Pineda 'efficient' for solid Twins rotation

MINNEAPOLIS -- Byron Buxton and Nelson Cruz have been producing the fireworks at the plate through the first week-plus of the season, but the bedrock of the Twins’ success has been, again, the performance of their pitching staff, as was quietly the case throughout much of last season.

That won’t always lead to wins, as Minnesota found out again when it couldn’t take advantage of Michael Pineda's six strong frames of two-run ball in a 4-3 loss to the Mariners in 10 innings on Saturday afternoon at Target Field. But another way of looking at it is that good starting pitching will keep the Twins competitive in these games, as evidenced by the fact that all three of the club’s losses this season have come in extra innings.

“We want to work hard every day and prepare for every start, and try to give the opportunity to my team to win the game,” Pineda said. “When I have a game like that, I feel good because I'm giving the opportunity to my team to be winning, and that's what I want."

Though the Twins matched Seattle with two runs in the third, coming on Nelson Cruz’s fourth homer of the season, and mounted a game-tying rally without a hit in the eighth, Mitch Haniger’s sacrifice fly in the top of the 10th off Taylor Rogers produced the final edge and dropped Minnesota to 0-3 beyond nine innings this season.

Still, the Twins’ new-look starting rotation has hummed along like a well-oiled machine through eight games after exchanging Jake Odorizzi and Rich Hill for Matt Shoemaker and J.A. Happ during the offseason.

Through eight games, Minnesota starters have combined to allow nine earned runs in 43 innings -- a collective 1.88 ERA. No starter has allowed more than two runs in an outing, and both Shoemaker (six innings, one run) and Happ (four innings, one run) were effective in their debuts.

“They win games for us,” manager Rocco Baldelli said. “They keep us in games, give us an opportunity to win games, but on top of all of that, there’s just a stability factor that I think braces our whole group over the course of a long season.”

Consistency is key there, and few have been better in that regard than Pineda, who held the Mariners to a pair of solo homers across his 75-pitch outing. “Big Mike” has now yielded three or fewer earned runs in each of his last 10 starts, and in 25 of his last 27 starts overall in a stretch dating to May 5, 2019.

Pineda isn’t flashy about it -- his fastball averaged under 90 mph in the cold weather on Saturday and he only induced five whiffs with his 75 pitches -- but his relentless attacking of the strike zone has made for unparalleled consistency out of the No. 3 slot in a rotation that has gone a long way in lengthening the effectiveness of the starters behind Kenta Maeda and José Berríos.

“Another very good and almost expected start from Mike,” Baldelli said. “That’s the way he goes out there and continues to throw the ball for us. He’s efficient. He continually makes good pitches.”

There’s plenty of upside in the top of this rotation, which boasts a 2020 American League Cy Young Award runner-up in Maeda alongside Berríos, who flashed his high-end ability with six hitless innings and 12 strikeouts in his season debut against the Brewers a week ago. But there’s also something to be said for the ability for the veterans in the rotation to keep the Twins in the game without their best stuff.

That’s been the case in each of Maeda’s starts. Following his Opening Day outing, Maeda remarked that he briefly lost his mechanics and wasn’t executing his slider during the third frame of a 4 1/3-innings start. In his last appearance, he needed a pair of runners thrown out at home to preserve his lead.

But when all of the guys behind him are pitching as well as they are, that increases the margin for error -- and ensures the Twins are rarely out of games. Without that, there wouldn’t have been extra innings in these losses in the first place.

“When you have guys that continually go out there and give you very not just competitive efforts, but winning type efforts over and over again, it gives you just a general confidence that, I think, permeates throughout our entire group,” Baldelli said.