Gray K's 10, and shows why Twins wanted him

MINNEAPOLIS -- Sonny Gray’s team needed him on Tuesday. He knew it -- and when he shook manager Rocco Baldelli’s hand following a job well done, he told his skipper as much.

“It seemed to kind of fire him up and allow him to focus and come into the outing knowing that,” Baldelli said. “You can see that at times being a lot to handle, when you know your team really needs you for something like that. I think he eats it up.”

The finest outing of Gray’s burgeoning Twins career helped find rest for a depleted bullpen and carried Minnesota to a sixth straight win, as the veteran right-hander provided an ace-like seven scoreless innings with 10 strikeouts in a 2-0 triumph over the Tigers at Target Field, Minnesota’s fifth shutout victory of the season.

The Twins haven’t had much pitching of this caliber over the course of the last decade, much of which was spent in a rebuild ahead of the more sustained success they found in 2019. Consider this: Gray joins José Berríos (six times) and Ervin Santana (once) as the only Minnesota pitchers with an outing of at least seven scoreless innings and 10 or more strikeouts in the last 10 years.

The 32-year-old right-hander scattered four hits and one walk across his outing, and he only allowed multiple baserunners in the third inning, as he joined Joe Ryan as the only Twins pitchers to complete seven innings this season.

“Honestly, we kind of feed off of it when you see a guy like that wanting to go out there, wanting the ball back, wanting to keep going,” said Tyler Duffey, who threw a scoreless eighth inning. “For everybody, it's a good thing. I think for offenses, sometimes, it's a breath of fresh air, too, to know that they scored two, and that's enough.”

Gray says he’s finally back to feeling like himself, following a delayed buildup in Spring Training and a stint on the injured list with a right hamstring strain. The results have followed across his last two appearances, during which he has combined for 15 strikeouts, one walk and two runs allowed in 13 innings.

“It just feels like the field is your playground,” Gray said. “You just go out there and you just play. I talked to [pitching coach] Wes [Johnson] before, and I was like, ‘It’s just like you play with your kids in the backyard.’ It’s the same thing. You just go out there and you just play and you just have fun and you just let it go.”

That’s the guy the Twins acquired to stabilize an uncertain starting rotation coming out of the lockout, sending 2021 first-round pick Chase Petty to Cincinnati to acquire the veteran of nine big league seasons who had posted the three best strikeout rates of his career in his three seasons with the Reds.

That strikeout ability took center stage on Tuesday, and while Gray’s sinker had been his primary strikeout pitch entering the game, with 18 of his 25 strikeouts having come via that pitch, he spread things out. He struck out four with the sinker, three with the curveball, two with the slider and one with the four-seamer against the Tigers. That’s the product, he says, of the sinker not moving as well as it normally does early in the game, and having to adapt -- and that’s what a veteran like Gray can do.

That veteran presence has also played well in the clubhouse, where Gray's penchant for acquiring trinkets like “Richie the Rally Goat” and introducing minigames like the Twins’ $100-per-pitcher-popup reward system has helped to foster the easy, loose environment about which the entire clubhouse speaks highly.

“He's a great dude, and he's really competitive, and I think he can egg his teammates on in that way, in the competitive way he handles everything that he does,” Baldelli said. “Gets really intense and locked in and goes from a very friendly individual to a very serious individual when he's out there and pitching.”

That’s all icing on the cake to complement the pitching, though, and the continued emergence of Gray as a formidable starter gives the Twins’ rotation -- which had already been thriving in his absence -- another reliable frontline arm alongside rookie Joe Ryan, who has pitched to a 2.28 ERA in eight starts.

The Twins’ rotation now owns a 3.12 ERA, fifth best in the Majors. If Gray continues to be, well, himself, who knows what more there is to come?