Twins

7/5 GAME NOTES: Ervin Santana Goes the Distance in Twins 2-1 Loss

Baseball is a game of inches. Of what-ifs. Of should haves, would haves and could haves. This is rarely more evident than in a 2-1 Twins loss Wednesday night at Target Field, when the go-ahead run scored on a steal of home — as part of a double steal — and a potential home run ball just missed going out by perhaps less than a foot.

Ervin Santana was brilliant for the Twins, as he tossed his fourth complete game of the season in a losing effort. He threw 117 pitches (80 strikes), and got his season ERA to 2.99 — back under 3.00, where it has resided before every start this season, except for this one (3.07 coming into Wednesday).

Santana now has more complete games than the other 29 teams in baseball. It’s true; no other entire team has more than three, while Santana accounts for all four that Twins hurlers have posted this year.

“Those are the toughest games for a manager,” said Paul Molitor of the complete-game loss for Santana. “You see some things get ugly at times, and you get maybe blown out of the water. But you get an effort like that; it’s hard to squander those away. Those are hard to come by.”

Throwing 80 strikes is also a rarity; just two other pitchers have done so this year, as Max Scherzer completed the feat on May 26 against the Padres while Chris Sale did so against the Blue Jays on April 20. In fact, prior to Scherzer doing it, Sale had the previous three times it had been done.  

The first what-if for the Twins came in the fourth inning with two outs, as Eddie Rosario drilled a double off the very top of the fence in right-center. How close was it to going out? Have a look for yourself:

(still photo courtesy of MLB.tv)

If you’re wondering what you’re looking at, the ball is above the shoulder of the man standing up pretty much directly up from the three next to Tampa Bay’s score. That’s the ball on a carom off the cement-colored part of the wall. For all intents and purposes, we know that ball is in play because if it had hit the flower pots, it would have been swallowed up by the soil. If it hit the front of the wall, it would have caromed straight down. Instead, it bounced straight up — and in other words was in play — ultimately holding Rosario to a double.

“There’s a little ledge out there on top of the whatever kind of scoreboard you want to call it,” Molitor said. “I could see pretty clearly that it hit it. I think that’s the second one this year. I don’t recall a lot in the past. It’s just a matter of if it made any contact with anything afterward.”

The long and short of it was that Rosario missed a game-tying home run by about a foot. That run wound up being pretty pivotal, based on how the game ended.

The other big what-if for the Twins came in the sixth inning. Cameron Maybin walked on a 3-2 fastball, then moved to third on a Kole Calhoun single with one out. Maybin opted not to tag when right fielder Max Kepler made a diving play on a sinking line drive in shallow right field, and it looked like a curious decision in the moment. Indeed, Kepler had to leave his feet to make the play, but the outfielder quickly flipped the ball to Brian Dozier — a heady play that either saved a run, or put his teammate in position to make a play he couldn’t have.

Either way, it showed superb baseball instinct on the part of Mr. Kepler.

With runners on the corners and two out, Yunel Escobar stepped up to the plate for what wound up being the most eventful at-bat of the night. Escobar felt he checked his swing on the first pitch of the plate appearance — a slider well out of the zone. Home plate umpire Doug Eddings signaled that Escobar swung, and the third baseman demonstrably gestured toward first base that the umpire ought to get help on the call. Escobar continued the discussion to the point where Eddings took his mask off and waved toward him to suggest he should just drop it.

Frankly, Escobar has a point. The home plate umpire already has enough on his plate as far as judging pitch location, so making the call on whether or not a hitter checked his swing is kind of out of the question. Is it preposterous that a man 90 feet away makes that call? Maybe. But it makes more sense than the home plate umpire doing it.

Nevertheless, Escobar took a close pitch for ball one to even the count, and appeared to shake his head no in the direction of the Twins dugout for reasons that were never totally clear. On the 2-1 pitch, Calhoun broke for second and Castro’s throw down was intercepted by Dozier, but the throw was late and Maybin scored standing up.

If that wasn’t enough, that pitch was strike two, which was awfully similar to the first ball that Escobar took, and no doubt did little to cool the simmering cauldron within him. On 2-2, Escobar swung wildly at a pitch identical to or perhaps even worse than the one he “offered” at to start the plate appearance, and promptly decided to once again engage Eddings, who wasted little time in throwing him out of the game. It was a puzzling decision on the part of Escobar, because regardless of what Eddings had done improperly earlier in the plate appearance, it wasn’t like he forced him to swing at a pitch that far off the plate.   

Surely a hitter can feel like they’re put in a position where they have to swing due to a poor call earlier in the plate appearance, but keep in mind Escobar still ended up ahead in the count 2-1, didn’t swing at a pretty good pitch that evened the count and then flailed wildly at a pitch well out of the zone.

The ejection was the 13th of Escobar’s career

The Twins pushed across their only run of the night in the seventh inning after being stymied for six shutout innings from Angels starter Parker Bridwell, who was making just his fifth big-league start. Reliever David Hernandez came in and gave up a one-out infield single to Byron Buxton on a grounder to third that made Cliff Pennington rush his throw to first and pull Luis Valbuena off the bag. Buxton stole second on the 0-1 pitch to Dozier, then came around to score on a single to right as the second baseman stayed on a full-count slider on the outside corner.

Unfortunately, that was the beginning and the end of the scoring output for the Twins on a night their starter was brilliant.

Santana’s effort simply can’t be overstated even in the loss. His only real mistake of the night was a Calhoun home run to center which came on the third pitch of the game. “After that, Ervin was tremendous,” Molitor said. He started 27 of the 34 batters he faced with first-pitch strikes, and even worked around an eighth inning jam which featured a Martin Maldonado single, a balk, a sac bunt and a walk before he bore down to get the final two outs on a Calhoun pop to short and an Albert Pujols groundout to third.  

“It was frustrating,” Santana said of waiting for his offense to try give him a boost on a tough night. “But at the same time you have to give credit to their team. They did a good job. We tried to score runs, but we tried to do too much. We won the series; that’s the important thing.”

With that, Santana’s first half of work is done for the Twins. He’s now in the company of the last Twins pitcher to complete four games in a season — Carl Pavano with seven in 2010. That’s about the pace Santana has set for this season. Only time will tell if he can sustain it.

Briefly

  • Joe Mauer revealed after the game that was not available due to battling back spasms. He’s day-to-day.

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