Ladies and gentleman, your 2026 Minnesota Twins: competent starting pitching, an improving young lineup and a spit and baling wire bullpen that apparently relishes the high-wire act.
All of that and more was on display Sunday as the Twins battled back and forth (again) with the Boston Red Sox and finally held on for a 6-5 win to sweep the Sox at Fenway for the first time since 1994.
“I feel I’ve been saying it all year. Even if we fall behind early, the at-bats continue to get better and better during the game,” Austin Martin told MLB.com. “It’s a matter of passing the baton, winning a good AB and adding some more energy to the next guy. That’s pretty much what it is. We don’t let up even if they score runs. They punch us and we try to hit them back.”
Martin made a fantastic “Say Hey” — as noted by Twins TV voice Cory Provus — over-the-shoulder catch in right field, plus he contributed two hits to a 12-hit attack overall. Brooks Lee, Trevor Larnach and Kody Clemens also had two hits apiece, while Orlando Arcia, showing off his major league chops, went 3-for-5 with a run scored. He’s playing like he wants to stick around.
The Twins are on the South Side Monday. Daniel Zebulon Matthews — you can call him Zebby — gets the ball.
Extra innings…
–Since when did baseball become an all-weather sport? Listening to the game and then watching highlights, it literally rained the entire game. Are major league baseball schedules that inflexible?
–Starting pitcher Bailey Ober got the nod on Sunday and emerged victorious with his sixth, team-leading win of the season. It wasn’t his best effort. He allowed four runs on seven hits, including two dingers, across five innings with three strikeouts.
–After Ober’s exit, the bullpen limited the Sox to one run the rest of the way. That run was scored off reliever Yoendrys Gomez who gave Twins fans a roller-coaster of an appearance across four outs.
The Gomez line: One run allowed on two hits with a walk, two strikeouts, a balk and a hit by pitch. The balk was hardly his fault because the mound was so wet he appeared to slip right off as he went into his motion. Despite all that, he still secured one out, a runner was thrown out at home and then the ball was handed off to Travis Adams who induced a pop up on one pitch. Ballgame.
–Incredible conversation. During the game, radio voices Kris Atteberry and Glen Perkins segued into a discussion about the short list of 20-strikeout pitching performances in major league history. From there, they moved on to Johan Santana’s 17-strikeout show on Aug. 19, 2007, against the Texas Rangers at the Metrodome.
Unbeknownst to me, Twins manager Ron Gardenhire apparently was caught off guard by Santana tipping his cap to the fans in the 8th inning because he was ready to send him back out there for the 9th. Instead, Johan signaled he was done and Gardy called on ace reliever Joe Nathan to close out the game, according to Atteberry.
Had Santana gone back out for the 9th would he have joined Roger Clemens, Kerry Wood, Randy Johnson and Max Scherzer as pitchers who have fanned 20 batters in a nine-inning game?
The Fort Worth Star-Telegram was there:
If the Twins’ two-time Cy Young Award winner threw every game the way he pitched Sunday, they’d have to start calling it the Johan Santana Award. With a cruelly deceptive changeup and pinpoint command, Santana was all but hittable Sunday in a 1-0 win over Texas, striking out a career-high, Twins-record 17 batters in eight shutout innings.
“I didn’t like it,” said Texas Rangers pitcher Kevin Millwood of Santana’s day. “But he went out and he dominated, that’s just all you can say. You run up against that, you just tip your hat.”
Texas Manager Ron Washington didn’t think Santana’s performance had anything to do with his opponent, though. “The way he threw today,” Washington said, “He might have got 17 strikeouts against whoever, it might have been the 1927 Yankees.”
Source: Newspapers.com