Player of the Game
With three hits including a double, two RBI and a run scored, Carlos Santana was the Indians top performer tonight. There will be quite a bit more upcoming on Santana, including his defense, which detracted heavily from his value tonight.
Feathers Up
Santana started the game with a single up the middle, extending his hitting streak to a career best 13 games. Santana advanced on walks to Jason Kipnis and Mike Napoli and scored the first run of the game on a Jose Ramirez sac fly. His longer hot streak stretches back to June 5th as he has batted 44 for 140 (.314) with 11 home runs, 26 RBI and 27 runs scored in the 36 games since.
Santana was directly responsible for two more Indians runs later in the game as well in the fifth. Juan Uribe hit a hard single to left, then Tyler Naquin a blooper to right to put two on. Chris Gimenez hit a perfect sacrifice bunt to move the runners and he was almost safe himself. After falling behind 0-2, Santana then worked his way back into the count before shooting a double down the right field line to score both runners. He was, however, stranded at second when the inning ended.
Much like Carlos Carrasco yesterday, Trevor Bauer didn’t have full command of all his pitches tonight, but he did a great job despite that and held the Twins to just two runs in the first six innings. Bauer allowed only six hits and walked two during that span with two of those hits being doubles that came with two outs in the sixth to score the Twins second run. Largely on the strength of his dynamic curve, Bauer struck out six. He did allow two more runs in the seventh, but we’ll look deeper into that in the following section.
Feathers Down
Bauer took a step back in terms of control compared to his recent starts and it cost him a run in the third. He walked the speedy Byron Buxton to start the inning, then after a single, walked Joe Mauer to load the bases. He did a great job of working out of the situation, striking out Miguel Sano, but Brian Dozier knocked in the Twins lone run with a sacrifice fly to deep center. Bauer finished the inning by striking out Max Kepler. He had similar trouble in the fourth, but a great play by Jason Kipnis to throw out a runner at the plate kept Minnesota from scoring.
One has to question Terry Francona‘s thinking when he brought Trevor Bauer in to pitch the seventh after the it took everything he had to get through the sixth. Bauer allowed a single and a walk without retiring a batter, after which he was pulled for Jeff Manship. When Santana missed a ground ball at first the Twins scored one, then a single up the middle brought home the tying run. It took another pitching change for the Indians to retire the first batter of the inning as Dan Otero came in to stop the bleeding with two runners still on base.
Because of some baseball official’s nocturnal habits, the Indians resumed play after a two hours five minute rain delay at about 12:20 AM local time in Minnesota. It was already the 11th inning when the delay started and when play resumed, nearly the entire crowd of 29,447 had gone home.
The game didn’t last long after it restarted as Yan Gomes flew out for the final out in the top of the inning, then Joseph Colon walked Joe Mauer and gave up a double to Miguel Sano with one out. Brian Dozier was intentionally walked, then the Indians brought in the rarely used five man infield with Jose Ramirez coming in from left field. Kepler hit a ball right back to the pitcher, Colon, but he misplayed it and Gomes was unable to catch the ball for the force out at home as Mauer scored the game winning run. Colon rushed the throw and given that it was Mauer running, he probably could have taken another second to gather himself before going to the plate. The official scorer gave Gomes an error for the play making the run unearned.
Final Score: Cleveland Indians 4 – Minnesota Twins 5
On Deck: The Indians and Twins will wrap up their three game set in Minnesota on Sunday afternoon at 2:10 PM. Josh Tomlin will be making his first start of the second half against the the Twins’ “ace” Kyle Gibson, who currently has a 5.02 ERA with 23 walks in 57.1 innings.
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