The A’s jumped out to an early lead in the 2nd inning when Carlos Cortes smacked a 2-run homer to right. Fast forward to the 5th, with the Twins offense still struggling against lefty rookie Gage Jump, Taj threw 9 pitches and all of them were strikes for the first immaculate inning in Twins history. This was surprising to me, I figured Johan Santana or somebody must have done it before, but I guess not.
Things were still looking great for Taj two outs into the 6th inning, but a single by Lawrence
Butler, an RBI double by Tommy White, and an RBI single by Donovan Walton pushed their lead to 4 runs.
The one hit the Twins had in the first 6 innings against Jump was a pop up that landed 5 feet from the pitcher’s mound in the 4th. I’m not sure how this is considered a hit, but it does help Royce Lewis’ batting average, I guess. In the top of the 7th, Royce got himself a “real” hit with a line drive to left. One out later, Kaelen Culpepper doubled to bring in the Twins first run. Then a Brooks Lee double put two in scoring position for Victor Caratini, who grounded out for an RBI to make it a 2-4 game. The final chance for the Twins tonight came with 2 on and 2 out for Luke Keaschall, but he struck out looking to end the threat.
To add injury to insult, Buxton had to leave the game after appearing to aggravate his hip chasing down a ball in the gap in the 7th inning.
In the standings, the Twins sit at 64-69 and may fall to 3 games back in the wild card hunt. Also, the Royals have won 9 straight somehow.
Studs:
Taj Bradley: 6.2 IP, 7 H, 4 ER, BB, 11 K, Immaculate inning
Royce Lewis: 2-4
Kaelen Culpepper: 1-4, 2B, RBI
Duds:
Byron Buxton: 0-3, 3 K
Ryan Jeffers: 0-4, 2 K
Kody Clemens: 0-4, 3 K
Four hits as a team just isn’t gonna cut it usually, and it definitely didn’t tonight.
