Game 1 between the Twins and Blue Jays is here, and it brings more pressure for the Twins than your typical Game 1 given they enter it with an 18-game playoff monkey on their back.
A loss would put them on the brink of elimination, but win and the release would be akin to the Yellowstone super volcano erupting 640,000 years ago.
No player on the Twins faces as much pressure as Game 1 starter Pablo Lopez. He’s the ace of the staff, a Cy Young contender and the right-hander with the most strikeouts (234) achieved by a Twins pitcher since Johan Santana way back in 2007.
But he’s also a player the Blue Jays happen to have a pretty decent hitting record against. That’s real pressure.
The current Blue Jays roster has a combined .917 OPS against Lopez, which is pretty daunting considering only 10 players in the big leagues this season posted an OPS of .900 or higher. It’s a small sample size (just 56 at-bats), but those at-bats have resulted in four homers, two triples and two doubles.
Here’s how the Blue Jays’ top batters have fared against Lopez:
- Bo Bichette: 2 for 5 with a homer, triple and 3 RBI
- Cavan Biggio: 1 for 2 with a homer
- Vladimir Guerrero Jr.: 1 for 5 with a triple
- Kevin Kiermaier: 3 for 8 with a homer and 3 RBI
Lopez faced the Blue Jays on May 27 and he gave up four runs on five hits in 5.2 innings. Bichette and Biggio each homered that day. His only other start against Toronto was in 2021 when he pitched for the Marlins. In that game, he gave up two homers to Randal Grichuk, who no longer plays for the Jays.
The key for Lopez will be preventing homers. In starts that he didn’t allow a homer this season he had a 2.95 ERA. In starts that he served up at least one long ball his earned-run averaged jumped to 4.31.
The Twins, meanwhile, have to beat Kevin Gausman, the Toronto ace whose case for the AL Cy Young award is just as strong as Lopez’s, finishing the season with 237 strikeouts (three more than Lopez) and a sublime 3.16 ERA.
Minnesota dinged Gausman for seven runs in two chances against him this season, but no one on the Twins’ roster pops off the page as a Gausman killer. In fact, Carlos Correa, Royce Lewis and Byron Buxton have never faced the righty.
As a team, the Twins’ combined OPS against him is a dismal .694. They’ve got to hope the bats show up as they did against Gausman earlier this season, ideally knocking him out of the game early and having a shot at the Blue Jays bullpen.
Win Game 1 and you fancy the Twins in Game 2, with the miserly Sonny Gray going up against former Twin Jose Berrios, who recovered to hit his best form this year after struggling in 2022, but hasn’t had the year Gray has.
If it goes to Game 3 it’s a tossup, with the Twins’ Joe Ryan struggling at times since his return from injury, but Toronto’s Chris Bassitt himself has the odd clunker.
The Twins have an exciting, young batting lineup that has proven this season they are not overawed by the big occasion. If they can step up in the Wild Card series and are backed by solid pitching, the confidence it would generate among the team and the fans could propel the Twins to a deep playoff run.
The fans will have their own role to play, ideally turning Target Field into a cauldron the likes of which have not been seen since the Metrodome days. Make it uninhabitable for the visiting Blue Jays and the Twins will have a real edge when the first pitch is thrown.
Nervous? You betcha. More confident about this Twins team than any since 2010? Absolutely.
Let’s go.
