Make It Official! Twins 6, White Sox 3: Power Bats Lead Twins to 4-Game Sox Sweep!

Box Score
SP: Simeon Woods Richardson - 5 IP, 7 H, 2 ER, 1 BB, 6 K (94 pitches, 66 strikes (70.2%), 11 whiffs)
Home Runs: Edouard Julien 2 (7), Ryan Jeffers (4), Carlos Santana (1), Jose Miranda (2). 
Top 3 WPA: Edouard Julien (0.206), Ryan Jeffers (0.133), Caleb Thielbar (0.095)

Win Probability Chart (via FanGraphs) 

Simeon Woods Richardson Stuff 
Woods Richardson knew earlier in the week that he would be taking the rotation spot of Louie Varland. The Twins decided to have him start on Thursday afternoon against the White Sox to give Bailey Ober an extra day before he makes a start on Friday. 

This outing was not as good as his first outing of the season. That would be a pretty lofty standard to expect. On this day, he was hurt by some long at-bats and some weak-contact hits. He needed 25 or more pitches in both the second and fourth innings. That really pushed his pitch count up. He was at 80 pitches through four innings. He was asked to start the fifth inning and was able to complete it with a 1-2-3 inning.  

“SWR” is fun to watch on the mound because he has four pitches, and he uses all of them. He had a career-high six strikeouts, three of those came on his slider. His fastball averaged just over 93 mph throughout his game and topped out at 94.7 mph, continuing the trend we have seen early this season. His changeup was an effective pitch, sitting nearly 10 mph slower than his fastball. He also threw several slow curve balls. Usually it was as a get-me-over strike, but as you can see here, he got a strikeout on it as well. 

Exit Velocity = Hit the Ball Hard 
It’s always funny to me when I hear people say something like, “All hitters care about is exit velocity.” We’ve all heard it. Well, yeah, isn’t that what we’re taught from the earliest days of baseball. Remember in Little League, the coach would say, “Hit the ball hard somewhere.” In high school, the coaches will say, “Get a good pitch and hit it hard.” Regardless of the league, a batter wants to get a good pitch, square it up, and hit it really hard. In general, the harder you hit a ball, the better the odds of getting a hit and being productive. 

Exit Velocity is simply the measure of how hard a ball is hit. So yes, we should want our hitters to have the goal of hitting the ball hard. Likewise, we want our pitchers to avoid hard contact. 

In the first inning on Thursday, after a couple of 90 mph flyouts, Trevor Larnach recorded the Twins first hit, on a 67.1 mph soft liner beyond the shortstop’s reach. Sox starter Mike Soroka didn’t allow another Twins hit until the bottom of the fifth inning when Jose Miranda hit a soft liner at 82.2 mph over the shortstop’s head. 

Arguably the biggest play of the game happened in the first inning. With runners at the corners and two outs, Max Kepler lined out on a diving play by Sox second baseman Nicky Lopez to end the inning. The liner left Kepler’s bat at 115.4 mph. Also in between the two soft singles, Alex Kirilloff grounded out on a ball he hit 101.2 mph. Willi Castro flew out at 99.9 mph. Larnach crushed a ball, 106.8 mph, that Kevin Pillar tracked down in center. 

“All of a sudden, the bats woke up.” 
As noted above, the Twins were starting to make more and more hard contact against Soroka. Cole Sands pitched a scoreless top of the sixth inning, and then, as Justin Morneau said, “All of a sudden, the bats woke up.” 

Edouard Julien led off the bottom of the sixth inning by taking fellow Canadian Soroka deep over the scoreboard in right-center. 105 mph on the homer. As the Twins dugout was still congratulating Julien, Ryan Jeffers went down below the zone and crushed a slow curveball 112 mph into the bleachers in left field.  

The White Sox brought in lefty Tanner Banks. Rocco Baldelli stuck with his lefties. Larnach singled up the middle at 75.3 mph. Next, Max Kepler tried to check his swing but made contact. He couldn’t have rolled the ball down the third base line any more perfectly. A 42.2 mph ‘excuse-me’ single. Willi Castro came to the plate and lined a single to left at 92 mph to score Larnach with the go-ahead run.  

Julien Finds the Jet Stream 
In the bottom of the seventh inning, Julien came to the plate and on a fastball up in the zone, he got under the ball and launched a ball high into the sky. He hit the ball 102.7 mph at a 40-degree angle. It must have hit the right jet stream and kept going and going and going. It landed just beyond the fence, 378 feet from home plate.  

It is the second time already this season that Julien has had a multi-homer game. His seven home runs move him past Astros star Jose Altuve for most home runs by a second baseman so far this season. 

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Back-to-Back Again!
With two outs in the bottom of the eighth, Carlos Santana came to the plate. He got a slider that really didn’t slide, it just spun. Santana took a hack and launched it 105 mph over the wall in right-center for his first home run of the season. I’m sure it was a huge relief as he rounded the bases. 

Jose Miranda followed by hitting a fly ball at 98 mph just beyond the fence in left-center. The Expected Batting Average on the Miranda homer was just .220 despite being a home run in 23 out of 30 ballparks. It was a little different than Santana’s which would have been a homer in all 30 MLB ballparks (yet somehow only had an expected batting average of .880). 

Bonus Stuff
- The Twins have now won 11 of the last 12 games they've played against the White Sox. It is the first time that they have completed a four-game series against the Sox since late September 2018. 
- Cole Sands pitched a scoreless sixth inning. It was his seventh consecutive appearance without allowing a run. Over that stretch, he has 14 strikeouts in 9 2/3 innings. 
- Sands was credited with the Win. It is his first career MLB Win. 
- Griffin Jax earned his career-high fourth Save of the season. 
- Despite the first two batters getting on in the eighth inning, Brock Stewart pitched an 11th straight scoreless appearance to start the season. The last run he gave up in the big leagues was on May 29th at Houston. 
- In his last 21 games at Target Field, Trevor Larnach is 21-for-61 (.344) with seven doubles, a triple and three home runs.  
- Jose Miranda went 2-for-4 in this game. He had started the season 0-for-16 at Target Field. 
- The White Sox lost their seventh straight game, their new seasons long streak. They had lost three games in Philadelphia before coming to Minnesota. 
- The White Sox have lost nine straight games in Minnesota. That is their longest such streak since the Twins have been in Minnesota. 
- The White Sox lead MLB with 38 home runs allowed. 

What’s Next? 
The Twins will head west for a three-game weekend series against the Angels. Then they will spend Monday through Wednesday in Chicago taking on the White Sox before their next scheduled off day, next Thursday. Here are the scheduled starters for the weekend in Anaheim. 

Fri 8:38 pm: RHP Bailey Ober (1-1, 4.91 ERA) vs LHP Patrick Sandoval (1-3, 6.75 ERA)
Sat 8:38 pm: RHP Chris Paddack (1-1, 5.57 ERA) vs RHP Jose Soriano (0-3, 3.43 ERA)
Sun 3:07 pm CT: RHP Pablo Lopez (1-2, 4.39 ERA) vs LHP Reid Detmers (3-1, 2.12 ERA)

The Twins will then play three games in Chicago against the White Sox

Postgame Interviews