It wasn’t late December or 1963, but what a night for the Minnesota Twins offense, as every starter recorded at least one hit and a run scored in a 20-7 drubbing of the Seattle Mariners on a hot, muggy Tuesday night at Target Field. The Twins and Mariners managed to avoid the late night deluge of rain that entered the city afterward, but there was a deluge of runs on both sides that led to one of the wildest games in the park’s eight-year history.
It was also a record-setting night for the Twins offense. The Twins set the all-time team and franchise records for hits in a game, with the previous Twins record being 25 hits against Cleveland and the overall franchise record belonging to the Senators (27 hits) dating all the way back to May 16, 1933.
How long ago was that? Well, Sid Hartman — who was in attendance to cover the game in the press box — was just a spry 13-year-old when that game was played.
The Twins and Mariners combined for 42 hits, which also set a Target Field record. The 20 runs scored was a season-high for the Twins, and their best mark since scoring 20 against the Detroit Tigers back on Aug. 22, 2014.
Incidentally, the hero that night was Eduardo Escobar, who had the first five-hit game of his career that night. This time around, he again found his stroke, going 5-for-6 with a chance for that elusive sixth hit — which a Twin hasn’t done since Kirby Puckett in 1991 — coming up short against Mariners reliever/catcher Carlos Ruiz.
The Twins were also the first team to pick up 28 hits in a game since Texas did so on on Aug. 22, 2007. They also scored seven runs in the third and seventh innings — the first time they scored seven-plus in separate innings in the same game since Sept. 4, 2012 against the Chicago White Sox.
If it’s hard to catch your breath after reading that, we get it — even if it isn’t just because of the heavy air in the metro due to high humidities.
Twins starter Kyle Gibson was by no means good, but he gave the team some depth after the bullpen had been so ravaged by the same Mariners team the night before in a blowout loss that they yet again turned to backup catcher Chris Gimenez to soak up some innings — the fifth time that has happened through just 61 games this season. After allowing the Mariners to go 6-for-9 the first time through the order, Gibson settled down to allow just five hits combined over his next two trips through the Mariners order.
Things nearly got out of hand early for Gibson, who allowed a double on the third pitch of the game to Ben Gamel. Two batters later, Robinson Cano socked a solid single to center, and Nelson Cruz followed with an RBI groundout before Kyle Seager snuck a ground rule double inside the left field foul line, into the stands in foul territory down the line. Gibson recovered to strike out Danny Valencia on three pitches, but had again dug the Twins a 2-0.
The Mariners added a third run in the second inning, as Jarrod Dyson homered on the first pitch he saw from Gibson. In fact, the first three batters reached for the Mariners against Gibson, who managed to rebound and get Gamel to fly out to deep left, Mitch Haniger to line back to the mound and Cano to ground to Polanco, who made a nice play at short for the final out.
Down 3-0 early, the Twins returned fire in their half of the second, as their first three batters reached as well. The first was Max Kepler, who fell behind 0-2 before homering on a 1-2 curveball to close the deficit to two runs. Kennys Vargas followed with a cue-shot single into left, and Escobar followed that with a single on a 1-1 slider into right field. Castro poked a 2-0 pitch to right which allowed Vargas to pick up third, and Jorge Polanco followed with an at-bat that, at the time anyway, seemed like it would matter more than it ended up mattering.
Polanco hit a weak grounder back to Bergman, who didn’t look Vargas back to third, but rather looked toward second to potentially start an inning-ending double play. Instead, he realized he didn’t have a play at second and threw onto first to get Polanco out. Vargas made a great read on the play, and scored easily with Valencia having no shot to throw him out at the plate after putting out Polanco at first. With Escobar standing on second, Eddie Rosario blasted the first pitch he saw of the night into the right-center stands to give the Twins a 4-3 lead — one they did not relinquish the rest of the night.
It almost seems a bit uncouth to mention at this point that Rosario actually hit three home runs on the night — the seventh time that has happened in Twins history — but the fact of the matter is that on a night with this kind of offensive outburst, some part of the lede was bound to be buried.
The first seven spot put up by the Twins came in the third, as Bergman got the first out by striking Joe Mauer out swinging before Robbie Grossman slashed a single into left. Kepler followed with a single, and Vargas got the green light on 3-0 for a single of his own to bring home Grossman. Then, Escobar followed with a single. Jason Castro got into the thick of things with a single of his own, but was out at second base trying to advance on what wound up being another bizarre play on a night full of them.
Castro stroked the single into center, with Dyson coming up throwing to try get Escobar out advancing to third. The throw hit Escobar in the back — at least according to the Twins’ radio broadcast — but the Mariners corralled the ball quickly enough to get Castro out trying to advance to second. Then, with two outs, the Twins got another single from Polanco to make the score 8-3 and chase Bergman from the game. Again, up stepped Rosario, and for the second at-bat in a row, he homered on the first pitch he saw against Mariners reliever Casey Lawrence to give the Twins an 11-3 lead just three innings into them.
That inning ended with Mauer grounding out to Cano in the shift. If your brain is allowing you to follow along here, Mauer made the first and third outs in the inning — something that can’t happen that often, right?
The Mariners clawed back with a pair of runs in the fourth, as Gibson — who allowed five doubles on the day and frequently gave up hits despite being up in counts — gave up an 0-2 double to Dyson, an 0-1 double to Mike Zunino and a 1-1 double to Gamel in the span of four batters. That brought manager Paul Molitor to the mound — and just him. As he ambled out to the mound, the entire cast of infield characters sauntered in to join the conference on the mound, only for Molitor to wave them all off to go one-on-one with his struggling righty.
For the most part, whatever Molitor said worked. Haniger grounded to Polanco, who made a nifty play to charge the ball and bare hand it to get the speedy runner at first, with Cano following with a grounder to second to end the inning with the Twins up, 11-5.
The fourth inning was a bit quieter for the Twins, who scratched across a run on the strength of a Vargas single — his third of the night in three at-bats — an Escobar single (see Vargas) and another single from Castro. The Mariners followed suit the next half inning later, as a single from Cruz, a groundout from Seager and a single from Valencia plated a run to make it a 12-6 game.
That’s where things stayed until the Twins went bananas on Lawrence and friends in the seventh. Castro and Polanco started with singles, while Rosario’s hot streak went on a brief hiatus with a fly to center. Dozier followed with a double down the left field line, but had to stand pat at second after Mauer grounded back to the pitcher — who at this point was Marc Rzepczynski. On the comebacker, Rzepczynski threw to Seager, who promptly dropped the ball, which allowed Polanco to streak home. Grossman followed with a single to load the bases, and the rest of the inning went Kepler infield single, Vargas single to right-center, Escobar single to right, Castro single to right and Polanco ground out to third. Polanco ended up facing reliever Tony Zych after Rzepczynski was ineffective, and Castro was actually — for the second time on the night — throw out at second base.
For the second time on the night, the Twins offense looked like this:
In fact, the only out Rzepczynski recorded on the night was Castro being thrown out at second. By the time the dust settled, the Twins led 19-6, and finally it was someone else who had to bring in a catcher to pitch.
The Twins greeted Ruiz rather rudely, as Rosario homered on a 1-1 “changeup” to close the scoring for them on the night. The Mariners managed to push across a run against recently recalled Ryan Pressly, who was otherwise solid in his two inning stint to close out the game. Tyler Duffey also worked as scoreless inning for the Twins, allowing one hit with a strikeout.
Here’s what we saw from our vantage point:
Gibson really didn’t have it
Even despite the “win,” it was clear early that it wasn’t going to be a good night for Gibson, who allowed 12 hits — including five doubles — in just six innings. Gibson did a fine job throwing first-pitch strikes, as 22 of the 30 batters he faced saw strikes to start their at-bats, but when he got up, he threw too many good pitches way up in the count.
The first six hits Gibson allowed came when he was either even in the count or ahead, and by my count, 10 of the 12 hits Gibson allowed came when he was ahead or even. It’s a nice change of pace from constantly pitching behind in the count, but he’ll have to find a happy medium, of course.
For all the talk of Gibson relying more heavily on his curveball, he threw just five on the night — perhaps suggesting that he or Castro didn’t think he had a good feel for it. Both guys said on Monday that it would very much be a feel pitch moving forward, but of the two curves put in play, neither were converted into outs. That probably means he didn’t have a good one tonight.
Bergman was even worse
This is what can happen when a high-80s-throwing righty control artist with home run problems doesn’t have his best stuff. He looked OK at the outset, but the Twins throttled him over the final few innings and he ended up giving up 10 hits and nine runs while recording just eight outs. It wasn’t even his worst outing of the season necessarily — though it was good for just a game score of five — as he also had a particularly poor outing against the Nationals recently.
We’ll frame it this way, 17 of the 26 earned runs he’s allowed this season have come either Tuesday night against the Twins, or against the Nationals back on May 23 in Washington, D.C. Whatever Bergman threw at the Twins on Tuesday, they had an answer for. Bergman got just two swinging strikes on 49 pitches on the night, and it seemed like there wasn’t much separation from his mid-80s slider and his high-80s fastball. That could be a part of why he didn’t have his best stuff on the night.
Kepler’s home run jump-started the offense, and it was red-hot from there
Kepler fell behind in the count 0-2, fouled off a pitch and took a ball before homering to right center to get the Twins on the board. From that point on, the avalanche started, as eight Twins had multi-hit games and only Mauer did not get more than one hit among starters.
Every Twins offensive player who got into the game reached, including Ehire Adrianza, who entered for Dozier late and took a walk against Chooch in the eighth inning.
All these runs, and virtually no walks?
The only two walks of the game were drawn by the Twins during their last trips to the plate, when they faced Ruiz on the mound. In other words, all 27 runs scored in the game before the first walk of the night was issued. For a Twins team that came into the series leading MLB in walk rate, this seems just a bit odd. The other thing that was interesting that was pointed out by a reader was that when the Twins had scored 12 runs, they had yet to leave a runner on base. That has to be fairly uncommon.
Escobar didn’t just do it with the bat, but also with the glove as there was no shortage of great leather on the night
Not only did Escobar have his second five-hit game of his career and raise his line on the season to .274/.321/.427, but he also made a couple of nifty fielding plays while filling in for Miguel Sano at third base on the evening. In the top of the third, Escobar made a nice backhand play and a strong throw to get Valencia at first to end the inning, and in the fifth, Zunino ripped a line drive to Escobar that he managed to corral, despite the fact that Statcast read it as 112.7 mph off the bat.
There was also this great picture of the bare hand play made by Polanco on the slow roller from Haniger:
It was good to see Pressly get back on the horse again
Pressly struck out the final six hitters he was at Rochester, and jumped right back into action with a pair of decent innings to close out the night. Pressly was as high as 96 mph on his four-seamer according to Brooks Baseball and as high as 92.6 mph on his slider, but didn’t induce any swinging strikes on the 25 pitches he threw (16 strikes). It’ll be a work in progress to get him back into high-leverage work, Molitor said before the game, but with the paucity of options outside of Duffey, Taylor Rogers and the closer, Brandon Kintzler, it might only be a long stretch relative to the rest of the crew. Pressly very clearly has the most overpowering stuff, but needs to be less fine with it and locate the fastball better, Molitor said before the game. Through one night, he at least appeared to be on the right track.
It was also nice to see someone else’s catcher pitching — for once
Things didn’t go great for Ruiz, but he did freeze Vargas on a called third strike that was pretty nasty:
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Notes
- Zych was the only Mariners pitcher to not give up a run on the night — he threw a total of four pitches.
- Rosario’s three home run game was the first for a Twins player since Dozier did so on Sept. 5, 2016 against Kansas City.
- Rosario was also the first MLB player to hit three home runs as the No. 9 hitter in a lineup since Trot Nixon did so for the Boston Red Sox on July 24, 1999.
- Dozier extended his hitting streak to nine games before leaving late. It sounded as though he was part of a group of Twins who needed some fluids after the game due to the overwhelmingly hot and stuffy conditions.
- Escobar has multiple hits in four of his last five games.
- Kepler posted his 13th multi-hit game of the season.
- The Mariners allowed a club-record 28 hits, breaking the previous record of 26 against Boston on Aug. 15, 2015.
- The loss was just Seattle’s fifth in the last 16 games.
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