Minnesota broke the game open in the fifth, getting a leadoff walk from Robbie Grossman before a two-out, two-run homer by Vargas that barely cleared over the wall – and a leaping Smolinski – in left field.
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Neither the Minnesota Twins nor the Oakland Athletics wanted a postponement, despite a severe thunderstorm that delayed the first pitch by 2 hours and 42 minutes and left the ballpark largely empty.
“He had his demeanor today”, Vogt said.
Minnesota starter Ricky Nolasco (3-7) walked three of the first eight batters but benefitted from two double plays to hold the A’s scoreless through six innings.
Gray, 26, is under team control for three more seasons and there isn’t necessarily an impetus for the A’s to move the man who finished third in American League Cy Young voting a year ago.
Stephen Vogt led off the eighth with a single, and Athletics designated hitter Billy Butler stepped to the plate. Unfortunately they just spoiled a lot of them off.
Minnesota got off to a historically bad start and quickly got buried in the AL Central.
The Twins have won four of their last five games and each of their last three series at home. The game started at 9:52 p.m. and ended at 1 a.m.
“I don’t even know what to say about that”.
Santana frustrated Oakland’s hitters all afternoon.
“We had some good at-bats off him at times and we had some non-competitive at-bats”, Vogt said. “When a pitcher has his stuff and you don’t have consistent at-bats against him it’s going to be hard to win”. Today is a battle of “formerly good and can hopefully be good again” pitchers. That was his lowest hits total since opening day, when a rain delay limited him to two innings.
Danny Santana had three hits, including a double, a triple and a run scored for Minnesota. In 16 starts, he’s thrown through 93 innings, and has just one season of over 200 innings since 2012. The actual number of people in the seats at first pitch couldn’t have been much more than 1,000.
Except shortstop Eduardo Nunez’s throw to third was high, Valencia slid around Miguel Sano’s tag, and replay review overturned an out call by umpire Jim Reynolds. That made him the first Twins player to swipe at least 20 bases before the All-Star break since Carlos Gomez had 21 in 2008.
All fans holding tickets to the Tuesday, July 5, weather-delayed game against the Oakland Athletics will have the ability to exchange those tickets for a future Twins home game (subject to availability). Opponents were hitting.312 off of A’s relievers, and they had another rough day on Wednesday.
Marc Rzepczynski was charged with two runs on one hit and didn’t record an out in the seventh inning.
Athletics: RHP Fernando Rodriguez was played on the disabled list after an MRI revealed a strained rotator cuff.
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“Probably the best mix of pitches we’ve seen in a while”, said Oakland manager Bob Melvin. He allowed five hits and one walk to the team that traded him to the Twins two summers ago, crediting catcher Kurt Suzuki for calling a smart game behind the plate.
