Twins-Giants series preview: Pitching matchups, key stats, players to watch

The Twins will look to keep rolling against a good San Francisco team this weekend at Target Field.

Apr 14, 2025; Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA; Minnesota Twins starting pitcher Joe Ryan (41) reacts after getting the final out of the fourth inning against the New York Mets at Target Field. | Jesse Johnson-Imagn Images

The Twins are rolling right now, having won a season-high five games in a row after completing a sweep of the Orioles this week. Now they face a much stiffer test with a weekend series against the 24-14 Giants, who are tied for fourth in MLB in winning percentage and are sixth in the league in run differential (+39).

This is an opportunity for Minnesota to show that it's capable of doing more than beating up on bad teams. At the moment, the 18-20 Twins are 10-5 against sub-.500 teams (10-2 outside of a sweep in Atlanta) and 8-15 against teams who are .500 or better. That's a continuation of a trend from last season, when they went 43-21 against teams who finished with losing records and 39-59 against everyone else.

The Giants get overshadowed a bit by the Dodgers and Padres in the NL West, but they appear to be a very good team in their own right. After three seasons of hovering around the .500 mark, San Francisco has all the makings of a playoff team in 2025. Offensively, they're ninth in the league in runs per game (4.82) and 14th in OPS. They've been even better on the pitching side, ranking sixth in ERA and seventh in opponent batting average. Only the Mets have allowed fewer home runs than the Giants so far this season.

Here are the projected pitching matchups for this series at Target Field, where the Twins have won ten of their last 11 games:

Friday: RHP Chris Paddack (5.57 ERA) vs. RHP Jordan Hicks (6.03)
Saturday: RHP Joe Ryan (2.93) vs. RHP Logan Webb (2.61)
Sunday: RHP Pablo Lopez (2.18) vs. RHP Landen Roupp (4.89)

The Twins won't face Robbie Ray, who has been one of the Giants' best pitchers this year, or 42-year-old Justin Verlander. All three guys they will face are sinker-heavy righties who generate lots of ground balls. Webb has only allowed one home run in 48.1 innings this season. Hicks has given up two in 37.1 frames. This may not be a series where Byron Buxton and the Twins can do a lot of damage by leaving the yard. Instead, they might have to string hits together to score runs.

On the position player side, the Giants are led in WAR by 3B Matt Chapman, CF Jung-Hoo Lee, and RF Mike Yastrzemski. Those have been their three best hitters, and they're all high-level defenders as well, particularly the first two. Heliot Ramos, Wilmer Flores, and Willy Adames are also important run producers for San Francisco, although Adames is off to a bit of a slow start in his first year with the Giants.

This is a huge series for the Twins. If they can find a way to take two out of three games, they'll be just one game below .500 heading into next week's road trip to Baltimore and Milwaukee.