Left-hander Dallas Keuchel will make his first start of the season on Sunday afternoon when the Minnesota Twins try to complete a three-game series sweep of the Arizona Diamondbacks in Minneapolis.
Keuchel, the 2015 American League Cy Young Award winner, had his contract selected from Triple-A Saint Paul on Thursday after Twins right-hander Joe Ryan was placed on the 15-day injured list with a left groin strain.
Keuchel, 35, was released by three teams, including the Diamondbacks, during the 2022 season. In all, he went 2-9 with a 9.20 ERA in 14 starts covering 60 2/3 innings. He lost his final four starts of the season, two with the Diamondbacks and his only two with the Texas Rangers. In the last of those games, he allowed seven runs on seven hits over 4 2/3 innings at Boston.
After healing up physically and working on his mechanics at the Driveline Baseball Academy in Scottsdale, Ariz., Keuchel signed a minor league contract with the Twins on June 22. He made six starts for Saint Paul, where he went 1-0 with a 1.13 ERA while earning the International League Pitcher of the Month honors for July.
“I got a chance to reset,” Keuchel said. “The biggest step for me was just feeling good physically. I think the mind kind of followed.”
Keuchel, who is 3-3 with a 3.86 ERA in seven career starts against Arizona, will be joining a first-place Twins team that has won four of its last five games and holds a 3 1/2-game lead over Cleveland in the AL Central.
“I think it’s a good situation,” Keuchel said. “I know a lot of these guys from competing against them and this and that. It’s tough not to like the Twins and the situation that they have. Moving forward, I think it will be a good fit.”
The Twins, who hit three solo home runs to win the series opener 3-2 on Friday night, clubbed four more, including two by catcher Ryan Jeffers, in a 12-1 victory on Saturday night. It was the Diamondbacks’ fifth straight loss, and they were out-hit 17-2.
Arizona, which held a three-game lead in the National League West at the start of July, has tumbled to third place, 7 1/2 games behind the first-place Los Angeles Dodgers. The Diamondbacks have lost 21 of their last 28 games and enter Sunday’s action 1 1/2 games behind Cincinnati for the final NL wild-card spot, with two other teams also in the way.
“I want these guys to keep fighting,” Arizona manager Torey Lovullo said. “We have something in front of us. We all know what it is. We can’t get distracted by any black noise. We have to go out and fight together and believe together and allow something like what happened today to never happen again.”
The good news for the Diamondbacks is that their ace, All-Star right-hander Zac Gallen (11-5, 3.41 ERÅ), is set to start Sunday’s series finale. The bad news is that Gallen, who is 9-1 with a 1.96 ERA in 11 starts at home, is just 2-4 with a 4.93 ERA in 12 road starts this season.
Gallen is 0-1 with a 2.57 ERA in one career start against the Twins.
–Field Level Media
