{"id":282272,"date":"2024-05-08T10:40:46","date_gmt":"2024-05-08T15:40:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/?p=282272"},"modified":"2024-05-08T10:40:47","modified_gmt":"2024-05-08T15:40:47","slug":"twins-lament-frustrating-miscues-in-loss","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/?p=282272","title":{"rendered":"Twins lament ‘frustrating’ miscues in loss"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

MINNEAPOLIS — The Twins have mostly played crisp, aggressive baseball throughout this season — and particularly so amid their recently ended 12-game winning streak<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They looked as far from that as they have all year on Tuesday, when a handful of key miscues all added up to eight runs scored by the Mariners in the final three innings of a 10-6 loss<\/a> at Target Field — but given defensive and baserunning mistakes haven\u2019t been frequent with this team and several key relievers were down, the Twins are just looking to move past this one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe didn\u2019t play the kind of baseball we\u2019ve been playing,\u201d manager Rocco Baldelli said. \u201cWe didn\u2019t play a complete game. We played pieces of a game. \u2026 It\u2019s just a combination that is not going to work. There is no way around that.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was always going to be a tougher path to the finish for the Twins with both Jhoan Duran and Griffin Jax unavailable out of the bullpen to protect what was, at one point, a 4-2 lead when starter Bailey Ober exited after five innings — and the club didn\u2019t help its cause with their uncharacteristically disjointed play in all phases beyond that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cal Raleigh\u2019s pinch-hit, go-ahead grand slam in the seventh off Steven Okert appeared to be a decisive blow for the Mariners after reliever Jay Jackson had loaded the bases.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first of the Twins\u2019 miscues had played into that, when catcher Ryan Jeffers didn\u2019t appear to see Dylan Moore\u2019s popup behind home plate at all, allowing what would have been the second out of the frame to fall harmlessly on the dirt track, where he could have made the play for the second out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Instead, Moore took a one-out walk to pack the bases ahead of Okert\u2019s entrance, and he had to throw his 3-2 slider over the plate, where Raleigh was able to put a big swing on the ball and send it into the third deck in left field.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhen it’s a solo [homer], it doesn’t kill you too much, but giving up the grand slam there while we have the lead and giving it to them — we came back there and tied it up, but obviously you give them momentum there,\u201d Okert said. \u201cThat’s frustrating.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Twins\u2019 offense did rally in the seventh and eighth to tie the game — they could have had more in the seventh, when they cut the Seattle lead to 6-5 on Kyle Farmer\u2019s RBI double but couldn\u2019t scrape across the tying run when he was unexpectedly caught stealing third base for the final out of the frame on a strikeout-throwout double play.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Baldelli said that Farmer did have the green light to use his judgment to take the bag on a pitch as the veteran saw fit, noting that the Twins would have liked to have Farmer on third as the tying run with the contact-oriented Jeffers and Max Kepler due up — but a poor jump did Farmer in on a bang-bang play.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThat came from us giving him the latitude to make a play if it was something that he saw fit,\u201d Baldelli said. \u201cIt didn’t work out this time, but that happens.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Twins did tie the game on a scary infield single by Austin Martin in the eighth, on which Mariners reliever Tayler Saucedo sustained an injury while trying to cover first base to allow Kepler to score from second.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But come the ninth, down to their last fresh reliever in Jorge Alcala, two final slip-ups buried the Twins — the first, when a catchable fly ball to the left-field warning track went off Martin\u2019s glove as the rookie, mainly an infielder in the Minors, misjudged the play in his first month playing left field at Target Field.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt was just a bad read on my end,\u201d Martin said. \u201cAs an outfielder, you should get back. You should know your space and just have spatial awareness. That\u2019s one hundred percent on me.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Couple that with Alcala failing to cover home on a run-scoring wild pitch, and it was more than enough to give Seattle the opportunities to take the game — but the Twins feel it\u2019s just a blip.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cObviously, we’ve played the last two weeks of really clean, really good baseball,\u201d Okert said. \u201cSo I feel like after watching that for the last two weeks, it looks even worse. We’ve just got to clean up those little things and move on to tomorrow.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

MINNEAPOLIS — The Twins have mostly played crisp, aggressive baseball throughout this season — and particularly so amid their recently ended 12-game winning streak. They looked as far from that as they have all year on Tuesday, when a handful of key miscues all added up to eight runs scored by […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":275699,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-282272","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282272","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=282272"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282272\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":282273,"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282272\/revisions\/282273"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/275699"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=282272"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=282272"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=282272"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}