Royals 2, Twins 0: Another Solid Pitching Performance Gets Wasted

[Thiéres Rabelo]

In what might've been their worst offensive performance of the season, the Twins got shut out by the Royals in Kansas City tonight, wasting a great pitching performance by Chris Paddack and the bullpen.

Box Score
Starting Pitcher: Chris Paddack, 5.0 IP, 5 H, 2 ER, 0 BB, 4 K (71 pitches, 52 strikes, 73.2%)
Home Runs: none
Bottom 3 WPA: Gio Urshela (-.181), Gary Sánchez (-.154), Trevor Larnach (-.085)
Win Probability Chart (via FanGraphs)

The Royals put pressure on Chris Paddack right out of the gate, as the righty gave up back-to-back hits to open the game, and the Royals had men on the corners eight pitches into the game. Paddack was able to induce a double play to get out of the jam partially, but not before leadoff man Whit Merrifield scored from third.

Fortunately, that double play was the beginning of Paddack hottest streak. After the two hits he allowed early, he went on to retire the next eleven batters. The Royals manufactured another run in the fifth inning, again opening the inning with back-to-back hits. Adalberto Mondesí brought Andrew Benintendi home on a bunt single to make it 2-0 Kansas City. Paddack got right back on track and retired the next three batters to end the threat.

Unfortunately, the offense was a no factor to back him up. Coming into this game, the Twins' offense had a poor OPS of .621 (ranking 19th in MLB) and struck out 26.8% of the time (ranking 22nd) when facing lefties this year. Minnesota’s bats were utterly dominated by Royals starter, lefty Daniel Lynch during the first five innings.

The only time during that span the Twins posed a threat to Lynch was in the third inning, the only time they had two baserunners – a Miguel Sanó leadoff single and a Jorge Polanco walk. However, Minnesota couldn’t cash in, and they stranded both runners. In the sixth, a leadoff single by Carlos Correa took Lynch out of the game, but the pitching change didn’t do much for Minnesota’s offense, which continued struggling.

Paddack closed out the game with a solid start, throwing 73.2% strikes over five innings of work. After two starts, he has yet to give up a walk in a Twins uniform. Is he becoming a reason for optimism for Twins fans?

Caleb Thielbar and Cody Stashak combined for three solid shutout innings with no walks and four strikeouts, keeping the team alive came the ninth inning. But once again the cold bats couldn't provide the needed runs. According to Aaron Gleeman, this is the first time in Twins history they've had a batting average below .200 after 12 games. It can't get any worse than that.

What’s Next? 
To conclude the road trip, the Twins will try to avoid the sweep on Thursday afternoon. Joe Ryan duels with Zack Greinke, with the first pitch scheduled for 1:10 pm CDT.

Postgame Interview

Bullpen Usage Spreadsheet

	SAT	SUN	MON	TUE	WED	TOT
Winder	66	0	0	0	0	66
Jax	0	0	47	0	0	47
Romero	11	0	0	30	0	41
Stashak	0	17	0	0	21	38
Duffey	0	18	0	15	0	33
Thielbar	0	17	0	0	15	32
Duran	0	0	23	0	0	23
Smith	0	0	6	2	0	8
Pagán	0	0	0	0	0	0
Coulombe	0	0	0	0	0	0

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[Vanimal46]

3rd time being shut out already. Hovering around .500 at the end of the month is starting to look like a pipe dream. This is not good at all. 

[Aggies7]

As bad as Correa has been, you have to wonder what he’s thinking. I went from Houston to THIS? 5 or less hits in 7 of 12 games. That stinks on ice

[LastOnePicked]

6 minutes ago, Vanimal46 said:

Hovering around .500 at the end of the month is starting to look like a pipe dream.

Yup. Trouble is, you gotta win four straight series now - two weeks worth of games - just to get to .500. This team hasn't shown any capacity to even win a single series.

Gonna be over before it even got started, unless someone can light a spark.

[darwin22]

Well.....if you ask Rocco I'm sure he's satisfied with tonight's final result. 

Making this statement as the Twins achieved his recent stated goal for HIS team.

"We're just trying to stay in games"

Mission accomplished Rocco.  

Take a bow.

 

 

[Dman]

If we can't even beat the Royals I don't really know who we plan to beat.  Maybe once they get Buck back they do something but this lineup is thin on hitters right now.  Can't win any games if you score no runs.  Gotta say the hitters look horrible, just horrible to start the season.  Hopefully they take extra batting practice because they need it.

[Vanimal46]

As the Common Man on KFAN would say, if you can’t be historically good, be biblically bad. 

[mikelink45]

This is reached the point where there's not much to say. Somebody has to hit the ball and get on base and then even more important somebody has to score. Maybe tomorrow, but even if we win one of the three games what does it really mean?

[Aggies7]

Someone please tell me our minor league system is full of really good hitters

[RpR]

4 minutes ago, mikelink45 said:

This is reached the point where there's not much to say. Somebody has to hit the ball and get on base and then even more important somebody has to score. Maybe tomorrow, but even if we win one of the three games what does it really mean?

We are one game closer to .500.

[Vanimal46]

2 minutes ago, Aggies7 said:

Someone please tell me our minor league system is full of really good hitters

My public school math isn’t as good as it used to be but I think there are about 37,000 pitchers on St Paul’s roster right now. So probably not. 

[Dman]

28 minutes ago, Aggies7 said:

Someone please tell me our minor league system is full of really good hitters

Falvey turned us into the Indians alright.  We can pitch now but no hitters to be found and the 30 Million dollar man has been less than clutch to this point.  These guys need to find themselves and fast if they want to save the season.

[Game7-91]

As Cito Gaston famously quipped after game 4 of the 91 ALCS, "It aint over 'till they beat us tomorrow."

[Twins_Fan_For_Life]

If the Twins' offense were a drunk fat guy on a skateboard...

[tony&rodney]

Add Royce Lewis? He can play in the outfield, infield, and DH. June is coming.

[jimbo92107]

This offense should be averaging 5 to 6 runs per game, even without Buxton. 

The starting rotation appears pretty solid. Even my initial horror at Paddack's first start was gratefully wrong. He's not a recently converted short stop. He's a good, not great mlb pitcher. That appears to be how we could describe most of the starters, except Ryan, who looks great, Ober, who looks efficient, and Bundy, who looks like a mature professional pitcher. 

[USAFChief]

25 minutes ago, jimbo92107 said:

This offense should be averaging 5 to 6 runs per game, even without Buxton. 

 

What? The Twins have averaged 5 runs/game 6 times in their entire history. They've never averaged 6 runs per game. Not even once.

 

And this current version featured Gio Urshela and Kyle Garlick hitting 3rd and 4th tonight. Less than 4/game isn't out of the question. 

 

 

 

[cHawk]

This is depressing 

[ToddlerHarmon]

Time to try the all-batting-average lineup?

DH Arraez, C Sanchez, 1B Miranda, 2B Polanco, 3B Urshela, SS Correa, LF Larnach, CF Buxton, RF Austin Martin

Is Kurt Suzuki still playing? *laughs* *sobs*

[RpR]

9 minutes ago, ToddlerHarmon said:

Time to try the all-batting-average lineup?

DH Arraez, C Sanchez, 1B Miranda, 2B Polanco, 3B Urshela, SS Correa, LF Larnach, CF Buxton, RF Austin Martin

Is Kurt Suzuki still playing? *laughs* *sobs*

Why is Larnach in there?

[Nashvilletwin]

Seriously, things are headed south pretty fast. Turned on the game tonight and took one look at the starting lineup and couldn’t believe what I saw. Garlick is batting cleanup? Our best batting average was Urshela? Almost everybody hitting under 0.200?  It was crazy looking at how pathetic that lineup was tonight.

Let’s hope they turn this around.  But if not, at some point someone has to be held accountable. That someone includes players (and there are a lot of them - hell, there are multiple DFA candidates playing on this team), coaches, and the FO. Sorry, I am not blaming the Pohlads - they’ve done their bit.

The good news is that we should see the future in Miranda, Lewis and Martin plus others more likely sooner than later. 

 

[denarded]

What sucks is if the is 2021 redux. Out of contention by mid-May. If that's the case bring up the youths. Gotta shake something up, because 2 years of this signifies a problem. That starting pitching is not going to last.

[TopTwinsFan]

We have one of the best offenses in the league and a great manager. LMAO.

Season starting to stink. Unwatchable baseball that a competitive person cant enjoy watching.

?

Baldy Ball '22. Bring a gag bag.

[wsnydes]

At the risk of sounding like a broken record...I'm just not going to drop the needle.

[bighat]

6 hours ago, denarded said:

What sucks is if the is 2021 redux. Out of contention by mid-May. If that's the case bring up the youths. Gotta shake something up, because 2 years of this signifies a problem. That starting pitching is not going to last.

"If"? I think we're already there. Rocco was DH'ing Ryan Jeffers last night and had him batting 8th. Just read that sentence again to get a feel for how bleak things are right now. So far we've had all the ingredients for a 2021 repeat: ice cold hitting and a sprinkling of bullpen meltdowns that cost the Twins winnable games. Decent starting pitching that won't last long. And by the time the Twins' hitters catch up, all the magic fairy dust will have come off guys like Bundy and Archer. It's 2021 all over again.

The only hope this team has rests in the hands of Buxton, who might single-handedly help them to 80 wins if he plays every game the rest of the season. And that's just not going to happen. And the dude should be on the IL if he's not going to play so we can get a look at some other guys ASAP.

There is just something about the aura of this team that feels off. Watching them, they all just look like they're stuck and nobody's clicking at the same time. Every small spark is immediately snuffed out and almost every key decision turns out to be wrong. Everything just feels out of tune.

 

[jmlease1]

8 hours ago, darwin22 said:

Well.....if you ask Rocco I'm sure he's satisfied with tonight's final result. 

Making this statement as the Twins achieved his recent stated goal for HIS team.

"We're just trying to stay in games"

Mission accomplished Rocco.  

Take a bow.

 

 

Really? We're going to blame the Twins utter inability to hit on the manager? I'm pretty sure he didn't swing a single bat in a game this year, but he did stack in a ton of RH hitters into the lineup last night. It's on the players to play, and right now the hitters are really struggling.

This is the kind of game a struggling team has: no breaks. Paddack pitched well, but was unlucky. KC only hit one ball hard against him all night it seemed, but a couple of INF singles and seeing-eye singles and the scraped up 2 runs. Everything the Twins hit in the air was right at someone. Not exactly sure how the manager is supposed to fix that, but I'm sure someone will tell me.

[rv78]

Rocco's brilliance or lack thereof was on display again last night. The offense continues to sputter and he has his best hitter (Arraez) sitting of the bench. I guess a .414 batting average at Kauffman stadium isn't good enough to warrant playing time there. For someone who is so into analytics how can you make the decision not to have him in the starting lineup? If righty verses lefty matchups is the only deciding factor he uses when he makes out the lineup card he is worthless. He's all about creating favorable matchups alright, even if it means benching your best players for guys that can't hit. I'm not sure how much more of his ineptness I can handle. This is bad with no end in sight.

[dogsday]

Statistically it also matters how you get to the mean (average) runs scored. Sometimes the median (middle) number on a list of numbers can be more useful than the mean. In an extreme example a team that plays 4 games and scores 17, 1, 1, and 1 has an average of 5 runs per game but probably finishes that stretch 1-3. A team that scores 5, 5, 5, and 5 over the same stretch maybe goes 3-1 or 4-0. I don’t have the actual data, but the Twins often feel to me more like that first team.

[wavedog]

You know you are in trouble hitting-wise when we are rotating DH'ing our catchers  who combined are hitting below .200 and are slow as molasses on the basepaths.   Sanchez I can maybe see as a DH but Jeffers should never be the DH.  Garlick in the 4 hole is another gem.  FO did not bring in enough depth this offseason.   I have mentioned this before so don't want to beat a dead horse but we also move players all over the lineup card each game which I think hurts any consistent production.   Looking at the opposing teams lineups we have played this season - they like to stick to a pretty consistent order.   So there is plenty of blame to go around - players, managers and FO .  

[Old Twins Cap]

There is literally nothing to complain about after last night.

Because nothing happened.

Look on the bright side:  we didn't have to see Tommy Watkins wave anyone into an out at home plate,. :}