{"id":282342,"date":"2024-05-10T08:55:05","date_gmt":"2024-05-10T13:55:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/?p=282342"},"modified":"2024-05-10T08:56:02","modified_gmt":"2024-05-10T13:56:02","slug":"jeffers-kepler-setting-league-on-fire-amid-surge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/?p=282342","title":{"rendered":"Jeffers-Kepler Setting League On Fire Amid Surge"},"content":{"rendered":"
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MINNEAPOLIS MN – Seattle\u2019s pitching staff is elite there\u2019s little question of that. It\u2019s just that there\u2019s really not much getting in the way of the red-hot Twins and their most productive hitters right now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let\u2019s talk streaks, even though Minnesota\u2019s 12-game winning streak ended last week.\u00a0Max Kepler<\/a>\u00a0is on an 11-game hitting streak, the longest of his career;\u00a0Ryan Jeffers<\/a>\u00a0has an extra-base hit in eight straight games, tied for second-most in club history. Behind their continued torrid hitting and a 10-strikeout gem from Pablo L\u00f3pez, the Twins thrashed the Mariners,\u00a011-1<\/a>, on Thursday to claim their fifth consecutive series victory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The question was if Kepler, Jeffers and the Twins could maintain their offensive success against the much tougher pitching staffs of the Red Sox and Mariners on this homestand after a week and a half of beating up on the White Sox and Angels.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They won the games started by Luis Castillo, George Kirby and Logan Gilbert to win three in this four-game series — so let\u2019s consider that a yes, especially coming off an emphatic showing in which Manuel Margot matched a career high with five RBIs as the Twins tagged Gilbert with a five-run first inning and eight earned runs overall, the second-highest total of his career. Margot tied an AL\/NL record for the most RBIs (5) in a game with one hit that wasn’t a homer, since RBIs became official in 1920.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s just guy after guy who has dominant-type stuff, and we went out there and scored runs in a competitive series,\u201d manager Rocco Baldelli said. \u201cI don\u2019t know what more I could ask for from our offense and the way they did their jobs. I know I was sitting back for a period of time, just watching and being very impressed with the whole group.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It really helps that Jeffers has continued to show that his huge offensive breakout of 2023 was no fluke — and that he\u2019s perhaps even better than what he showed last season, when he led all primary catchers in MLB with a 138 wRC+, indicating his overall offensive performance was 38 percent above average.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thanks to his torrid start to 2024, Jeffers isn\u2019t just among the best hitting catchers; he\u2019s been one of the best hitters, period — and that was even before he added a solo homer, sac fly, walk and hit-by-pitch for four more productive plate appearances on Thursday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Highest wRC+, qualified hitters, 2024 (entering Thursday)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

1. Shohei Ohtani, LAD — 210
2. Juan Soto, NYY — 191
3. Mookie Betts, LAD — 191
4. Marcell Ozuna, ATL — 190
5.\u00a0Ryan Jeffers, MIN — 177<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jeffers entered last season having scrapped his old swing mechanics and having remade his mechanics altogether — and didn\u2019t feel fully comfortable with them until July, he said. He\u2019s now had an offseason to refine and continue developing comfort with the new approach — and it\u2019s paying off, bigtime.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt worked, but it was still very new,\u201d Jeffers said. \u201cI was still learning a lot about myself, a lot about the swing. This year, it\u2019s just that learning curve. We\u2019re through that learning curve and we\u2019ve really figured out what works and what doesn\u2019t and where my body wants to go. It\u2019s showing and paying off, for sure.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the most noticeable changes for Jeffers is in his ability to avoid the strikeout, with his strikeout rate having plummeted from 27.8% last season to 17.6% in \u201824 — and that\u2019s the product of a simplified two-strike approach that Baldelli acknowledges isn\u2019t necessarily possible for all hitters but has paid dividends for Jeffers in his way to find productive endings to battles.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

MINNEAPOLIS MN – Seattle\u2019s pitching staff is elite there\u2019s little question of that. It\u2019s just that there\u2019s really not much getting in the way of the red-hot Twins and their most productive hitters right now. Let\u2019s talk streaks, even though Minnesota\u2019s 12-game winning streak ended last week.\u00a0Max Kepler\u00a0is on an […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":282343,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-282342","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282342","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=282342"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282342\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":282347,"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282342\/revisions\/282347"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/282343"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=282342"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=282342"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=282342"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}