The Minnesota Twins came into tonight's game against the Cleveland Indians knowing that they had a great opportunity to gain ground on the Houston Astros in the hunt for the final Wild Card spot in the American League. By virtue of the Astros' loss earlier in the day to the Los Angeles Angels, as well as taking care of business against the Indians tonight, Minnesota has come within one game of Houston for a Wild Card spot.
The Twins sent Phil Hughes to the mound, on what turned out to be a beautiful night in Minnesota after some rain showers passed through the area in the afternoon. The Indians countered with last year's Cy Young Award winner Corey Kluber.
The game was scoreless going into the fourth inning, but that is where the Twins broke the game open. It started with a Brian Dozier solo home run to right field to open the scoring. That was followed up by a Joe Mauer double and a Miguel Sano walk. Trevor Plouffe would double to left field to score Mauer and advance Sano to third base. After Eddie Rosario struck out swinging, Torii Hunter was hit by a pitch. Kurt Suzuki then struck out for the second out of the inning, which set up Eduardo Escobar who laced a single to right field that scored Sano and Plouffe, giving Minnesota a 4-0 lead.
Corey Kluber struggled against the Twinkies as he only went 3.2 innings where he allowed four runs on five hits, while walking two and striking out six.
Hughes ended up pitching five shutout innings, allowing only four hits while striking out four. Neal Cotts then came in and worked a perfect sixth inning. The seventh and eighth innings belonged to right-hander Casey Fein, who breezed through them with no baserunners.
Minnesota would bring in their closer Glen Perkins in a non save situation to seal the ninth inning. Perkins struggled a bit, giving up two runs, both of which came on a Carlos Santana home run that came with two outs. Perkins would get Yan Gomes to pop out to Dozier to end the game.
With the win, the Twins have moved to just one game back of Houston for the final Wild Card spot. Los Angeles is just a half game behind the Twins, partly thanks to taking three games out of four from Minnesota over the weekend. All of the Twins' remaining games will be against divisional opponents, with five games still left against Cleveland. The rest of their games will be against the Detroit Tigers, before ending the season at home against the Kansas City Royals. While it is not an easy schedule, they need to continue winning if they have any shot of making the playoffs for the first time since 2010.
The two teams now will play the final game of the series on Wednesday night. For that finale, Minnesota will send Kyle Gibson (10-10, 3.73 ERA) to the mound, while Cleveland will counter with Cody Anderson (5-3, 3.48 ERA).