Sports

/

ArcaMax

Success with bases loaded powers Twins to victory over Athletics

Phil Miller, The Minnesota Star Tribune on

Published in Baseball

WEST SACRAMENTO, Calif. – The Twins have discovered a team that handles bases-loaded situations even worse than they do. It paid off Monday night.

With a Twin on every base, Ty France singled home their first two runs in the second inning and Byron Buxton singled home two more runs in the sixth. The Twins added six more runs on the night and captured their first-ever game at Sutter Health Park, 10-4 over the don’t-call-them-Sacramento Athletics.

Two bases-loaded hits in one game? Not bad for a team that has only eight all season.

Especially in comparison with the A’s. The “home” team (playing in temporary, but decidedly minor league, quarters) has only six all season and an MLB-worst .143 batting average in such advantageous situations.

The A’s got a three-run homer from Lawrence Butler and trailed by only two runs when former Twin Brent Rooker opened the fifth inning with a single. Joe Ryan then hit Tyler Soderstrom with a pitch and walked Shea Langeliers, loading the bases.

Joe Ryan clearly had the A’s where he wanted them. Even after starting CJ Alexander with three straight balls, he battled back and forced Alexander to pop up. He needed only three pitches to get Luis Urias to do the same. And Ryan finished off the Athletics’ futile rally by getting Drew Avans to hit a routine grounder to Kody Clemens.

Still, it was an odd start for Ryan, who walked a season-high three A’s and tied his season low by striking out only four. He threw 96 pitches to get through five innings, not a clean inning among them.

 

But the Twins bullpen was its usual sturdy self against the last-place A’s, who have lost seven straight games and 21 of their last 24. Only two A’s reached base over the final four innings, and Brock Stewart erased one of them with his third career pick-off.

Besides, the Twins were facing one of their favorite foils in a ballpark he hates. Luis Severino, who owns an 0-5 record and 6.99 ERA in the California state capitol, gave up both of the Twins’ bases-loaded hits, and six of the seven runs they drove in with two outs.

Somehow, he’s even worse against the Twins. In five career starts — including, memorably, the 2017 wild-card playoff game at Yankee Stadium in which he was removed after retiring only one batter — Severino has given up 21 runs in 17⅔ innings, a 10.70 ERA.

Severino gave up doubles to Carlos Correa, Buxton and Brooks Lee in the second inning, and nine hits overall, giving the Twins a terrific first impression of the ballpark, home to the Sacramento River Cats.

Their clubhouse is beyond the center-field fence, and the game drew only 8,922, the second-smallest gathering of the season in Sacramento. But the Twins didn’t seem to mind any of it.

_____


©2025 The Minnesota Star Tribune. Visit at startribune.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

 

Comments

blog comments powered by Disqus