Twins 6, Red Sox 0: Mick Abel Shines, Byron Buxton Mashes for Another Twins Victory

[Steven Trefz]

Image courtesy of Jesse Johnson - Imagn Images

Box Score
SP: Mick Abel 7 IP, 4 H, 0 ER, 0 BB, 10 K (90 pitches, 64 strikes (71%)
Home Runs: Byron Buxton 2 (2, 3), Brooks Lee (3)
Top 3 WPA (via FanGraphs): Abel (0.27), Buxton (0.19), Luke Keaschall (0.10)

Win Probability Chart (via BaseballSavant) 

The Twins looked to continue their winning ways against an old friend, as non-lefty Sonny Gray returned again to Target Field. Gray was coming off of a dominant 6.1 scoreless inning performance against a salty Milwaukee offense. Meanwhile, his counterpart Mick Abel finally found his footing during his last start, going six scoreless against the Tigers in his last home start. 

Twins Offense Stays Unwelcoming
Gray might have come into the game on a roll, but he encountered an even larger steamroller called the Twins lineup. Minnesota has averaged over nine runs a game in their latest three-game winning streak, and tonight it was Byron Buxton who got started the scoreboard tallying with his speed and power. In the bottom of the first inning, Buxton led off the game with a single up the middle, and then immediately advanced to second on a Gray balk. Trevor Larnach got called out on strikes after the Red Sox won an ABS challenge, but Luke Keaschall blooped a single to center to advance Buxton to third. Only, Byron didn't stop there! With the ball already reaching the infield, Buxton got the green light and he got called out at the plate. This call was also challenged, and this time the Twins were celebrating an overturned call and a 1-0 lead.

Kody Clemens got on in the bottom of the second and worked his way around to third base but got stranded there. Buxton led off the bottom of the third, and he didn't get stranded anywhere. 2-0 Twins.

The Twins kept the pressure on, eventually loading the bases in the third before stranding more runners in scoring position. Before Twins fans could fear reprecussions from the missed opportunities, Brooks Lee led off the bottom of the fourth, and for the sixth game in a row he drove in a run and for the third time in this recent streak that run was himself. 3-0 Twins.

It's important to note how well Mick Abel was pitching, but the Twins wouldn't stop scoring runs. Tristan Gray followed up Lee with a hard single and Buxton found some space on the left side of the diamond to put runners at first and second with still nobody out in the fourth. Larnach has feasted on Gray (Sonny...not his teammate Tristan) in the recent past, and it was time for seconds. 5-0 Twins and Gray was chased from the game (Sonny...not our new third baseman).

Abel is More Than Able
The first two appearances of Abel's season left a lot to be desired. Piggy-backing in Baltimore didn't go well, and his first frozen Target Field start versus the Rays was rough. Abel's third start was near-dominant through six, and he managed to top that tonight. Mick struck out five consecutive Boston batters from the last out of the first through the first out of the third innings. Through six innings and only 81 pitches, Abel allowed only one runner to reach as far as second base. Before we get to how much Mick had left in his tank, a brief 438 foot message from Byron Buxton.

More Abel, New Milestones
Now emboldened with a 6-0 lead, Abel kept on dealing into the seventh and in many ways he accelarated his performance to the end. Abel notched two more strikeouts to reach a new career high at 10, with the last punchout of Carlos Narvaez maintaining his highest velocity of the night at 96 mph in what he himself described as a "pretty poorly executed pitch" in his dugout post-op interview. Not only that, but Abel utilized five separate types of pitches to collect his 10 strike outs, showing the kind of promise that made the Twins willing to depart with popular closer Jhoan Duran last season. Solid infield defense, no walks, and a 71% strike rate will make for a great night. Hope is abounding in Twins Territory, and Abel is starting to become a key part of that surprising story.

Finishing it Off Like You've Been There Before
After the first three series of the season, Twins fans were asking if their squad would get a series win at all in 2026. Now it feels like anything less is unacceptable. Taylor Rogers came in for the top of the eighth, and allowed a couple of baserunners but no ultimate damage done. Cole Sands got the call in the ninth as he looked to rebound from a rough outing in Toronto on Saturday. Sands preserved the shutout, and kept the Twins climbing up the win column.

---

What’s Next?
The Twins look to break out the brooms again at home on Wednesday afternoon during the annual Jackie Robinson Day celebration. Twins righty Simeon Woods Richardson (0-2, 4.60 ERA) looks to join in on the winning side of the ledger for the first time this season, while the Red Sox will send young lefty Connelly Early (0-0, 2.63 ERA) out for eighth career start. First pitch is scheduled for 12:40pm CDT.

Postgame Interviews

Bullpen Usage Spreadsheet

	FRI	SAT	SUN	MON	TUE	TOT
Morris	0	0	67	0	0	67
Rogers	30	0	0	0	22	52
Sands	0	22	0	0	15	37
Banda	36	0	0	0	0	36
Acton	0	0	0	33	0	33
Topa	12	0	12	0	0	24
Orze	0	0	0	23	0	23
Funderburk	0	17	0	0	0	17

 

View full article

[Vanimal46]

That Derek Falvey guy might be on to something. Good thing he's lea-..... Whoops. Can an unemployed person win Executive of the Year? 

Congrats to Mick Abel for his best start of his MLB career. According to Gleeman, he's the youngest pitcher to record 10+ Ks and 0 BB since Jose Berrios in 2018.

[GopherMike]

Pardon my language, but gosh darn this is a lot of fun

[Dman]

Nice to see Buxton get his groove back. The warmer weather agrees with him.  Am I crazy or does it look like we might have three top of the rotation starters in Ryan, Bradley and Abel?  If they can continue to pitch this well I don't see why we wouldn't match up well with pretty much any team in the league.  

Not sure if they can stay this hot with the bats, but if you get Buxton and Keaschall going along with Jeffers, Bell and Martin with some other guys mixed in this lineup looks like it might be OK.  Only thing that feels a ways off is the pen.  I mean they have been fine so far but they still do appear to be the weak link.  It's a long season and a lot has to go right, but they are starting to make me believe.

[PseudoSABR]

7 minutes ago, Vanimal46 said:

That Derek Falvey guy might be on to something. Good thing he's lea-..... Whoops. Can an unemployed person win Executive of the Year? 

Congrats to Mick Abel for his best start of his MLB career. According to Gleeman, he's the youngest pitcher to record 10+ Ks and 0 BB since Jose Berrios in 2018.

When did Falvey go to head of baseball operations? He may have less to do with the roster construction than at first blush.  I ask the question because I am not a great historian in this regard.

[Mauerpower]

Twins are in first place after the Cardinals beat the Guardians 6-5 in the 10th inning.  

[Blyleven2011]

Buxton has a 4 hit night with 2 homers ...

Abel pitches 7 scoreless innings with 10 strike outs ...

Game ball ( its a tie ) goes to both players  ...

[Parfigliano]

3 minutes ago, Mauerpower said:

Twins are in first place after the Cardinals beat the Guardians 6-5 in the 10th inning.  

Yea Cards.

[jmlease1]

Abel was fantastic. Even when the BoSox got a runner on, you didn't feel concerned because he was pitching so well. Boy, if this who he is now, we are going to be smiling a lot. Really terrific start. Caratini did a nice job calling that game too: Sox looked confused the whole night. Only knock on Abel is his dugout interview was pretty low energy and bland. Come on, mah dude! You crushed it out there!

Love it when Buck gets on a roll. He was locked in tonight that's for sure. And very nice to see Lee turn on one and send a ball out from the left side. He's looking better at the plate.

Winning the series was great. Love to see a sweep!

[USAFChief]

Boring.

Big early lead, dominant start, add on runs at will, shutdown pen.

Lather, rinse, repeat. Every night.

Snoozefest!

Sheesh. Mix in a close one once in a while ferpetesakes.

[Permanent Twins Fan]

Wow!

 

[ashbury]

24 minutes ago, Mauerpower said:

Twins are in first place after the Cardinals beat the Guardians 6-5 in the 10th inning.  

Best in the entire AL, in fact.

/ as expected

[ashbury]

26 minutes ago, Mauerpower said:

Twins are in first place after the Cardinals beat the Guardians 6-5 in the 10th inning.  

Cleveland with bullpen woes.  Man, that would suck, wouldn't it?

[soyouresayingtheresachance]

What a start from Abel. 

Buck starting to heat up. 

Another HR from Lee. Needs to clean up the defense, but the bat is looking better so far. 

Let's see if we can bring out the brooms tomorrow! Go Twins!

[LastOnePicked]

52 minutes ago, ashbury said:

Best in the entire AL, in fact.

Exactly like I predicted.

[LastOnePicked]

1 hour ago, USAFChief said:

Sheesh. Mix in a close one once in a while ferpetesakes.

Stop that. My blood pressure is loving these games.

[Fatbat]

Surprisingly fun baseball in April. Keep it up boys !

[UK Twin]

What is going on? I thought the Twins were going to be in a basement battle with the White Sox this year? 

Fantastic from Abel, love what him and Bradley have brought to the rotation. And great to see Buck's bat heating up. 

Just going to enjoy the moment and take it one game at a time. Clearly, we're not going to keep winning at the rate we've done over the last 10 days but we're playing really good baseball so every reason to be optimistic.

[Twinsrtheworst]

1 hour ago, UK Twin said:

What is going on? I thought the Twins were going to be in a basement battle with the White Sox this year? 

Fantastic from Abel, love what him and Bradley have brought to the rotation. And great to see Buck's bat heating up. 

Just going to enjoy the moment and take it one game at a time. Clearly, we're not going to keep winning at the rate we've done over the last 10 days but we're playing really good baseball so every reason to be optimistic.

To answer your question of what’s going on. The Twins are a competitive team. Noticed it at spring training. I tried telling people to not bail before the season starts. Unfortunately you listened to the loud majority geniuses around these parts. Even though historically the loudest most persistent opinions on here are almost always wrong. Actually it’s true in every day life as well. But heck what do I know.

[Peter]

Able is real deal and I’ve believed the twins would be good this year!!! Don’t listen to the national big city media!!! They hate all of our teams and state they are 🤮💩also don’t go to facebook as most if not all are toxic negative 💩🤮 saying sell the team huge shutout win!!! Let’s get sweep over Red Sox!!!! As always let’s go twins!!!

[Doctor Gast]

To borrow Tarheel's correlation, Bucks diesel truck has warmed up. Time to deliver. 

[UK Twin]

1 hour ago, Twinsrtheworst said:

To answer your question of what’s going on. The Twins are a competitive team. Noticed it at spring training. I tried telling people to not bail before the season starts. Unfortunately you listened to the loud majority geniuses around these parts. Even though historically the loudest most persistent opinions on here are almost always wrong. Actually it’s true in every day life as well. But heck what do I know.

The first part of my post was more tongue in cheek after being written off by literally every single media outlet.

[Doctor Gast]

9 hours ago, Vanimal46 said:

That Derek Falvey guy might be on to something. Good thing he's lea-..... Whoops. Can an unemployed person win Executive of the Year? 

Congrats to Mick Abel for his best start of his MLB career. According to Gleeman, he's the youngest pitcher to record 10+ Ks and 0 BB since Jose Berrios in 2018.

Just to remind you, we gave up a very impactful, in high demand, the most electric closer in MLB (Duran) at the deadline, where teams like PHI are desperate to do something in the postseason. If Falvey landed Painter, then yeah, Falvey'd have done well. But he didn't. Abel was the best they offered. Abel is promising but was inconsistent. Praise to the pitching coaches for Abel becoming more consistent.  Not Falvey

[CRF]

I'm liking this stuff!

[Patzky]

8 hours ago, GopherMike said:

Pardon my language, but gosh darn this is a lot of fun

Welp that settles it!

[jmlease1]

1 hour ago, Doctor Gast said:

Just to remind you, we gave up a very impactful, in high demand, the most electric closer in MLB (Duran) at the deadline, where teams like PHI are desperate to do something in the postseason. If Falvey landed Painter, then yeah, Falvey'd have done well. But he didn't. Abel was the best they offered. Abel is promising but was inconsistent. Praise to the pitching coaches for Abel becoming more consistent.  Not Falvey

So Abel is in the rotation and doing well, but Falvey deserves no credit for the acquisition? I suppose he doesn't deserve any credit for grabbing Joe Ryan either, because Ryan wasn't a high enough prospect in the Rays system?

This is just weird, blind hatred of Falvey.

[Bangkok Twins Fan]

I sincerely thought the Twins would be competitive this season, but this early season performance has been a pleasant surprise. I hope this stuff is sustainable, at least from the starting pitchers. Keep it coming!

[laloesch]

8 hours ago, soyouresayingtheresachance said:

 

Another HR from Lee. Needs to clean up the defense, but the bat is looking better so far. 

 

Barely.  He's hitting a few dingers but still swinging a lot at stuff out of the strike zone, but I suppose any improvement is better than no improvement.  

[laloesch]

I think the Twins struck gold with Taj Bradley and Mick Abel.  Time will tell but these two look pretty good so far.  

[Major League Ready]

10 hours ago, Vanimal46 said:

That Derek Falvey guy might be on to something. Good thing he's lea-..... Whoops. Can an unemployed person win Executive of the Year? 

Congrats to Mick Abel for his best start of his MLB career. According to Gleeman, he's the youngest pitcher to record 10+ Ks and 0 BB since Jose Berrios in 2018.

Yep,  A lot of people were worried about Falvey making trades in a rebuild scenario.  However, 6 years of Abel is likely to be a lot more valuable than 2 years of Duran and of course Tait looks like he could be a major contributor as well.  Taj Bradley is also almost certain to be a lot more valuable than Jax.  We shall see on the Varland trade.  I remain skeptical on that one but Rojas does have the stuff to be a font of the rotation SP. 

Our weakness has been drafting guys that stick as starters.  The current rotation was acquired through trade other than Ober.