{"id":679597,"date":"2026-04-20T04:53:17","date_gmt":"2026-04-20T04:53:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/679597\/"},"modified":"2026-04-20T04:53:17","modified_gmt":"2026-04-20T04:53:17","slug":"week-in-review-cracks-in-the-armor-twins","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/679597\/","title":{"rendered":"Week in Review: Cracks in the Armor – Twins"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tThe Weekly Nutshell:
Coming off a 6-1 week, the Minnesota Twins kicked this one off with their most impressive showing of the season, clobbering Red Sox ace Garrett Crochet<\/a> for 11 runs in a blowout win to keep the good times rolling. They followed on Tuesday by knocking around old friend Sonny Gray<\/a>, notching their eighth win in nine games.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n

\n\tThat’s where the charmed run finally came to a halt. The Twins dropped the finale against Boston and then got swept by Cincinnati with poor defense, unreliable relief pitching, and a lack of timely hitting all playing a role in the rapid cooldown. With four straight losses, Minnesota has dropped back to the .500 mark as they prepare to embark on a challenging East Coast road trip.\n<\/p>\n

\n\tWeekly Snapshot: Mon, 4\/13 through Sun, 4\/19
***
Record Last Week: 2-4 (Overall: 11-11)
Run Differential Last Week: +4 (Overall: +12)
Standing: 3rd Place in AL Central (1.5 GB)\u00a0\n<\/p>\n

\n\tLatest Game Results\n<\/p>\n

\n\tGame 17 | MIN 13, BOS 6: Red-Hot Twins Obliterate Crochet, Launch 4 Homers<\/a>\n<\/p>\n

\n\tGame 18 | MIN 6, BOS 0: Abel Spins a Gem and Buxton Goes Deep Twice<\/a>\n<\/p>\n

\n\tGame 19 | BOS 9, MIN 5: Woods Richardson Hit Hard as Sox Cool Off Twins<\/a>\n<\/p>\n

\t\tWoods Richardson: 5 IP, 10 H, 6 ER, 3 BB, 3 K<\/p>\n

\n\tGame 20 | CIN 2, MIN 1: Slumping Keaschall Strands Seven in One-Run Loss<\/a>\n<\/p>\n

\t\tKeaschall: 0-4, GIDP, 7 LOB<\/p>\n

\n\tGame 21 | CIN 5, MIN 4: Late Leads Slips Away as Bullpen and Defense Lapse<\/a>\n<\/p>\n

\t\tBradley: 6 IP, 2 ER, 2 BB, 5 K<\/p>\n

\n\tGame 22 | CIN 7, MIN 4: Bullpen, Defense Melt Down Again as Red Complete Sweep<\/a>\n<\/p>\n

\t\tMorris, Acton: 3 IP, 6 R, 3 ER<\/p>\n

\n\tIF YOU’D RATHER LISTEN TO THE WEEK IN REVIEW THAN READ IT, YOU CAN GET IT IN AUDIO FORM! FIND THE LATEST EPISODE ON OUR PODCAST PAGE<\/a>, AS WELL AS ON APPLE<\/a> AND SPOTIFY<\/a>. SUBSCRIBE TO OUR CHANNELS SO YOU DON’T MISS OUT!\n<\/p>\n

\n\tNEWS & NOTES\n<\/p>\n

\n\tWhen Royce Lewis<\/a> went on the injured list with a low-grade knee sprain last weekend, the hope was that his absence would be a short one. Sure enough, he initiated a rehab stint with the Saints on Saturday, just seven days after landing on the IL. Lewis homered in his first at-bat with St. Paul and then homered again on Sunday, looking plenty healthy while starting at DH and then third base. He is eligible to return as soon as as Tuesday.\n<\/p>\n

\n\t\u00a0\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\n\tThe big question in my mind: when Lewis is activated, who exits the 26-man roster to make room? The straightforward answer is Ryan Kreidler<\/a>, who was called up as Lewis’ replacement, but I’d prefer to see<\/a> Kreidler stay with James Outman<\/a> shipped out.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n

\n\tHIGHLIGHTS\n<\/p>\n

\n\tAfter shaking off a slow start, which was undoubtedly impacted by his WBC-related lack of regular spring playing time, Byron Buxton<\/a> is finally locked in at the plate. It’s a joy to behold. Buxton homered on Monday and then launched two more on Tuesday as part of an 8-for-21 week that raised his OPS by 171 points.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n

\n\t\u00a0\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\n\tBuxton also flew around the outfield and made some nice defensive plays. By the weekend, though, something did appear somewhat amiss for him. He started at DH on Saturday and twice in the game he was seemingly unable to run out grounders on close plays at full speed. Is he okay? Worth keeping an eye on. For what it’s worth he was back in center field on Sunday and did appear to be moving fine.\n<\/p>\n

\n\tAiding Buxton at the top of the order was Austin Martin<\/a>, who continues to provide exactly what the Twins need from him as a table-setter. Martin notched five hits, including two doubles \u2014 one of which tied the game in the ninth on Sunday \u2014 and his first home run of the season. He also drew four more walks, keeping his on-base percentage up near the .500 mark, and crossed the plate five times. Martin leads the team in fWAR through 22 games.\n<\/p>\n

\n\tKreidler’s arrival as a (short-term?) roster addition has provided a defensive boost, as expected, but also a surprising boost to the offense. The 28-year-old utilityman homered just twice in 89 games for the Tigers over the past four years before homering twice in his first week with the Twins. His 438-foot nuke to the upper-deck against Crochet on Monday proved to be the final straw for the left-hander. Kreidler also doubled and drew four walks on the week.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n

\n\t\u00a0\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\n\tIf you didn’t know anything about Kreidler and his history, you might start to think, hey, maybe we’ve got something here. Sadly, we’re witnessing a bit of an anomaly. Kreidler has been one of the worst hitters in the majors during his limited opportunities and it’s unlikely he’s suddenly figured it all out at the plate as opposed to running into a few mistake pitches with good swings. But Kreidler’s defensive value is such that he really doesn’t need to hit much at all to be a valuable roster piece. A week like this here and there would be more than enough.\n<\/p>\n

\n\tThe rotation excelled once again, and has been a strength that few others can match. Entering play on Sunday, the Twins ranked third in the majors in fWAR from starting pitchers (behind Detroit and Seattle). Taj Bradley<\/a> and Joe Ryan<\/a> ranked fifth and seventh among individual starters, respectively, and both shined again in their latest outings.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n

\n\tRyan held the Reds to two runs (one earned) in six innings on Friday, striking out six and walking none with three hits allowed. He’s allowed two or fewer earned runs in four of his five starts this year. On Saturday, Bradley also went six innings in a quality start, allowing two earned runs and handing a lead to the bullpen that disappeared in the late innings. Bradley’s ERA sits at 1.63 and his FIP at 1.97. He has yet to allow a home run through five starts.\n<\/p>\n

\n\tCommendably, Bailey Ober<\/a> is finding a way to get it done with sub-90 fastball velocity. He was nothing short of dominant on Sunday against the Reds, leaning heavily on the changeup and breaking ball to strike out 10 over 6 \u2153 innings with just one unearned run allowed. He’s keeping hitters off balance and keeping the ball in the yard. Can he keep it going? Who knows, but we’ll certainly take it for now.\n<\/p>\n

\n\tWhile Ryan, Bradley and Ober were good, Mick Abel<\/a> stole the show with his brilliant performance on Tuesday night, striking out 10 with no walks over seven shutout innings in a win over the Red Sox. It was Abel’s second start in a row holding the opposing lineup scoreless, and he’s lowered his ERA from 11.05 to 3.98 in the process. Beyond encouraging.\n<\/p>\n

\n\t\u00a0\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\n\tLOWLIGHTS\n<\/p>\n

\n\tFor a second consecutive week, the ugliest pitching moments came with Simeon Woods Richardson<\/a> and Anthony Banda<\/a> on the mound. It was an otherwise mostly successful home stand for the staff, but these two in particular are struggling here in April.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n

\n\tIn Wednesday’s series finale against Boston they combined to allow nine runs (eight earned) on 12 hits in six innings, negating any chance for a sweep over the Red Sox. Five days earlier, that same duo coughed up eight earned runs over 5 \u2153 in Toronto. The Twins are 0-4 in Woods Richardon’s starts this year and Banda has quickly found himself on the lower end of the bullpen hierarchy with an ERA now sitting at 10.38. It’s especially unfortunate because the Twins are lacking for relievers they can trust in key spots.\n<\/p>\n

\n\t\u00a0\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\n\tThe bullpen in general is getting a reality check. On Saturday three relievers combined to progressively blow a two-run lead in the late innings. On Sunday it happened much more rapidly, with Andrew Morris<\/a> surrendering three runs in the ninth before three more scored (unearned) against Garrett Acton<\/a> in the 10th. A sure win turned into a crushing loss with a rookie (pitching a second inning in his second career appearance) and recent waiver claim on the mound.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n

\n\tNeither of these guys should be pitching in such a situation. Obviously. Then again, it’s hard to have a whole lot more faith in the mediocre likes of Justin Topa<\/a>, Eric Orze<\/a> and Cole Sands<\/a>, who each gave up a run on Saturday as the 4-2 lead built up behind Bradley turned into a 5-4 defeat. We wondered last week<\/a> how long the patchwork bullpen could hold up and it turns out, not long at all.\n<\/p>\n

\n\tIn fairness, the pitchers were not helped at all by the defense, which has been atrocious. The past week we saw two different plays where multiple errors were committed, and in both cases the spiraling misplays were highly damaging.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n

\n\tLuke Keaschall<\/a> \u2014 who is also struggling mightily at the plate \u2014 bobbled and threw away a double-play ball with the bases loaded on Wednesday, letting in two and setting up a three-run blast. On Sunday, things unraveled in the 10th on a grounder that Tristan Gray<\/a> failed to stab and then Martin failed to cleanly pick up in the outfield.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n

\n\t\u00a0\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\n\tSloppy, sloppy baseball. No different from what most of us expected<\/a>, but painful to watch nonetheless, especially when these botched plays are proving more costly than anticipated with the offense and rotation both contributing strongly. Winnable games keep slipping away and early-season momentum is being dashed. I wish I could say I was confident that help was on the way.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n

\n\tTRENDING STORYLINE\n<\/p>\n

\n\tIs there anything the Twins can do about their bullpen and defense? Right now the team is so bad in both areas that it’s pretty much impossible to envision them as a consistent winner. Watching quality starts get wasted in every game against the Reds was brutal, and the type of thing that’s going to quickly sour fans who were attempting buy into this team’s surprising April energy.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n

\n\tDerek Shelton<\/a> needs better options in the bullpen. Asking Morris to throw the eighth and ninth with a two-run lead in his second MLB appearance, when he’s barely been tested as a reliever, was ridiculous. Claiming Acton off waivers and throwing him into extreme high-leverage situations right off the bat, ridiculous.\n<\/p>\n

\n\tUnfortunately, they are no easy fixes. The collection of relief arms at Triple-A is uninspiring. Minor-league signing John Brebbia<\/a> was pitching pretty well before giving up three home runs on Sunday. John Klein<\/a> has a 7.36 ERA for the Saints and Marco Raya<\/a> 9.64 as two of the only readily available 40-man roster options. Dan Altavilla<\/a>, who almost made the Opening Day roster, has a 9.31 ERA and 12-to-11 K\/BB ratio. I guess you could think about giving a shot to 35-year-old Matt Bowman<\/a>, owner of a 1.54 ERA through seven appearances, but that’s not a needle-mover.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n

\n\tThere’s just little hope on the horizon for this relief corps, unless they try something drastic like converting Connor Prielipp<\/a> or Zebby Matthews<\/a> at the expense of their starting depth.\n<\/p>\n

\n\tUPDATE: Well how about that. They’re calling up Kendry Rojas<\/a>, fresh off the injured list, with Prielipp reportedly joining on the taxi squad for the road trip. More to come.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n

\n\t\u00a0\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\n\tThe dreadful Twins defense feels just as hopeless. They have sub-par fielders in most of the starting positions, including a couple who rank among the league’s worst. Matt Wallner<\/a> has been the least valuable defender in baseball, per Defensive Runs Saved, and Brooks Lee<\/a> has no business playing shortstop regularly in the big leagues with 6th percentile range and 19th percentile arm strength. Speaking of dismal arm strength, Keaschall is skipping routine throws to first from 70 feet away at second.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n

\n\t\u00a0\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\n\tKeeping Kreidler on the roster would be helpful, but only so much. No one else the Twins can call upon or swap in soon is going to be any kind of savior with the glove. This a fundamentally bad defensive team and we’re probably going to have to live with it. We’ll see how they intend to address this crippling weakness over time. There is going to be a lot of pressure on prospects like Emmanuel Rodriguez<\/a> and Kaelen Culpepper<\/a> to come up and be impact defenders in a hurry.\n<\/p>\n

\n\tLOOKING AHEAD\n<\/p>\n

\n\tThe suddenly slumping Twins are off to New York to face a Mets team with the second-highest payroll and worst record in baseball. Can Minnesota get the vibes back on track by capitalizing on the rotten ones in Queens, or will this prove to be the matchup that gets the Mets right?\u00a0\n<\/p>\n

\n\tFrom there it’s off to Tampa for three games against the Rays, starting with a showdown between Bradley and the team that is probably second-guessing their decision to trade him at the moment.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n

\n\tTUESDAY, APRIL 21: TWINS @ METS \u2014 RHP Mick Abel v. RHP Nolan McLean<\/a>
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 22: TWINS @ METS \u2014 RHP Simeon Woods Richardson v. RHP Clay Holmes<\/a>
THURSDAY, APRIL 23: TWINS @ METS \u2014 RHP Joe Ryan v. RHP Kodai Senga<\/a>
FRIDAY, APRIL 24: TWINS @ RAYS \u2014 RHP Taj Bradley v. RHP Drew Rasmussen<\/a>
SATURDAY, APRIL 25: TWINS @ RAYS \u2014 RHP Bailey Ober v. LHP Shane McClanahan<\/a>
SUNDAY, APRIL 26: TWINS @ RAYS \u2014 RHP Mick Abel v. TBD<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Weekly Nutshell:Coming off a 6-1 week, the Minnesota Twins kicked this one off with their most impressive…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":679598,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2388],"tags":[5,2223,4571,822,60,3190,4,408,13629,148],"class_list":{"0":"post-679597","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-minnesota-twins","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-byron-buxton","10":"tag-james-outman","11":"tag-minnesota","12":"tag-minnesota-twins","13":"tag-minnesotatwins","14":"tag-mlb","15":"tag-royce-lewis","16":"tag-ryan-kreidler","17":"tag-twins"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116435252550776926","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/679597","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=679597"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/679597\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/679598"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=679597"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=679597"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=679597"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}