MINNESOTA TWINS 9, BALTIMORE ORIOLES 6 IN MINNESOTA

Date:  Friday, July 7, 2017.

Batting stars:  Kennys Vargas was 3-for-4 with a double and two RBIs.  Eddie Rosario was 3-for-4 with a double.  Max Kepler was 2-for-4 with two runs.  Brian Dozier was 2-for-5 with a triple.

Pitching stars:  Trevor Hildenberger struck out three in 2.1 scoreless innings, giving up two hits.  Ryan Pressly pitched a scoreless inning, giving up a hit and striking out one.  Matt Belisle pitched a scoreless inning, giving up a hit and striking out one.  Taylor Rogers pitched a perfect inning.  Brandon Kintzler pitched a scoreless inning, giving up one hit.

Opposition stars:  Manny Machado was 4-for-5 with two home runs (his seventeenth and eighteenth) and four RBIs.  Trey Mancini was 2-for-4.  Seth Smith was 2-for-5 with a home run and two runs.  

The game: Smith and Machado opened the game with back-to-back home runs off Twins starter Felix Jorge, giving Baltimore a 2-0 lead.  In the third, Ruben Tejada walked, Smith singled, and Machado hit another home run, making it 5-0.  The Orioles weren’t done, though.  With two out, Mark Trumbo doubled and Mancini singled him home to put Baltimore up 6-0.

The Twins started their comeback in the fourth.  With one out, consecutive singles by Miguel Sano, Kepler, and Vargas loaded the bases.  Rosario singled home one and Chris Gimenez was hit by a pitch to bring in another.  The next two batters fanned, but the Twins were at least on the board at 6-2.

They followed that with a big inning in the fifth.  Dozier led off with a triple and scored on a Robbie Grossman double.  Sano reached on an error, putting runners at the corners.  Kepler singled home one and Vargas delivered a two-run double, tying the score.  Gimenez then came through with a two-out single, and improbably, the Twins were ahead 7-6.

The Orioles threatened in the sixth, putting men on second and third with one out, but nothing came of it.  Neither team did anything after that until the eighth, when the Twins got a couple of insurance runs.  Rosario doubled and was bunted to third, but when Jorge Polanco grounded to short he was thrown out trying to score.  But Polanco stole second and scored on a Byron Buxton single.  Dozier then singled and Buxton scored from first, putting the Twins up 9-6.  Baltimore got a man on in the ninth but did not bring the tying run up to bat.

WP:  Hildenberger (1-0).

LP:  Miguel Castro (1-1).

S:  Kintzler (24).

Notes:  Gimenez was behind the plate in place of Jason Castro.  Vargas was at first in place of Joe Mauer.  

Mauer, who did not play in this game, was the Twins’ lone .300 hitter, batting .305.

Hildenberger had an ERA of 0.00.  He would finish at 3.21.  Rogers had an ERA of 2.14.  He would finish at 3.07.  Kintzler had an ERA of 2.29.  He would finish at 2.78.

Jonathan Schoop was at second base for the Orioles, going 0-for-4.  He would play for the Twins in 2019.

Baltimore pitchers allowed fourteen hits, but did not give up a walk and struck out ten.  Twins pitchers walked only one.

Manny Machado played in Baltimore for six and a half years, making four all-star teams, winning two Gold Gloves, and finishing in the top ten in MVP voting three times.  He was traded in July of 2018 for five players who, while they all played in the majors, were nowhere near as good as Manny Machado even if you added them together.

Brian Dozier fell apart rather quickly.  He went from an OPS of .871 with 76 homers in 2016-2017 to an OPS of .696 in 2018.  He bounced back to have a decent year for Washington in 2019, but got only fifteen major league at-bats in 2020 and then was out of baseball entirely.

I still think Kennys Vargas could have been a good player if he’d been given regular playing time for an extended period.  I can’t prove it, of course, and we’ll never know.

This was the second and last major league appearance for Felix Jorge.

This was the fourth major league appearance for Trevor Hildenberger.  As you can see, he had not yet given up a run in the major leagues.  That would change in his next appearance, but he still was pretty good for the Twins in 2017.

Record:  Baltimore was 40-46, in fourth place in the AL East, 9.5 games behind Boston.  They would finish 75-87, in fifth place, 18 games behind Boston.

The Twins were 45-41, in second place in the AL Central, 1.5 games behind Cleveland.  They would finish 85-77, in second place, 17 games behind Cleveland, but good enough for a wild card spot.

Random Record:  The Random Twins are 16-12 (.571).