Minnesota Twins right-hander Ervin Santana (3-8) threw his second complete game in the span of four outings Tuesday night, but came up on the short end as his offense was held to just five hits and no runs by Atlanta Braves right-hander Lucas Harrell (2-2) in a 2-0 loss at Target Field.
Santana — whom interim general manager Rob Antony said prior to the game that he wasn’t actively shopping, but would only move in a “good baseball trade” — went all nine innings, scattering seven hits with a pair of runs and five strikeouts and no walks. He even told manager Paul Molitor that if the team tied the game up in the ninth off Braves closer Jim Johnson, he wanted to go back out there for the 10th.
“I felt pretty good,” Santana said after the game. “We had a lot of chances to score runs, but there’s nothing we can do. We try to push, and push and play hard every time. We want to score runs, but tonight was not the night.”
Santana finished with 97 pitches (63 strikes), and lowered his season ERA to 3.78 — the lowest it has been since he lowered it to 3.13 after eight strong innings against the Blue Jays on May 19.
After scoring 18 runs in the final two games at Fenway Park over the weekend, the Twins offense was listless against Harrell, who wasn’t particularly impressive in his six innings, as he fanned four batters, walked three and threw a wild pitch.
After clean 1-2-3 inning in the first and a fly out by Nick Markakis to start the second, Santana gave up a solo home run to Braves third baseman Adonis Garcia to get the scoring underway. Santana rebounded to get center fielder Ender Inciarte to ground out on an odd 4-1 scoring play, and right fielder Jeff Francoeur to ground out on a nice play by second baseman Brian Dozier — one of three on the night where he ranged to his right and made an off-balance, on-target throw — to get out of the second inning trailing 1-0.
The Braves tacked on another run in the third, as catcher A.J. Pierzynski snuck a double between Joe Mauer and the first base line, advanced to third on an Erick Aybar single and scored on a 6-4-3 double play ball off the bat of left fielder Jace Peterson.
And like that the scoring was finished, just two-and-a-half innings into a game that took a grand total of just two hours, 23 minutes to play.
Santana was incredible with his pitch economy in the early going. He completed five innings with just 39 pitches, while Harrell needed 90. In fact, at that point Harrell had thrown as many balls (39) as Santana had thrown total pitches. Santana also got through six innings with just 56 pitches before running into a few more lengthy innings as the night wore on.
“Nothing,” Santana said when asked what Atlanta’s tendency to swing early in counts on Tuesday night did to alter his game plan. “Just trying to get the ball down for the most part, and make them swing early.”
As an offense, the Twins mustered just five hits total, with no baserunner for the club reaching after Kurt Suzuki’s one-out double in the seventh inning. Four of the Twins’ five hits came off Harrell, with Mauricio Cabrera, Hunter Cervenka, Chris Withrow and Johnson (save, 3) combining to throw three clean innings with just one hit allowed, four strikeouts and zero walks.
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Up Next – RHP Mike Foltynewicz (3-4, 3.79) vs. RHP Tyler Duffey (5-7, 5.71)
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Notes
- This marked the fifth time the Twins were shut out this season.
- This was the Twins’ third complete game of the season; Santana has two and Phil Hughes had one in a rain-shortened win over Milwaukee on April 18.
- Eduardo Nunez stole his 25th and 26th bases of the season to take the lead over Houston’s Jose Altuve in the AL stolen base race.
- Kennys Vargas, Byron Buxton and Dozier all extended personal hitting streaks to a modest four games.
- The 2:23 time of game marked the third-shortest game of the year for the Twins. On May 21 they beat the Blue Jays in 2:19, and on April 18 they beat Milwaukee in 2:21 in the aforementioned rain-shortened game.
- Santana on the last time he felt he pitched this efficiently: “Maybe last time against Oakland?” That was Santana’s other complete game this season, back on July 6 at home against the A’s where he threw a complete game, two-hit shutout on exactly 100 pitches.
- Molitor on Santana’s effort despite not getting any offensive help: “Ervin was good. He gave up the solo home run and after the first and third, nobody out he still got out of it with only one run. We were in striking distance. We just squandered opportunities early and didn’t muster late. The at-bats weren’t particularly good today, for the most part. We came back after the off day and felt a little sluggish for whatever reason. I can’t always explain that. We just couldn’t get a big hit with someone on base. We ran ourselves out of one inning a little bit there too. Ervin was solid; he wanted to go back out there if we tied it up in the ninth. He wanted to go one more. He was strong, economical and very efficient.”
- Molitor on if Santana played into the Braves’ swing-happy tendencies: “I think he was. He had good command of his pitches. They couldn’t really sit on any one thing. He was getting ahead with the breaking ball, changeup and fastball. They were aggressive, there’s no doubt about that when you look up in the fifth or sixth inning and he’s averaging less than 10 pitchers per inning. You know that the team is coming out aggressively.”
- Molitor on if a lack of familiarity with the opponent can lead to a flat offensive performance such as this one: “I don’t think in this day and age it’s a huge thing. Obviously you build up track records, you get a little better feel for what guys might try to do. In the meeting today we kind of covered what to expect. I think we received that, but I don’t know if the plans were executed particularly well.”
