ATHLETICS TAKE DOWN THE TWINS
MINNEAPOLIS — Whatever has infected the Twins bullpen lately, it’s shaking up the AL Central race.
The Twins saw their AL Central lead shrink to three games, the narrowest it has been since May?6, and the relief corps continues to be a big part of the reason. On Friday, after Jake Odorizzi handed over a tie score, the normally sure-armed Ryne Harper gave up three hits and two runs in his lone inning of work, and the Twins were left looking for a miracle for a second day in a row.
They didn’t get it, and the Oakland Athletics won, 5-3, at Target Field, dropping the Twins to 1-3 on their nine-game homestand.
Harper, the 30-year-old rookie scored upon in only eight of his previous 41 big league out
ings, was greeted by a ground-rule double by Ramon Laureano in the sixth inning, and four pitches later, the Athletics went ahead. Khris Davis smacked a 2-2 curveball into left field, scoring Laureano with the go-ahead run. Before Harper could escape the jam, Chad Pinder added an RBI single, too, putting the Twins in a two-run hole.
The Twins were in a similar position after the first inning, too, but rallied to tie. Marcus Semien became the first visiting player since the White Sox’s Yoan Moncada in June 2018 to lead off a game with a home run, lining Odorizzi’s third pitch a half-dozen rows deep into the left-field stands, his 15th homer of the season. After two quick outs seemed to restore order, Odorizzi surrendered a single to Mark Canha and walked Laureano, and Davis followed with an RBI single up the middle.
The Twins got a run back in the second inning, thanks to an error by A’s Gold Glove first baseman Matt Olson, who booted Max Kepler’s hard grounder with two out, allowing Miguel Sano to score from third.
An inning later, after Nelson Cruz was hit by a Chris Bassitt pitch, Marwin Gonzalez lifted his 11th home run into the second deck in right field, a two-run shot that tied the score.
Odorozzi worked deliberately on a sweltering, 94-degree night, second-hottest in Target Field history, and allowed the A’s to reach base in four of his five innings. But only in the fifth, when a Semien double and Olson’s two-out single tied the score again, did he allow another run to score.
In all, Odorizzi gave up six hits and two walks, striking out three. The five-inning outing, though an improvement on his six-run drubbing in Oakland earlier this month, extended his streak to five consecutive starts without completing six innings.
The Twins put on a baserunner in the fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth innings, but only one each time. They wasted leadoff singles in the fourth and fifth innings and did nothing with a oneout walk in the sixth and one-out singles in the seventh and eighth.
In the eighth, after Luis Arraez beat out an infield single, A’s AllStar reliever and former Twins right-hander Liam Hendriks came in. He struck out Miguel Sano on three pitches, then did the same to Mitch Garver.
Going back out for the ninth, Hendriks struck out Kepler, then got Jorge Polanco on a fly ball and retired Cruz on a grounder, recording five outs on 20 pitches. Hendriks earned his seventh save and dropped his ERA to 1.17.