Twins fall in penultimate game of season to Rangers
· Yahoo Sports
Rangers 6, Twins 2
Starting pitcher performanceAfter a rain delay that lasted just over two hours, Bailey Ober needed just six pitches to get through the first inning. He started the second inning off strong, as well, striking out the first two batters he faced.
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But the Rangers broke through with a pair of outs in the second, tagging him for four runs in the inning. A Nicky Lopez double started the rally. A single and three consecutive doubles followed before Ober was able to extract himself from the inning. All told, the Rangers sent eight men to the plate as they established an early lead that they kept for the rest of the day.
“They just put balls in plays and found holes,” Ober said. “We weren’t able to make a catch on one and after that they put balls in play and some of them found gaps.”
Ober would give up two more runs, allowing solo home runs to Danny Jansen and Jake Burger before concluding his five-inning outing. It was his first start since Sept. 15 as Ober made his first-career relief appearance (three innings of scoreless ball) his last time out.
It was an up and down season for Ober, who had a strong start to the season, missed an entire month of June with an elbow issue and then has had some mixed results since returning. He finished the year with a 4.47 ERA across 131 innings pitched.
“I felt pretty good for the most part this year,” he said. “(Saturday) and the Pittsburgh outing (seven earned runs), you take those two games out of the equation and the numbers look a lot different.”
Twins on offenseLuke Keaschall led off the bottom of the first with a double and came around to score on a Kody Clemens ground ball to first. Keaschall would later triple and come around to score on Josh Bell’s two-out knock in the eighth inning, which center fielder Evan Carter dove for but was unable to hang on to.
“He’s just been so effective and he’s finishing really strong,” manager Derek Shelton said of Keaschall.
Up nextDean Kremer (4-5, 4.97 ERA) will get the start on Sunday for the Twins’ final game of the season as the American League West title is on the line for Texas.