Mouth-Watering Pitching Duel Headlines Twins Series with the Pirates
In a three-game series, it’s not a guarantee to face the other team's best pitcher; far rarer is pitting each team’s ace against one another. Yet Friday night in Minneapolis, the stars will align to give the fans an absolute treat. Joe Ryan is facing off against Paul Skenes. Skenes is the future of Major League pitching. He leads the league in ERA with 1.94 and is in the top five in WHIP with 0.92. Along with that, he’s in the top 10 in strikeouts with 125. Stats a perennial all-star in the prime of their career, would be proud to have, but Skenes turned 23 under two months ago. Unfortunately for the Twins, Skenes' ERA improves on the road, clocking in at 1.65. Fortunately for the Twins, he’s on the Pirates, so despite all of those incredible stats, he currently has a record of 4-7. No further evidence is needed that a pitcher's record is a flawed metric to judge them on. The Pirates' offense simply doesn’t manufacture enough runs, which Joe Ryan should feast on.
As for Ryan, he also boasts a top 15 mark in both ERA and strikeouts with 2.76 and 116. He one-ups Skenes in WHIP, posting a 0.89, which is the third-best in the Majors. Ryan has been excellent as the Twins' ace since Pablo López’s injury. In his six starts as the number one, he’s at a 2.49 ERA with 40 strikeouts. Over this ace stretch, Ryan has faced a similar run support problem as Skenes. The Twins have put up three or fewer runs in four of the six games Ryan pitched, including being shut out by the Marlins on July 1st.
That run support took a hit on Wednesday when Byron Buxton was hit in the hand by a pitch. He exited Wednesday’s game and missed Thursday’s series finale with the Cubs. While it doesn’t sound like a long-term problem, his availability for the battle with Skenes is up in the air. Skenes will still have to contend with Ryan Jeffers and Harrison Bader. Heading into Thursday, they have crushed the ball. Over the last week, Jeffers is hitting .500 with a ridiculous 1.374 OPS. Bader, meanwhile, is crushing the ball with a slugging percentage of .947. That slugging is higher than Buxton’s OPS over that same stretch.
The Pirates' bats, on the other hand, are in a collective slump. The team is on a six-game losing streak. Over those six games, they have scored a total of nine runs. More embarrassing, they started that losing streak with a three-game series against the Mariners. They were shut out in all three contests. Salt on the wound, they lost 1-0 twice. Friday night's game will feature a matchup of the Titans on the mound, but for the series overall, Minnesota needs to secure some wins against a struggling Pirates team that currently sits at 38-56. The series starts Friday at 7 p.m. CST.
