Take away last Sunday’s seventh inning against Kansas City, and Scott Baker has been terrific in his past two starts.

He has taken the mound for 14 innings and posted 13 zeros. But that one 5-spot in Sunday’s seventh inning left him 0-4 with a 9.15 ERA heading into Friday’s start.

It was an important game for the Twins because they had a three-game losing streak, and they’ll be facing King Felix and Erik Bedard in the final two games of the series.

The Twins grabbed a 5-0 lead by the second inning, making it easier for Baker to relax, and he tossed seven innings in the team’s first shutout of the season, an 11-0 victory that helped restore their battered confidence.

What’s been the key to Baker’s success? Basically, he’s not throwing the meatballs that led to seven home runs in his first two starts.

In a way, he’s been effectively wild, despite walking just one batter in the two starts and throwing 142 of his 207 pitches (69 percent) for strikes.

Baker hasn’t been putting himself into many dangerous counts, but he’s also not being predictable by simply pounding the strike zone.

Against Kansas City, Baker threw first-pitch strikes to just eight of 24 hitters. Against Seattle, he was 14-for-25 with first-pitch strikes. Throwing first-pitch strikes to 45 percent of the hitters you face isn’t recommended, but Baker almost seems to be doing it on purpose. He also knows he can recover quickly.

Against the Royals, he went into the dangerous hitter’s counts of 2-0 or 3-1 in just five plate appearances. Against the Mariners, he only went 2-0 twice and only reached a 3-ball count once. Russell Branyan lined to center with a full count to end the sixth inning.

“I think all of us have talked about it,” Baker said. “All of us starters are pretty efficient as far as throwing strikes, not walking a lot of guys, and maybe we throw too many strikes sometimes. Opposing hitters know we’re going to be around the plate all the time, so it’s kind of a Catch-22.”

Baker is learning. After losing his first four starts — that’s as many losses as he had all of last year, when he went 11-4 with a 3.45 ERA — Baker is settling into the groove the Twins expected when they gave him that four-year, $15.25 million contract.

“We were hoping he’d come back out [after the KC start] and get after it again, and he did,” Manager Ron Gardenhire said. “I have a lot of confidence in Scott Baker, he’s a very good pitcher, and he’s going to win some ballgames for us, a lot of them.”

This entry was posted on Friday, May 8th, 2009 at 11:38 pm and is filed under Twins thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.