MINNEAPOLIS -- Faced with a major early-season test against one of the elite teams in the American League, the surging Twins passed with flying colors.
Led by a homer and four RBIs from former Astros catcher Jason Castro and ace José Berríos' sixth quality start of the young season, the Twins’ bats pounded starter Brad Peacock for seven runs in 3 2/3 innings as they claimed three wins in the four-game series by cruising to an 8-2 rout at Target Field on Thursday afternoon.
"It means a lot,” second baseman Jonathan Schoop said. “If you want to be the best, you've got to beat the best … We're a really good team. We're the best. We believe we're the best team in the league, so we're going to go out there and have fun and compete."
The Twins have won 10 of their last 13 games and own the AL’s best record, at 19-10, as they enter a tough series in New York against the Yankees.
The series victory was made all the more impressive by the Twins’ ability to bounce back from an 11-0 loss on Tuesday with a pair of complete wins on Wednesday and Thursday. Minnesota has only lost consecutive games twice this season, and manager Rocco Baldelli and his club have focused on not letting any loss knock the team out of their rhythm this season.
“We try to keep a loose clubhouse and that kind of plays into it,” Castro said. “When things aren’t going well, we don’t get too down. We just try to bounce back the next day, and we’ve done a nice job of that.”
Here are three takeaways from a big series win at Target Field:
1. Twins' rotation shows high upside against powerful Astros
The eye-popping numbers of the Twins’ offense have garnered much of the attention early this season, but Minnesota’s series victory over the powerful Astros was just as much about dominant starting pitching as it was about continued production from the offense.
Jake Odorizzi set the tone in Monday’s series opener by besting Justin Verlander, one of the game’s unquestioned elites, in a 1-0 pitchers’ duel. Martin Pérez followed on Wednesday with eight shutout innings, the Twins’ longest start of the season, and Berrios neatly wrapped up the series on Thursday with seven strong innings.
“It's a great run, and we just played four against what might be one of the best offenses in baseball,” Baldelli said. “Just seeing our guys have that success, go out there and try to attack them and live in the zone, because you're really not going to beat a team like this pitching consistently out of the zone. You have to throw strikes. You have to attack them.”
The Twins entered the series against the Astros with four starts longer than six innings this season; they added three more of those in just these four games against Houston, which entered the series in MLB’s top three in batting average, on-base percentage and slugging percentage.
Minnesota’s rotation combined for six quality starts during the seven-game homestand against the Orioles and Astros, and, for the most part, aggressively attacked the strike zone, collecting a combined 39 strikeouts and allowing only four walks.
“That’s something we try to stress -- not necessarily forcing the issues, but in certain situations, it’s, ‘Here’s my good stuff, let’s see how it matches up,’” Castro said when asked about the squad's pitching strategy. “That’s huge. Definitely don’t want to pitch away from contact. We’ve done a nice job trusting ourselves and done a nice job executing what we’ve set forth prior to the game.”
2. This offense doesn’t need homers to get it done
The Twins shattered a club record with 50 homers before May 1 and entered Thursday second in the AL in percentage of runs via homers, having scored 52.4 percent of their runs this season with the long ball. But they showcased a different side of their offense in the final two games of the series, scoring only three of their 14 total runs in those games with homers.
Notably, Minnesota kept the ball in the yard as it scored six runs in their fourth-inning offensive spree against Peacock on Thursday, sending 10 hitters to the plate and tallying RBI hits from Schoop, Castro, Byron Buxton and Nelson Cruz, plus a sacrifice fly from Max Kepler.
The Twins made hard contact on pitches in the zone throughout the inning, which has been the primary focus of the team’s aggressive strategy at the plate this season. There were six batted balls that inning classified as hard-hit (greater than a 95 mph exit velocity), including all four run-scoring hits, Jorge Polanco's double and Eddie Rosario's liner into the right-center-field gap that Houston right fielder Josh Reddick snared with a diving grab.
"Of course, there's been some home runs hit this year already,” Baldelli said. “We know that and we've talked about it a lot. But I think with that we haven't seen some of the other things that our guys are capable of. The at-bats were quality, and I think they kind of added up, and they really came out in that inning and obviously were able to put a few runs on the board."
Moreover, the Twins continued to hit for extra bases, notching four doubles, two triples and a homer among their 10 hits on Thursday. Minnesota entered the game with extra-base hits on 48.1 percent of their hits this season, the highest mark in the Majors.
3. Gonzalez, Castro come through against old team
The two former Astros in the Twins’ lineup both got off to slow starts in 2019, but they both played important roles in Thursday’s series-clinching victory. Marwin Gonzalez reached base three times for the second time in four games and scored two runs. Castro homered and doubled and tied a career high with four RBIs.
Gonzalez started the season hitting .133/.212/.167 with four hits, nine strikeouts and three walks in his first 10 games, but said that he has felt better over the last two weeks and has been working to improve his plate discipline. Thursday marked his fourth multihit performance in his last 14 games.
“I wasn't being patient at the plate and swinging at balls out of the zone,” Gonzalez said. “That's a small chance to get a hit, with a ball out of the zone. That's one of the things … That's a combination to do bad if I'm not hitting the breaking balls and I'm not hitting the fastballs, either. I've got to make an adjustment and get better pitches to hit.”
Castro started the season in a 2-for-14 slump but has collected hits in five of his last seven starts, including all three of his homers. His 426-foot shot to left-center field on Thursday tied the game before the rest of Minnesota’s offense showed up in a big way one inning later.
“I’m not trying to do too much,” Castro said. “I’m trying to put good swings on it. I’ve done some other things to try to be more consistent with posture at the plate. It’s been feeling good.”
Thanks to Castro’s improving performance and continued production from Mitch Garver and Willians Astudillo, the Twins lead the Majors with nine homers and a slugging percentage of .695 from their catchers, second to only the Cubs in batting average (.315) and on-base percentage (.404).
“You don't see your catchers carrying you in games and we have that,” Baldelli said. “We've had our guys, all three of our catchers have led our offense on different nights.”