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After two frustrating games against the White Sox the Twins find themselves three games back from the South-Siders in the AL Central race. The good news? The Twins’ bats have been hot against Chicago ace Lucas Giolito, who takes the bump tonight.Yesteday's Game Recap CHW 6, MIN 2: White Hot-White Sox TODAY Twins (30-20) @ White Sox (32-16), 7:10 pm CDT Twins Starter: Jake Odorizzi, RHP 8.10 ERA Rocco Baldelli announced Tuesday night that Odorizzi will return from the 10-day IL to start Wednesday night’s game against Chicago. Odorizzi was placed on the IL after taking a liner off the chest on August 21 against the Royals. It’s been a year of injuries for ‘Odo,’ as he missed the entire month of July with a back injury and has only made three starts all season. All of Odorizzi's starts have come against the Royals, who split the season series with the Twins at five a piece. Odorizzi has a clean slate against the Sox this year and hopefully tonight;s game will provide an opportunity for him to find some sort of rhythm for the first time this year. Last year Odorizzi posted a 2-2 record against the Sox in four starts. White Sox Starter: Lucas Giolito RHP 3.43 ERA Giolito has played an integral role to the success story of baseball across the Windy City this summer. Not only did Giolito record his first no-hitter on August 25, he did it in dominant fashion, striking out 13 and only walking one batter against the Pirates. That performance combined with Alec Mills’ no-no on August 13 for the Cubs marked the first time both Chicago teams have recorded a no-hitter in the same season. While Giolito has posted a 4-2 record on the season his two starts against Minnesota have been rocky. In the season opener the Twins shelled Giolito as he exited the game after just 3.2 innings, giving up 7 runs on 6 hits and 2 homers. And even though the Twins lost their August 31 matchup to the Sox they were able to post 4 runs on 4 hits in Giolito’s five innings on the mound. Twins Starting Lineup: White Sox Starting Lineup: What to Watch for: Max Kepler has a career .364 average against Giolito in 22 at-bats. Nelson Cruz has a .353 average in 17 at-bats, including three home runs. Expect these two sluggers to carry the heavyweight for the Twins offense against the White Sox ace.Byron Buxton is faster than Jimmy John’s delivery service. He proved that last night, banking his third career inside the park home run on a line drive he clubbed to left center field. Buxton has batted .304 in his last seven games and will need to find ways to get on base for the Twins to find success.Jake Odorizzi hasn’t made it past 4 innings yet this year. And after a game where the Twins’ bullpen was heavily utilized they will need him to put up a quality start.Other News:In addition to Odorizzi, the Twins have activated Alex Avila from the Injured List. As a result, the team has optioned Travis Blankenhorn and Randy Dobnak to the team's alternative site in St. Paul. Around the AL Central Chicago White Sox 32-16 Minnesota Twins 30-20 (3 GB) Cleveland Indians 26-22 (6 GB) Detroit Tigers 21-26 (10.5 GB) Kansas City Royals 20-29 (12.5 GB) Click here to view the article

Because of other Labor Day shenanigans, I wasn't able to watch any of today's Twins-Tigers game, but listened to the opening innings. As if oft my wont, I had the opposition's broadcast chosen so I got to hear the Tigers' radio guys demonstrate their love for the Minnesota Twins. One of the most valuable things about listening to opposing teams' broadcasts this season is to hear the amount of respect this Twins team has around the league. But one thing struck me as perhaps going a bit too far, and that was a comment that the Twins were like the Astros in terms of being able to provide an analytical improvement to a pitcher. They were specifically talking about Jake Odorizzi and commenting on how the Twins had made him a better pitcher by having him throw his fastball more often and higher in the zone. This was compared to what the Astros have done with pitcher such as our old friend Ryan Pressly. As I said, this caught my ears unawares because I often think of this as one of the Twins' areas of need, as they (and it was this front office group) who let Pressly go and have watched him thrive in Houston. But I wanted to give it a look to see if there is anything to the idea that Odorizzi has changed his approach since coming from the Rays. First some basic statistic conversation about Odorizzi's value. In his 4+ years with the Rays (2013-2017 with 2013 being very limited), Odorizzi earned an ERA+ of 103, a FIP (Fielding Independent Pitching) of 4.22 and earned 8.2 bWAR. In his two years thus far with the Twins, that compares to an ERA+ of 108, a FIP of 3.96 and a bWAR of 4.5. The majority of this value has come in 2019 as his ERA+ is 128. This compares to his Rays high of 117 in 2015. So 2019 has been the best year of his career, but 2018 was not: in fact, his first year with the Twins saw an ERA+ of 95. So the first thing to say is that if the Twins have done something special with him, it was not until this year. Then I began to dig into pitch distribution, as the Tigers' radio team suggested. This year, according to Statcast, Odorizzi has thrown 56.4% 4-seam fastballs, 19.1% cutters, 17.1% splitters, and 7.4% curveballs. This IS the highest percentage of 4-seamers since his first two years in the league, but the trend has been consistently upward since a low of 31.1% in 2016, before he became a Twin. The splitter and curveball have not changed significantly. The big change, according to the way Statcast charts these pitches, is in this: in 2019, Odorizzi has not thrown a slider, a pitch he threw 21% of the time in 2018 which was the highest percentage of his career. He has swapped that pitch for a huge increase in his use of a cutter, at 19.1% in 2019 from a low of 2.4% in 2018 and surpassing the previous career high of 12.4% in his previous career year of 2015. So, based on comparing pitch usage in 2019 to 2018 (a down year) and 2015 (his previous career year) it would seem that the consistent pattern for good Odorizzi is: throw more cutters, scrap the slider, and keep the 4-seamer going. Perhaps, given some strangeness in the data and the fungibleness of these definitions, the same pitch that used to register as a slider is now reading as a cutter. But either way, the change in that pitch seems to be the change that connects Odorizzi's quality 2019 to 2015.

Sound the alarm! The Twins pitchers currently lead the league in team strikeout percentage! I know, I know, we’re talking about three games in March. This sample size hopes one day it will grow up to become a “small sample size.” That said, Jose Berrios and Jake Odorizzi each struck out 10+ batters in the Twins first two games, something that only Randy Johnson and Curt Schilling have ever done before. As an encore, Michael Pineda and Martin Perez teamed up for 11 strikeouts in 7.2 IP in game three. There’s a legitimate chance that this is the best starting rotation to ever reside on Target Field’s mound. It would not surprise the reader to know that the Twins have been really bad at getting strikeouts. For five straight seasons, from 2011 through 2015, they finished dead last in team K% in all of baseball. In the 35 years since the Pohlad family took over as the Twins’ owners, their 15.9 K% is the second to worst in the MLB, just 0.1% better than the last-place Tigers. So ya, leading the league in strikeout percentage is very unusual, even if it is only three games into the year. But the question is: are the Twins pitchers really this good or are the Indians hitters really bad? Should we commence construction of Wes Johnson's statue? Or should we point and laugh at the Cleveland’s crappy lineup? A point in the favor of Twins pitchers is that their stuff has been better. Odorizzi’s velocity is up nearly a mile per hour over where it was a year ago, and his swinging strike rate was up 140% over his career mark. Berrios had a similar increase in his swinging strike rate (156% increase over his career mark). Pineda also got more whiffs and was insanely efficient in blanking Cleveland through his four innings. Perez maintained his spring velocity bump with a fastball that maxed out at 97 mph while producing a swinging strike rate at nearly double his career mark. Here’s the problem though: if the Indians hitters really do suck, then these improvements in swinging strike rates are exactly what we’d expect to see. Bad hitting teams make opposing pitchers look good. It’s the pitching equivalent of a Snapchat filter that removes your blemishes and makes your eyes look like Alita (you know, the freaking Battle Angel). With proven major-league hitters Francisco Lindor and Jason Kipnis on the injured list, the Indians gave 18% of their team’s plate appearances to a putrid combination of Eric Stamets, Max Moroff, and Brad Miller. Hanley Ramirez was batting fifth despite not having played a major-league game since last May. Their leadoff hitter Leonys Martin has never produced an above-average DRC+ in his career. These guys are … not great. It’s Jose Ramirez, Carlos Santana, and the cast of The Expendables up there hacking. To see if having a bad lineup explains the Twins’ pitching dominance, I looked at the PECOTA projections for each Cleveland hitter and weighted them based on the number of plate appearances they actually had in this series. This gave me with a PECOTA-projected K% for the Indians when Jose Ramirez gets 12 plate appearances and Jake Bauers gets 9 and Jordan Luplow gets 4 … you get the picture. I did the same with Twins pitchers, weighting them by batters face for each pitcher and adding them all together. INDIANS HITTERS PROJECTED K% 21.7% TWINS PITCHERS PROJECTED K% 21.2% ACTUAL K% FOR BOTH 38.6% Had the Indian’s projected strikeout percentage been worse, I would’ve been tempted to chalk this up to terrible Indians hitting. Similarly, had the Twins projected strikeout percentage been higher, I'd talk myself into thinking the Twins pitchers are great. As it is, we’ve probably got a little from Column A and a little from Column B, but even that is uncertain in our tiny sample. We can’t glean anything conclusive from three games, we knew that coming in, but these are interesting data points that trend in an exciting direction. As we collect more and more data points over the coming weeks and months, the picture will continue loading until it eventually becomes clear. In the meantime, we can stare these particular data points and admire their beauty. Twins pitchers are striking people out and it’s amazing.

Eno Sarris’ top 175 pitchers for the 2019 fantasy baseball season The Twins top five according to Sarris all make it in the top 175! Berrios 18 Above Strasburg, Corbin, Price, Wheeler, Morton and Greinke Kyle Gibson 60 Above Matz, Woodruff, Lucchesi, Quintana Odorizzi 69 Above Jimmy Nelson Pineda 71 Above Stroman, Gonzales, Smith and Gray Fernando Romero 135 Above Valdez, Cease, Gohara, Williams, Lynn Take all those positions and average them out and our rotation comes out in with an average of 70. It is interesting to see how Gibson/Odorizzi/Pineda are all bunched and that they project Romero. Based on 32 teams that is pretty average - a 500 team. 32 teams would have five rotation places or 160 spots. At least Romero keeps us above the 160 mark.

Manager Paul Molitor has not yet named his opening day starter. I have an out-of-the-box suggestion: Fernando Romero. Romero has not yet allowed a run - or a hit - in spring training. He's been nearly perfect. Yes, I know, he's not expected to make the opening day roster. Here's my thinking: • Clearly Ervin Santana cannot be the opening day starter – he's recovering from finger surgery. • Jose Berrios would be the next logical choice, but Molitor wants him to pitch in Puerto Rico, his native land, later in April. That does not line up easily with an opening day start. • Lance Lynn may not be ready by opening day. With the late signing, Lynn may need a few more days to get up to 60-90 pitches. • Jake Odorizzi and Kyle Gibson have not proven enough in spring training or last year to warrant being the opening day starter. • Romero has electric stuff, had a great year last year in the minor leagues, and he's been nearly perfect this spring. Let's see if he's ready for the big show. I realize there are rules about sending a player down who is on the opening day roster. He might have to start two games. But that would give ample time for Lynn to get up to speed. The Twins could carry both Lynn and Romero on the roster at the beginning, and have one less batter. If the Twins were to go with Zack Granite over Robbie Grossman, Granite could start out in Rochester, and be called up when either Romero goes down, or if there's an injury. What do you think?