Brilliant Sandoval shuts down Twins
The Angels southpaw is ‘just magnificent’ in amassing 13 strikeouts during his no-hit bid.
MINNEAPOLIS — Patrick Sandoval softly smiled and waved his glove, his forceful stare and heavy breaths suddenly replaced by a soft chuckle and reluctant peace.
The last two years, the Angels left-handed pitcher struggled in abbreviated big-league stints. This year, he began the campaign at the club’s alternate training site. But over the last two months, the 24-year-old has experienced a career transformation.
And on Saturday night, he found himself on the precipice of history.
Sandoval, a Mission Viejo native, carried a no-hitter into the ninth inning of the Angels win against the Min
nesota Twins, racking up 13 strikeouts while trying to throw just the 10th individual no-hitter in team history.
But with one out in the final inning, Twins designated hitter Brent Rooker broke it up, slicing a first-pitch slider the other way for a double down the right-field line.
As the ball floated beyond the infield and landed just inside the chalk, Sandoval snapped his head back in disappointment, but then relented with a lighthearted grin, the totality of his landmark night — and the latest step in his breakthrough season — immediately beginning to set in.
“It’s not even something I’ve dreamt of. That was just insane,” Sandoval said of the near no-hitter. “To be able to actually be in there, to go into the ninth inning with two outs to get, it was pretty surreal.”
Sandoval retired his next batter before being taken out in favor of Raisel Iglesias, who gave up an RBI double but then secured the 2-1 win with a strikeout of Miguel Sanó.
Iglesias pointed to the sky in celebration of his 21st save.
But it was Sandoval, from the postgame handshake line to the video news conference afterward, who was the center of all the attention.
“He was just magnificent,” Angels manager Joe Maddon said. “You could see that from early on.”
Indeed, through the first eighth innings of the night, Sandoval never really came close to giving up a hit.
He retired the side in order in the first and third innings, and worked around a walk in the second and hit-batter in the fourth.
He was aware of the Twins’ hit total from the start — “I looked up at the scoreboard after every inning, I knew what was happening,” he said — but didn’t begin to truly notice the significance of the moment until teammates stopped coming near him in the dugout, leaving him all alone at the end of the bench.
“As the game went on, everyone in the dugout just got further and further away,” he said with a laugh, adding: “All of a sudden, I got shunned.”
His best inning was perhaps the fifth, when shortstop José Iglesias committed a throwing error in the opening at-bat that Sandoval immediately answered with three straight strikeouts — blowing a fastball by Ryan Jeffers, spinning a slider to freeze Trevor Larnach and battling back from a 3-0 hole against Gilberto Celestino to end the frame with a swing-and-miss changeup.
For Maddon, it was the clearest sign of Sandoval’s growth over the last several seasons, from an inconsistent pitcher prone to frustration into a confident hurler who calmly handled the biggest moment of his career.
“He kept his composure and came back and made really good pitches,” Maddon said. “That stood out to me. … He did everything right.”
After that, Sandoval kept on cruising, finding improved feel with his slider to mix with a devastating trademark changeup.
He didn’t allow a baserunner in the sixth or the seventh. In the eighth, he stranded his second hit-by-pitch with his 11th and 12th strikeouts, passing his previous career-high of 10.
“I felt really good out there, just crisp and in sync with my delivery,” he said. “That was the key as the game went on. I didn’t try too hard or try to do too much.”
The double by Rooker, a rookie outfielder with nine hits who had been recalled only a day earlier after the Twins traded Nelson Cruz, was one of Sandoval’s few bad pitches, a slider that stayed over the middle of the plate.
Rooker didn’t make great contact, the ball leaving his bat at only 79.3 mph, but found an open spot of grass anyway. Sandoval wanted to stay in and complete the ninth, but Maddon went with Iglesias two batters later to set up right-hander versus right-hander matchups against the heart of the Twins order.
And when he walked off the mound for the final time, Sandoval was met with a standing ovation from the opposing crowd.
“This is just the beginning, it’s not the finished product,” Maddon said. “He’ll be back in that situation again someday. When he gets everything going on like he had tonight, you can see more of that.”