Rosters have turned over, players have moved on and new players have reached the majors, but there\u2019s one storyline that seems to have followed the Twins in recent years. The sample size is still particularly small, but in the early going of this season, it doesn\u2019t seem to have gotten better.<\/p>\n
The Twins, yet again, are struggling to hit lefties.<\/p>\n
Entering Monday, the Twins were hitting .169\/.280\/.250 against left-handed pitchers with 38 strikeouts in 124 at-bats.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe knew coming in that we were a left-handed based team,\u201d manager Derek Shelton said. \u201cWe\u2019ve been in every game with the exception of one. \u2026 If we\u2019re going to look at a sample size of nine games at any point during the season, then we\u2019re going to overplay a lot of things.\u201d<\/p>\n
True.<\/p>\n
But to make matters worse, the Twins are scheduled to face two of the best southpaws this week with reigning two-time American League Cy Young Award winner Tarik Skubal lined up for Tuesday and Framber Valdez, whom the Twins made a run at in free agency, set for the next day.<\/p>\n
Through their first nine games, the Twins saw five left-handed starters \u2014 Trevor Rogers, Kris Bubic, Noah Cameron, Cole Ragans and Steven Matz. That\u2019s a lot and won\u2019t stop soon \u2014 all four rival American League Central rotations have at least one, and most have multiple.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think we\u2019re going to turn it around and find a way to get some hits off lefties,\u201d second baseman Luke Keaschall said. \u201cI don\u2019t think we\u2019re just never going to hit a lefty. It\u2019s baseball. It comes in waves.\u201d<\/p>\n
The problem is exacerbated by how left-handed heavy the Twins\u2019 current roster is. Of their 13 position players, the Twins have five left-handed bats, as well as three switch hitters, two of whom have been better hitters left-handed in their careers. That leaves at least one left-hander \u2014 typically Matt Wallner \u2014 in the lineup at all times.<\/p>\n
The Twins are 1-4 in games started by lefties thus far this season.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe fact we\u2019re a little left-handed heavy may be something we have to look at as we get farther down the road,\u201d Shelton said.<\/p>\n
Lineup shake-up<\/p>\n
Coming off a pair of games in which they collected a combined six hits, Shelton made a change atop the Twins\u2019 lineup for Monday\u2019s game against the Tigers.<\/p>\n
Kody Clemens, who has been leading off against right-handers, was out of the lineup with Byron Buxton moved up a spot to leadoff, where he primarily hit last season, followed by Trevor Larnach. Buxton served as the team\u2019s designated hitter for the second straight day after being hit on the arm by a pitch Saturday.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think any way we can try to figure out a way to get our offense going consistently is what we\u2019re going to try to do,\u201d Shelton said.<\/p>\n
Briefly<\/p>\n
The Twins faced Skubal twice last season. In one game, he went seven innings and gave up one hit, striking out 13. He also beat them the second time he faced them. \u2026 Taj Bradley, an early bright spot for the Twins, will pitch Tuesday. Bradley has given up one run in 10 1\/3 innings this season, and the Twins have won both of his starts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Rosters have turned over, players have moved on and new players have reached the majors, but there\u2019s one…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":667197,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2388],"tags":[5,19,822,60,3190,4,148],"class_list":{"0":"post-667196","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-minnesota-twins","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-major-league-baseball","10":"tag-minnesota","11":"tag-minnesota-twins","12":"tag-minnesotatwins","13":"tag-mlb","14":"tag-twins"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116360180234868890","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/667196","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=667196"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/667196\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/667197"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=667196"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=667196"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=667196"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}