After nine straight games against in-division rivals to open the season, the Mets will get a quick little two game break from the NL East to face the Minnesota Twins at home before hitting the road again for seven more games against NL East opponents.

The Minnesota Twins are off to a solid start so far this season with a 5-3 record including taking two of three from the AL Central division favorite, Cleveland Indians, and sweeping the Kansas City Royals in a quick two game series. The strength of this team so far has been their pitching which ranks 14th in the MLB in ERA but 3rd overall in AVG Against and tied for 5th in total earned runs allowed.

Due to the high number of early season off-days, the Twins have been able to use a modified four man rotation allowing Berrios to start three of the team’s eight games thus far producing a 2.18 ERA and a measly .155 AVG against. Former Yankee Michael Pineda has also been quite good allowing only two earned runs in his two starts thus far helping the team win both of them.

The strong performances from them have been offset somewhat by one start struggles from Jake Odorizzi (0.2 IP, 2 H, 4 ER, 3 BB, 1 K vs Phillies on 4/5) and Kyle Gibson (4.2 IP, 8 H, 5 ER, 2 BB, 2 K vs Royals on 4/3) but most teams would be pretty happy with a 75% success rate from their rotation. The group has also received strong support from their bullpen as well as the team ranks 6th in the MLB in bullpen ERA and hasn’t given up the any leads that have been handed to them thus far. The group’s 2.70 ERA is either matched or bested by five of the seven relievers in the group with only Adalberto Mejia (5.40 ERA) and Martin Perez (5.68 ERA).

Offensively, the Twins have been in the middle of the pack in the MLB ranking 11th in team AVG, 13th in team OPS, and 16th in runs per game. The team has been carried by strong starts from SS Jorge Polanco (.375 AVG, 1.116 OPS), OF Max Kepler (.265 AVG, .854 OPS), DH Nelson Cruz (.316 AVG, 1.059 OPS), and fan favorite bench bat Willians Astudillo (.500 AVG, 1.458 OPS).

With the Mets playing host as the National League team though, the Twins are going have a difficult time utilizing Cruz and Astudillo. Kepler would be the guy that sits in order for Cruz to play RF but will the significant defensive downgrade be worth it? The same with Astudillo, are they willing to bench free agent signing Marwin Gonzalez to play him at 3B? Or will they bench primary catcher Jason Castro for a game giving him days off in 3 of 4 days?

April 9: Jacob deGrom (R) vs Kyle Gibson (R)

Kyle Gibson’s spring training and season started off later than expected as the Twins #2 SP struggled to fight off E.Coli poisoning that he contracted in January which caused him to lose 15 pounds and threw him off his normal schedule. He finally made his first start on April 3rd against the Kansas City Royals and he threw quite well for the first four innings of the game holding the Royals to one earned run on three hits and a walk. However, he ran out of gas in the fifth inning allowing a total of five runs (four earned) on five base hits including a home run and a walk.

Despite the rough finish, the results were encouraging for the Twins as Gibson’s velocity was in-line with prior year and the movement on his primary pitch, the sinker (~40% usage) looked as sharp as it has been in the past. In addition to the sinker, Gibson also has a traditional four-seamer, a slider, a change-up, and a curveball giving him a wide array of weapons to attack both right handed and left handed bats.

As is customary for inter-league games, most of the Mets team has not seen Gibson much with Robinson Cano being the only one with a significant BvP sample size. In 32 plate appearances against him, Cano has a reasonable .267 AVG against but only one extra base hit giving him a paltry .581 OPS against Gibson.

While the Twins are no stranger to facing elite pitching being in the same division as the Cleveland Indians, they still have a tough task ahead of them with Jacob Degrom on the mound for the Mets. Degrom will be chasing another piece in this game as well as he is currently tied with Hall of Famer Bob Gibson for the longest consecutive streak of quality starts with 26 straight. Once again, as is customary with inter-league play, pretty much all of the Twins hitters have never faced Degrom before with 1B C.J. Cron possessing the most plate appearances on the team against him with a measly four.

One small piece of information we have noticed from Degrom’s 1st two starts is how he is attacking right handed batters. Unlike in year’s past when he would throw all four of his pitches to any batter at any time, so far this year Degrom seems to have abandoned his curveball against righties having only thrown it once so far this year. Its a repertoire change that could actually make him even better than last year as right-handers posted a .273 AVG against the pitch last season.

April 10: Noah Syndergaard (R) vs Jake Odorizzi (R)

The short two game series concludes with a battle of two right-handers who are very different from each other, Noah Syndergaard’s high velocity, “blow it by you” stuff vs Jake Odorizzi’s softer tossing, “mix it up” repertoire. Odorizzi is coming off a horrible performance against the Philadelphia Phillies in which he was unable to get out of the first inning of the game due to a lack of command. He faced only seven batters but needed 36 pitches to get through them as he walked three and allowed two base hits leading to five runs allowed (four earned) before he was pulled from the game. It was a stark difference from his first start of the season when he held the Cleveland Indians to only one run on a solo home run across six innings pitched while striking out eleven.

Despite not having premium velocity (91.5 mph in ’18), Odorizzi still generates a solid swing and miss rate due to his impressive six! pitch repertoire. He has two different fastballs (a four-seamer and a sinker), two different sliders (a traditional sweeper and a more cutter-ish one thats a few ticks faster), a curve-ball, and a splitter that all generated whiff rates better than 9% in 2018.

Despite the great stuff, what has held him back has been his below average command (career 3.2 BB/9) and his propensity to give up the long ball (career 1.3 HR per 9 IP).  Once again, only Robinson Cano has significant BvP but he’s had a little more success against Odorizzi with a .333 AVG/.775 OPS in 15 plate appearances

Noah Syndergaard will be on the mound for the Mets coming off of a six inning, one hit performance against the Washington Nationals despite not having the best command of his pitches. Unfortunately for him, the one hit was a solo home run by Victor Robles with a second run scoring via sacrifice fly that set-up by his own inability to throw strikes. Command aside, the stuff has been downright nasty as he’s generating a 13.9% Swinging Strike Rate which is among the Top 20 starters in the MLB so far year to date.