Series win vs. WS champs shows Twins are trending up

MINNEAPOLIS -- The Twins faced the Astros at Target Field early last season, too -- and that time, things went decisively awry. Minnesota was outscored 21-3 in that May series, falling in such a lopsided sweep that several players described the experience as an eye-opener and a wake-up call.

A much less experienced group of Astros with some key injuries came to town this year, but the Twins looked to match up against the defending World Series champions on much more equal footing as they claimed a series victory despite the bats falling quiet in a 5-1 loss in Sunday’s finale at Target Field.

“I strongly like what I saw this series from our team,” manager Rocco Baldelli said. “I consider that a good series win for us. I’m not satisfied with the series, but I think overall, our guys did a nice job in the series, competed very well against a good pitching staff and a good lineup. If you go out there and play like that against teams like that, those are very positive signs.”

Though Minnesota was held to one run on two hits by rookie right-hander Hunter Brown on Sunday, it outhit the Astros, 23-12, across the first two games of the series, with strong at-bats against even Houston’s leverage relievers, while Sonny Gray and Joe Ryan outpitched a pair of playoff-tested starting pitchers in José Urquidy and Luis Garcia.

It’s one thing for Minnesota to compete within the limited ecosystem of the American League Central, which has long stood as one of the weaker divisions in baseball. But for a team with deeper playoff aspirations like these Twins, they’ll need to match up much more effectively against the elites of the sport -- and to put it bluntly, they were quite poor at that last season.

Last year, Minnesota was 0-6 against these Astros and 2-5 against the Yankees, the two teams that met in the AL Championship Series. The Twins were also 0-4 against the Dodgers, making for a combined 2-15 record against three of the most playoff-tested and proven winners around the league.

“We know we're a really good team,” catcher Ryan Jeffers said. “We would have loved to get the sweep today. But looking at how we played these past three days, we pitched the ball well, we hit the ball well outside of today. That's how baseball works. That's how big playoff series work.”

If there’s anything to be learned from these first three series of the regular season, it’s that the pitching staff could pave the way for far more success than the Twins have seen at any point under the leadership of Baldelli and president of baseball operations Derek Falvey, with a start about as good as they could have hoped after stockpiling veteran depth this offseason.

Entering Saturday’s game, Twins starting pitchers had allowed no more than one run in each of the first seven starts of the season, marking the second such single-season streak in club history. Even the “poor” starts to this point have hardly been that: Ryan and Tyler Mahle each allowed four runs in the final two games of this series, but each also limited the damage and looked effective for large stretches in completing six innings -- which was not a given last season.

Through nine starts, each of Minnesota's starting pitchers has completed at least five innings -- something accomplished only four other times in club history, and most recently in 2005, when Johan Santana and Brad Radke led the Twins' rotation.

“I feel like we feed off one another, outing to outing,” Mahle said. “I think Kenta [Maeda] will go out and put a good start in there tomorrow, and we’ll get rolling again.”

There aren’t any sweeping conclusions to be made from nine games’ worth of regular-season data, but there was at least some question as to whether the Twins could sustain their productivity on both sides of the ball when moving beyond the Royals and Marlins -- and through one significant test, they’re feeling good about what they see.

“It’s still early, but those guys go out there to try to win as well, so [for there] to be a pitching staff like they’ve got and the batters, our pitching staff has been unbelievable,” Byron Buxton said. “Just how off-balance teams have been against our pitching staff just shows how much better we are. Not just on the hitting side, but on the pitching as well.”