The Minnesota Twins held leads in the third and fourth innings, but promptly gave them away on errors by Eduardo Escobar, Robbie Grossman and Joe Mauer. Two of the errors resulted in three unearned runs.
“There has been a concerning pattern of allowing the other team to come back and score. We call them shutdown innings,” Twins manager Paul Molitor told the Star Tribune after the game.
“I suppose it’s like anything, it can go in trends. But it seem like this year in particular, we’ve had trouble getting off the field after we score. It really does change the course of how games go.”
Friday’s loss was the Twins’ third game in a row in which they took a lead and immediately gave it right back. Escobar booted a grounder and Grossman had a fielding error in the third, and Mauer failed to field the ball cleanly in the fourth to squander the leads.
“I think he was screened by the runner just a hair,” Molitor told the Pioneer Press. “That ball that comes out of the right-handed hitter’s uniform when he lets it get deep, it kind of gets on you. He got his glove down there but was only able to knock it down.”
Mauer may have been able to record the out anyway, but Milone did not cover first.
“I should have been there, 100 percent,” Milone said. “I guess I just paused, and it was just too late.”
Once New York got ahead in the fourth, the never looked behind. Yankee starter Masahiro Tanaka pitched two more scoreless innings, and Dellin Betances, Andrew Miller and Aroldis Chapman shut down the Twins lineup.
Chapman recorded three outs on 11 pitches.
“It’s hard to take your eyes off of it,” Miller told The Associated Press. “It’s just an impressive feat of athleticism.”
And, perhaps to add insult to injury, former Twins outfielder Aaron Hicks hit a home run in the eighth inning to put the game away for good.
[Star Tribune, Pioneer Press, The Associated Press]
