The Cleveland Guardians will try to finish a three-game sweep of the Minnesota Twins when the teams meet in their series finale Sunday afternoon in Minneapolis.
Cleveland won the series opener 4-2 Thursday and followed with a 3-1 victory Saturday. The Guardians have won four straight games and seven of nine to start the season.
The latest victory came hours after the team announced that veteran right-hander Shane Bieber would be lost for the season because of an elbow injury.
“This is a special group of guys we have right now,” Guardians manager Stephen Vogt said. “To go through a day like we all had (Saturday) and then have a game like we had, it was real telling about the people in that room.”
Minnesota will seek to stave off a sweep in its home-opening weekend. The Twins are looking to jump-start their offense, which has been dormant for most of the season.
On Saturday, the Twins went 0-for-11 with runners in scoring position. Twins batters struck out 14 times one game after striking out 15 times in the home opener Thursday.
“That’s not going to last forever,” Twins manager Rocco Baldelli said. “We know that. But all these games matter, and the sooner we figure this out, the better.”
Cleveland right-hander Triston McKenzie (0-1, 10.80 ERA) will try to keep the Twins at bay in his second start of the season. McKenzie is looking for his first win after giving up five runs (four earned) in 3 1/3 innings against the Seattle Mariners on Monday.
McKenzie has made 10 career starts against Minnesota. He is 2-5 with a 5.14 ERA in those games and has walked 15 and struck out 64 in 56 innings.
The Twins will counter on Sunday with right-hander Bailey Ober (0-1, 54.00 ERA), who also is looking to bounce back from a regrettable season debut. Ober surrendered eight runs in 1 1/3 innings in his opening start against the Kansas City Royals on March 31.
The rocky performance surprised Ober, who went 8-6 with a 3.43 ERA in 26 starts last season. The 28-year-old has 294 strikeouts in 294 career innings.
In five career starts against Cleveland, Ober is 1-1 with a 1.29 ERA. He has walked only two and struck out 21 in 28 innings.
After his rough 2024 debut, Ober said he would watch film and get ready for Cleveland.
“I’ll go back, look at it and see if anything was going weird,” he said. “I executed some (pitches), they hit them. Didn’t execute some, they hit them.”
Twins right fielder Max Kepler also is looking to change the narrative after a rough start to the season. Kepler has one hit in his first 20 at-bats for a batting average of .050.
Cleveland left fielder Steven Kwan will try to bounce back from a rare hitless performance. He went 0-for-4 with two strikeouts on Saturday but is hitting .349 to start the season with 15 hits in his first 43 at-bats.
Wet weather could jeopardize Sunday’s series finale. The forecast for Minneapolis calls for temperatures in the 40s with a 90 percent chance of rain.
–Field Level Media
