Jose Berrios is looking to emulate his fellow staff ace Ervin Santana. On Thursday night, he went out and showed his stuff to the Colorado Rockies. In the process of shutting down his opponent, he made some history a decade in the making for the Minnesota Twins. Needless to say, but fans of the oft-struggling team haven't seen a performance like this from a young pitcher in quite some time.
Historic pitching performance from Berrios
When Berrios stepped on the mound on Thursday night, he probably wasn't thinking about history. Instead, he was just thinking about what every pitcher thinks about - what's the most efficient way to get in and out of the inning?
The Twins were coming off a 5-1 loss in the afternoon game of a doubleheader with the Rockies. In that game, Santana had one of his rare poor starts of the season, giving up five earned runs in seven innings.
Berrios was not going to endure the same fate. With a breaking point that was on point all evening, the starter dominated one of the best offenses in baseball. In 7.2 innings, Berrios gave up just two hits and one walk, striking out a career-high 11 batters. Nine of those strikeouts were recorded in the first five innings, setting the career-high early as well as a team-high for the season so far. At the age of 22, he also became the youngest Twins pitcher to record double-digit strikeouts since Francisco Liriano did it in 2006.
Minnesota wound up with a 2-0 victory to split the doubleheader.
Slowly emerging Twins ace
Berrios has been an intriguing prospect for the Twins for some time. The teams selected him in the first round of the 2012 MLB Draft. He rose through the minor league ranks at a reasonable clip and made his major league debut last April.
That went about as expected, as Berrios gave up five runs to the eventual World Series runner-up Cleveland Indians.
The rest of the season was significantly worse, though. He finished the year with just three victories and an astronomical 8.02 ERA, good for minus-1.7 Wins Above Replacement. Expectations were low this season and Berrios started off in the minors, only being called up by the Twins a couple of weeks ago.
In his two starts this season, however, he has a 2-0 record with a pristine 0.59 ERA. Whether his effort going forward is sustainable is unclear, but after Thursday night's domination, he should clearly have a spot in the team's starting rotation for several more weeks.
