San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
Urquidy limits damage to solo shots in win
MINNEAPOLIS — The Twins are baseball’s most disappointing team.
They’ve won two consecutive American League Central crowns, but awoke Saturday in last place. Most of their key contributors have been injured or ineffective.
Depth is tested at almost every position. Byron Buxton and Luis Arraez will miss this series against the Astros while on minor league rehab assignments. Max Kepler and Mitch Garver are injured, too.
Minnesota does excel in one important area, one that tested Astros starter José Urquidy in Friday night’s 6-4 Houston victory.
“This team can hit fastballs,” manager Dusty Baker warned. “They’re one of the best fastball hitting teams around, and it’s a must that you get your secondary pitches over.”
The Twins entered Friday’s game with 88 home runs before Houston allowed four more, giving them a long-awaited look at the top of a leaderboard.
Minnesota’s lineup is top-heavy, with one of the sport’s longest-tenured sluggers and a former American League MVP. Nelson Cruz and Josh Donaldson will get theirs. Limiting the production around them is paramount.
Cruz crushed a fullcount fastball into the left field seats in the first inning Friday night against Urquidy. Donaldson (who later added a second solo shot in the eighth off reliever Ryne Stanek) deposited a hanging slider in the third, sandwiched around a fourseamer rocketed 418 feet into the left field seats by Miguel
Sano. The Twins took a 3-1 lead against Urquidy with the long balls.
“They were solo homers,” Baker said. “If you can keep it to solos, some of the greatest pitchers of all time gave up a lot of homers, but a lot of solos. If
you don’t walk guys before, give up base hits before, you’ll still be in most games, especially with the offense that we have.”
The game adhered to Baker’s hunch. Houston’s offense stormed back to score six times and bail out its bullpen. Urquidy’s home run propensity may seem troubling — he now has allowed five in the past 11 ⅓ innings — but keeping them to solo shots is key. Five days ago against the Blue Jays, Urquidy allowed two and three-run homers en route to a brutal start.
On Friday, he flipped the script. He yielded only three other baserunners, generated a career-high 21 swings and misses, threw a career-high 103 pitches, and finished seven innings. Urquidy’s ERA is now 3.77.
“It was good to get the guys out in front of them so that way it wasn’t two, three or four runs with one swing,” third baseman Alex Bregman said.
Baker often says Urquidy throws too many strikes. Without overpowering velocity or precise command of his secondary pitches, Urquidy can be prone to hard contact if he’s around the strike zone too often. Limiting it is crucial.
Urquidy and catcher Martin Maldonado entered with a plan to feature Urquidy’s slider and changeup more against the fastballhunting Twins. Urquidy had no early feel for his slider in the strike zone, forcing Maldonado to rely almost solely on the changeup against a righthanded-heavy Twins order.
Urquidy gaining the confidence to throw right-onright changeups likely saved his outing on Friday. After Sano’s solo home run in the second, Urquidy struck him out in consecutive at-bats with the changeup. He tossed 29 changeups, two shy of a seasonhigh, and generated nine swings and misses.