Pineda ends first half on a season-high note

MINNEAPOLIS -- It was tough for the Twins to know at the start of the season what they would get from Michael Pineda after two surgeries and a year and a half away from Major League action.

If the big right-hander can keep up his performance from the past month, that will be more than good enough for this team.

Pineda surged to a strong finish to his first half with another gem against the Rangers on Saturday, allowing only a solo homer over six innings while striking out a season-high nine batters in the Twins’ 7-4 victory at Target Field.

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“There’s no way to ever know what a guy is going to do, but he has a track record of being a highly successful Major League pitcher that can make adjustments and figure things out,” manager Rocco Baldelli said. “He missed a significant amount of time, but he’s been able to come back and find himself and … do it in different ways. He’s not the exact same pitcher that he was five years ago -- he’s a different pitcher. But he’s an equally good pitcher.”

How exactly has Pineda changed? For one, he has focused more in the last two to three years on developing and using his changeup as a weapon alongside his fastball and slider. He only got strikes with six of his 19 changeups on Saturday, but he felt good about his command and felt that the pitch helped his slider be more effective.

“Everybody knows that I'm a slider guy,” Pineda said. “I throw a lot of sliders in games. But right now, I try to focus and use more of my changeup. The changeup is a hard pitch for the hitter because it's a pitch that's similar to the fastball. That's why I'm focusing on the changeup right now. But I love my slider."

As he has done in several of his starts this season, Pineda struggled through one frame but was otherwise dominant -- and this time, he limited the damage in that third inning, when he loaded the bases on two singles and a walk but struck out All-Star outfielder Joey Gallo to emerge unscathed.

Otherwise, he scattered only three other hits in his 96-pitch start. Another promising development: Pineda was able to get his fastball up to 97 mph. He recorded nine whiffs with that heater, and his nine strikeouts were his most in a start since April 10, 2017.

Pineda has now allowed only one earned run in four of his past five starts, and has yielded more than three earned runs only once in his past 11 appearances. He has a 3.21 ERA, 34 strikeouts and five walks since his June 7 reinstatement from the 10-day injured list -- and the Twins have won five of his six starts in that span.

“Big Mike got good results early on [in the season] when he executed, and when he did what he set out to do,” Baldelli said. “I think he’s doing that at even greater rate right now. He’s just going out there and executing well really for just long periods of time. For innings and innings at a time, he’s doing what he wants to do.”

Pineda also had eight strikeouts and only one walk in his last start, against the White Sox, and has seemingly turned around his season after posting a 6.21 ERA through his first six starts.

Moving into the second half, Pineda will continue to provide value even if he isn’t the lights-out pitcher he has been recently, as the potent Twins offense had averaged 5.19 runs of support in his starts entering Saturday.

“Right now, the last couple of games, I'm pitching really good games and helping my team win the games, so I'm happy for that,” Pineda said. “That's what we want. We want that every five days, when I take the mound, I just give the opportunity for the team to win."

Rogers slams the door

Despite his 1.82 ERA in 33 appearances and 51-to-7 strikeout-to-walk ratio this season, Taylor Rogers wasn’t recognized with his first career selection to the All-Star Game.

That’s all the better for the Twins, who will be able to rest their left-handed bullpen ace after he was used for a seven-out save in Saturday’s game when the Rangers had cut the Minnesota lead down to one run. Rogers struck out five batters in 2 1/3 perfect innings and picked up his 12th save of the season.

“Obviously, with the All-Star break coming up, being able to up-and-down him a couple of times would be OK,” Baldelli said. “He didn’t throw, I don’t think, a super high number of pitches. It was a good, efficient effort by him to go out there and go that length, and not throw that many pitches while also getting the results that he got. It was going to take a special effort from him to get it done, and he was able to do it.”

“Rocco said, ‘It’s your game if you want it,’” Rogers said. “I said, ‘Yeah.’ That’s about it.”

Pitching plans for Sunday set

Instead of throwing his standard bullpen session of 30-35 pitches between starts on Saturday, Kyle Gibson will instead make an abbreviated start in Sunday’s game on three days’ rest, with Adalberto Mejía also available to provide length out of the bullpen and Devin Smeltzer set to be recalled from Triple-A Rochester to contribute innings as well.

Kohl Stewart will be optioned back down to Rochester in a corresponding move.

Gibson had also appeared in a game in place of a bullpen session on June 27, when he pitched an inning of relief in the Twins’ 5-2, 18-inning loss to Tampa Bay at Target Field. Though he had not yet been informed of his start following Saturday’s game, Gibson had been around “90 to 95 percent” sure that he would be asked to pitch in Sunday’s contest.