Three Keys for the Twins to Slay the Astros

April 27, 1980 at the Forum in Montreal. The four-time defending Stanley Cup champions, with their elite goalie retired and their stars aging, face Game 7 in the quarterfinals against some upstarts in green and gold trying to overcome years of mediocrity and inferiority.

It's happened before.

Good hitting and good pitching (especially concerning BBs) are needed for sure, but the defense simply cannot give up extra outs. Polanco needs to be moved to 2nd, DHed or used as a pinch-hitter. He just doesn't look comfortable at 3rd and it eventually will cost the Twins (I'm afraid).

Polanco at 2nd, Lewis at 3rd and Julian dhing.  Can a hamstring heal in two days?

Agree totally with you Adam. We have to max our defense so that means moving Polanco back to 2B, having hopefully Lewis at 3B if not, Farmer or Castro, and keeping Julien at DH or 1B when he plays. We need the rest of the line-up to wake up besides Lewis, Correa & Kepler

The Twins pitching has been pretty consistent all year. It might slip in a game or two but fans of the team can count on the pitching in my opinion.

The Twins defense has been all over the map but fairly decent at making the outs. A few Twins look less than stellar in the field yet I'm comfortable with those awkward plays that result in an out.

The primary pressure in this series will be on the Twins offense. They will need to lay off of pitches out of the zone and punish mistakes. The Twins have bats who can accomplish this and Houston pitchers will make enough mistakes to provide opportunities for Minnesota to score runs. This is actually the strength of the Astros offense right now, which will face a slew of Twins pitchers capable of throwing strikes on the edges of the strike zone.

This series is a great matchup in my opinion and whomever manages to execute their plan should prevail in the games. National writers see the Astros as a far superior team while giving only a nod to the Twins pitchers and Correa. It is an opportunity for a number of unheralded Twins players to give the wider audience a chance to remember their names.

10 hours ago, Karbo said:

I feel it will come down to if the Twins bats can come alive. I agree that 2.5 runs per game probably isn't going to be enough. That's an awful lot of pressure on the pitching staff to hold the Astros hitters to 2 runs per game

Yup. Even if they contain Alvarez and Altuve, they’re going to need some runs this series!

13 minutes ago, Doctor Gast said:

Agree totally with you Adam. We have to max our defense so that means moving Polanco back to 2B, having hopefully Lewis at 3B if not, Farmer or Castro, and keeping Julien at DH or 1B when he plays. We need the rest of the line-up to wake up besides Lewis, Correa & Kepler

I get this point, but I think it’s critical to keep Lewis, Polanco, and Julien in the lineup against righties. The Astros are going to score some runs and we need to play good defense to limit it, but it’s just as important to score runs against them. The silver lining is that against Valdez Julien will sit and Farmer can play third.

Have to be better offensively, I'd like us to stop flipping Kiriloff and Wallner so quickly when there's a pitching change. Each of the got 1 AB on Wednesday before being replaced; can't get comfortable when you don't get AB's

The 3 keys to winning  ...

Pitching ,  defense and hitting ...

swing at those close pitches with 2 strikes , put the ball in play  , hopefully  stay out of the double play and steal some bases  ...

Go Twins 

Looks like everybody is on the same page...the pitching needs to remain good, and we obviously need to hit better and score a lot more runs than the Toronto series. If those things happen, we'll give the Stros all they can handle. I'd add one more thing, and it's just my 2 cents...I don't want to see Rocco over manage us out of any game. No blowing through our bench in the 2nd or 3rd inning. Save the pinch hitting and substitutions for later in the games. 

3 hours ago, Coach Wheels said:

Have to be better offensively, I'd like us to stop flipping Kiriloff and Wallner so quickly when there's a pitching change. Each of the got 1 AB on Wednesday before being replaced; can't get comfortable when you don't get AB's

The Astros don’t really have any lefty’s in their bullpen. Their righties can get lefties out, but they won’t force Rocco to consider pinch hitting. It should give Julien, Wallner, and Kirilloff the chance to really get going. 

As long as we give up less runs and score more runs  in three of the same games we should come out on top.  The keys to doing this are pitching defense and hitting.  We got this.