Pablo Lopez dominated once again for Minnesota, striking out 10 batters over 7.2 innings while allowing two runs. Lopez's ERA now sits at just 1.35 over 16.1 innings with 21 strikeouts. Over his first two starts of the year he was throwing his sweeper at a 27% clip, but this outing he went back to the changeup at a 30% clip and the sweeper dropped to a 12% usage. That changeup generated a 41% whiff rate and the sweeper still got three whiff on five swings. He's quickly turning into both a real life and fantasy ace, and especially when he can switch between multiple elite secondary offerings.
Mitch Keller's start to the season couldn't be much better with him now sitting with a 3.57 ERA and has allowed two runs or fewer in each of his last two starts. He tossed six innings against the Astros on Tuesday, allowing a run in each of the first two innings and then nothing after that. Keller struck out seven in the game too, continuing his stretch of 7+ Ks to start the year. Surprisingly, his swing and miss numbers were not great with just a 21% whiff rate and a 23% CSW. For the whole season though he's still running a slightly below league average whiff rate. So not certain as to where that means he's due for some positive regression on the whiffs or negative regression on the strikeout rate.
Grayson Rodriguez had another mixed bag of results in his start, going 4.1 innings but allowed five runs, six hits, and walked four batters. With all that though, there's still positives to take from this with five strikeouts in the game and he ran almost a 30% whiff rate in the outing. Additionally, only five batted balls off of him registered over 95 MPH. His slider generated a 36% whiff rate in the start, but his changeup hardly generated any whiffs at all with just two on 11 swings. That's a lot of contact given up for the pitch, and it was hit fairly hard with a 91 average exit velocity, and a max of 109.3. He threw 99 pitches in the outing so he's at a full workload and should take his turn against in the rotation next time out.
Edouard Julien is headed to the major leagues after Joey Gallo was placed on the 10-day IL Tuesday. Julien was off to a great start in AAA with a .934 OPS over eight games with a pair of homers. Julien could make for an immediate impact in OBP leagues, but I'm not super sure where he plays right away for the Twins. He could replace Nick Gordon and his .339 OPS at second base as he's been getting the majority of the reps at the position. I do think that this promotion to the majors could be very short lived as Jorge Polanco is closing in on being activated and I'd imagine that Julien will be the roster casualty when that does happen.
Kyle Wright struggled in his first start on 2023, allowing four runs over three innings against the Reds. The big issue that plagued Wright in this start was four free passes that helped push his pitch count up to 75 in a short time. Wright saw a pitch mix change last season that helped unlock his potential, and his first start of 2023 saw him throw an even higher 40% curveballs followed by his sinker at 28%. Barely any sliders were thrown in this start but it is still basically spring training for him. I'm not worrying a ton about this start as the velocity was good and he still did a solid job of generating swing and miss.
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