Saturday was the day everyone has been waiting for all winter.
No, I don't mean my birthday, but the first official game of Spring Training for your Minnesota Twins.
The Twins gave up a run in the third inning, but followed with two runs in the sixth and another in the seventh in a 3-1 win over the Atlanta Braves at the Lee Health Sports Complex in Fort Myers, Fla.
Zebby Matthews drew the start for the Twins against Atlanta's Chris Sale, with both starters tossing a pair of scoreless innings before giving way to a bullpen barrage.
Here are some observations from Sunday's tilt:
Matthews brought the heat (fire emoji goes here)
Jhoan Duran touched 99 mph in his inning of work and threw the three hardest fastballs of the day, but it was Zebby who turned some heads with some some previously unseen gas.
Matthews topped out at 97.4 mph on a fastball to Garrett Cooper in the first inning, but reached back for 12 fastballs that registered 96.0 mph or higher on the day (of a total of 31 pitches/15 fastballs). Matthews got a pair of swings and misses on the fastball and the cutter, and his velo was up across the board — except for the one (1) curveball he threw that was minus-0.4 mph slower than last season's average.
His four-seam fastball averaged 96.6 mph, up 1.7 mph from last season. His slider was up 1.4 mph, his cutter was up 1.1 mph and even his changeup was 0.6 mph crisper.
Matthews threw just 31 pitches 96 mph or faster last season, and just one — a 97.1 mph four-seam fastball to Cardinals utility man Brendan Donovan in the fourth inning on Aug. 25 last year — above 97 mph.
Reading into spring training stats is like trying to juice a banana — it's really hard to know if you're actually doing anything — but spring training velocity is always a curiosity.
Some guys start low and build up (Joe Nathan was a notorious example of this), and some come out throwing darts. It'll be worth watching where Matthews falls on that list, as he's (as of this writing) probably about seventh on the team's starting pitcher depth chart.
Matt Wallner batted leadoff, but maybe not for the reason you'd think?
Wallner batted leadoff, took his two plate appearances and hit the showers in what felt like a pretty standard appearance for a big-league regular in Spring Training.
But what can we make of him batting...leadoff? Maybe nothing, as again Spring Training is less about results and more about just getting back on the field, but is it really crazy to have Wallner bat leadoff on a regular basis?
Wallner had a .372 on-base percentage last season, which ranked second on the team among hitters with at least 100 plate appearances (Carlos Correa, .388). He also saw 3.95 pitches per plate appearance, which ranked fourth on the team among the same hitters (behind Edouard Julien, Carlos Santana and.....Willi Castro?!?!).
But from my point of view, Rocco Baldelli hit Wallner leadoff for one reason, and maybe only that one reason: to make sure he got a plate appearance against a lefty.
Few lefties are going to give a left-handed hitter a tougher matchup than Sale, and it's hard to know for sure how long he was going to pitch on Saturday. If Wallner hits lower in the lineup, does that remove even the slightest bit of a possiblity that he'd face Sale?
Maybe not. It's possible I'm reading into this far too much.
But if there's one frontier to still be conquered in Wallner's relatively young big-league career, it's hitting left-handed pitching. While he's a career .277/.396/.555 hitter against righties, he's hit a ghastly .144/.231/.278 in 108 plate appearances against southpaws.
Yes, it was only one plate appearance, but it was a free opportunity to face a great lefty like Sale in a spot where it won't hurt the team in any way compared to, let's say, handing over a free out in a regular-season game.
If those opportunities present themselves, they should be taken — and the Twins did so on Saturday (Wallner lined a 2-1 slider to right field for an out).
This was likely very close to the Opening Day lineup
It's always hard to put much stock into these things, but it felt like the first day of school looking at a lot of the lineups these teams trotted out for their openers.
In some cases, like the Twins, teams put forth a lineup that could come close to what they do on Opening Day. Here's how the Twins lined up against the Braves:
- Matt Wallner RF
- Carlos Correa SS
- Byron Buxton CF
- Trevor Larnach DH
- Royce Lewis 3B
- Willi Castro 2B
- Christian Vazquez C
- Ty France 1B
- Harrison Bader LF
Is this for sure how the Twins will line up when they open against the Cardinals next month? Well, of course not.
But it's certainly plausible. We've laid out the groundwork for why Wallner could feasibly be a leadoff hitter — albeit an unconventional one. The team's defense is certainly stronger with Bader in left field and Larnach at DH.
The platoon behind the plate may still swing in Ryan Jeffers' favor, but on any given day, it's not unreasonable to see Vazquez in the starting lineup hitting in the bottom third.
Is Castro the prohibitive favorite at second base? That, I'd perhaps push back against, but is it really that unreasonable? He can play second base quite well, Brooks Lee has a lot to prove and beyond all that it's far from outlandish that Castro could be there on Opening Day.
The opposite is true for the Braves
...and then you have the Braves, who started Jarred Kelenic in right field and leading off as well as Sean Murphy behind the plate hitting third. Pretty much everyone else was likely ticketed for the minor leagues this spring, or is a veteran trying to win a spot on Atlanta's — or perhaps someone else's — bench (Cooper, for one).
Obviously there's no right or wrong way to do Spring Training lineups necessarily; it's just funny to see such a stark contrast on Day 1.