6/10: Red Sox Knuckleballer Knocks Out Twins 8-1

The narrative that came out of the Minnesota clubhouse was that one pitch opened the floodgates for the Boston Red Sox, who beat the Twins 8-1 on Friday night.

Tyler Duffey was looking to get out of his third jam of the night in the fifth inning when he left a pitch he intended to throw inside on Xander Bogaerts’ hands.

“I knew what I was trying to do with it. I threw the pitch I wanted, [but] about 6 inches over the middle instead of in,” Duffey told the Star Tribune. “It’s a different ballgame [if he doesn’t miss]. You can’t take it back, but sometimes one pitch makes a difference.”

Bogaerts went 4-for-5 with four RBI on the night, capping a game in which Minnesota honored his teammate, and former Twin, David Ortiz, before the game.

“That guy is out of his mind,” Boston slugger David Ortiz told the Associated Press after the game.

Steven Wright used one pitch, albeit multiple times, to flummox the Twins hitters. His knuckleball held Minnesota to one unearned run in 7.1 innings pitched.

“He sped it up, he slowed it down, he had it going in, he had it going out,” Twins manager Paul Molitor told the Star Tribune. “If he throws a good one, it’s ‘Good luck.’ You hope you get a couple mistakes that float more than dive and dart, but we swung and missed a lot. That tells you it was moving.”

All of the Twins young hitters had trouble against it. Byung Ho Park, who is 29 but in his first major league season, had particular trouble with it. He struck out four times in four at-bats.

“I know [Park] doesn’t have any knuckleball experience. I asked him about Korea, and he said couple guys might have [toyed] with it, but he never saw a steady diet. so that was tough for him,” Molitor told the Star Tribune. “You want him to face different people so he gets different looks.”

Boston scored three in the fifth and three in the sixth, putting them up 6-0 before Minnesota could get a run on the board. For good measure, they added two in the ninth off of Michael Tonkin.

“They kept adding on,” Molitor told the Associated Press. “It turned out to be pretty lopsided.”

[Star Tribune, Associated Press]

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