Jax's stuff 'ticking up' despite 2 HRs to Crew

August 29th, 2021
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      MINNEAPOLIS -- Major League Baseball is a results-oriented industry, but given the Twins have needed to replace all five members of their Opening Day starting rotation, results will carry less of a priority than continued development through the end of the season.

      That’s the backdrop to consider when evaluating rookie ’s second straight clunker of a start, with this one featuring six earned runs allowed on six hits -- all extra-base knocks -- in five innings. The right-hander has been tweaking and learning on the fly against some of the best hitters on the planet, and sometimes, that will result in outings that lead to losses like Minnesota’s 6-2 defeat to Milwaukee in Sunday’s series finale at Target Field.

      “His stuff has been ticking up in a good way, but along with that has been a little bit of command issues,” manager Rocco Baldelli said. “It looked like some of those sliders were popping out and not competitive pitches. He's a guy that actually does have pretty good feel for what he's doing, and his walk rates are above where they should be. It gives us something to spend some time on and think about.”

      Miguel Sanó continued his productive second half by launching a two-run homer to the second deck in left field and singling against a Brewers pitching staff helmed by left-hander Aaron Ashby. Sanó has reached safely in 26 of his last 28 games, with a .941 OPS in that stretch entering Sunday.

      But the Twins’ offense couldn’t dig out of an early hole forged by Jax, who averaged 93.6 mph with his four-seam fastball for the second straight start -- well above his season average of 92.4 mph -- but couldn’t find any control of his slider, which led to six Milwaukee runs by the fourth inning. Luis Urías hit a hanging slider for a solo shot in the second before Rowdy Tellez crushed a center-cut changeup for a three-run blast in the third. Two more Crew runs crossed the plate in the fourth as Jax gritted out a 100-pitch outing.

      “​Some of these guys are getting baptism by fire, as you know,” pitching coach Wes Johnson said last week, following Jax’s start in Boston. “You go back in history and you look at guys who make a little bit of a velocity jump, they all lose a little bit of touch there for an outing or two until they get it back. So it's something we're not concerned about.”

      As Baldelli noted, the Twins do feel that Jax’s stuff has continued to improve. The 26-year-old couldn’t point to any specific reason why his velocity spiked so suddenly before his last outing -- his 10 hardest pitches of the season to that point all came against the Red Sox on Tuesday -- but he did indicate that he approached Johnson about using his core velocity belt last Spring Training and has been working on his body ever since.

      “I’ve been in his ear about that for the past two-ish years,” Jax said. “So now, it’s getting back into those mechanical drills and it’s helping my body feel the best it has in a long time.”

      Earlier in the year, when he was sent down to Triple-A after his initial stint with the Twins, Jax noted that he had worked to reinforce what he did this spring, improving the carry on his fastball with a tweak to his delivery -- and he used that adjustment to greater success immediately following the Trade Deadline, when he gained a consistent place in the starting rotation.

      While Jax was a four-pitch guy in the Minors -- fastball, slider, curveball, changeup -- he has emphasized his heater and slider to a greater extent after reshaping the latter into what he now calls his “best pitch.” He just didn’t have feel for that pitch against the Brewers and needed to rely on his changeup more, which got four swings and misses.

      With all that in mind, there are clearly a lot of moving pieces that Jax and the Twins have navigated in his transition to the big leagues -- and the lineups of the Red Sox and Brewers aren’t exactly forgiving opponents.

      “Jax's stuff [is] ticking up -- the slider, at times, when he let's it go, it can be a good pitch,” Baldelli said. “We've seen it get good results. It's putting it all together.

      “There's a lot going on with these guys right now. They're being exposed to this, and [we're] letting them go out there and swim for themselves, but we're going to run into bumps and we're going to see some of that stuff. There have been positives with Griff's outings and there have been negatives, and we're going to learn from the latter."

      Fortunately for Jax, while his last two outings indicate that he hasn’t yet found that consistency, there’s still plenty of time to keep plugging away in September.

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      Do-Hyoung Park covers the Twins for MLB.com.