Rocky fourth inning helps sink Twins in loss to Guardians
CLEVELAND — For a brief period of time on Saturday, Sonny Gray lost the strike zone. Making matters worse for the veteran, when he was getting the ground balls he was looking for, the defense behind him wasn’t providing much help.
A turbulent fourth inning, during which Gray gave up as many runs — three — as he did in the entire month of April, and a seventh-inning solo home run helped sink the Twins in a 4-3 loss to the Cleveland Guardians at Progressive Field.
“I think it was just an uncharacteristically difficult inning for him,” manager Rocco Baldelli said.
Gray threw seven straight balls to begin the inning. His cutter, in particular, he started losing feel of, he said, starting to miss with it gloveside. After walking the first batter of the inning, José Ramírez reached on a single that first baseman Donovan Solano couldn’t corral.
On the very next play, Josh Naylor poked a ball toward third baseman Jose Miranda, who slid to stop it but fell over before he could get a throw off.
“I just felt off balance,” said Miranda, who was unable to make two second-inning plays and committed an error earlier. “That’s why I couldn’t throw it.”
The ball ended up trickling towards Carlos Correa. An alert Ramírez had broken towards third. Correa underhanded the ball toward Miranda, who lunged at Ramírez, failing to tag him. That prompted Baldelli to come out of the dugout, arguing that Ramírez was running outside of the baseline. Baldelli was promptly tossed, sent away to watch the rest of the game from the clubhouse.
“Honestly it’s a judgment call by the umpire and I think I’ve seen that play get called maybe both ways in my life,” Baldelli said. “I wanted it to go one way for our team today and we didn’t get that call.”
Shortstop Amed Rosario scored for the Guardians (15-18) on the play. Another run scored on a Josh Bell single, and the third run in the inning came on a bases-loaded walk to Myles Straw. Gray was assessed an automatic ball for a pitch-clock violation to begin that plate appearance.
In total, Gray walked three and allowed a trio of hits. He got one more inning, but the 39-pitch fourth spelled an early exit for him.
“Physically, I felt great the whole time,” Gray said. “ … Even throughout the fourth, when it kind of started going and going, I felt like I still thought I was a pitch away and still tried to just settle down and make one pitch, make a pitch, make a pitch. And it was just a couple runs too late.”
While that inning was the most consequential in the Twins’ loss, they managed to claw their way back into the game with a pair of home runs — one from Max Kepler, who has proven himself a prolific home-run hitter at Progressive Field, and the other from Correa, whose blast tied the game in the seventh.
But that tie was short-lived.
Jorge Alcala, who was called up earlier in the day, allowed a solo home run to Steven Kwan in his second inning of work, the seventh, and the Twins (19-15) went down in order in the final two innings. It was the second straight day that the Twins were unable to manufacture any offense that did not come via the longball, making the fourth inning even more consequential.
“It was just one inning of walks and them putting the ball just out of the reach of where we were,” Gray said. “I mean, I think that was it.”
