Twins

10/1 GAME NOTES: Twins Win Tigers Series; Cap Season with 85th Win

If you were a catcher for the Minnesota Twins, there was a fairly good chance you homered on Sunday. Jason Castro took reliever Blaine Hardy deep in the sixth inning, and Chris Gimenez homered in the eighth against Drew VerHagen as the Twins wrapped up an 85-win regular season with a 5-1 win at Target Field.

“It was good to finish with a win,” manager Paul Molitor said. “The regular season was kind of a strange on in the American League where five teams that are over .500 are in the playoffs, and three teams won 100 games.”

If you’re Mitch Garver and you’re reading this and feeling left out — first of all, hi! — and second of all, two out of three ain’t bad.

The same went for the series, as the Twins took two of three from the skidding Tigers, who finished with just six wins from Sept. 1 on and locked up the No. 1 pick in next season’s amateur draft — thanks to a walk-off home run from Pablo Sandoval for the San Francisco Giants.

Now the Twins will head to the Bronx, where they’ll work out on Monday and then take on the New York Yankees in a one-and-done Wild Card game on Tuesday. Who knows what’ll happen, but maybe this year’s 85-win Twins can surprise like the 1987 team did. Playoffs were a bit different in those days — just two teams from each league made the playoffs as there were just four divisions total — but that year’s team won the World Series, and they also finished 85-77.

Sunday’s win capped a 41-40 season for the Twins at Target Field, which was also an impressive feat considering how poorly they’d started at home. It was the first winning season at both Target Field and on the road for the Twins since 2010 — the first year at the new stadium and also the last time they made the postseason.

It was also a series of potential ‘lasts’ for some Twins. An emotional Glen Perkins got the final out in the top of the ninth on Saturday night — a popout to Kennys Vargas at first base which saw the grizzled veteran lefty ask him for the baseball before spending the bottom of the inning openly weeping with only a Gatorade hand towel to console him.

Sunday was possibly Bartolo Colon’s final game, but maybe it’s possible that carries less gravity, inasmuch as any game can be a 44-year-old’s final game. But for a left-handed reliever a decade his junior who has spent his entire career in the same uniform of the team he grew up rooting for, that seemed to be a bit of a tougher pill to swallow. Nevertheless, manager Paul Molitor removed the righty after 6.1 solid innings with one earned run, three hits allowed and 83 pitches thrown.

Colon left to an ovation, and even contributed to it a bit by clapping with his pitching hand and glove in a manner only befitting of the lovable hurler — with the trademark smile to boot. If this is it for Colon, it seems fair to remember his Twins tenure — brief as it was — more so for how it affected players off the field than on it. His ERA in a Twins uniform was an unbecoming 5.18, but it seems more apt to measure his value in ways, well, we can’t really measure. How much did he help fellow Latin pitchers like Jose Berrios and Adalberto Mejia, or even position players like Eddie Rosario, Jorge Polanco and Miguel Sano?

Furthermore, when the camera was on Colon in the dugout, did you ever see the people around him not smiling?

Right?

He won’t make the Wild Card game roster and even if the Twins advance to the Division Series might not make that roster, either. But it’d be a hard sell to say he didn’t affect the organization in a positive manner.

“It was good to see him bounce back after falling to a bit of an illness last time out,” Molitor said. “The same guys stepped up and were doing good things. We’ll turn the page on the regular season and put all our focus on trying to put together the right package to give ourselves a chance to win on Tuesday.”

Sunday’s game was kind of a snoozer, to be honest. Not only did it come on the heels of an ugly Vikings loss, but was delayed nearly an hour due to persistent rain on a chilly day. On the positive side, the game was played in a tidy 2:36 — fitting for a Tigers team that couldn’t have looked less interested in wanting to be at a ballpark at any point over the last month or so of the season.

Colon pitched well, with Buddy Boshers, Tyler Duffey and Gabriel Moya pitching 2.2 innings of scoreless relief the rest of the way. Moya got two strikeouts in 1.2 perfect innings of work, and in doing so, picked up his first major-league save.

Notes and Quotes

  • This marked the lowest win total (85) of any Twins playoff team in club history — tied with the 1987 team.
  • The Twins were 24-22-6 in series this season and 11-8 in the season series with the Tigers.
  • The win was the 240th of Colon’s career.
  • Joe Mauer (1-for-3 with a double) finished the season hitting .305/.384/.417 — the first time he’s hit over .300 or slugged over .400 since his 2013 season.
  • Castro’s home run was his 10th of the season, giving the Twins nine players with double-digit homers this year. Last season’s team had 11 players do so — a team record.
  • Molitor on finally being able to turn his attention to the postseason: “It’s been on my mind during these games. To be honest with you, we tried to do the best we could to play it out and get the guys their work and keep them sharp. But you’re right, Tuesday will come very quickly. We’ll get out there tonight, and get our workout in tomorrow.”  
  • Molitor on if he’ll have time to take a breath between the end of the regular season and Tuesday: “I think there’ll be a bit of a breath. I think some of the work has already begun as far as preparation over the last couple days. I haven’t gotten through all the paperwork, but I’ve gotten through a lot of it. It’s still a baseball game. We’ll do what we can to prepare, and our players will take it from there.”

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