The Twins, riding a 4-game winning streak and playing about as well as they’ve played in forever, ran head-on into Tampa Bay’s Chris Archer on Friday night. And it went...poorly.
Archer stymied the Twins through 7.2 innings, giving up just two runs while striking out 11 in a 5-2 Tampa victory. That’s a lot of strikeouts.
There’s really nothing more to it than that. Archer was flat-out fantastic tonight. Definitely a “tip your cap, go get ‘em tomorrow” kind of performance. No need to panic, but if you want to freak out, it’s a free country. Miguel Sano has struck out in seven straight at-bats. Find shelter if you must.
The game did give us this moment, one of two runs that Archer surrendered as he tired in the late innings
#Rays Steven Souza dove for a ball more than 20 ft. away from him pic.twitter.com/0g2eFytN94
— Matt Johnson (@MattJ_Sports) May 27, 2017
Souza did destroy a Matt Belisle pitch the next inning to make up for whatever that was.
Hector Santiago wasn’t bad, and would have given the Twins a chance to win on a normal night. He put in 5.1 innings of adequate hurling, with his only misstep a 2-run dong by Logan Morrison. Ryan Pressley relieved Santiago, and gave up his own 2-run dong to Kevin Kiermaier.
The above Souzaflop was the first Twins run of the game, a soft liner from Kennys Vargas. The second RBI came from Brian Dozier, who plated Eddie Rosario in the 8th. The Twins were able to get the tying run to the plate in the person of Sano, but again, strikeouts (this one from Rays closer Alex Colome).
Colome ended the game without much incident in the ninth, halting the Twins’ winning streak at 4.
STUDS: Archer
DUDS: Sano (Archer was great, but that’s a lot of Ks, my dude).
ROBOT ROLL CALL
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Enjoy your weekend, everybody.