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The #MNTwins were looking to sweep the Miami Marlins this afternoon so they could stay on a nice little roll as they head home for 10 straight against the Kansas City Royals (3-game series), the Atlanta Braves (3-game series) and the Cleveland Indians (4-game series.)

They had RHP Michael Pineda on the mound and he’s been pitching very well for a couple of months now. He’d face RHP Jordan Yamamoto.

Max Kepler put the Minnesota Twins on the board with his 30th HR of the season to lead off the game in the top of the 1st. THIRTY HOME RUNS!!! #MaxPower

The Marlins tied it up in the bottom of the 2nd with an RBI-Triple from Harold Ramirez.

The Twins responded in the top of the 4th when Miguel Sano hit a 1-out double (13) to left field. Jason Castro struck out then Ehire Adrianza was hit by a pitch and that brought up Byron Buxton. He hit an 0-2 curveball off the left field line for a double (30) that scored both Sano & Adrianza and gave the Twins a 3-1 lead. In the top of the 5th, Luis Arraez & Jorge Polanco hit back-to-back singles with Arraez advancing to 3rd on Polanco’s single. Eddie Rosario then hit a sacrifice fly to put the Twins up 4-1.

Michael Pineda had another good start, going 6 innings and allowing 7 hits and 1 walk while striking out 3 and allowing just the 1 run. RHP Tyler Duffey pitched the 7th allowing 2 walks but striking out the side. RHP Sergio Romo then pitched a perfect 8th and Rocco decided to bring in newly acquired RHP Sam Dyson to close out the game. He had arrived at the game around the 3rd inning or so after taking a flight the night before but LHP Taylor Rogers had pitched the previous 2 games so Rocco brought in Dyson, who hadn’t pitched in a couple games so he was likely fresh.

In his Twins Debut, RHP Sam Dyson walked the first batter (Granderson) on 6 pitches then allowed a single (Prado) followed by an RBI-double (Berti) and then walked (Anderson) the bases loaded and Rogers was summoned from the bullpen. Rogers got down 3-0 then got a strike and followed it up with a fastball in the same area, or that’s where it ended up, and Neil Walker hit a 2-run single to tie the game. Mr. Rogers then struck out Castro, intentionally walked Ramirez to load the bases again then he struck out both Jorge Alfaro and Bryan Holaday to send the game into extra innings.

Neither the Twins nor the Marlins got a hit in extra innings until the bottom of the 12th when Harold Ramirez hit a Cody Stashak 90mph fastball out to end the game and Walk Off the Twins for the 1st time this season.

An unfortunate ending to a pretty good 5-2 road trip.

After the game, Sam Dyson said:

“Didn’t execute, didn’t get the job done,” said Dyson, who entered the outing with 1.2 walks per nine innings. “We had the lead. I didn’t do my job as part of the team. That’s a bad first impression. Hopefully, there’s no more of those.

“I haven’t walked too many guys this year. … You’re never trying to go up there and walk a guy. I’m not trying to walk anybody, that’s for sure. I wasn’t initially trying to do that, I wasn’t trying to work around them. I didn’t have it, and that was about it.”

“Coming from our point of view, the way the game played out, I think it made sense to get him in,” Baldelli said. “It’s a high-leverage, fairly high-leverage situation. It’s a three-run game in the ninth inning. You can question yourself on our end decision-making-wise on what ifs and things like that, but he’s going to pitch in big spots like that for the rest of the year, so I thought it fit well.

“We had Romo up in the seventh, and therefore made it pretty easy to make the decision to bring him in in the eighth because he was already up and hot. So he went out there and did a nice job. We were going to try to stay away from ‘Rog’ if possible, if we could today, so I thought it made sense to get Dyson up. He was ready to go. He’s been off for a few days, and get him in there and he’s, like I said, he’s going to be a guy that we lean on and days like today, they’re going to happen.”

You have to hand it to Taylor Rogers for giving his team a chance to win by striking out 3 of the next 4 hitters and sending the game into extra innings. 

According to FanGraphs, the Marlins had a 93.3 percent win expectancy after Walker’s knock.

They get to take their anger out on the Royals right away tomorrow night at 7:10pm when LHP Martin Perez (8-4, 4.38 ERA) takes the mound for the Twins against RHP Glenn Sparkman (3-7, 5.25 ERA)

The #MNTwins made a couple Twinsactions today. Both of them were trades but they weren’t the big trades they, and their fans, wanted, trades for an ace-type pitcher like New York Mets RPH Noah Syndergaard, Arizona Diamondbacks RHP Zach Greinke or Toronto Blue Jays RHP Marcus Stroman but…maybe they got their own ace-type pitcher to step up like they’ve wanted him to.

RHP Jose Berrios pitched 7 brilliant, 2-hit, scoreless innings with no walks while striking out 11 Miami Marlins and, behind a 3-run HR from Mitch Garver (20), a solo HR from Max Kepler (29), a 2-run HR from Eddie Rosario (23) and an RBI-single from Jonathan Schoop that scored Marwin Gonzalez, he had a nice 7-0 lead when he exited the game after those 7 innings.

RHP Sean Poppen pitched a perfect 1-2-3 8th with 2 strikeouts but ran into trouble when he stayed in the game to try to finish it up in the 9th. He allowed back-to-back-to-back singles then allowed Brian Anderson to plate 4 runs on one swing of the bat to make the score 7-4. Poppen struck out the next batter for the 1st out but Rocco wasn’t messing around and he went to LHP Taylor Rogers to finish the game and Mr. Rogers only needed 11 pitches to strike out both Starlin Castro and Martin Prado to finish the game.

They’ll look for the sweep tomorrow afternoon at 11:10am with RHP Michael Pineda 7-5, 4.30 ERA, 1.18 WHIP) on the mound against RHP Jordan Yamamoto (4-2, 3.64 ERA, 1.02 WHIP) on @FoxSportsNorth.

Back to the #Twinsaction Trades. The Twins waited to the very end of the Trade Deadline to get RH RP Sam Dyson from the @Giants for AAA OF Jaylin Davis and low-minor league pitchers Prelander Berroa and Kai-Wei Teng, none of whom were in their Top 30 Prospects. Jaylin Davis is in the midst of a great season with 25 HRs between AA @PensacolaBlueWahoos & AAA @RocRedWings but he will need to be added to the 40-Man Roster or be exposed to the Rule 5 Draft so…we’ll see if that one hurts down the road.

But, they addressed their biggest need for relief pitching with the acquisition of Sam Dyson. 

“We now have Dyson, Romo and [Taylor] Rogers, three guys there that have some back-end experience and can do some different things against different parts of the lineup,” chief baseball officer Derek Falvey said. “[Manager Rocco Baldelli] has already proven that he’s willing to use different guys in different spots based on how the matchup works. So I think it only helps that now you have guys that have been through this before and have pitched and closed out games at the Major League level. That only helps.”

The 31-year-old Dyson had a 2.47 ERA in 49 relief appearances for the Giants this season, posting 47 strikeouts and only seven walks in 51 innings. Significantly, the right-hander is under team control through next season and has some postseason experience from his time with the Rangers in 2015 and ’16.

Falvey and Baldelli both expressed confidence that Dyson, who heavily features a sinker and cutter and generates strong ground-ball rates, will be a late-inning option against both right-handed and left-handed hitters.

“I think this is a very nice acquisition for us,” Baldelli said. “He’s a hard-throwing guy, a guy with very, very good command. His fastball is a weapon in and of itself. I don’t know if he calls it a sinker or a two-seamer or what he calls it, but I think he gets great action on that pitch. This is a guy that’s done it, he’s had a lot of success. He’s a guy we’re going to turn to in later-inning situations, and I’m excited to be able to call his name.”

All of a sudden, the Twins’ bullpen looks that much deeper and more experienced, and the addition of two veterans that have late-inning experience should take needed pressure off Rogers, who has pitched more than one inning in 13 of his 40 appearances this season. 

So, now they just have to get to work and keep that American League Central lead where it is and/or raise it by continuing their resilient ways in every game.

The #MNTwins lost a tough a hard-fought series against the Yankees on Wednesday night and RHP Jake Odorizzi took a beating, giving up 10 hits and 9 earned runs in just 4 innings.

So…it’s relatively obvious the Twins were looking for RHP Jose Berrios to take last night’s start and go as far as he could.

And that’s what he did. He ended up going 7 innings, allowing just 2 earned runs (3 total) on 6 hits and 1 walk while striking out 8 and most nights, he would probably have been the story of the game but DH Nelson Cruz hit 3 HRs against supposedly one of the best pitchers in the American League, RHP Lucas Giolito.

That’s the first time Nelson Cruz has hit 3 HRs in a game. It’s funny how most people are surprised by that stat as if it’s easy to hit 3 HRs in a game.

OF Max Kepler (26) and 3B/1B Miguel Sano (17) also hit HRs in the game and all of those HRs were responsible for 9 of the 10 runs the Twins scored. The other run was scored on a SS Jorge Polanco RBI-single.

7 of those runs came off of White Sox All-Star RHP Lucas Giolito. That raised his ERA from 3.12 to 3.52 and his record to 11-5. In his last 7 starts, he has a record of 1-4 in 36.2 innings allowing 26 runs (9 HR) on 39 hits and 16 walks while striking out 46 batters. That’s an average of just over 5 innings per start with an ERA of 6.38 and a WHIP of 1.519. 

The Twins will try to keep the momentum going tonight with RHP Michael Pineda on the mound against White Sox RHP Dylan Cease.