It was his third home run in as many games and his fifth on the homestand. It had the looks of a routine fly ball, but of course, the Trop makes an adventure out of every batted ball. We hung in there off Snell, made him work, got his pitches up a little bit. “There were some things we need to do better, but overall when you go to Cleveland and down here to Tropicana and win a series, you take the positives more than the negatives”. “I definitely wanted to go deeper but it’s not all about me, it’s about getting a team win”.
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The Twins (44-65) have won seven of their past nine games.
The Rays are 6-3 on their homestand, which secures their first winning homestand of the season. “I didn’t come through”.
The Twins have won eight of 11.
“We all know he’s a very talented young man, ” Twins manager Paul Molitor said. He had his velocity going and took advantage of some of our inexperience to expand (the strike zone).
Tampa Bay Rays’ Nick Franklin, center, celebrates in the dugout after hitting a solo home run off Minnesota Twins starter Kyle Gibson during the third inning of a baseball game Sunday, Aug. 7, 2016, in St. Petersburg, Fla.
Evan Longoria hit his 25th home run in the loss. Logan Forsythe singled, advanced on a two-out single by Miller and scored on an RBI single by Nick Franklin for a 1-0 lead in the first. The 2009 AL Most Valuable Player was 10-for-18 (.556) with five doubles, a triple and a home run during the four-game series against the Indians.
Logan Forsythe added a solo home run, his 11th of the season, in the seventh for a 6-1 lead.Bobby Wilson added an RBI single in the eighth, and Minnesota got two runs back in the ninth, with a fielding error setting up a two-run single by Jorge Polanco to cut the lead to 7-3. “It’s taking good swings, not necessarily home-run swings, ” Miller said. Probably not quite as crisp of an outing as he had against Kansas City, but I still thought he threw the ball well.
Archer struck out seven batters to give him 168 for the season, moving back ahead of Detroit’s Justin Verlander for the American League lead.
The Rays placed OF Desmond Jennings (bruised left knee) on the 15-day disabled day and reinstated OF Mikie Mahtook (fractured left hand) from the DL.
Those pitches included a two-run home run to Eddie Rosario and a solo shot from Miguel Sano.
Brad Miller homered to give the Rays a 2-1 lead in the sixth inning. The Twins expect to activate Plouffe as early as Monday.
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The importance of Matt Andries’s role with the Rays has certainly increased with the recent trade of Matt Moore.
