Can Twins get to Blue Jays’ pitching staff?

This story was excerpted from Do-Hyoung Park’s Twins Beat newsletter. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.

The Twins have done everything possible to learn from the failures of the past and try to make this year different from those that have come before.

Their health failed them down the stretch of a divisional chase last fall — so they added enough depth to the point that they run at least 12-deep in players with double-digit homers, or 40-plus RBIs, or 100-plus total bases.

Their playoff inexperience has perhaps cost them in tough, pressure-packed settings — and now, they’ve got Carlos Correa, Christian Vázquez, Michael A. Taylor and Kenta Maeda, who have four World Series rings and 151 postseason games of experience among them.

And, most significantly, after the pitching failures of postseasons past, the Twins have assembled their most formidable playoff staff yet — and this American League Wild Card Series matchup against the Blue Jays will almost certainly be dictated by the arms featured by two of the most effective pitching staffs in the league throughout the regular season.

Pablo López (3.66 ERA, 234 strikeouts, 1.15 WHIP) and Sonny Gray (2.79 ERA, 183 strikeouts, 1.15 WHIP) are both likely to appear on AL Cy Young Award ballots, and they’ll lead a rested pitching staff against a similarly loaded Toronto rotation and bullpen.

The prep work is over, having gone as well as the Twins could have hoped. The battle starts now, with Game 1 at Target Field slated for a 3:38 p.m. CT first pitch this afternoon. If you can’t get to Target Field, you can watch the game on ESPN.

“So, now, you throw the numbers out the window and the season starts,” Correa said. “This is the season that matters, so it’s time to go.”

The Twins can put more faith in López and Gray than they have in any 1-2 punch in some time — as well as in a pitching staff that tied for the fewest runs allowed in the AL during the regular season. They’ll also have to scrape together runs against a Toronto pitching staff that finished with the fourth-fewest runs allowed in the Majors — but there’s a path to that.

The Blue Jays will open with Game 1 starter Kevin Gausman, the only man in the AL to strike out more batters than López this season. But the Twins actually did tag Gausman for six earned runs on June 11 and drew five walks off Gausman on May 26.

Gausman’s strikeout pitch is a splitter that generates misses on 43% of swings — and only one other team was better than the Twins at laying off that splitter in any game this season, that second time they saw Gausman in June.

The Twins’ second-half improvements on offense largely came on the backs of increased playing time for their rookies — Edouard Julien, Royce Lewis and Matt Wallner — and the fact that the Blue Jays could line up three right-handed starters could bode well for the Twins, considering that keeps Julien and Wallner in the starting lineup.

And, in that regard, old friend and Game 2 starter José Berríos has allowed a .774 OPS to lefties. Here’s something else to watch: Both Berríos and possible Game 3 starter Chris Bassitt rely primarily on sinkers; the Twins were the third-best team in the AL at hitting right-handed sinkers, by expected slugging.

It’s a tough pitching staff to crack, especially when you get to the bullpen — but the path is there, on paper, for the Twins to put pressure on the starting rotation and play from ahead, which will be crucial when the likes of Jordan Hicks and Jordan Romano await at the back end.

“We don’t have aspirations just to win the division, to play in October,” catcher Ryan Jeffers said. “We want to do something special this year. I think we know we have the team to do it.”

One other thing: Even as the Twins’ lineup came together in the second half and in September, one key piece was missing in a healthy Correa — and there’s hope that now that the plantar fascia in his left foot has ruptured to give him some pain relief, he might finally be back to his trademark October self as the finishing piece.

“I don’t think we’ve ever had the full lineup together where everybody’s just at the same time in the lineup feeling healthy,” Correa said. “So, I think in this postseason, we’re going to start with our lineup with the guys that we’re expecting to be out there, and it’s going to be fun to see how it’s going to develop, so I’m excited.”