The Twins head into Oracle Park tonight with their postseason fate already sealed. Sunday night’s White Sox win over the Tigers officially knocked Minnesota out of contention, leaving the club with six games left to finish out the schedule and get to the offseason.
Minnesota will hand the ball to right-hander Zebby Matthews, who had originally been lined up to start Tuesday. Matthews is 9-10 with a 4.74 ERA this season, a solid enough year without quite pushing him into frontline territory.
He also draws a Giants lineup that has been thinned out, which gives him a chance to work through a manageable matchup. It will be the first time in his career that Matthews faces San Francisco.
The Giants are going with right-hander Blake Tidwell. He enters at 1-2 with a 4.56 ERA and comes in off one of his better outings, after holding the Cardinals to two runs over 6 2/3 innings. Minnesota’s offense has been up and down all year, and San Francisco’s pitching has had its own problems, so both clubs have an opening to capitalize on the other side’s flaws.
Bryce Eldridge stands out as one of the few bright spots for the Giants this season. He has put up a 132 OPS+ in 448 games, and with the bigger names in the San Francisco lineup on the IL for the rest of the year, he may be the most dangerous bat available to them tonight.
The Twins will also be watching to see if Jenkins can keep rolling on this road trip. He already has two home runs on the trip, and Minnesota would love to see that kind of production carry through the final stretch.
Tidwell is still a young pitcher, and Jenkins should have some familiarity with that type of profile after facing AAA pitching as recently as last month. A strong finish now would give him and the Twins something useful to carry into the offseason.
First pitch is set for 8:45 p.m. CT / 6:45 p.m.
PT at Oracle Park. The game will be televised on TwinsTV and NBC Sports Bay Area.
In Other News...
Giants May Have Found Their Next Valuable Swiss Army Arm
Matt Wilkinson gave the Giants exactly the kind of outing that tends to catch an organizations attention in September and beyond, spinning five scoreless innings against the Dodgers and trimming his ERA to 3.65 on the season. For a club that has long valued pitchers who can wear different hats, the performance fit neatly into a larger conversation about where Wilkinson might fit on the staff.
The appeal is straightforward: the Giants believe he could fill a flexible role similar to what Yusmeiro Petit once provided, working as a long reliever or stepping into the rotation when needed. Wilkinsons pitch mix and velocity profile look familiar in that respect, and the value comes from the same place every contender looks for it - a pitcher who can give real length out of the bullpen without forcing the club to scramble if a start opens up. [Read more 🡒]
Giants Fans Know This Deadline Regret May Not Be Baseballs Worst Anymore
For Giants fans, the old ache around the Zack Wheeler deal has long been part of the deadline memory bank, a reminder of how quickly a promising arm can get away before the return fully arrives. But around the league, the conversation has shifted a little, because some of the most widely discussed deadline swings of recent years have made that regret feel less singular and more like part of a larger pattern of front offices chasing immediate help at the expense of long-term value.
The 2021 swap that sent Pete Crow-Armstrong from the Mets to the Cubs for Javier Bez and Trevor Williams is one of the moves drawing fresh scrutiny, especially with the Mets now facing the possibility that it may age worse than the Wheeler trade ever did. Add in the Athletics trade of Jess Luzardo to the Marlins for Starling Marte, and the deadline starts to look like a place where the price of urgency can linger for years, even if the full damage only becomes clear much later. [Read more 🡒]
Giants Leave LA With A Dodgers Problem They Need To Answer
The Giants headed out of Los Angeles having run into the same kind of trouble that has dogged them all season against the Dodgers. A 3-1 loss finished off a three-game sweep for the home team, with Emmet Sheehan giving Los Angeles a steady lift in long relief and Enrique Hernandez delivering the go-ahead double in the seventh inning.
Tommy Edman added a home run as the Dodgers stretched their winning streak to four, while San Francisco was left to sort out a familiar divisional problem after another frustrating night. For a club trying to keep pace in a crowded race, the issue is not just the result of this series but the way it exposed the gap they still have to close. [Read more 🡒]