Joe Mauer raced home with the winning run when Max Kepler’s comebacker ricocheted off pitcher Joe Colon’s glove in the 11th inning to give the Minnesota Twins a rain-delayed 5-4 victory over the Cleveland Indians on Saturday night.
Advertisement
Gomes was tended to for several minutes by medical staff before leaving the field on a motorized cart due to a shoulder injury. Sandwiched in between was Mike Napoli’s home run to the second deck in left field to lead off the second to put the Indians on the board first. How 15-time All-Star Shaq became an ambassador in CubaLesnar flagged for potential doping violationWainwright could be difference maker for Cards moving forwardValentine’s double-double leads. The Twins weren’t able to do much against Josh Tomlin today. Naquin moved into scoring position when Almonte hit a ground-rule double over the head of Twins center fielder Danny Santana.
However, the inning was overshadowed by an injury to catcher Yan Gomes. Three more were consecutive two-out singles in the fifth inning, the latter one by Francisco Lindor driving home Carlos Santana for the Indians’ second run.
Despite fighting out of a pair of jams in the first two innings, Tomlin struck out four Twins (33-58) hitters and scattered six hits, one walk and an earned run over 7.2 innings of work and threw 74 strikes in his 107 pitches on the way to earning his 10th win of the season for the Indians (54-37).
The game was delayed by rain in the top of the 11th for 2 hours, 5 minutes.
“I thought that was probably clubhouse humor to the nth degree”, Francona said.
Gibson allowed two more runs an inning later, again with two outs, but these weren’t entirely his own fault.
Advertisement
Former Minnesota Twin Rod Carew, right, presents former outfielder Torii Hunter, who retired previous year, with his jacket after Hunter was inducted into the Twins Hall of Fame during a ceremony prior to the Twins’ baseball game against the Cleveland Indians on Saturday, July 16, 2016, in Minneapolis. It was his 20th of the season – and second in three games – to tie Carlos Santana for the team lead. Eduardo Nunez, Vargas and Eddie Rosario each had two-hit nights for Minnesota, while Dozier contributed two RBIs.
