The march to 100 losses hummed right along for the Minnesota Twins on Tuesday night, as lefty Matt Boyd righted all his previous wrongs in threatening to shut them out for the ninth time this season. No, not nine times for Boyd against the Twins this season — that would be a record — but on eight occasions, including most recently against Bartolo Colon in New York, the Twins have been held scoreless this season.
A home run for Robbie Grossman in the seventh prevented the shutout, but perhaps only prolonged the suffering in an 8-1 loss at Target Field on Tuesday night. Hector Santiago gutted it out through five innings before the sixth blew up on him, and ultimately it mattered not as Boyd and Mark Lowe conspired to make it a difficult evening for the Twins offense.
Here’s what we saw:
Boyd flat out dominated — period
After Brian Dozier singled and stole second to begin the game, Boyd buckled down. He got the next three batters in order, and set down 19 of the next 20 batters until Grossman homered on a full count pitch with one out in the seventh. And immediately after the home run, Boyd went right back to work by retiring the next two batters before the eighth inning by mixing three flyouts with a single to center by John Ryan Murphy.
All told, Boyd finished with eight solid innings, allowing just three hits and one earned run with seven strikeouts and just one walk. Baseball Reference had him with a respectable 10 swinging strikes on 99 pitches, while ESPN had him with 13 — a number Brooks Baseball concurred with. Basically, on the lower end that’s solid and on the higher end that’s very good, but he attacked hitters with 19 first-pitch strikes out of 27 batters faced, and set the Twins offense down without much of a whimper.
It’s probably safe to say Boyd exorcised some demons from his last start, which was also against the Twins where he allowed seven earned runs while getting just 11 outs at Comerica Park a week ago.
Santiago was rolling along until the sixth
The Twins entered the sixth slumping offensively but still trailing just 2-0, yet came out of the frame down 6-0 and ready to wave the white flag. Heading into the sixth, Santiago had allowed just two earned runs on four hits with five strikeouts and just one walk. It was a fair mix of bloop and blast that did Santiago in however, as Iglesias looped a fly to left for a single to start the inning. That was followed by a Cabrera lineout to center, a J.D. Martinez walk and a Justin Upton flare to right which scored Iglesias. Mostly innocuous stuff, right?
That was until James McCann tattooed a 2-2 pitch like he’d been tipped off on what was coming. McCann has hit just .222/.274/.366 this season, but if you’re thinking he’s owned the Twins this year, that’s either a really good guess or you’ve been watching really closely. McCann is hitting .303/.324/.576 against the Twins this year with a pair of home runs and three doubles. For a defense-first guy, the bat has looked pretty good against the Twins for Mr. McCann.
Pat Light had a chance to strike out four batters in the eighth
Light got JaCoby Jones, Jarrod Saltalamacchia and Andrew Romine each to strike out swinging in a row, but the last pitch to Romine — an 0-2 splitter — got away from Murphy, allowing the batter to reach. Light got two strikes on each of the next two hitters, ultimately walking Cameron Maybin before getting Jose Iglesias to fly to right to keep his name out of the record books.
Twins righty Tyler Duffey is the second-most AL pitcher to have achieved this feat, as he did so back on May 8 of this season. Other Twins to do so include Francisco Liriano (6/5/12) and Scott Baker (6/15/08).
Cabrera is a bad — but very intelligent — man
Cabrera is one of just two batters in the game to have multiple hits — Maybin was the other — but it was his trip around the bases in the fourth that showed just how intelligent of a player he is. Cabrera fell behind 0-2 while hitting multiple screaming foul balls to right field, and on 1-2 he crushed a pitch to right center that Max Kepler played off the wall. Cabrera decided to try for the hustle double, and just beat Kepler’s throw.
That play nearly merited a second look, but Cabrera’s foot just snuck in there ahead of the throw. Martinez followed that up with a fly to deep center. Here’s where Byron Buxton caught it:
….and here’s how close the play was at third base:
Cabrera wasn’t finished. On a 3-1 pitch, Upton hit a chopper to third. Eduardo Escobar might have checked Cabrera at the bag — it looks more like Cabrera erred on the side of caution than anything — but Miguel took off with the throw, and after recording the out at first, Kennys Vargas’ relay throw appeared to beat Cabrera home. In fact, Cabrera was ruled out before review revealed that Murphy’s tag was late.
The only play of the three that really took any undue risk was the last one, and it’s excusable in that it’s trying to score a run, forces a throw from an unusual position/player and was done with a huge dropoff in production from the current batter (Upton) to the next (McCann). That’s a smart player.
Buxton went hitless — and we aren’t even mad
What.
McCann homered — and our guy called it on the podcast
Our guy Anthony Fenech of the Detroit Free Press joined us on the Midwest Swing podcast in-person on Tuesday, and predicted a home run from McCann. See for yourself:
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Notes & Quotes
- The Twins fell to 4-13 against the Tigers this year, including an incredible 0-7 at Target Field.
- The Twins have lost four straight games, and have allowed eight or more runs 39 times this season.
- Dozier’s single to open the first extended his hitting streak to 23 games. The most recent Twin to do that before Dozier was Torii Hunter in 2007.
- Every Tigers starter had at least one hit.
- Molitor on Santiago, the offense: “He kept us around. They had a couple two-out hits for the first run. We had three chances to throw out Cabrera. I don’t know if you’ll ever see that. We weren’t able to figure out how to save that run. The sixth inning, Santiago gave up a couple 0-2 hits that were costly, and that led to the situation where they hit the three-run homer. Our offense has been having a tough time. We didn’t score much in New York, and that trend kind of continued tonight. We had a good day against Boyd last week, but he made amends by going eight strong innings. I thought Hector was OK. He obviously let things slip away in the sixth, but we just didn’t have any offense to back him up.”
- Molitor on the slipping offense: “We’re having to kind of change up the lineup a bit with some of the people we’re missing right now. We’ve lost some players in September which has thinned us out a bit. But you don’t make excuses. Guys are getting opportunities to swing the bat. You can tell there are some guys aren’t used to playing this long into the season, and it’s maybe taking a bit of a toll. But you have to find a way to finish as strongly as you can. Tonight obviously wasn’t a pretty game.”
- Molitor on Dozier’s hitting streak: “It’s impressive. He’s finding ways to extend it even without hitting the ball over the fence, banging the ball up the middle. We’ve talked about what he’s done for this team, he’s continued to want to play. I know it wasn’t too well received to take his last at-bat away, but he’s been out there how many consecutive games? It’s just one of those ways where he keeps finding a way to get it done.”
- Santiago on rolling early, faltering late: “For the most part, most of their hits were nothing too good or crazy. If you take away two pitches, I think it’s a different game. Iglesias got the broken-bat single, and I got Upton on a good pitch he just blooped over. Finally I left a pitch over the middle of the plate, and I think all night that was the only one, and he got it. There’s only so much you can do. Trying to make so many good pitches, and for the most part all night I executed pitches when I needed to. Cabrera did a good job; he pretty much made a run happen by himself. Got a double, tagged up when I don’t think anybody expected him to, and then went home when nobody else expected him to. He kind of manufactured that run on his own. But for the most part, I think I did a good job. Take away that one pitch like I said, and it’s a different ballgame. All around, I think I did a good job tonight.”
