The Twins in this postseason won a playoff game, then a playoff series, then were at least competitive against a seasoned Houston team that they might want to emulate going forward.
The Twins need to fix their hitting approach, and the ALCS has good lessons for doing it
We can agree that strikeouts aren't necessarily evil, but we should also state this: It is possible to draw walks and hit the ball over the fence without piling up excess whiffs.
October 19, 2023 at 5:18PM
The Twins also showed us what their flaws are, both in roster and approach. We are getting a further lesson in that as the playoffs have continued without them, particularly in the American League Championship Series and specifically in Houston's 8-5 win over Texas on Wednesday that narrowed the Rangers' series lead to 2-1.
Both teams offered further evidence that hitting the ball hard and over the fence is a good idea, particularly in the postseason, but that such a philosophy doesn't have to come at the expense of a sound approach at the plate — particularly with two strikes.
It's the second part of that equation that the Twins seemed to struggle with in the playoffs, and perhaps organizationally as a whole this year.
Houston and Texas combined for 13 runs, including three home runs, while striking out just 10 times combined on Wednesday.
The Twins in six playoff games this year scored 18 runs and struck out 73 times, living (and often dying) by the feast-or-famine approach that I talked about on Thursday's Daily Delivery podcast.
This much is true: The Twins set a Major League Baseball record by striking out 1,654 times. But they also finished 10th in runs scored and seventh in OPS, so their stated approach of swinging hard at fat pitches and taking the ones on the edges, strikeouts be damned — reiterated even after they lost to Houston — does have some merit.
But this much is also true: The Twins had the highest strikeout rate of any of the 12 playoff teams (33.6%) during the postseason, with the next-highest a distant second at 26.8%. Houston and Texas are striking out in roughly 23% of their at bats in the playoffs, yet they are easily outscoring and still out-homering the Twins in the postseason.
To me, it comes down to two-strike approach — which Twins manager Rocco Baldelli hinted last week might be a focus of some offseason change for certain hitters.
This year the Twins had a .482 OPS once the count reached two strikes, 41 points below the MLB average. With no strikes? The Twins had a whopping 1.161 OPS, which was 141 points higher than the MLB average.
Houston on Wednesday got an Jose Altuve homer on a meaty 1-2 fastball after he fouled off a Max Scherzer curve the pitch before. More importantly, the Astros got two critical insurance runs later on a two-out, two-run single from Yordan Alvarez on a 2-2 pitch.
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Let the approach match the moment. As the Twins' roster evolves and their hitters mature, so should their philosophy.
Here are four more things to know today:
*Thursday's game between the Wild and Kings will be an interesting revisiting of a trade that helped both teams a year ago, when the Wild got defenseman Brock Faber in a deal that sent Kevin Fiala to the Kings.
*What sort of coach will Minnesota United look for once they turn full attention to replacing Adrian Heath? Jerry Zgoda and I talked about that on Thursday's podcast.
*Here's an interesting New York Times piece on how sports on TV look in Phoenix.
*The Gophers and Vikings have potentially season-defining games coming up Saturday and Monday, respectively. Chip Scoggins and I will talk about both games on Friday's Daily Delivery podcast.
When he was hired after the disastrous 2016 season to reshape the Twins, Derek Falvey brought a reputation for identifying and developing pitching talent. It took a while, but the pipeline we were promised is now materializing.
