A fourth-inning home run from Todd Frazier squared things at three runs apiece, and from that point on it was all White Sox as they pounded Kyle Gibson and friends in an 11-4 win at Target Field on Friday night.
The offense staked Gibson to a 3-1 lead in the third inning as Brian Dozier poked his 33rd home run of the season, but the tall right-hander couldn’t hold it as the Pale Hose outscored the Twins 10-1 the rest of the way to send the Twins to their 85th loss of the season.
If the Twins play to their current pace (50-85) the rest of the way, they’ll finish with a 60-102 record — tying them for the worst record in franchise history since the club moved from the nation’s capital.
The Twins couldn’t stop the bleeding after Gibson departed, as relievers Alex Wimmers and J.T. Chargois combined to give up six runs in the final two innings to make the margin of defeat look bigger than the deficit was for much of the game.
Here’s what we saw from our seats:
Gibson allowed a first-inning run — which has been an issue for him this year
The Twins were in a quick 1-0 hole, as Gibson allowed Jose Abreu to single home Adam Eaton. As a side note, Abreu and Eaton absolutely crushed the Twins on Friday night, as they went a combined 7-for-11 with four RBI and four runs — all from Eaton — scored.
Anyway, Gibson allowed his 18th run of the first inning on Friday night — the most he’s allowed in any inning by a pretty wide margin. In fact, entering play Friday night, he’d allowed 17 runs in first innings, and 19 runs total in innings 2-4 in games all season long. As a result of the run Gibson allowed, he’s got an 8.10 ERA in first innings this year.
Gibson worked from behind — yet again
Gibson threw a first-pitch strike to just 12 of the 27 batters he’s faced, and since his complete game in Atlanta three starts ago, has started with strike one to just 42-of-77 batters in the meantime. That’s just a 54.5 percent rate, well below the AL average for starters (60.6 percent). The honest-to-goodness truth is that Gibson’s raw stuff just isn’t good enough for him to consistently work from behind.
Nothing about the pitching staff made any sense as far as the Twins were concerned
Five Twins pitchers combined to allow 11 runs on 16 hits, but also strike out 12 batters and walk six. Overall, the Twins threw a staggering 199 pitches — nearly twice as many as the White Sox — but ultimately outside of the strikeouts, got absolutely obliterated. Ryan O’Rourke and Pat Light were the only two Twins pitchers to not allow a run; O’Rourke threw just three pitches (all strikes) and got just one out, while Light pitched into, and subsequently out of trouble with a pair of bases-loaded strikeouts in the seventh inning. When he can command the splitter, it’s absolutely nasty. He told me on two occasions now that when he’s commanding it right, it’ll either cut — in other words, like in to a left-handed hitter — or the bottom will drop out, and it’ll get swings and misses. When it’s not working, it tails, and gets hammered. He’s shown both as a Twin so far this season.
The Twins offense didn’t exactly make the White Sox pitching staff work too hard
Outside of the Dozier home run, White Sox starter Carlos Rodon was pretty much perfect. In seven innings, Rodon fanned five batters, walked just one and threw only 79 pitches (54 strikes). In fact, Gibson threw nearly as many pitches (101) in 5.2 innings as the White Sox staff threw in whole (104). Rodon finished by retiring the final seven Twins batters he faced before giving way to Nate Jones.
Byron Buxton had a nice night at the plate, and also in the field
Dozier and Buxton were the only Twins with multiple hits, as Rodon, Jones and Michael Ynoa held the Twins to just eight on the night. Perhaps the most important thing for Buxton following a strikeout-filled stint at Rochester is that through two games, he’s still yet to whiff with the Twins. Buxton singled in the third inning and came across on the Dozier home run, and added another single in the fifth on a 1-1 count before scoring on a Jorge Polanco sacrifice fly.
Buxton also made an incredible catch in the top half of the fifth to record the third out of the inning, and preserve what was at the time a 4-3 deficit while taking away yet another hit from Abreu. Abreu thrashed a 1-1 pitch from Gibson into the gap, and Buxton loped after it, catching it in right-center after a very long run to close out the inning, and prevent Melky Cabrera from scoring after he reached second on an errant throw.
The data on Kepler’s catch was no joke, either:
Dozier absolutely throttled that home run
He’s now up to .271/.344/.546 on the season. Incredible. Rodon left a two-seam fastball right over the middle of the plate, and Dozier capitalized with a 411-foot homer that came off the bat at 101 mph via Statcast.
Max Kepler went 0-for-4, and Miguel Sano was 0-for-3
Kepler’s down to just .240/.320/.458 on the season, as he’s been mired in a bit of a mini-slump. Kepler hasn’t had a multi-hit game since Aug. 17 in Atlanta, and he’s just 8-for-53 since then (.151 average). Sano’s line is virtually identical at .234/.320/.444, as he’s just 8-for-60 (.133) since Aug. 12, when he hit his last home run against Kansas City’s Yordano Ventura.
Logan Schafer….uh, we’ll just let the GIF do the talking
Notes & Quotes
- The Twins have lost 14 of their last 15 games, and are just 4-10 against the White Sox this season.
- Dozier extended his hitting streak to a modest seven games.
- Polanco is batting .328 since returning from Triple-A (39-for-119).
- This marked Buxton’s seventh multi-hit game of the season.
- The Rochester Red Wings lost 7-1, and were nearly no-hit in the process as Reynaldo Rodriguez broke up the bid with two outs in the ninth as he singled to score James Beresford. As a result, the Red Wings are eliminated from postseason play with three games left in the season.
- Rochester Democrat and Chronicle reporter Kevin Oklobzija wrote that catcher John Ryan Murphy was headed back to the Twins following the loss. Murphy’s Triple-A stats overall are not good — .237/.287/.324 — but he did manage to hit a solid .328/.361/.448 in August.
- Molitor said after the game that Michael Tonkin — who hasn’t pitched since Aug. 26 in Toronto — is battling shoulder fatigue. That makes sense, given his workload for the season (63.2 innings), and that he’s given up nine earned runs over his last three appearances.
- Molitor on Gibson’s effort: “It’s one of those things we’ve talked a lot about with Kyle. I think he’s trying to find a way to be a little more aggressive with his approach, but he fell behind a lot of guys. Even sometimes it’s just 1-0 and then you get back even. But some of the hits were in hitter’s counts when he’s gotta throw a strike. I don’t know how many of the hits he gave up. It’s tough when you have a chance to go out there and throw a shutdown inning after you score, and that happened a couple of times where we got ahead with Dozier’s big hit and they came right back with the two-run homer and then they scored again, and we scored and they came back to tie it up before they took the lead. It’s one of those things. He’s a worker; it’s just not always getting the results that I’m sure he’d like to be getting.”
- Molitor on if any reinforcements are headed to Minneapolis following the Rochester loss: “I don’t know what the final was there. I certainly haven’t talked to (interim general manager Rob Antony) yet, but we talked prior to the game about what might happen if it didn’t go their way tonight. I will give him a call, and there’s a good chance something will happen tomorrow.”
- Molitor on Buxton’s second game back with the big club: “Well, the catch was big. Abreu’s hot, you can see it in every at-bat he’s getting good swings. And that ball, I didn’t think he really had a chance, but they were shading him that way and he was able to track it. He ran a good route. It was a big play, and his at-bat the first time was good to see. He’s had a little trouble in situational hitting, getting guys in from third and moving runners, but that was nice. We got rewarded with a base hit trying to advance the runner from third there. I just think his hands look like they’re working pretty good the last couple days. It’s a good sign, it looks like he’s swinging with some confidence, stayed back on the changeup the next at-bat, so a couple of good games to get him back hopefully on track upon his return.”
