In a homestand full of wild games and large comebacks, the Twins attempted to pull one more card out of their sleeve.
Their starting pitcher, Joe Ryan, didn’t make it out of the fourth inning. Reliever Jordan Balazovic gave up a costly three-run homer on a two-strike, two-out pitch. They trailed by five runs in the sixth inning.
The Twins pulled within one with a four-run sixth inning, but they couldn’t sustain their momentum in an 8-7 loss to the Mariners. They had only one runner in scoring position over the last three innings against a worn-down Mariners bullpen and dropped the final two games in the three-game series.
Seattle scored in each of the first six innings. Dylan Moore, who homered off Ryan in the second inning, delivered a three-run home run in the fifth inning. His second homer marked the first extra-base hit by a righthanded hitter off Balazovic this season. Balazovic entered Wednesday holding righties to a miniscule .280 OPS, but he walked two of them in the fifth inning before Moore’s 429-foot blast.
The way the Twins’ bullpen staggered into Thursday’s off day, after playing on 13 consecutive days following the All-Star break, underscored the urgency for the front office to add relief depth before Tuesday’s MLB trade deadline.
The Twins’ offense, which was so inconsistent throughout the first half of the season, continued to chip away at their deficits. They tallied 12 and four of them were solo homers. Matt Wallner bashed home runs in consecutive at-bats, homering to right field in the fourth inning and left field in the sixth. The latter was a show of strength, a second deck shot that traveled 426 feet on a hanging slider.
With two outs in the sixth inning, the Twins produced four consecutive hits. Joey Gallo, who later left the game with an illness, broke a 0-for-19 skid with an RBI double. Kyle Farmer and Christian Vázquez delivered RBI singles.
Ryan yielded multiple homers for the fourth time in his last eight starts, and he lasted 3⅔ innings in his second-shortest start of the season. He’s permitted 15 homers in his last 44⅓ innings after giving up six homers in his first 77⅔ innings, his ERA climbing above 4.00 for the first time.
After surrendering one run in each of the first three innings, Ryan was knocked out of the game during a 38-pitch fourth inning. The first four batters reached base, including a leadoff double in an eight-pitch at-bat and an eight-pitch walk.
Down by two runs following Kolten Wong’s RBI single, Ryan faced the top of the Mariners lineup with the bases loaded and none out. It brought out some of his best pitching. He struck out Rodríguez, who already had a double and a homer, on three pitches. Then he struck out Eugenio Suárez in an 11-pitch at-bat that featured nine straight fastballs.
Ryan tried to wave off manager Rocco Baldelli after he struck out Suárez, but most teams view 40 pitches in an inning as a cutoff point. Balazovic replaced Ryan and retired Teoscar Hernández to leave the bases loaded.
Ryan owns a 7.62 ERA in six starts since he pitched his first career complete game.