Twins Vitals

Royals vs. Twins

Offense

Pitching

Twins Projected Lineup

Projected Pitching Matchups

Friday – 7:10 pm

Gonsalves came into the season as one of the top 100 prospects in baseball according to both Baseball America and MLB Pipeline and had a really nice minor league season, posting a 2.76 ERA in 23 games and 120.2 innings with just 76 hits allowed. The big leagues have been a bit less kind to him as he’s allowed 19 hits and 10 walks in 10 innings while striking out just five. He’s a big guy, standing at 6’5”, but isn’t really a power arm with his changeup leading the way for him. His fastball is low-90s and his breaking stuff has a chance to be good someday. The control issues are curious and might just be a bit of nerves combined with maybe some fatigue as he’s now thrown 21 more innings than last season, though it’s not a career high for him, so who knows really? As a big leaguer, the sample is miniscule, but he hasn’t been able to get out lefties or righties with a .333/.429/.750 line allowed to lefties and .429/.545/.600 to righties. He had a reverse split in the minors this season, which is often a result of the changeup being the best pitch since they don’t throw it left on left as much.

Fillmyer just keeps sucking me back in. After he imploded against the White Sox a couple weeks ago and lost a six-run lead, I figured that was it. Then he went out and threw 13 innings in his last two starts with three runs allowed and a 3:1 strikeout to walk ratio. Yes, one of those starts was against the Orioles, and yes there are still underlying issues with Fillmyer, but I’ll repeat what I’ve said a million times this year. Why not see what he is? He started against the Twins in Minnesota at the beginning of August and lasted just three innings during that weird rain delay game and was hit fairly hard and only had four swinging strikes in 70 pitches. He’ll need to be better in this one for the Royals to get a win, even if the offense supports him.

Saturday – 6:10 pm

I mentioned Berrios has been disappointing, which seems odd to say for a guy who is having a solid enough season, but after last year’s step forward, it really just seemed like another one was coming and it hasn’t. He has increased his strikeout rate and decreased his walk rate, so that part is good, but he’s also been more homer prone this season, which has given back some of the gains from the better strikeout and walk numbers. Really he’s just giving up a little more hard contact in general, and for a pitcher with the stuff he has, you wouldn’t expect that. Still, his curve is outstanding and has been even better this year than last, and when his fastball is on, he can be nearly unhittable with those two pitches. And, like Gonslaves, his changeup is a plus pitch as well, so really you’re talking about a guy who should be an ace, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the breakout was just delayed a year and he’s incredible next season. He has a 4.99 ERA in seven career starts against the Royals, but a lot of that was damage done during his terrible rookie season and last year. This year, he’s 2-0 with a 1.93 ERA in two starts with 14 strikeouts in 14 innings.

Again, the Orioles caveat applies here, but Lopez had the best start of his career his last time out, going seven innings and allowing just a run on five hits with eight strikeouts and no walks. He had 14 swinging strikes in 99 pitches, which is truly amazing, and very encouraging no matter who he was facing. I think his curve was talked up quite a bit, but his slider was insane last week with six whiffs out of 17 pitches and outs were recorded on all four put in play. If he can bring that slider and that curve to this game, he’ll be just fine against the Twins. Personally, I still have my doubts that he’s a starter in the long run, but please refer to Fillmyer, Heath regarding why not. In his career as a starter, he’s held opponents to a .220/.278/.320 line the first time through before that balloons to .413/.500/.543 the second time. The sample is tiny, but it’s a trend that isn’t promising. But again, let’s see if he can do it again against a team not as bad as the Orioles, but certainly not good.

Sunday – 1:10 pm

After back-to-back matching 5.07 ERAs for Gibson, he’s finally doing what he did in 2015 for the Twins, just in time for his final year of arbitration before free agency. The biggest difference is that he’s just getting more strikeouts and more swings and misses in general. How has he gotten there? His slider has always been a great swing and miss pitch, but it’s been even better this year, so that’s one. Another is that his curve has been outstanding for whiffs with a 47.3 percent whiff rate, compared to 36 percent last year. And with that, I think his changeup has played up too and he’s allowed a .114 average on it, compared to .271 last season. He still throws his sinker quite a bit to get those worm burners, but the swings and misses have made him a truly different pitcher. And the Royals have seen quite a bit of him over the years. This will be his 18^th start against Kansas City, and it seems like he’s almost always annoyingly good with a 3.40 ERA in 106 innings. This year has been more of the same. In 12.1 innings, he’s struck out 13 Royals, walked three and posted a 2.92 ERA. Alex Gordon has done well against him, and Hunter Dozier has two doubles in seven at bats against him, which isn’t a sample worth noting other than the fact that Dozier has been a doubles machine lately, so maybe he can carry that over.

Junis is on one now and looking like the guy we were so excited about in spring training and earlier this year. With seven two-hit, shutout innings against the Indians (with no walks, I might add), he’s padded his post-DL stats some more now having gone 52.1 innings in nine starts with 49 hits allowed, 53 strikeouts and a 2.75 ERA. The six unearned runs still loom, but even adding those in, he’s still at just a 3.78 RA, which is perfectly acceptable. I’ll say again what I’ve said a few times since his DL stint as well. With just three home runs allowed, it maybe does lend some credence to the idea that his back was a bigger problem than we originally thought. He’s faced the Twins twice this year and once since coming off the disabled list (his first start off). He’s gone 10 innings, allowed four runs on 10 hits with 13 strikeouts and five walks. He was solid against them last year too, so maybe this is just a good matchup for him.

The Twins are looking to next season and maybe they’re just figuring out a way to get through the season with some of the Rays “opener” strategy or maybe they’re looking to next season, but either way, it’s at least interesting. Hopefully, Salvador Perez can come back for this series given his crazy numbers at Target Field. If he does, I say they win two of three. If not, I say they win two of three.

Twins Vitals

Twins vs. Royals

Pitching

Offense

Twins Projected Lineup

The Matchups

Friday

Santiago has had a better season than the numbers would indicate. Prior to his last start, he had posted a 2.76 ERA through his first seven and was averaging about six innings per start. Regression comes at you fast, though, and he allowed six runs in 2.2 innings against the Indians his last time out to see all his numbers balloon. With those six runs came three home runs, which doubled his season total. Now the question is if he can get back on track and shut down the Royals like he did in the season’s opening week or if he’ll continue to regress more to the pitcher he was when he came to the Twins initially last season.

He’s mostly a two-pitch pitcher throwing his four seam fastball about 60 percent of the time and his changeup about a quarter of the time. The changeup is often a very, very good pitch, but it does flatten out from time to time and, when that happens, it’s quite hittable. He also mixes in a curve, slider and a cutter. This season, the power has come on the fastball. He’s allowed five home runs on that pitch, but the cutter and slider have been hit the hardest in the limited sample we have of them being put in play. The Royals have largely struggled against lefties, but Santiago has allowed a .429/.571/.905 line to them this season, so something’s gotta give here. He’s also found a way to actually be better in the third time through the order this season, which you don’t see all that often.

Karns has been very, very good his last few times out, but he’s returning to the scene of where his ERA got out of whack in the first series of the season when he gave up four runs in 2/3 of an inning in relief against the Twins. As a starter, he has a 3.63 ERA and has found the strikeout pitch of late, fanning 26 in his last 12.1 innings. He’s recorded 18 swinging strikes in each of his last two starts and has been in double digits in that category in his last five starts and in six of seven total. He’s not likely to get too deep into games, but if he can keep doing what he’s doing, five or six innings of that will be just fine.

Saturday

The Twins acquired Mejia from the Giants in exchange for Eduardo Nunez, a player who I thought the Royals would try very hard to acquire this offseason. That doesn’t have anything to do with Mejia, but I’m still surprised they didn’t. It’s also interesting in a way that he made his big league debut and only appearance of the season last year against the Royals. He’ll turn 24 in a month and is actually a pretty decent prospect, though there’s still plenty of work to be done for him.

Mejia throws two fastballs, a changeup and a slider, but he lives on the fastballs that average about 93 MPH with some movement. If you’re looking for a pitch that’s been most effective in his four big league games, you likely won’t find one as they’ve all been rocked pretty hard. Of the 16 hits he’s allowed in 11.2 big league innings, nine of them have gone for extra bases. That seems bad. There’s not much of a big league sample, but Mejia has yet to pitch more than five innings and hasn’t even been able to complete three innings in two of his starts. Of course, he’s a young lefty, so the Royals might have some serious trouble.

Kennedy will make his return in this one, and the Royals and Royals fans couldn’t be more excited. He’s missed his last two starts with a hamstring issue and is still coming off his worst start of the season against the White Sox when he allowed five runs in 4.1 innings before having to exit. All in all, Kennedy has pretty much been Kennedy this season, only with slightly fewer strikeouts than you’d expect. The Twins power concerns me against Kennedy, but he didn’t allow a home run in a loss to them in early April, so maybe now that the offense is going a little better, he can continue that.

Sunday

Hughes is a cautionary tale for why you don’t give players new deals when you don’t have to. He signed a three year, $24 million deal prior to the 2014 season and was really good. He posted the best strikeout to walk ratio in big league history. So the Twins tore up his deal and gave him a five year deal for $58 million instead. Since then, he’s gone 16-18 with a 4.90 ERA in 257.1 innings over two plus seasons. You see what he’s done this year. Not great, Bob.

Hughes has seen his fastball velocity drop from the 93-94 he threw with in 2014 to about 90 MPH in 2017, which is probably a big chunk of the cause of his struggles. He throws that a lot, too, about 42 percent of the time. He also has a solid curve, a cutter and a changeup. The fastball actually hasn’t been crushed too bad. That’s been reserved mostly for the changeup and the cutter. Nothing has been hit poorly, though, so Royals hitters should enjoy seeing both a righty and a righty they should theoretically be able to hit. This is kind of crazy, but in at bats that end on the first pitch, Hughes has allowed a .632 average and a 1.263 slugging percentage. That accounts for three of the seven home runs he’s allowed this season. But even if the Royals swing early and don’t find success, Hughes has found struggles the third time through the order, allowing a .349/.391/.605 line when facing a lineup a third time.

Hammel has been terrible. There’s no way around it. He’s made eight starts this season. Two have been very good. One has been acceptable. The rest have been downright bad. That’s going to have to change. As it stands right now, the Royals don’t really have another option and they aren’t going to move away from a guy in the second month of a two-year deal, but he’ll be pitching for his rotation life soon enough. There were some encouraging signs from Hammel after moving to the stretch exclusively, but he was brutal against the Yankees on Tuesday and will need a bounceback in this start to gain some confidence, both in himself and from the organization.

With lefties going in the first two games and the Royals being stymied by the Twins this season, I probably shouldn’t feel very good about this series, but I feel like they find a way to take two of three by beating one of the lefties and Hughes.