Astros 11, Twins 0: Twins bats silenced in shutout

You know how the Minnesota Twins have been on a hit parade the past month? Multi-homer games for some players? Five homers in a game for the team? Well the roles were reversed tonight when the Twins took on the Houston Astros.

Michael Pineda toed the rubber for the Twins tonight and made it through four innings fairly cleanly, with the only blemish being in the third inning after hitting Jake Marisnick, who stole a base and then scored on a George Springer double. Pineda promptly served a meatball to Springer for the first pitch of the fifth, and Springer took it beyond the wall to left field and put Houston up 2-0. A double by Jose Altuve and a single by Michael Brantley (that was hit off of Pineda’s leg) led to an RBI sacrifice fly by Carlos Correa to bring the score to 3-0.

Pineda came out for the sixth and allowed a single to Robinson Chirinos followed by a homer by Marisnick to make the score 5-0 in favor of Houston. Pineda got the hook and Matt Magill came in to try to keep the game within reach for the Twins. Two outs later, Alex Bregman stroked a dong into left field as well, followed by a Brantley double and a Correa single put the game out of reach for Minnesota with a score of 7-0. Magill would get through the seventh inning without any issue.

The Twins did try to strike first right away in the first inning leading off with back-to-back walks by Max Kepler and Jorge Polanco off of Astros starter Gerrit Cole, but a double play by Nelson Cruz and a fly-out by Eddie Rosario put an end to that threat. That was the biggest threat the Twins put on tonight as Cole was spinning a no-hitter through 5.1 innings, when Kepler slapped a double off the wall in right field to squash the no-no. However, Cole was effective against the Twins tonight, holding the Twins to seven innings of one-hit baseball, yielding three walks, and striking out 11 Twins batters.

As you can tell by the final score, Houston scored more runs than the seven that I previously mentioned. Well, Adalberto Mejia and Ryne Harper did not get the memo about not allowing additional runs. Mejia walked Correa with the bases loaded, and Harper allowed a single and a sacrifice fly followed by a Jorge Polanco error before getting out of the inning.

The Twins take on the Astros again tomorrow night at 7:10p in game three of this four-game set.

Astros 11, Twins 0
W: Cole (2-4)
L: Pineda (2-2)

STUDS:

• Max Kepler: 2-3, BB, K

duds:

• Michael Pineda: 5+ IP, 9 H, 5 ER, BB, 2 K, 2 HR
• Anyone not named Max Kepler that swung a bat for the Twins: 1-26, 4 BB, 11 K
• Matt Magill, Adalberto Mejia, Ryne Harper: 3 IP, 5 IP, 5 ER, 3 BB, 4 K

NOTES:

• This is the Twins’ first time being shutout this season.
• The Twins fall to 5-4 in blowout games, according to baseball-reference.com.
• Twins batters struck out 12 times tonight, matching their season-high strikeout mark from two nights ago.

COMMENT OF THE GAME THREAD:

Hayden A! Congrats to you and your team on a walk-off victory tonight!

ROLL CALL:

Thank you to everyone who joined in on the game thread tonight!