Minneapolis – It was one of the most anticipated starting pitching matchups the Minnesota Twins have had at home all season. Joe Ryan in front of a sold-out home crowd against Paul Skenes, the Pittsburgh Pirates’ young phenom. The icing on top of it all, a Nelly postgame concert.
What more could fans ask for?
“It doesn’t happen every day,” Twins manager Rocco Baldelli said pregame on the pitching matchup. “You’ve got to take advantage of the opportunities that you have to watch great players out there. When you see two pitchers like this matchup, it should be must-see TV.”
Target Field was host to a sellout crowd of 40,100 fans, the first sellout of the year, and their first time since 2019 with 30,000-plus fans in attendance for four consecutive games. Baldelli said it is exactly the type of crowd Major League Baseball players hope for every day, especially when two of the best pitchers in the game are up against one another.
“You need the players to make great plays and pitch awesome and all those things,” said Baldelli, “but when you have a jam-packed building to experience it with, and they become part of the game, it was a blast to be a part of.”
Backup outfielder DaShawn Keirsey Jr. arguably had the best play of the night. Ryan and Skenes were already out of the game when he entered in the top of the seventh as a defensive replacement for Matt Wallner in right field.
With one out and Louis Varland on the mound, the Pirates’ Tommy Pham hit a ball that ricocheted off the right field overhang. Keirsey played well off the bounce from the overhang, but his throw was a perfect missile that was right on target to Correa at second to tag Pham out.
“It felt good,” Kiersey said about his throw after the game. “I feel like my best throws are throws where I get the ball and throw it opposed to try and get it, gather myself, and make a throw at third.”
Unfortunately, Pham’s slide went right into Correa’s right leg and aggravated his right ankle. It’s the same leg he’s had surgery on and has a metal plate in it. He was on the ground for a few minutes and was helped off the field by Minnesota’s training staff to be evaluated in the clubhouse.
By the time the game was over and his teammates were heading to the field to partake in Nelly’s concert, Correa was walking around the clubhouse pain-free, as if the collision hadn’t happened.
“I’m ultra sensitive when it comes to that stuff, my ankle,” said Correa. “My brain right away went to a dark place. ‘Oh s–t, here we go again.’ But once we got back in (the clubhouse), the X-rays were clean, [and] I started putting weight on it. It didn’t feel like I fractured it, which when I tried to put my foot down, I felt that vibration going throughout my entire bone.”
When everything was good with Correa, it came easier for the Twins’ clubhouse and their fans to appreciate the play he made to get the most crucial out of the game.
“I also have to single out DK going in the game and immediately making an impact,” said Baldelli. “Playing that ball, there’s no textbook way to play that right field. Our right field. It’s a very challenging overhang. He put himself right in the right spot. And then he made just a fantastic throw for the out.”
“Incredible play by Keirsey, the way he played it off the wall, the throw, it was perfect,” Correa said. “Perfect way to get that out.”
Back to the pitchers’ duel. Skenes came as advertised through the first three innings, striking out the side to start the night. Pittsburgh’s battery gave Ryan some trouble, working him for 34 pitches in the first inning on a couple of hits and a walk, but Ryan was able to get out of the jam on an infield pop-up to Brooks Lee at second.
“That’s many for the first two, three innings,” said Ryan on his pitch count. “A little too much for the first. Yeah, it was good. Get out of there. Pretty fresh, so I can make good pitches still. Probably a couple of sinkers I could have gotten back in there a little better, but it’s fine.”
Ryan still had some work to do. Pittsburgh’s lineup wouldn’t give him a break getting a man on base in the second and third, clocking his pitch count up to 60 through three. It looked as if the matchup would come down to whoever threw the most pitches to be the first to exit the game.
However, everything changed for both starters in the fourth inning.
First with Ryan, Pirates first baseman Spencer Horwitz coaxed a one-out single off him. Two batters later, with two outs retired, Twin-for-a-day Isiah Kiner-Falefa hit a double to the right-center field gap to make it a 1-0, Pirates. Ryan retired Pham to get out of the inning with his second strikeout looking of the night.
Things turned over to the Twins for their half of the fourth, and Byron Buxton wasted no time ending the perfect game bid, striking an unconventional infield single hit to third and beating out the throw. He then advanced to second, beating out a play that could have been a double play as Willi Castro stumbled out of the batter’s box to get to first.
The stage was set for Trevor Larnach, who worked a full count against Skenes with Buxton at second. He was expecting something on the corners as Skenes had been pitching him all night, so when he got a hanging curveball in the bottom part of the zone, there was no way he was going to miss it to put the Twins ahead 2-1 with the first home run Skenes’ has allowed on the road all year.
“Honestly, he shocked the s–t out of me my first at-bat, threw multiple of those,” Larnach said. “I was kind of yelling at it to go over, but I thought it had hit the wall at first, then I saw the umpires, and thankfully it did go over.”
Ryan and Skenes only went five innings, not overworking themselves ahead of their chance to face each other again in Tuesday night’s MLB All-Star Game in Atlanta. With the bullpen holding onto the lead and keeping the Pirates lineup to just three hits in four innings, it gave the Twins the jolt they needed to be a better team going into the break.
“You know there’s not going to be a ton of runs scoring that day,” said Ryan. “So you just want to minimize as much as you can, and I think we did a very good job of that early. And then the bullpen locked it and did an outstanding job, so that was great to just hold it and get a team win.”
Correa is expected to sit out Saturday’s day game against the Pirates as a precaution, but when the next collision like that happens, he intends to power through as long as the training staff clears it.
“The hardware and all the mess that’s in there, whenever it gets hit or something happens to it, I’ll probably now know better for next time to stay in the game,” he said. “’Don’t be so soft.’”
