The Minnesota Twins appeared to be headed towards a disappointing loss in the ninth inning, as the Seattle Mariners had the tying run on third base and the winning run on first with no outs against closer Kevin Jepsen.
But Dae-Ho Lee popped out to shallow right for the first out. Then Jepsen threw a ball in the dirt that landed a few feet in front of catcher Juan Centeno. Kyle Seager broke towards second base, but decided to go back to first once he saw he could not break Centeno’s throw.
Dozier followed Seager with the ball, but made a sudden throw to third, where Eduardo Nunez tagged Shawn O’Malley, who was inching towards home plate. Nunez then threw to second where Eduardo Escobar tagged Seager to record the final out.
“A lot of things go through your head, one being, that’s the winning run [in the rundown]. You’ve got to try to get that out, but you can’t lose your aggressiveness,” Dozier told the Star Tribune. On his throw to Nunez, “I didn’t get my feet situated, and I threw from my back leg. I knew it was going to be bang-bang, but Nunez did a good job putting the tag on.”
“I thought it was a clear play. I know I got my tag down in time,” Escobar told the Associated Press through an interpreter. “I know Nunez was saying it was a little bit close, but I thought I had it.”
The Twins were able to squeeze out a win against the first-place Mariners despite tempting fate all night.
Twice the Twins allowed the first two Mariners of an inning to reach base, and twice more they let the first three, yet only three runs resulted from all that mess.
They made one official error, misplayed multiple other balls, including a seemingly critical drop of a foul fly ball by Miguel Sano, routinely threw to the wrong base and once cut down the go-ahead run at the plate.
Starter Phil Hughes gave up nine hits, gave up four earned runs and walked three in 4.2 innings.
“We got out of some jams tonight. We kind of Houdini’d our way out of a couple of those innings, particularly there in the ninth,” Twins manager Paul Molitor told the Star Tribune. “I’m glad we caught a break, because we haven’t caught a lot.”
[Star Tribune, Associated Press]
