Cleveland Indians-Minnesota Twins Series Preview

Cleveland Indians-Minnesota Twins Series Preview 4/25-4/27

The Cleveland Indians (9-7) head to the Twin Cities to take on the Minnesota Twins (5-14) in a three-game series.  This will be the first meeting between the division rivals and is the second of three stops on this nine-game road trip for the Tribe.  The Indians are coming off a huge series sweep of the Detroit Tigers while the Twins will be looking to rebound after being swept by the Washington Nationals.

The scheduled starters for the Indians this series are Danny Salazar (tonight), Cody Anderson (tomorrow), and Josh Tomlin (Wednesday). The Twins are set to counter with left-hander Tommy Milone followed by righties Ricky Nolasco and Kyle Gibson.

Danny Salazar will look to continue his dominant start to the season for the Tribe. He’s currently sixth in the American League with a 1.47 ERA and fourth in strikeouts per nine innings (11.3 K/9). On offense, the Indians could be led once again by “leadoff man” Carlos Santana. In his three games in the leadoff spot, Santana is hitting .286 with a .929 OPS. Small sample size for sure but hard to argue with the results to this point so it would not be surprising to see him hitting there a few times this series as well… 

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Keys to the Series

The Indians finally were able to show off their dominant starting pitching this past weekend in Detroit. Outside of the injury to Carrasco, the starters were great and showed just how tough the Indians can be even against the vaunted Detroit lineup. The Indians can’t let up heading into Minnesota, where the Twins’ offense pails in comparison to the Tigers’. The biggest key will likely be Tuesday’s game with Cody Anderson on the mound.

The Indians will need Anderson to step up and pitch like he did in the second half of 2015. Anderson has really struggled in his three starts this season, posting an ugly 7.53 ERA and allowing over three home runs per nine innings. His 7.07 FIP is very ugly as well and even his xFIP (4.99) doesn’t provide much reason for optimism to this point. The lone bright spot is that his walks are down while his strikeouts are up from last year. If not for Carrasco’s injury there may have been a chance that Anderson wouldn’t be making this start this week, but he’ll remain in the rotation for now.

Brantley to be Activated?

While the news of Carlos Carrasco‘s injury was anything but good, the Indians could be getting a key player back from injury very soon. Outfielder Michael Brantley joined the team in Minnesota last night after playing back-to-back games with the Triple-A Columbus Clippers on his rehab assignment.

Next: Tomlin Proving to be Right Choice

There’s still no official word on the status of Brantley for this series as we await word on how his meeting/assessments went, but the fact that he was deemed well enough to travel to Minnesota is a great sign. The Indians have announced that Carrasco will be going on the disabled list but have not announced who will be taking his roster spot. Could that someone be Brantley?  I would not rule it out and hopefully that decision will be coming very, very soon…