CLEVELAND — With their world crashing down around them over the past month, the Minnesota Twins would like nothing more than for their players to simplify things to avoid making every moment of the final 11 games feel larger than they should be.
Pitch better. Hit better. Defend better.
As simple as those directions may seem, those are the points Twins president of baseball operations Derek Falvey emphasized to reporters early Tuesday evening ahead of the Twins’ matchup against the Cleveland Guardians.
With three rookies in the starting rotation, the Twins figure that stressing a day-by-day, inning-by-inning, pitch-by-pitch mentality can be more helpful overall.
On cue, rookie starter Zebby Matthews followed the script, and the rest of his team, including more than half the bullpen, followed him.
From outstanding defense to a combined pitching effort to key hits from multiple players, the Twins put together a complete victory, topping the Guardians 4-1 in front of 17,391 at Progressive Field.
Matthews pitched well into the fifth inning and five relievers pitched 4 1/3 scoreless innings to make a pair of Matt Wallner RBI singles and a two-run Willi Castro homer hold up.
“Great win for our entire team,” Twins manager Rocco Baldelli said. “Everywhere you looked in the dugout, out in the bullpen, everyone played a part in some small way. … There’s a lot to clap about and talk about.”
Baldelli’s loudest hoorays were saved for Matthews, who entered with a 13.06 ERA in his previous three starts. On his fourth team this season after starting at Single-A Cedar Rapids, Matthews never before faced a bigger must-win situation than taking the mound Tuesday after Monday’s crushing 4-3 loss.
Before he conducted a thorough review of Pablo López’s strong start from Monday, taking notes and forming a game plan, Matthews said he decompressed by calling his wife.
He continued to study on Tuesday morning and with a blister that’s been bugging him since June feeling a little better, Matthews put together a clutch performance, one good enough for Baldelli to suggest he earned the victory even though he didn’t qualify.
Working with very good stuff and iffy command, Matthews made big pitches when he needed to. He started with a quick 1-2-3 first inning but needed to escape a jam in the second, striking out Bo Naylor with two on and two outs.
After surrendering a one-out single in the third, Matthews struck out José Ramírez to end the inning.
He also responded well after yielding a solo home run that tied the score in the fourth inning, retiring the next two batters to end the inning. Even after he allowed a leadoff single in the fifth, Matthews immediately erased it with a double play. Matthews exited after giving up a two-out single but limited Cleveland to just one earned run on five hits with one walk against five strikeouts.
“(Tuesday) was definitely better with runners on, making big pitches and getting out of some jams,” Matthews said. “There’s still some things to do a lot better, but really happy with that. … It’s something to build off of.”
The foundation of Tuesday’s victory was centered on an all-hands-on-deck mentality. Hours after saying he’s ready to do whatever is asked of him and predicting a Twins playoff berth, newcomer Cole Irvin retired Andrés Giménez for the final out of the fifth inning.
Cole Sands set down the heart of the Guardians lineup in the sixth. Ronny Henriquez, whose role appears to be elevated by the demotion on Monday of Jorge Alcala, pitched a scoreless seventh, jump-started by picking off pinch runner Myles Straw after Kyle Manzardo opened the inning with a single.
Jhoan Duran pitched a perfect eighth and returned for the ninth only to give way to Jax after putting two men on. A day after he allowed a back-breaking homer to Manzardo, Jax rebounded with a two-out save, including securing the game-ending out by himself.
“You can’t just sulk in what happened the day before,” Jax said. “I was just happy to get back out there. … I was just ready to get the ball and get the game over with. I didn’t want to leave it up to chance again.”
Castro did his part to reduce the chance of the kind of fluky losses that have dominated the team’s 9-18 stretch dating back to Aug. 18.
Facing Nick Sandlin with two outs after Trevor Larnach singled, Castro ripped an 0-1 fastball for a two-run homer to extend the Twins’ lead to 4-1. Before Castro’s knock, the Twins thrice earlier failed to extend the lead.
Celebrating the second anniversary of his big-league debut, Wallner put the Twins ahead 1-0 in the third inning with a two-out RBI single. Wallner produced another two-out RBI single in the fifth inning behind Byron Buxton’s double to give the Twins a 2-1 edge. But both times, Cleveland starter Gavin Williams wiggled out of jams, first with a strikeout of Carlos Santana and later with a whiff of Royce Lewis.
Finally, Castro provided the hit the Twins needed while also producing his first extra-base hit since Aug. 27.
“It was really good to have that win,” Castro said. “Obviously, these are really (big) games. All these games count. … We’re going to keep it going. We have the team to keep having games like this.”
The Twins hope the carryover from a win like this helps keep things simple. With Detroit still right on their tails and Seattle lurking, the Twins know they’ll need to improve over the past month to be alive in October.
“When you’re going through a stretch like this and you haven’t won the number of games that you expect to or want to, you’re going to feel like that all the time,” Falvey said. “It means that your performance isn’t lining up where you want it to be and so yeah, we want to hit a little bit more. Yeah, we want to pitch a little better. Yeah, we want to play slightly better defense. If the record was reversed during the stretch of games, we’d say, ‘Oh, all those things are fine.” We need to do everything a little bit better right now and I think our guys just need to start with one game at a time.”
Length is a big factor in Varland over Alcala
The current makeup of Minnesota’s starting rotation — as well as Alcala still having a minor-league option — drove the team’s decision to demote him to Triple A instead of Louie Varland, who has struggled since returning to the majors earlier this month. Not only would the Twins feel comfortable using Varland in a shorter situation, but they believe he’s more capable of providing two innings than Alcala, who has a 7.11 ERA with eight home runs allowed in 19 innings since July 21.
“The length is probably the main point,” Baldelli said. “We’re going to have games where we might need someone to go out there and throw three or four innings potentially. … We can’t get caught in a situation where we can’t cover. We’re going to have to piece these outings together. We’re going to have to find ways to get two or three innings for guys. Ronny is going to have to do that. Lou is going to have to do that. I’m not saying this is going to go perfectly because it hasn’t. But we’re going to have to do it that way.”
Kepler gets cortisone shot
The hope is Max Kepler will play for Triple-A St. Paul this weekend after receiving a cortisone shot in his groin/hip area, Falvey said. Kepler felt soreness after taking live batting practice last week as he recovered from left patellar tendonitis.
“He’s tracked really well,” Falvey said. “The goal right now, and his goal right now, because he’ll be feeling better hopefully over the next couple of days, is to work back into activity. We know the season is coming to a close here soon, so we’re targeting getting him into games this weekend in St. Paul.”
(Photo of Willi Castro, right, celebrating his two-run home run with Trevor Larnach: Jason Miller / Getty Images)
