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Game Notes: Archer vs Gibson

With the possibility of Nick Franklin making it rain in his season debut

By Adam Sanford
Marilyn Indahl/Getty Images

Chris Archer is freshly coming off his best start of the month, in which he battled through a tough first inning, then went on to throw six shutout innings after allowing two in the first. He followed that up by causing a stir with a tweet aimed at the Rays' record low attendance against the usually high drawing Yankees. His opponent on the mound will be Kyle Gibson.

Gibson was the Twins first round pick in the 2009 draft and he worked his way to Triple-A by 2011, but alas an elbow injury sidelined him for the majority of the season, he would eventually have to undergo Tommy John Surgery that would cost him the most of the 2012 season. After recovering, Gibson made his major league debut in 2013, but didn't have much success and this past season was his first full year in the bigs and he had a decent showing.

So far this month, Gibson has been great for the Twins, only have allowed one run in 21 innings pitched over three starts. Heading into play today, Gibson sports a 2.70 ERA with a 4.51 FIP.

Lineups:

Rays;

The Rays are giving Souza the day off, so he'll have a total of two days rest before the next game on Tuesday in Atlanta. Logan Forsythe moves up to the 2nd spot in the order and he'll DH, while Nick Franklin makes his season debut playing 2B. Also, Rene Rivera gets a day off as well and Bobby Wilson will catch.

Twins;

Kyle Gibson Scouting Report:

Kyle Gibson has five pitches he can use on opposing batters; a fastball (19%) and sinker (42%) in the low 90's, a change (17%), slider (20%), and curve (2%) in the low 80's.

Gibson drills lefties on the inner part of the plate with his fastball, while using it sporadically in the zone to righties. With his sinker, he has it start in the middle of the zone and tail to the low outside corner, while having it run down and in on righties. Gibson uses his slider pretty much exclusively in one spot, sweeping down and in on lefties, and running down and away from righties. He has only used his curve a handful of times this season, but so far it's been anywhere low in the zone. With his final pitch, the change, Gibson keeps it away from lefties either down, out of the zone, or paints the outside corner with it. To righties, he gets more specific, placing it on the inside corner or drops it below the zone.

Thus far this season, Gibson has a 9.4 K% and a 8.3 BB%. With his hard sinker, he nets plenty of grounders as they're hit 50.3% (linedrives are 22.4% and flyballs are 35% of the time off him.

Other Rays News:

- If Chris Archer records more than four strikeouts, he'll surpass Victor Zambrano for 8th all-time on the Rays leaderboard.

- Following yesterday's lost, the Rays optioned Andrew Bellatti to Durham and promoted Nick Franklin. During his short stint with Durham, Franklin slashed .318/.423/.500 with 1 HR in 8 games. Andrew Bellatti gave the Rays all they could hope for during his week in the big leagues, going 6 scoreless innings.

- The scene earlier at Target Field

- May 17 in Rays history

  • Jose Guillen (1976) and Carlos Pena (1978) are born.
  • 2003 - Geremi Gonzalez makes his Rays debut, with a line of 7 IP / 5 H / 2 R / 2 BB / 9 K
  • 2003 - During that same game, the Rays tied a MLB record by not recording a single assist, as every out came via strikeout, or the ball was caught in the air (fly out, line out, or pop out).

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