Texas Rangers at Minnesota Twins 5/5/21 - MLB Picks & Predictions

The Texas Rangers will look to close out a road series at Target Field against the Minnesota Twins. Minnesota got off to a slow start to the year, but has won four of their last five games including the opener of this series 6-5 to improve to 11-16 on the year. Texas won three of four against the Red Sox but with the series-opening loss dropped to 13-17, already 5 games back of the AL West lead.

Texas is a middle-of-the-pack offense hitting .236 and is scoring a shade over 4 runs per game at 4.07 runs per game, ranking 19th in the MLB in scoring offense. The young second baseman Nick Solak is off to a solid start in his first full season at the big league level, he’s hitting a team-best .288 and 7 homeruns. First baseman Nate Lowe is second in the MLB in RBIs with 24 and is hitting .277 with 6 homeruns.

The 33-year-old rookie, and former KBO MVP, Heyon-Jong Yang will get the ball in his third start in the MLB. Yang has worked through just 4 ⅓ innings in each of his starts but his last start was a solid outing allowing just one hit and one walk whilst striking out four. He has a solid 2.08 ERA but how deep will the Rangers allow him to work into games as he adjusts to the big-league level. 

Minnesota has been a top-10 offense this season despite their slow start to the year record-wise, they’re 6th in scoring offense averaging 4.93 runs per game and hitting .244 as a team, which is 8th in the MLB in team batting average. Nelson Cruz, despite being on the wrong side of 40, is hitting .318 with team-highs in homeruns with 8 and RBIs with 21. Centerfielder Byron Buxton is 3rd in the MLB hitting .392 and has hit 8 homers in his 21 games.

The left-hander Lewis Thorpe will take the mound and hope to continue his solid start to the year, he’s made just two appearances pitching through 5 innings allowing 3 hits and 2 runs. Thorpe has a career ERA of 5.88 but is still in the budding stages of his career, and this will be just his 5th time being the starter across his 3 years in the MLB.