Twins turn quiet after a loud start, fall to Astros in 10th

MINNEAPOLIS — In retrospect, Ryan Jeffers said, he very much liked the pitch that Griffin Jax made to Yordan Alvarez in the ninth inning.

Too bad Alvarez liked it even more.

The Astros slugger bashed that high fastball into the upper deck in right field Sunday, dramatically tying a game the Twins once led by six runs, and Houston went on to steal a 9-7 victory at Target Field.

“Right at the top of the zone — it’s a really good pitch. I have zero hindsight looking back on” that devastating at-bat, Jeffers said. “I’m calling those same pitches again. [Jax] executed really well. … But that’s kind of how this game works.”

Sure does so far this season for the Twins, who right now can’t even get a blowout victory right.

Minnesota built a 7-1 lead through four innings Sunday, then watched the Astros make it disappear. Once Alvarez sent the game to extra innings, Jose Altuve singled home the go-ahead run in the 10th, and another scored when Jake Meyers stole home, allowing Houston to win two of the three games in the series.

“We’re going to have to have a little bit of thick skin, going to have to kind of weather it and deal with it,” Twins manager Rocco Baldelli said. “Some losses are different than other losses. This is going to be a tough one that’s going to bother a lot of people in our clubhouse.”

People like starter Chris Paddack, visibly angry with himself as he walked off the mound without retiring a batter in the fifth inning. He escaped a three-hit first inning with only one run and faced only 10 batters over the next three innings. Just as he seemed to be cruising to victory, he opened the fifth by walking eighth hitter Zach Dezenzo. Myers followed with a double, the Astros added a couple more singles, and suddenly, for the fifth time in nine games this year, the Twins’ starter was out without recording a fifth-inning out.

“We need our starters not only to go five, we need our starters to go five, six or even seven innings,” Baldelli said. “Chris walked the leadoff guy, which is something you need to avoid. But with that, he threw the ball fine. Stuff looked good. But they just kept kept finding space when they put it in play.”

The outcome would have seemed unfathomable to the 14,638 in attendance at the start, after the Twins knocked Houston starter Ronel Blanco out in just 1 2/3 innings, collecting five hits, two walks and four runs. Back-to-back doubles in the fourth inning by Byron Buxton and Trevor Larnach produced another three runs off reliever Luis Contreras, and the Twins appeared on the way to their fourth win in five games.

But the Astros weren’t done — and the Twins, it turned out, were. Minnesota never got another runner past second base — even in the 10th, when the inning started with one there.

“We’ve got to find a way to win a game like this, where we’ve given ourselves a nice cushion,” Baldelli said. “You can’t rest on laurels. You can’t rest on a 7-1 lead, obviously. You’ve got to” keep hitting, a problem for a team whose offense seems to sputter to a halt in almost every game.

Houston, meanwhile, kept chipping away. Paddack’s day ended when three runs scored in the fifth. Reliever Darren McCaughan surrendered two singles and a walk in the sixth, closing the gap to 7-5.

And all, plus Isaac Paredes’ leadoff single in the ninth, set up Alvarez’s dramatic home run off Jax. A first-pitch, 418-foot exclamation point.

“I know he’d been struggling on fastballs up, pretty much [the whole] series. Maybe he was over it and ready to get on top of a pitch like that,” said Jax, who has allowed two home runs in his first three innings this year, after allowing only four all season in 2024. “I’ll go look at it in a little bit and see if I got it to the right spot, but you can’t really second-guess yourself. It’s over.”

Houston quickly claimed the win in the 10th, first with Chas McCormick’s sacrifice bunt that moved courtesy runner Brendan Rodgers to third base. Louie Varland walked Meyers, who immediately stole second base. Altuve followed with his second hit of the day, a solid single through the drawn-in infield to left field, scoring Rodgers.

When Altuve took off for second base, catcher Ryan Jeffers threw across the diamond in an attempt to throw him out. The throw was unsuccessful, and Myers broke for the plate. Willi Castro’s return throw was too late to get Myers.

“I think we got him at home,” Jeffers said, though the Twins’ video challenge was inconclusive. “We run that same [double-steal] play sometimes and we know that when it’s executed, it’s hard to defend. But we almost got him.”

The Twins went quietly in their half of the 10th, with Christian Vázquez striking out to end the game.

“You don’t want to lose that game. You can’t lose that game. But we’ve got [Kansas City] tomorrow,” Jeffers said. “We’ve got three night games against KC, good games to get up for, excited for. You can’t let this game linger on.”

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