The Twins won on Thursday, but it’s clear this team misses Carlos Correa, Brooks Lee and now Byron Buxton, who has landed on the 10-day injured list with right hip inflammation.
Still, the remaining contingent managed to string together three runs on six hits, including a huffing and puffing Kyle Farmer who appeared to hit an inside the park home run, but who was later credited with a triple and an error on the Rangers outfielder.
With the bats in a cooling off period, it’s a good thing the pitching stood up to the challenge. Starter Bailey Ober made his 10th straight quality start, but the win went to reliever Jorge Alcala and the save to Jhoan Duran, his 17th.
Simeon Woods Richardson gets the ball Friday.
Extra innings…
-There was a funny moment at the end of Thursday’s radio broadcast. As Duran fielded the grounder and threw to first base for the final out of the game, play-by-play man Kris Atteberry announced a 2-1 Twins win, which elicited a puzzled comment from radio booth partner Paul Molitor. Atteberry chuckled and quickly corrected himself: Twins win, 3-2.
-Former Twins infielder Mike Cubbage, who spent five seasons with the club in the late 1970s, died Saturday from cancer, the Star Tribune reports. He was 74.
Cubbage’s best day as a Twin likely came on Aug. 7, 1977, when he doubled, tripled and homered, scored two runs and drove in five more in an 11-1 beatdown of the Cleveland Indians.
The Minneapolis Tribune
“Cubby’s Corner Alumni Association missed one of Mike Cubbage’s better hitting shows in the Minnesota Twins’ 11-1 rout of Cleveland at Met Stadium Sunday.
“The left-handed hitting third baseman went home run, triple and double to drive in five runs as the Twins swept the three-game series and moved within one-half game of first-place Chicago in the American League West. The White Sox bowed 3-2 at Kansas City yesterday with the Royals sweeping that three-game series.”
“I don’t know what happened to Cubby’s Corner, but I think the bigger crowds this season sort of usurped their territory in the second deck back of third base,” said Cubbage. “But I’ll take winning and drawing fans. They make you play better with all that applause.”
“A group of collegians established Cubby’s Corner last season when Cubbage and Roy Smalley came to the Twins from Texas in June for pitcher Bert Blyleven and made its presence known with signs and noisy appreciation of Cubbage’s play. They’d have enjoyed the Cleveland series as Cubbage knocked in five runs with three hits and a homer on Friday plus yesterday’s production.”
Sources: MLB.com, Baseball-Reference.com, Newspapers.com