All three series the Twins have played have split the first two games. They've managed to win the rubber game in the first two series, and turn to Shoemaker to try to keep that pattern going.
Last time out, Shoemaker got quite a bit of run support, and only allowed 3 hits over 6 innings, so I say let's do all of that again and see how it goes.
Flexen is the first right-handed starting pitcher the Twins have seen this series. So far (in ~200 PA) the Twins are a little less successful at the plate against righties (.242/.333/.453) but an .786 OPS certainly isn't a bad thing, just less than their .854 OPS against lefties (~100 PA).
Further reading?
I thought this story about scouting during COVID and Flexen's journey from the KBO back to the major leagues was pretty interesting.
It's been over 600 days since Michael Pineda took the loss in one of his starts (July 16, 2019 vs. the Mets). You can argue that number is inflated by the general lack of games over that time period, but that wouldn't be any fun.
But in a general sense, Pineda has been incredibly consistently good as a Twin. In his last 20 starts here's the distribution of runs allowed:
0 starts with 0 runs allowed
8 starts with 1 run allowed
5 starts with 2 runs allowed
5 starts with 3 runs allowed
1 start with 4 runs allowed
1 start with 5 runs allowed
His record is 9-2 in those 20 starts and he's got a 3.17 ERA. Perhaps more importantly the Twins record in those games is 16-4.
Adrian Houser had trouble missing bats last season, and all the projection systems at FanGraphs seem to anticipate that he will be almost perfectly average (4.30 ERA/FIP, 8.0 K/9, 3.0 BB/9).
