Twins 3, A’s 1: Lewis scores twice, Sanchez goes deep in Twins win

[Nate Palmer]

Royce Lewis was the spark to the Minnesota Twins offense early, scoring the Twins first two runs. Gary Sanchez added some power, and the Twins bullpen was lights out once again as the Twins won the first game of their west coast road trip. 

 

Box Score
SP: Chris Archer: 4 IP, 1 H, 1 ER, 2 BB, 2 K (62 pitches, 37 strikes (59.7%))
Home Runs: Gary Sanchez (3)
Top 3 WPA: Gary Sanchez (0.143), Griffin Jax (0.143), Jorge Polanco (0.138) 

Win Probability Chart (via FanGraphs)

Garlick activated
The Twins sent out their patented righty heavy lineup with lefty Zach Logue on the mound for the Athletics. It was a perfect opportunity for the healthy Kyle Garlick to return to the Twins after spending time on the IL with an injured calf. Coming into Monday night, Garlick has hit .357/.500/1.000 with a 1.500 OPS against left-handed pitchers. 

Archer gives the Twins four innings
Chris Archer did exactly what 2022 Archer does. He gave the Twins four full innings of work and left the game with the Twins in a position to win the game. It was an uneasy beginning as it seemed Archer was trying to nibble around the edges of the plate. Once the right-hander could locate some pitches better, he went through a stretch of sending nine straight A's batters back to the dugout. 

Lewis makes his case
As Carlos Correa draws closer to returning from his finger injury, Royce Lewis isn’t ready to go back to St. Paul just yet. The Twins shortstop is doing everything to make sure he stays in the majors. Lewis accounted for two Twins runs. He was first driven home by Jorge Polanco after his third-inning double and then Byron Buxton after a fifth-inning walk. 

While Lewis will need to find a new defensive home if he and Correa are to coexist in the same lineup, his bat may force just that to happen. Lewis is now hitting .286/.306/.457 since his call up. 

Gary brings the power
While the Twins needed to employ small-ball tactics of what feels like an era forgotten for their second run, Gary Sanchez brought us right back to present-day baseball. Sanchez smashed a ball to center field in the sixth inning for the Twins third run. His home run measured at 433 feet and had an exit velocity of 109.9 mph. 

Cano, Jax, Duffey impress out of the bullpen
Yennier Cano has seen the Twins bullpen roles be shuffled around, and now he is staking his claim to a role of his own. Cano once again was asked to pitch two innings as he came on in relief of Archer. As he sat mid-90s with his fastball, Cano only allowed one hit and recorded two strikeouts. Cano is turning heads early on in his major league career. 

Griffin Jax was the next man up out of the bullpen and added his own two innings following Cano. Allowing only one hit, Jax has continued to be trusted by his manager and has become a real asset for the Twins. Tyler Duffey followed to get the save on a night in which Emilio Pagan was unavailable. It is also interesting that the choice was Duffey and not Jhoan Duran, but now Duran will be available for the rest of the series. 

What’s Next? 
The Twins will go to bed likely with the sounds of drums and horns bouncing in their heads. It was announced Dylan Bundy will return from the COVID IL to make the start on Tuesday. Bundy brings into the game a 5.76 ERA on the season in his five starts. 

The A’s will send James Kaprielian to the mound. The right-hander has made three starts in 2022 and currently owns a 4.97 ERA. 

 

Postgame Interview

 

 

Bullpen Usage Spreadsheet

Jax	0	50	0	0	25	75
Cano	36	0	0	0	25	61
Stashak	46	0	0	13	0	59
Duffey	33	0	5	0	20	58
Pagán	0	22	9	10	0	41
Thielbar	23	0	15	2	0	40
Smith	0	4	15	9	0	28
Duran	0	10	12	0	0	22
Cotton	0	0	17	0	0	17

 

 

 

 

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[Unwinder]

I feel like it's time for an article about how good the bullpen has been.

[launchingthrees]

The bullpen was getting a ton of volume over the past week. Good to see a bit of a reset tonight.

[wsnydes]

I did not expect to see Lewis excel to this degree coming off of two straight lost years.  He continues to impress and it's fun to watch.

It's great to see him taking the opportunity and running with it.  Love to see him forcing the issue to keep him up.

[puckstopper1]

Even though the A's are a bad team right now, it is really nice to get a win in Oakland given that it has been a house of horrors for the Twins over the past several years.  Lets hope that continues against Kaprielian tonight as he pitched well against the Twins last time he faced them.

According to the box score the attendance was 3,138 for the game.  That is what happens when you have a dreadful team playing a week-night home game while school is still in session at a below average stadium.

[JimPohlad1]

Very pleased with the bullpen last night. Props to them for holding their own. 

[mikelink45]

Oakland is a sad situation - I do not understand why the team persists in staying there.  A move to LV makes sense.  It is an embarrassment to the league to have this lousy a team and this lousy a stadium and this lousy attendance..  

Of course for Bundy, it is the right team to come back against.  The A's have five players in last night's box score with a BA of under 200.  They had 3 between 200 - 231 and only one player hitting about 250 (267).  That is why we have to have perspective on the team and our pitchers.  This is a AAA team that we are against.

[Riverbrian]

14 minutes ago, mikelink45 said:

Oakland is a sad situation - I do not understand why the team persists in staying there.  A move to LV makes sense.  It is an embarrassment to the league to have this lousy a team and this lousy a stadium and this lousy attendance..  

Of course for Bundy, it is the right team to come back against.  The A's have five players in last night's box score with a BA of under 200.  They had 3 between 200 - 231 and only one player hitting about 250 (267).  That is why we have to have perspective on the team and our pitchers.  This is a AAA team that we are against.

I agree that perspective is necessary. 

This particular AAA team is currently winning 4 games out of every 10.

If the wheels completely fall of, They will still win 1 out of every 3 games. 

I sure hope we don't pitch underhand to them. ?

 

[USAFChief]

5 hours ago, launchingthrees said:

The bullpen was getting a ton of volume over the past week. Good to see a bit of a reset tonight.

Reset?

The pen was asked to pitch 5 innings last night.

 

 

[Alex Schieferdecker]

I have to say that I doubted Duffey and Thielbar at the start of the season (and frankly, I still doubt Duffey), but the way both have recovered from disastrous starts has been impressive.

[DJL44]

2 hours ago, mikelink45 said:

Oakland is a sad situation - I do not understand why the team persists in staying there.  A move to LV makes sense.  It is an embarrassment to the league to have this lousy a team and this lousy a stadium and this lousy attendance..  

They had an affordable contender but the economics of baseball revenue sharing makes it more profitable to field young, cheap players.

[roger]

Had thought they would keep Jax to piggy-back with Bundy tonight.  Will be interesting to see who they bring in, assuming Bundy is only good to go only four inninings.

I expect all of us are shocked, or pleasantly surprised, at how well Lewis is doing.  Although I think a short trip back to St. Paul to play a lot of third base or left field, or both, would make sense, this young man belongs with the Twins.  With Correa at short, where is the $64,000 question (us old guys will remember when that was a lot of money).

On the other hand, Miranda needs to return to St. Paul to continue his development.  Problem is, who is available to play first base when Arraez needs a break?  Hopefully, they have an answer for that and Miranda, not Lewis, is the man returning when Carlos comes off the IL tomorrow or the next day.

Saw the first 4.5 innings last night before turning it off and going to sleep.  Damn, Lewis is exciting.  And loved that sacrifice.

[DJL44]

18 minutes ago, roger said:

Had thought they would keep Jax to piggy-back with Bundy tonight.  Will be interesting to see who they bring in, assuming Bundy is only good to go only four inninings.

I expect all of us are shocked, or pleasantly surprised, at how well Lewis is doing.  Although I think a short trip back to St. Paul to play a lot of third base or left field, or both, would make sense, this young man belongs with the Twins.  With Correa at short, where is the $64,000 question (us old guys will remember when that was a lot of money).

On the other hand, Miranda needs to return to St. Paul to continue his development.  Problem is, who is available to play first base when Arraez needs a break?  Hopefully, they have an answer for that and Miranda, not Lewis, is the man returning when Carlos comes off the IL tomorrow or the next day.

Saw the first 4.5 innings last night before turning it off and going to sleep.  Damn, Lewis is exciting.  And loved that sacrifice.

Royce is 6'2". Maybe he can play first base.

[Nate Palmer]

2 hours ago, USAFChief said:

Reset?

The pen was asked to pitch 5 innings last night.

 

 

The Twins not using Pagan, Duran, Smith, even Thielbar seems to be the reset. That is the usual go to for late inning save situation games. 

[Trov]

4 hours ago, puckstopper1 said:

Even though the A's are a bad team right now, it is really nice to get a win in Oakland given that it has been a house of horrors for the Twins over the past several years.  Lets hope that continues against Kaprielian tonight as he pitched well against the Twins last time he faced them.

According to the box score the attendance was 3,138 for the game.  That is what happens when you have a dreadful team playing a week-night home game while school is still in session at a below average stadium.

It is not just Oakland being a bad team, but they told their fan base with the moves they made we are making no plans this year to compete.  The fans told the team, that is fine we have no plans to attend games if you have no plans to put forth an entertaining product.  

[Trov]

5 hours ago, wsnydes said:

I did not expect to see Lewis excel to this degree coming off of two straight lost years.  He continues to impress and it's fun to watch.

It's great to see him taking the opportunity and running with it.  Love to see him forcing the issue to keep him up.

I get his missed 2 years of games, but in 2020 he was working at the alternate site I believe getting work in.  2021 the started getting work after the season ended.  It is not like in game time is only time you can do work.  He was a top talent for a reason, and he could still do things recovering from the knee injury.  After about 3 months he was most likely jogging, after 6 months he was most likely back to full running and hitting.  He could work on the mind part of the game when he was not working on the physical part. 

[wsnydes]

1 minute ago, Trov said:

I get his missed 2 years of games, but in 2020 he was working at the alternate site I believe getting work in.  2021 the started getting work after the season ended.  It is not like in game time is only time you can do work.  He was a top talent for a reason, and he could still do things recovering from the knee injury.  After about 3 months he was most likely jogging, after 6 months he was most likely back to full running and hitting.  He could work on the mind part of the game when he was not working on the physical part. 

Sure, but workouts and simulated games are no substitute for real game action.  It's one thing to do something in practice, but often quite another to do it in a game with the adrenaline going.

[roger]

3 hours ago, DJL44 said:

Royce is 6'2". Maybe he can play first base.

Interesting?

[Doctor Gast]

Great to see that small ball executed, I miss that. Lewis was great again. Miranda needs some more time in AAA. 

Pitchers from that HOU series tried to find that extra gear and got beat up pretty bad. Glad to see the're bouncing back. Archer gave us a chance to win. Archer said he liked the way that Sanchez called the game, I did not. Archer had his change up working, he got some SOs with it. But many times where a change up was a perfect set up for a SO but was never called and had negative results. If change up was called more often in those situations IMO Archer could have gone 5 innings. 

Ideally I wanted Archer to start off in the BP as long relief but he hasn't fared as well there previously because of his mindset. In his last interview he stated he'd do anything for the team maybe he'd be open to try long relief until he's 100%. I'd be fine with this if Baldelli would change his mindset of practically totally ignoring long relief.

The BP has also bounced back from that HOU series, so I'm hopeful.