Twins

9/15 GAME NOTES: Colon Falters in Seventh, Loses On Big Sexy Night

Sports are the ultimate spot for second-guessing, and that’s rarely more evident than in baseball, where most plays come down to decision-making — especially late in games.

But with a 14-man bullpen, the seventh inning felt a bit more preventable than it wound up being as the Minnesota Twins fell 4-3 to the Toronto Blue Jays on Friday night at Target Field.

The Twins’ lead in the Wild Card race fell to two games, as the Angels managed to beat the Rangers 7-6 to keep the heat on Minnesota with 15 games left in the season.

For six innings on Big Sexy Night at Target Field, Bartolo Colon gutted things out, and left the frame with a 3-2 lead even after surrendering home runs to Kevin Pillar and Josh Donaldson over the previous two innings. While his pitch count was in good shape heading into the seventh (78), so too were the swings opposing hitters were getting against him.

Virtually all the batted balls early against Colon were in the air, and that didn’t change much throughout the course of the night. In the sixth, Colon allowed four batted balls, and the exit velocities on them (in mph) were as follows in order:

  • 100.9 (home run)
  • 105.1 (groundout)
  • 88.7 (fly out)
  • 88.5 (line out)

To go back to the fifth inning paints an even bleaker picture:

  • 93.9 (home run)
  • 98.3 (double)
  • 97.8 (fly out)
  • 96.9 (line out)

Letting Colon pitch the fifth was a no-brainer, not only in terms of pitch count but because he went in with a two-run lead and it was the bottom of the order due up. Having Colon pitch the sixth was a bit more dicey, as he wound up giving up the home run to Donaldson while dancing out of danger otherwise.

But letting him pitch the seventh — especially after Ryan Pressly had warmed in the sixth — seemed like playing with fire from the outset, and it didn’t take long for that to be true. Pillar opened the inning by walking on four pitches. Rather than go to the bullpen at that point, Molitor stuck with Colon as Russell Martin stepped to the plate. The thought process of wanting a double play grounder with the slow-footed catcher at the plate and a pitcher dealing two-seamers with ample run makes sense, but again, Colon lived and died by the fly ball on Friday night.

Twelve of the 17 batted balls he allowed were fly balls, for instance.

On the fourth pitch of the plate appearance, Martin doubled just past the outstretched glove of Eddie Rosario, scoring Pillar to knot the game at three runs apiece. Colon strode off the mound to a warm applause, but it didn’t take long for things to go sideways on Pressly, either.

To be fair, it wasn’t entirely his fault.

On the first pitch Pressly threw, Ryan Goins dropped down a bunt in no-man’s land between third base and the mound. Pressly, who naturally falls off the mound to the first base side as a righty, didn’t get over to the ball in time to field it cleanly, and was convinced even if he had, would not have had a play on Goins, who according to Statcast leaderboards is about middle of the road, speed-wise.

Molitor called it a PFP — pitcher’s fielding pratice, a spring training staple — play the team missed after the game, but did concede that the mistake may have been in thinking the team had a play on the runner at third — especially since it was a tag play. Escobar crashed on the play and Pressly looked up for a split second to perhaps get the runner, and nothing came to fruition.

No matter the reason, the Jays had runners on the corners with nobody out.

That’s when Pressly went to work.

He got the next two outs with relative ease, as he pumped 98 mph fastballs past Richard Urena for out two after getting a shallow fly to left off the bat of Teoscar Hernandez. Finally, Pressly got up 0-2 on Donaldson, but opted to throw a curve that the former MVP smoked back up the box. It caught Pressly on the right ankle — he claimed with incredulity after the game he simply wanted to get out of the way because he knew Dozier was playing right behind him and had a play in the ball — with the kick save deflecting the ball to shortstop Jorge Polanco, who had no time left for a throw to first as Martin scurried home for the eventual winning run.

There’s a lot to unpack about the seventh inning, but it all seems to start with the decision to put Colon back out there. He’d been getting peppered for much of the night — seven of the top-10 balls hit by highest exit velocity came off Colon on the evening — and the Twins went to the well one too many times.

With a deep bullpen — at least in terms of available arms, though not necessarily those trusted by the manager — that seems like the wrong decision. In Molitor’s defense, he didn’t have Trevor Hildenberger, Alan Busenitz or Taylor Rogers at his disposal — a large swath of the relievers who have earned his trust to this point in the season.

So again, this feels a lot like second-guessing. Or in all honesty, first-guessing since it was done in the moment. But who knows? Maybe going to the bullpen to start the seventh blows up immensely, which makes not trusting your 20-plus-year veteran starter with under 80 pitches look bad too.

That’s why Molitor makes the big bucks, and we just write the reactions.

Notes

  • Reports emerged from the St. Paul Pioneer Press and Minneapolis Star Tribune that both Fort Myers manager Doug Mientkiewicz and long-time minor-league pitching coordinator Eric Rasmussen were not being brought back.
  • The loss dropped the Twins to 38-38 at Target Field this season.
  • Dozier hit his 31st home run of the season in the fifth inning off Jays starter J.A. Happ.
  • Buxton had another two-hit night and is hitting .255/.317/.421 for the season.
  • Buxton also stole second base for his 21st successful steal in a row — second-most in team history behind Matt Lawton and Chuck Knoblauch.

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