Hearn
3B Maikel Franco
LF Alex Gordon
SS Alberto Mondesi
C Meibrys Viloria
Defense played a big part in this game and it started on the very first pitch, too. Royals CF Whit Merrifield hit a hard grounder down the 3rd baseline but Twins Man of Many Gloves, Marwin Gonzalez made a great play diving to his right to snag it, get up quickly and throw him out for the 1st out. Nicky Lopez struck out looking for the 2nd out. Hunter Dozier then took the 1st pitch he saw over the limestone overhang in right field for his 1st HR of the season. It was pointed out by Roy Smalley, today’s analyst on the Fox Sports North broadcast, that Hunter Dozier is big on hitting the first pitch. Quickly looking it up on Baseball-Reference shows what he did in 2019 when he swung at the 1st pitch:
Kansas City Royals OF Hunter Dozier’s 2019 Stats in each count.
So…in the 2019 season, Hunter Dozier hit .494/.494/.920 (Average/On-Base%/Slugging%) going 43-for-87 with 5 doubles, 1 triple, 10 HRs and 31 RBIs when swinging at the 1st pitch.* That’s pretty impressive and shows teams should probably know that going into every game against the Kansas City Royals and with the success he had doing it last season. He might be looking to do it even more in 2020.
*Most Twins fans probably know this is basically the opposite of what Joe Mauer did. He rarely swung at the first pitch in his career but he still did it and did pretty good when he did.
Jorge Soler struck out swinging to end the top of the 1st. 1-0 Royals
The Twins went down 1-2-3 in the first on a Max Kepler flyout to center, a Jorge Polanco groundout to the pitcher and a Nelson Cruz lineout to first.
In the top of the 2nd, Dobnak once again got the first 2 batters out, an O’Hearn flyout to left & a Maikel Franco groundout to short, but he fell behind 3-0 to LF Alex Gordon and threw a fastball right down the middle and it was in a spot Gordon liked and he hit it in almost the same spot Hunter Dozier hit his home run, over the limestone in right field. Alberto Mondesi then grounded out to 2nd to end the top of the 2nd. 2-0 Royals
The Twins got a couple of 2-out baserunners in the bottom of the 2nd on a Luis Arraez line-drive single to center and a Miguel Sano walk but Byron Buxton grounded out to short to end the threat.
Twins backup catcher Alex Avila was huge in today’s game because of his game-calling, his defense and his plate discipline. He led off the bottom of the 3rd with a 7-pitch at-bat that began with him going down 2-0 on 2 called strikes. He then fouled off the 3rd pitch and watched the next 4 pitches and walked to first. He advanced to 2nd on a Wild Pitch then advanced to 3rd on a balk and scored on a Jorge Polanco groundout to 1st. No hits, 1 run. Cruz singled after the run scored but Rosario grounded out to 1st to end the 3rd inning. 2-1 Royals
Alex Avila came up again in the bottom of the 5th and this time he walked on 4 pitches and I had a good feeling about what Max Kepler was going to do next.
Max Kepler, who hit an RBI-double a week ago against Brady Singer, did twice the damage this time as he hit his 6th HR of the season.
It went from 2-1 Royals to 3-2 Twins On One Swing! Maximum Impact!
The next 3 Twins batters went flyout, groundout and groundout to end the 5th inning. 3-2 Twins
Randy Dobnak made an adjustment and/or got his command back after the 2nd inning and he set down the next 11 batters including the final batter in the top of the 2nd but he allowed a 1-out single to Whit Merrifield and then walked Nicky Lopez so Minnesota Twins manager Rocco Baldelli brought in RHP Tyler Clippard to finish the 6th inning.
Clippard’s first job was getting Hunter Dozier and it looked like he wasn’t going to do that as Dozier lined a change-up to left field but Eddie Rosario raced in and made a great sliding catch and, since it was a 3-2 count, the runners were sent on the pitch, so Rosario quickly got up and threw to Luis Arraez at 2nd to get the double play. Luis caught the ball and slammed his glove down on the bag instead of just stepping on it. Defense is playing a big part in this game.
Before that play and in the same at-bat against Hunter Dozier, Twins C Alex Avila made a block on a Tyler Clippard slider that kept the runners at 1st & 2nd. If he doesn’t make that block, that double play doesn’t happen and the Royals might tie the game on the flyball to left field.
In the bottom of the 6th, both Marwin Gonzalez & Luis Arraez grounded out but Miguel Sano drew a 7-pitch walk taking a close pitch for ball four. Royals manager Mike Matheny went to his bullpen and brought in RHP Greg Holland but Buxton flew out to deep left to end the 6th inning.
RHP Trevor May took over for the top of the 7th, allowed a leadoff single but then got a swinging strikeout and a ground ball for a 6-4-3 double play & it was a thing of beauty. SS Jorge Polanco had to run to his left to catch the ground ball then on the run toss it to 2B Luis Arraez at 2nd but the throw was a little off & to Arraez’s left so he caught it with his bare hand then turned and threw a bullet to 1st to get Franco at 1st. If Luis doesn’t do that, he doesn’t turn it but he also risks not even getting one out on the play.
👀 #MNTwins pic.twitter.com/7nenWKe08b
— Tom Froemming (@TFTwins) August 16, 2020
Alex Avila once again led off an inning but this time he doubled past a diving Hunter Dozier and then advanced to 3rd on a Max Kepler groundball into the shift and the 2nd baseman was in short right field so Kepler beat out the throw but he was mainly trying to advance Avila to 3rd. The newest Twins, INF Ildemaro Vargas then pinch-ran for Avila at 3rd base. That brought SS Jorge Polanco to the plate and, with a 1-1 count, the Twins called for a safety squeeze and Vargas scores and gets dirty minutes after entering the game! 4-2 Twins!
Twins LHP Taylor Rogers was then brought in to pitch the 8th. He got Alex Gordon to ground out to 3rd on 1 pitch then got Alberto Mondesi to strike out swinging. He allowed a single to pinch-hitter Ryan McBroom but got Whit Merrifield to pop out to short to end the top of the 8th.
The Twins went down 1-2-3 in the bottom of the 8th on a flyout, a strikeout looking and a popout and with Taylor Rogers already in the game, I was wondering if they were going to try to have Rogers go 2 innings but Rocco brought in RHP Sergio Romo to close it out & he struck out the side getting Nicky Lopez & Hunter Dozier to strike out swinging and then ending the game by painting the low outside corner to get Jorge Soler looking to end the game and earn his 3rd Save of the season.
That’s a nice team win for the Twins. Defense, pitching & offense when they needed it to come back from being down 2-0 early.
They’ll go for the series win tomorrow night at 7:10pm on Fox Sports North:
Twins will go with an opener it appears as RHP Matt Wisler (0-1, 1.80 ERA) is scheduled to start against…
Royals LHP Kris Bubic (0-2, 5.40 ERA)
Bubic is a 22-year-old rookie who was a 2018 1st Round (Competitive Balance A) pick (40th Overall) from Stanford who hasn’t pitched above High-A ball in the minors but was very good there. He had a 2.30 ERA, 1.01 WHIP & 110 strikeouts in 101.2 innings in 17 starts in the Carolina League for the Wilmington Blue Rocks. This will be his 4th career Major-League start.
Interesting note for the Twins…
5 of the last 7 Twins games have ended with a 4-2 score and the last 4 games against the Royals have all ended with a 4-2 score. The Twins are 3-2 in those games and 2-2 in the last 4 against Kansas City.
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