For only the ninth time in their 56 seasons as a franchise, the Twins have had a losing streak reach double-digits. It was also the sixth consecutive game that Minnesota had given up eight runs, also a franchise record, and just one short of the MLB mark.
“We scored over 20 runs in three games and couldn’t find a way to win one,” Twins manager Paul Molitor told the Associated Press. “It shows you how they’re rolling offensively.”
Josh Donaldson was a force on Sunday, hitting three home runs off of three different pitchers — starter Kyle Gibson and relievers Pat Light and Alex Wimmers.
“It’s one of those things, as a baseball player, you want to happen one day,” Donaldson told the Associated Press. “You don’t know it it’s ever going to happen, it’s kind of a rare thing. I was happy to do it.”
Blue Jays fans threw their hats on the field after the third home run, a nod to the hockey tradition when a player scores a hat trick or three goals in one game.
“I’ve seen it before here,” Molitor, the Blue Jays 1993 World Series hero told the Star Tribune. “I had a Joe Carter memory flash, when he hit three in a game here.”
Gibson pitched well through five innings, but gave up a first-pitch home run to Troy Tulowitzki in the sixth. A Kevin Pillar double and Devon Travis RBI single moments later knocked him out of the game.
It was the fifth time in six August starts that Gibson did not make it through six innings, this time forcing Molitor to go to Light, Wimmers and J.T. Chargois in the bullpen, three pitchers with 15.2 innings pitched between them.
“Inexperience [against] experience, us being the first and them being the latter, is the big difference,” Molitor told the Star Tribune. “We were calling on some people to try to get some big outs, and there’s not a lot of experience for us.”
A 5-4 lead quickly turned into a 9-6 deficit, and the Twins once again found themselves on the losing end of a game in which they held a lead.
“Guys are being asked to do things … well, it’s their first time around,” Molitor told the Star Tribune. “That’s just kind of where we are right now.”
[Star Tribune, Associated Press]
