The smell of the Rally Sausage still lingered in the Minnesota Twins clubhouse air on Monday night. The impressive 12-game win streak had finally ended just one day before, but the dream that the fabled lump of meat represented was trying to live on. They kept the recipe, even if some of the original ingredients had run dry.
While the club surely took pride in its nearly two weeks of wins, the hope wasn’t just to honor that stretch but to replicate it. Game 1 against the visiting Seattle Mariners felt like a good place to start. However, the Twins quickly discovered that the challenge — whether it be a dominant Luis Castillo facing them on the bump or the mere act of igniting a new win streak — was going to be harder than expected.
It was going to take a full squad effort, with timely hitting and lockdown defense, to come out victorious against a dangerous Mariners club.
Accomplishing such a feat would take patience. Through the first four frames of the game, Castillo held the eager Twins lineup hitless. Last year’s Cy Young award finalist had his goods going in this one, needing only 49 pitches to get through the fourth inning. He spotted his fastball and mixed in a few wipeout sliders. He kept Minnesota’s hitters off-balance, inducing a handful of easy fly balls and weak contact.
However, in the fifth inning, a leadoff error by first baseman Ty France allowed Max Kepler to trot into second base. Carlos Correa drove him home with a hard-hit liner off the padding in right field.
“It’s always fun to go against a guy like [Castillo]. He has a great name in this league,” said Twins starter Simeon Woods Richardson after the game. “He’s a competitor. He throws strikes and gives his team the best chance to win. It’s always fun to go toe-to-toe with someone like that.”
And as nasty as Castillo was for the Mariners, Woods Richardson matched him in nearly every category through six innings, even down to the pitch count. Woods Richardson dazzled, tossing six scoreless frames with eight strikeouts (a career-high) and allowing one hit and one walk. His counterpart had the exact same line but with one fewer strikeout.
While the pitching excelled for the most part in this matchup, it wasn’t all smooth sailing. The Twins were cursed momentarily by the ghosts of a past life, or at least from a couple of old friends. With the bases loaded and one out against Griffin Jax in the seventh, Mitch Garver belted a sacrifice fly to center field, driving in Jorge Polanco.
But like we saw countless times through the win streak, the Twins adjusted their approach and bounced back in the late innings. They chased Castillo with a series of hits and sacrifices in the bottom of the seventh, scoring two more to retake the lead.
At that moment, it was like the Rally Sausage never left.
The Twins were using the same recipe that they followed in their illustrious streak, albeit with a different main ingredient. They had sound pitching and clutch at-bats from the bottom of the lineup, including two walks from Carlos Santana and a crucial sac fly from Christian Vazquez. For the young hurler who secured another quality start, it’s a metaphorical digging of the heels into a hopefully long career in the Twins rotation.
“I think [Woods Richardson] is getting more and more comfortable. I think he’s coming into his own tremendously,” said manager Rocco Baldelli, giving a glowing review for his starting pitcher. “I can’t really hope to send a guy out there and hand him the ball and get more than what he’s giving us right now. He’s stepped into a role where we needed someone in that spot to go out there and give us a chance to win every night.”
That’s also where the rest of the club finds itself. If they can continue to step up and find their roles in a competitive ball club, they’ll give themselves a chance to win each game and start a brand new win streak after each one ends.
They just need to wake up and smell the sausage.
