NEW YORK ‐ One consequence of the Twins’ bullpen sell-off at the trade deadline is the Russian roulette tenor of the team’s pitching staff, game-to-game.
Will this pitcher perform well? Will he disintegrate before the manager’s eyes? Past history offers so few clues to the tiny sample size of one game, even one inning.
Thus it was for Rocco Baldelli on Monday, when he chose Zebby Matthews to start, Brooks Kriske as his first reliever and Erasmo Ramirez as a rally-killer for a game that the Twins dutifully lost 6-2 to the New York Yankees, their sixth consecutive defeat at Yankee Stadium.
Kriske, an impressive option in his first three outings for the Twins, this time faced five hitters and put four of them on base, with two of them scoring. Ramirez, who surrendered a run in two of his first three assignments as a Twin, this time was perfect — for a while. Ramirez retired Cody Bellinger, Giancarlo Stanton and Ben Rice with ease, recording two strikeouts and a popup to strand a pair of Yankees. But his luck, and scoreless outing, changed when he was sent out for another inning, with Jazz Chisholm taking him deep.
And Matthews? His start was both impressive and depressive, an exercise in limiting his mistakes — but paying the highest possible penalty for the few he made. The second-year righthander threw 99 pitches and watched three of them disappear over the outfield walls, a trio of solo shots that the Twins couldn’t quite match.
Bellinger popped the first one, a first-inning two-out fastball that carried into the seats in right field. Two innings later, again with two outs, Stanton jumped on a first-pitch fastball and clubbed a far more impressive blast, into the Yankees bullpen in center field. Rice immediately followed with by far the longest of the three, belting a down-and-in slider into the second deck, just inside the right-field foul pole.