A ball that traveled at less than 50 miles per hour for a double, a throw that let a runner advance and bats that were, at times, nearly as cold as the frigid April night were contributing factors on Friday night in the Twins’ second straight loss.
The Washington Nationals mounted a late-inning comeback, scoring a pair of eighth-inning runs, and the Twins (11-9) were unable to convert in the ninth despite putting a pair of runners on with no outs, sending them to a 3-2 loss in the series opener at Target Field.
“We have nobody but ourselves to look at for the loss, for a few reasons,” manager Rocco Baldelli said.
And that starts, Baldelli said, with finding ways to get more baserunners on and bringing them home, easing the pressure on a pitching staff that has performed well to begin the season.
Starter Tyler Mahle, a day after the Twins’ bullpen was taxed in Boston, pitched into the seventh inning, allowing just two singles through his first six innings. Mahle’s night ended in the seventh when he gave up a home run to Nationals designated hitter Joey Meneses, his last batter.
“(I) felt I easily could’ve finished the inning if I (didn’t) fall behind to Meneses and then gave up a homer,” Mahle said. “That’s tough to look back on. To me, it kind of overshadows the whole outing for me in my eyes.”
But Mahle did more than enough to put his teammates in a good position, spending much of his start protecting a lead the team grabbed in the third inning. Joey Gallo’s first Target Field home run as a Twin, a rocket struck at 112.6 mph off the bat, gave the Twins a third-inning lead. The Twins manufactured another run in the inning, using a Ryan Jeffers double, a Michael A. Taylor sacrifice bunt and a Max Kepler shallow sacrifice fly that Jeffers raced home on to score on for their second run of the game.
But that was it offensively for the Twins.
“We had some guys take some decent at-bats today, but we need more of them,” Baldelli said. “We knew what their guy was going to come at us with today, and I think we could have done a better job executing a game plan against him. We have to put some more runs on the board in order to help our pitchers out at the moment.”
The lack of offense meant that Griffin Jax came in protecting just a one-run lead in the eighth inning, and some soft contact ended up leading to a pair of runs for the Nationals (6-13).
With two outs in the eighth, shortstop CJ Abrams hit a slow groundball — it was struck at just 49.9 miles per hour off the bat, per Statcast — toward third base. Jose Miranda, who was shaded over toward short, dove for it, but it just got past his outstretched glove, rolling into shallow left. Abrams raced to second base for a double that had an expected batting average of just .150.
“There’s really nothing you can do,” Jax said. “You make a pretty good pitch and it just doesn’t go your way. I had to watch it happen a couple times that inning.”
Abrams came around to score on the next play when Lane Thomas grounded a single past both Miranda and shortstop Carlos Correa. Thomas advanced to second a poor throw by left fielder Trevor Larnach, a play that Baldelli said, “we can’t allow … to happen,” and then came around to score on Keibert Ruiz’s go-ahead single, another softly-hit ball.
“Tough ball game today,” Baldelli said. “A few things we can look in the mirror at ultimately. But when we wake up tomorrow, we can’t worry about this.”
