Minnesota Twins Daily Clips Monday, April 10, 2017
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Minnesota Twins Daily Clips Monday, April 10, 2017 Ervin Santana plays his ace card, leading Twins to 4-1 win. Star Tribune (Miller) p. 1 Twins closer Brandon Kintzler's broken nail becomes a casualty. Star Tribune (Miller) p. 2 Santana would have pitched seventh; Twins spend extra night in Chicago. Star Tribune (Miller) p. 3 Twins are worth watching, analyzing. Star Tribune (Rand) p. 4 Ervin Santana leads Minnesota Twins to series victory over Chicago White Sox. Pioneer Press (Bernardino) p. 4 Minnesota Twins considering Louisville lefty Brendan McKay along with Hunter Greene. Pioneer Press (Bernardino) p. 5 Polanco, Sano key factors on offense. MLB (Bollinger) p. 7 Santana quiets White Sox; Twins move to 5-1. MLB (Bollinger and Merkin) p. 7 Falvey to be involved in Draft process. MLB (Bollinger) p. 9 Santiago in search of second win. MLB (Bollinger) p. 9 Wetmore’s 5 thoughts: Dropping Buxton, leveraging relievers, Sano homers again. ESPN 1500 (Wetmore) p. 10 Arizona Diamondbacks, Minnesota Twins Headline Week One Surprises. FOX Sports (Burke) p. 11 Sizzling Santana, bullpen hold White Sox in check. FOX Sports (Associated Press) p. 12 Twins boast AL's best record: MLB Sunday scores, news, highlights, injuries. CBS Sports (Snyder and Anderson) p. 13 As Diamondbacks go on without him, Ron Gardenhire readies for cancer fight. USA Today (Nightengale) p. 13 Ervin Santana plays his ace card, leading Twins to 4-1 win Phil Miller | Star Tribune | April 10, 2017 CHICAGO – Ervin Santana produced almost an exact replica of his Opening Day brilliance on Sunday — two hits, two walks and a win in six whisper-quiet innings — and raised the question: When he’s pitching like this, can anybody hit him? Turns out: Yes. “I can,” Miguel Sano said confidently after Santana pitched the Twins to a 4-1 victory over the White Sox, and their first 5-1 start to a season since 2010. “One time in spring training, I hit a homer off him.” These days, Sano’s homers are put to use in support of the Twins’ ace, not against him, and they’re a sight to behold. The 23-year-old slugger drove a 96-mph fastball 410 feet into a howling wind on Sunday, landing it seven rows up in the center field seats to give the Twins a four-run cushion. “I’d have liked to see that ball if the wind was blowing out,” Twins manager Paul Molitor said. “That ball was smoked.” Jorge Polanco’s wasn’t exactly lightly basted, either: The 23-year-old shortstop cranked his first homer of the year into left-center in the seventh inning, one pitch after another blast succumbed to the gale from the east. “Under normal conditions would have been a homer,” Molitor said. “The wind carried it foul, but he came back on the next pitch.” The White Sox weren’t able to do that, or much of anything, against Santana, who had never before in his 13-year career collected a win in his first two starts of a season. Mixing mostly sliders with his now-you-see-it fastball — “I didn’t have a changeup today,” he shrugged — Santana didn’t allow solid contact all day. Only once did a Chicago base- runner advance as far as second base. The only surprising part of his performance, in fact, was its length. Santana was pulled after six innings, having thrown 87 pitches. Caution now will pay off late, Molitor said. “I’m not too enthused about the prospect of him going much past 100 [pitches], if at all. Rather than having him start the inning and maybe having something created, we went with the clean inning,” Molitor said of his decision. “[With] Six months of baseball ahead of us, to try to push a guy for an extra inning in the second start — that’s where we ended up landing.” Twins first-week statistics The bullpen wasn’t nearly as sharp as Santana, but the home runs gave them room to endure a little sloppiness. Chicago put runners on base in each of the final three innings, though the only run the Sox scored may have had to do more with super glue than pitch location. After Ryan Pressly rescued Taylor Rogers from a two-on, one-out jam in the seventh, closer Brandon Kintzler tried to do the same for Matt Belisle, who loaded the bases with a couple of walks and a hit. But the nail on Kintzler’s right index finger is cracked, and the closer had glued it shut — a little too aggressively, it turned out. “I put too much on there, and I couldn’t feel the ball on the tip of my finger,” Kintzler said. “That pitch got away from me.” It hit Avisail Garcia in the ribs, actually, forcing in Chicago’s lone run. Kintzler came back to strike out Yolmer Sanchez to end the inning, and he got through the ninth unscathed, except for the blood on his finger. He wasn’t too concerned about it after the game, not with reason to celebrate. “You can’t ask for a better start to the season,” Kintzler said. “We sweep the first series, then we win our first road series, and now we get a day off to enjoy it. This is the start we told ourselves we could make happen.” Twins closer Brandon Kintzler's broken nail becomes a casualty Phil Miller | Star Tribune | April 10, 2017 CHICAGO – Brandon Kintzler looked at his index finger, saw the blood oozing around the broken fingernail, and summoned home plate umpire Dana DeMuth, along with Twins manager Paul Molitor and athletic trainer Tony Leo, to the mound in the ninth inning. Not because he wanted medical assistance. He just wanted a witness. “We put too much super glue on [the nail]. It was covered, and I was having trouble feeling the ball,” the Twins’ closer said. “So I was trying to peel it off without looking like I was cheating.” A crowd gathered on the mound, and Kintzler was able to peel away enough of the glue to continue pitching. “It wasn’t really an injury,” he said. “I was afraid [DeMuth] would think I was filing it or doing something to the ball.” The nail cracked during spring training, but with three days off between each outing, it was never a problem. “I just cut and filed it each time, and it was fine. It never even bled in spring training,” Kintzler said. It bled Sunday, though, which may be more problematic. “I didn’t even notice it until I was in the game, so we put more super glue on after the eighth inning ended,” he said. “I’m glad we have [Monday] off. We’ll see how it does.” Sneaking a peek Derek Falvey doesn’t want to comment on possible draftees yet, but his interest in Sherman Oaks, Calif., pitcher/shortstop Hunter Greene is a little conspicuous: That was Falvey sitting behind the plate (and caught on video) at Greene’s complete-game performance for Notre Dame High School on Friday. “You can [scout] a lot off of video. You can get a pretty good look. But when you get a chance to meet somebody, interact, say hello, meet their parents, be around the teammates, talk to the coaches, it just gives you a broader perspective,” the Twins’ chief baseball officer said Sunday, after jokingly pretending to know nothing about the trip. “Our scouts — Taylor Cameron was out there, and [scouting director] Sean Johnson and [West Coast supervisor] Elliott Strankman — they’re all doing that, too. So it’s just another set of eyes.” The Twins will select first in the June 12 draft, and Greene, a 17-year-old righthander who hit 100 mph with Falvey in attendance, is widely considered the likely choice. But the Twins are a long way from deciding that, Falvey said. “There are some years where the industry might see a 2 clear number one, there are other years where it’s a little bit more spread out. We’re not going to cross anyone off the list at this stage,” he said. “The reality is, we won’t have a decision made until we get through the entirety of the scouting season. We want to make sure we get all the way to the end, with as much information as possible.” He and General Manager Thad Levine will both take several trips to personally view prospects, more this year with the overall No. 1 than in a year when they pick later. “We’re getting to know as many players as possible, as deep as possible,” Falvey said. On the mend • Glen Perkins threw 25 pitches “with about 80-90 percent intensity” on Saturday, Falvey said, and will increase it to 30 on Tuesday as he works back from shoulder surgery. • Infielder Ehire Adrianza played catch and hit off a tee but has yet to take part in more serious work as his strained oblique heals. He’ll require some rehab games before the Twins decide whether to put him on the roster or try to get him through waivers. • Lefthander Ryan O’Rourke, sidelined because of a forearm strain, will begin a throwing program late this week. Santana would have pitched seventh; Twins spend extra night in Chicago Phil Miller | Star Tribune | April 9, 2017 CHICAGO — A couple of extras from the series finale at whatever they’re calling New Comiskey Park these days: — Ervin Santana admits he was a little surprised when Paul Molitor approached him after the sixth inning and told him they were going to have Taylor Rogers pitch the seventh.