Minnesota Twins series preview: Trying to gain ground

The post-break presumed continued swoon for the Royals will commence with a three-game series against the Minnesota Twins. Winners of nine of their last 11, the Twins were red-hot heading into the break, thanks in part to getting to face the Royals for three of those games. They’ll get the luxury of facing the Royals again, with the prospect of a sweep bringing them to the verge of .500 baseball.

Game times and pitching matchups as follows:

• Friday, July 20 — 7:15 PM CDT — Kyle Gibson versus Danny Duffy (L)
• Saturday, July 21 — 6:15 PM CDT — Lance Lynn versus Jakob Junis
• Sunday, July 22 — 1:15 PM CDT — Jake Odorizzi versus Brad Keller

All stats courtesy of FanGraphs and Baseball Reference

Kyle Gibson is in the midst of the best season of his career. His 14.1 K-BB% is 4.4% better than any mark he’s posted in his career, finally beginning to live up to the lofty expectations he built up after a sterling minor-league career marked with multiple top-100-prospect list appearances in multiple seasons, peaking at 34 on BA’s 2011 list.

Signed to a one-year deal in the off-season, Lance Lynn’s BB% has spiked to an unsightly 13.1%. This has helped diminish the returns on a resurgent K-rate back to pre-TJS levels. Whether it’s just aging or slow recovery from injury, Lynn is on pace for his worst full season yet.

For former Royals farmhand, the points about Lance Lynn hold true here too. Both his K- and BB-rates have spiked this year. Odorizzi has enjoyed a little more success than Lynn thanks to a high but not unconscionable walk rate.

As a unit, the Twins’ position players are slashing .244/.316/.406 with a .312 wOBA and 95 wRC+. That wRC+ is tied for the 14th-best mark amongst teams. Fielding the sixth-worst defense (per FanGraphs’ defensive component of WAR) is dragging down the offensive efforts of the Twins. Most of these Twins are more than familiar, but Willians Astudillo is a delightful oddity. The short and squat third-string catcher/corner infielder/left fielder plays wherever he’ll let them. While his stature is an outlier in sport, his batting profile is pretty wild. He posted a 3.2 K% in the minors and a 3.4 BB% in the minors. The latter is positively Royalsian, but the former mark is pretty noteworthy. Clearly contact is his game.