The Twins had to settle with a four-game split in their series against the Toronto Blue Jays. After wins Thursday and Friday, the Twins lost 6-1 on Saturday and 5-2 on Sunday.
Contributing to the two losses was a serious lack of situational hitting. Over the weekend, the Twins went 1-for-16 with runners in scoring position and left 16 men on base. I’m getting awfully tired of watching Miguel Sano come to the plate with runners on base and not produce — even worse is when he stands there and watches a called third strike. There’s just been too much of that this season.
Joe Ryan and Bailey Ober are pitchers to get excited about, but I’m increasingly less thrilled about Griffin Jax and his tendency to serve up the long ball. He did it again twice on Sunday and has now allowed 23 home runs in 77 innings pitched, or 2.69 home runs per nine innings.
Extra innings…
-The end of the season is here. The Twins have six more games: Three at home against the Detroit Tigers, who have an outside chance at ending the year at .500, and three more at Kansas City before the 2021 season is in the books.
-The Minnesota Vikings won their home opener on Sunday and yet 20,000 fans still showed up to watch the Twins at Target Field. Not bad for a team that is 69-87.
-Although the Twins lost Saturday and Sunday, the one bright spot from the weekend was the pitching of Twins reliever Jovani Moran on Saturday. Moran pitched two shutout innings with four strikeouts on 19 pitches — 15 of them thrown for strikes.
-The St. Louis Browns lost 7-4 on Sunday to the Texas Rangers. They are now 50-106.
-TV play-by-play man Dick Bremer shared an interesting anecdote on Sunday about former major league player/manager Don Zimmer, whose final major league at bat came against the Twins. On Sept. 26, 1965, the same day the Twins clinched the American League pennant, pitcher Jim Kaat and the rest of the Twins edged the Washington Senators before only 8,300 fans at D.C. Stadium, according to Baseball-Reference.com. Kaat went the distance, allowing one run (unearned) on eight hits with no walks and 10 strikeouts. No. 10 was Zimmer. The Senators scored first, but the Twins’ Zoilo Versalles countered with a triple in the sixth inning and scored on a passed ball. Versalles followed that with a sacrifice fly in the eighth and the Twins won 2-1.