Rangers Beat Twins
MINNEAPOLIS — After sustaining heartbreaking, walk-off losses each of the previous two days, the Texas Rangers finally inflicted some late damage.
Ian Desmond led off the top of the 10th inning with a solo homer, lifting the Rangers to a 3-2 victory over the Minnesota Twins on Friday night at Target Field.
“There’s nothing wrong with a little adversity, especially at this point in the season,” Desmond said. “We see what we’re made of. We had some good bounce-back performances today.”
Desmond’s blast, which travelled 418 feet into the upper deck in right-center field, was his 15th of the season. It came off Twins left-hander Fernando Abad (1-3), who was charged with a loss for the second time in as many days.
Desmond, who hit .358 in June, got his July off to a solid start, finishing a triple short of the cycle.
“He continues to impress us every single night in what he goes out there and does,” Rangers manager Jeff Banister said. “Not all of his home runs have come with runners (on base), but they’ve come in situations where we’ve been tied or down one.”
Minnesota’s Trevor Plouffe had a two-run homer among his three
hits. Brian Dozier finished 1-for-4, extending his career-long hitting streak to 13 games, but his 11-game extra-base-hit streak ended.
Texas reliever Matt Bush (3-1) pitched two scoreless innings for the victory, and Sam Dyson worked around a leadoff single in the bottom of the 10th for his 17th save.
Bush, who allowed two runs in two-thirds of an inning his last time out, Wednesday against the New York Yankees, struck out two and allowed one hit and no walks.
“It was lights out from that point,” Desmond said.
After both teams failed to score a run through six innings, Texas took the lead in the seventh, drawing a pair of walks against Twins starter Ervin Santana, then a single by Mitch Moreland to load the bases. The Rangers pinch-hit for catcher Bobby Wilson, the No. 9 batter, with Jurickson Profar, who fell behind reliever Ryan Pressly 0-2 before muscling a broken-bat, two-run single into center field.
Santana allowed two runs, three hits and three walks while striking out five in 6 1/3 innings. He threw a season-high 117 pitches.
“I don’t even think about that,” Santana said of the pitch count. “(Twins manager Paul Molitor) gave me the opportunity to stay in the game and gave me more enthusiasm to pitch. I was fighting. I was excited for that.”
The Twins quickly got the runs back off Rangers starter Martin Perez in the seventh. Dozier hit a leadoff single before Plouffe’s seventh homer barely cleared the overhang in right field.
It was Plouffe’s 91st career homer but just his second to the opposite field.
Perez finished the inning but wound up with a no-decision. He allowed two runs on five hits and three walks with four strikeouts over seven frames.
Plouffe’s infield single to lead off the fifth was the first hit allowed by Perez and was backed up by a single to left by Robbie Grossman. Max Kepler’s sacrifice bunt moved both runners into scoring position, but Kurt Suzuki’s attempt at a safety squeeze was caught out of the air by Rangers first baseman Moreland, who fired to third to double off Plouffe and end the threat.
“Just one of those situations that came up that didn’t work out,” Molitor said. “Didn’t get the ball down. Trevor is not running particularly well, and we were just trying to get a run on the board with the way Ervin was pitching.”
Minnesota advanced runners into scoring position in the fourth, fifth and sixth innings, only to see all three threats sniffed out by double plays.
