The good news is that most of the pieces came together for the Minnesota Twins. There was another strong performance from a starting pitcher, they made frequent contact and pushed runs across in a variety of ways and the bullpen closed it out and put the finishing touches on a 6-3 victory over the New York Mets Tuesday night at Target Field in Minneapolis.
The bad news was that the injuries started adding up. Matt Wallner left the game in the first inning with left hamstring soreness after beating a throw to first base in the first inning, and Carlos Correa exited the game in the fifth inning with left wrist soreness, appearing to tweak it during his at-bat. Twins manager Rocco Baldelli said postgame both would receive imaging, but didn’t have any further updates on either player’s status going forward.
The Twins (6-12) were able to make contact and push runs across in a variety of ways Tuesday night. In the third inning, Harrison Bader singled, stole second and advance to third on a single from Byron Buxton. With two outs after a failed bunt attempt from DaShawn Keirsey Jr., who replaced Wallner in right field, Ty France was able to reach first and plate a run on Francisco Lindor’s fielding error. Minnesota took a 2-1 advantage when Correa hit an RBI single the next at-bat.
In the fourth inning, Trevor Larnach was hit by a pitch and Ryan Jeffers appeared to hit a two-run homer the next at-bat for a 4-2 Twins lead. The home run was overturned after review, however, and instead ruled a ground-rule double. Either way, Harrison Bader made sure Minnesota would lead at the end of the fourth inning, hitting a one-out RBI single for a 3-2 lead.
In the fifth inning, Buxton led off with a single, stole second base and advanced to third on Keirsey’s groundout. France then hit a grounder to second, but Buxton beat out Luisangel Acuna’s throw to home to extend Minnesota’s lead to 4-2.
Jeffers hit a leadoff double in the sixth inning and later came home on an RBI single for Edouard Julien for a 5-2 lead. It was a particularly impressive game from Jeffers, who went 3 for 3 with a pair of doubles and was hit by a pitch. Brooks Lee hit a solo homer in the seventh inning for a 6-3 Twins advantage that gave the team a little bit of breathing room.
The Twins collected 13 hits, a season high, and went 5 for 14 with runners in scoring position.
Bailey Ober provided another solid start, giving up just three runs off five hits while fanning five across 6 2/3 innings. His lone blemishes were solo homers to Pete Alonso and Juan Soto in the first and fourth innings, respectively, until he ran into a bit of trouble in the seventh when giving up a single to Mark Vientos and a double to Luis Torrens. That’s when his day came to an end in favor of Cole Sands, who gave up a sac fly to Jesse Winker but otherwise quieted the Mets (11-6).
Ober recorded his 500th career strikeout in the fourth inning.
Griffin Jax pitched a scoreless eighth inning and Jhoan Duran kept it scoreless in an interesting ninth inning.
Target Field set a record for lowest attendance (excluding COVID) during Monday night’s series opener against the Mets with an announced crowd of 10,240, and it wasn’t substantially larger Tuesday night with just 12,507 in attendance. It was Jackie Robinson Day across the major leagues, and all Twins and Mets players wore his No. 42 in Tuesday night’s game.
The Twins and Mets meet for the series finale at Target Field at 12:10 p.m. CT.
Be First to Comment