With the Cleveland Indians off on Monday night before opening a series at Citi Field with the New York Mets on Tuesday, the Minnesota Twins had a prime chance to round off their divisional lead at three games.
Instead, a four-run third inning punctuated by an ugly throw from Eddie Rosario and a booming home run off the bat of Jose Abreu gave the Chicago White Sox all the ammunition they needed to put away the Twins at Target Field on Monday night, 6-4.
It wasn’t a woeful offensive effort for the Twins, who got 15 hits — including three-hit games from Luis Arraez and Rosario and two hits apiece from Jake Cave, Miguel Sano, Jorge Polanco and the freshly-activated Nelson Cruz — but weren’t able to cash in on some key situations late, as Ivan Nova and four White Sox relievers bent, but did not break to move Chicago to 56-68 on the season.
The Twins fell to 76-49 on the season — still two wins from matching last season’s total.
Here’s what we saw:
The third inning did Gibson in
Really the most choppy waters Gibson navigated came in the third, when he allowed four earned runs — including most notably, the three-run mammoth homer off the bat of Abreu.
But the events that led to it were a bit unusual as well.
With one out, Matt Skole and Yolmer Sanchez poked back-to-back singles before Gibson got Leury Garcia to fly to center. Ryan Goins dropped a single into left, but with the heavy-footed Skole streaking home, Rosario had a good chance to throw him out at the plate and end the inning.
Instead, Rosario uncorked a throw that not only clearly wasn’t going to be cut off — allowing easy base advances to Goins and Sanchez — but was so wide of the plate that Gibson had to play it off a carom from the advertising boards behind home plate.
Still, Gibson had a chance to stem the tide and keep the damage to one run — until Abreu drilled the next pitch into the stands in left-center to give the White Sox a 4-2 lead.
Gibson recovered to retire the White Sox in order in the fourth, fifth and sixth innings, but the damage was one, and the Twins trailed for the rest of the evening.
Overall, the manager was appreciative of Gibson’s effort.
“Gibby threw the ball really well,” manager Rocco Baldelli said. “We can all point to the one pitch, one swing that put three runs on the board for them. It was just a pitch he would want back. Not really where he wanted to throw it and we got beat on that pitch. Other than that, he executed the ball really well. He was sharp. If that pitch is not part of the equation, it’s a heck of a start.”
Gibson said he felt like he had fine stuff, but just threw the wrong pitch at the wrong time — to the wrong guy.
“It’s always tough to look back at six, seven innings and giving up five runs and feeling too good about it,” Gibson said. “In this case, I picked the wrong time to not execute a pitch. When I look back at how many pitches I executed and where my stuff was, it’s one of those weird nights where I felt like I threw the ball pretty well and unfortunately got beat by the wrong guy at the wrong time.
“I feel like we had a good plan on that pitch. After his first at-bat we kind of felt like he was looking for the ball down in the zone. The plan was to execute a heater up and in and try to keep him off that and then go to the breaking stuff. Unfortunately, I didn’t get it high enough.
There was a play at the plate that was somewhat controversial
With one out in the sixth inning and runners on second and third, C.J. Cron hit a slow roller that Goins played to his backhand side behind the bag. Goins came up firing to the plate, and catcher James McCann applied the tag just ahead of Sano’s head-first dive into the plate for the second out.
Jason Castro struck out swinging to strand the potential tying runs on base, and again another chance was squandered.
But where there was a little controversy was in McCann’s setup at the plate while he was waiting for the throw from Goins. McCann’s foot blocked a large portion of the plate, but the Twins opted not to ask the umpires to take a look at it, instead choosing to play on.
Baldelli said they didn’t feel their chances of getting it overturned were very good, due in large part to the nature of how those reviews have gone.
“Those blocking the plate calls are in some ways, they’re challenging to get overturned,” Baldelli said. “They don’t get overturned very often, and they have to be almost to the eye pretty egregious. That being said, we looked at it. There was a lane. The way that it works is the catcher basically, I believe, has to block the plate before anything happens. The runner has to have no lane at any point, because the throw can take the catcher into the lane.
“Once the catcher has the ball, he can block the plate all he wants. So, in that situation we just didn’t feel like it was a play that was going to get overturned. We actually thought the play yesterday, with Mathis, we thought there was a much better chance of that being overturned despite the play not being as close as the one today.
“Basically as the ball (is moving), he has to stand directly in front of the plate with zero room for the runner the entire time, catch it, out a tag on, and that’s really the only way that it works. It’s very rare, and again, it has to be pretty obvious all the way around for it to be overturned.”
Despite it being an iffy night, the Twins had one last chance at the end
After Mitch Garver hit for Castro and grounded out to first, Arraez — who always seems to be in the middle of these things — poked a single to right to get things started. Polanco legged out the back end of a fielder’s choice to avoid a game-ending double play, and took second when Cruz singled off the limestone in deep right.
Rosario followed by golfing a pitch into right field to score Polanco and push Cruz to second, and that left it up to Sano with a chance for his second walk-off win at Target Field this month.
On Aug. 5, Sano took Braves reliever Chris Martin deep to center field for a walk-off home run in a 5-3 win. However, this time White Sox closer Alex Colome got the best of Sano, falling behind 2-0 before coming back with three straight strikes — all on cutters — for his 24th save of the year.
“We had opportunities,” Baldelli said. “We had a lot of good at bats, put ourselves in a good position to score enough runs. (We) just didn’t get the hits with people in scoring position.”
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Notes & Quotes
- Arraez has reached safely in 50 of 59 career games played, per the game notes.
- Arraez also recorded his 19th multi-hit game of the season.
- The Twins fell to 7-4 against the White Sox this season.
- Baldelli on the White Sox executing a two-strike squeeze: “There’s nothing you’re going to be able to do about it. It’s an unconventional play. It’s not something you can prepare for. Truthfully, I think it’s the only one I’ve seen in pro ball with two strikes in a situation like that. I’ve never seen it and I doubt that our players on the field have seen it. It was well-executed, if it is gonna play out like that, we will probably give up a run on it every time because there’s not a lot we are going to do about it. They put it on, they ran it and they ran it well.”
- Gibson on if he’s ever seen a two-strike squeeze: “I don’t know that I have. Garver was asking me that after the game. I don’t know that I have. And especially for it to work in that instance on that pitch in that situation, Yolmer must be — he might just be a really elite bunter. I have no idea. That was a really good job.”
