Minnesota Twins Tie It Late But Still Fall To Toronto
Credit: Dan Hamilton-USA TODAY Sports
It’s rare to start a game with a leadoff home run. It’s even rarer to leadoff a game with back-to-back home runs, but the Minnesota Twins did just that on Monday evening. Danny Santana hit his first career leadoff homer off of former Twin R.A. Dickey and Brian Dozier followed to give the Twins a 2-0 lead, leading Twins fans to some comfort. That comfort didn’t last too long.
In the bottom half of the inning, Ricky Nolasco gave up a three-run bomb to Edwin Encarnacion giving the lead to the blue birds. The Blue Jays tried flying away with it after that, adding on with a Jose Reyes solo shot in the fifth inning to make it 4-2.
The Twins made a comeback in the ninth inning, though. The Blue Jays couldn’t complete a game ending double play which lead to an RBI double from Kurt Suzuki with two out. Eduardo Escobar stepped up to the plate and hit a pop up falling between the third baseman, left fielder and shortstop, the hit scored Suzuki to tie the game at 4-4.
The Twins couldn’t scrape another run together. In the bottom of the ninth, the Jays strung together some hits before a Kevin Pillar blooper off of Casey Fien fell in front of Oswaldo Arcia scoring a run from second giving Toronto the 5-4 win.
To say Ricky Nolasco had a rough outing would be an understatement. Nolasco somehow got through 5.2 innings, but didn’t show a glimpse of goodness in any of his 114 pitches. The highest paid free agent in Twins history gave up seven hits in the outing.
Dickey didn’t have a wonderful start by any means either, only going 5.1 innings while giving up five hits.
Joe Mauer got the day off on Sunday and still couldn’t find it in his return to the lineup on Monday. Mauer went 0-for-4 on the night, dropping his batting average down to .259 on the season.
Kendrys Morales got his first start of the year in the DH spot. He went 1-for-3 with a walk in his first game action.
Fun thing of the game: Josh Willingham hit a stand-up triple. Oh, Canada.
Caleb Thielbar and Matt Guerrier both pitched in the ballgame for the Twins.
The boxscore for the game can be found here.