The Twins were swept by the Baltimore Orioles on Wednesday, raising new questions about the team’s ability to hit and pitch.
The club showed little of either in 7-4 and 11-3 losses on Monday and Tuesday, then the pitching improved on Wednesday, but the Twins managed to score only two runs on five hits in the 4-2 walk-off loss.
Pablo Lopez, though, righted the ship quite a bit after Chris Paddack and Louie Varland got hammered in their starts. Lopez allowed only a run across six innings with no walks and seven strikeouts. And yet the Twins didn’t score until the seventh inning.
The Twins are off Thursday, then face the Tigers at home Friday. Joe Ryan gets the ball.
Extra innings…
-The Twins are 6-11, already 5.5 games out of first place.
-I am ready to move on from catcher Christian Vazquez. It doesn’t appear he is going to recapture his earlier form with the Boston Red Sox and, frankly speaking, he wasn’t that good last season and is off to an even worse start this season. He slashed .223/.280/.318 in 2023 and is hitting .133 now. Let’s give Jair Camargo an extended shot to do something for the Twins.
-Funny moment in the radio booth Tuesday night when play-by-play guy Kris Atteberry and color analyst and ex-Twin Paul Molitor began to discuss famous pitchers Molitor faced or would’ve liked to face.
Molitor finally acknowledged, if I’m remembering this correctly, that he was either talking to a minor league player or a relatively new major leaguer who asked Molitor what it was like to face Walter Johnson.
Johnson pitched for the Washington Senators from 1907 to 1927, while Molitor played the game from 1978 to 1998.
Molitor’s comment got a big laugh out of Atteberry, with Molitor adding he told the player that Johnson’s tenure was a “bit before my time.”
-The Twins have signed veteran infielder/outfielder Tony Kemp to a minor league contract.
More from MLB Trade Rumors:
“While Kemp’s 2023 season was one he’d like to forget — he hit just .209/.303/.304 in 419 plate appearances with Oakland — he was a solid contributor for the A’s from 2020-22. In that time, he hit .252/.341/.361 while playing both second base and left field.
“Kemp is a career .237/.324/.351 hitter who’s walked in 10.1% of his plate appearances and fanned at just a 13.3% clip. That latter number could hold particular appeal to a Twins club that has been allergic to contact both this year and last.
“Dating back to 2023, no team in baseball has a higher strikeout rate than Minnesota’s woeful 26.7% clip.”