The new-look Twins took the field on Friday against the Cleveland Guardians, but there was nothing new about the way they lost.
For the third time this season — and the 11th time in the past five seasons — the Twins lost yet again in walk-off fashion 3-2 in 10 innings to the Guards.
Joe Ryan kept the Twins in the game and made a quality start in the process, allowing just the two runs across six innings, but there’s a big difference in your offensive firepower when you lose the likes of Carlos Correa, Ty France and Harrison Bader from your lineup, not to mention the injured Byron Buxton.
The result was two runs on six hits and half of those hits belonged to Austin Martin, who was back in the lineup after an extended absence. Eddie Julien, too, returned to the lineup and they were joined by newcomer Alan Roden, who came to the Twins in the deal that sent Louis Varland and France to the Blue Jays.
Bailey Ober gets the ball Saturday.
Extra innings…
–Neither team had an extra-base hit.
–The Twins fall to 3-7 in extra-inning games and 13-18 in one-run games.
–Tuned into the game on Friday and was caught off guard by the play-by-play voice of Tim Grubbs, who calls games for a Twins’ minor league club in Wichita. After Thursday’s massive shakeup, I must admit that I thought the team had parted ways with Kris Atteberry. It turns out he had the day off.
–The Blue Jays lost on Friday, but Varland still made a strong appearance and pitched a scoreless seventh inning on 14 pitches, 12 of them landing for strikes.
–Former Twins closer Jhoan Duran also made an impressive debut in Philadelphia where he closed out a come-from-behind win over the Detroit Tigers on four pitches for his 17th save.
–Two terrible teams, the Rockies and Pirates, went toe-to-toe on Friday and it was the Rockies that emerged with the 17-16 win. The Bucs scored nine runs in the first inning, but it was the Rockies who made it count with five runs in the bottom of the ninth inning. The two teams scored 33 runs on 40 hits. They also issued 14 walks, nine of them by the Rockies. Quality pitching was not on display here.