Twins 5, Braves 3: Sano bomba walks off Braves

The Twins and Braves came into a big series both boasting a top offense in their respective leagues. However, goose eggs littered the scoreboard early on, as Jake Odorizzi pitched around some trouble and Mike Soroka was perfect through three innings.

In fact, Soroka retired the first 11 Twins he faced. As opposed to Odorizzi, the young Braves righty was efficient in rolling through the Twins lineup until a really in the fourth by your hometown nine.

As you probably guessed, the rally started with a Nelson Cruz bomba, double, infield single, followed by a Eddie Rosario single to the left-center gap. Marwin Gonzalez joined the infield single party with a slow one-hopper to the shortstop, and the bases were juiced with rookie Luis Arraez up to bat.

Arraez did not disappoint, taking a high heater the other way to lash a laser to left and score two Twins.

Odorizzi gave one run back with wall-scraping home run to left for Freddie Freeman, but Max Kepler was quick to answer to with a dinger of his own. Kepler retook the team lead for bombas with 31st of the year, second in the AL to only Mike Trout.

Despite tossing 97 pitches through five innings, Odorizzi was back out for the sixth. The AL all-star got his first 1-2-3 inning of the night, and ended the night with a line of 6 IP, 5H, ER, 3 BB and 7K over 109 pitches.

While Odorizzi’s effort left just three innings for the Twins bullpen to hold the lead, Minnesota’s relief corps couldn’t do so for even one frame. Ryne Harper entered the game, and things got a little sloppy for the Twins. After a Ronald Acuna Jr. infield single in which Adrianza was unable to scoop the ball, a Jason Castro passed ball put a runner in scoring position. A single by Ozzie Albies and a fielding error by Jake Cave in right trying to charge the ball gave the Braves a run and another baserunner in scoring position.

Baldelli opted to go with Tyler Duffey with two outs, but the Duff man hung a first-pitch curveball to Josh Donaldson, who blasted a smacked to center to tie the game.

Trevor May then entered into the game for the Twins, and made us all sweat a little bit as he worked himself into jams in both the eighth and ninth inning. Fortunately, he also worked himself out of those jams, including a big-time strikeout of Freddie Freeman in the ninth with a runner in scoring position.

In the bottom half of the ninth, newly acquired Braves reliever Chris Martin came in for Atlanta and retired the first two batters. Luis Arraez would not go down so easily, as he flipped a broken-bat single into short left to keep the inning alive. Pinch-hitting for Adrianza, Miguel Sano came up to the plate and absolutely destroyed a baseball to end the game:

STUDS:

Jake Odorizzi: 6 IP, 5H, ER, 3 BB, 7K

Trevor May: 2 IP, H, BB, 2 K, W

Luis Arraez: 2-4, R, 2 RBI

Miguel Sano: 1-1, WALK-OFF DINGER, 2 RBI

DUDS:

NO DUDS, THAT’S A TWINS WIN!

*The Indians also lost tonight to move the Twins division lead to 4.0 games

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