The Twins compiled a nice video tribute to Sonny Gray’s 1,500th career strikeout, with clips of his first whiff a decade ago and other notable K’s in the intervening years, that played on the scoreboard as he walked to the dugout after freezing Taylor Wells with a fastball to close the first inning with that milestone.
It’s a good bet Gray was too furious to notice.
The veteran righthander, whose 2.96 ERA is second-best in the American League, allowed three of the Rays first four hitters to single, hit a batter before the inning was through, and threw a tone-setting 33 pitches. He was done after four innings, the bullpen made things worse, and the Twins suffered their second straight loss, 7-4 to Tampa Bay at Target Field.
The Rays, who have scored the second-most runs in the AL and allowed the fewest, peppered the oft-frustrated Gray and his successors all night, putting a runner on base in eight of their nine turns at bat and scoring seven times, tied for the most runs the Twins have allowed in almost four weeks. And it dropped the Twins to a mystifying 13-16 on days that Gray starts.
“It’s obviously a tough group on the other side of the field,” Twins manager Rocco Baldelli said before the Twins lost to the Rays for the fourth time in four meetings this year. “They have offensive players that do a lot of damage. They always have pitchers with very good stuff. There’s never really any soft spots that you can look at and say, ‘this is something we can aim at. This is something we can take advantage of.’ “
Not in the way the Rays took advantage of Gray’s control problems, anyway. The righthander didn’t give up an extra-base hit until Yandy Diaz’s two-out double in the fourth inning, yet seemed to pitch out of the stretch all night. He walked one, allowed five singles and for only the fifth time in his career, hit two batters with pitches. Well, one batter, Luke Raley, but he hit him twice.
After Jose Siri drove in Randy Arozarena with Tampa Bay’s second run, albeit unearned since Arozarena reached base on Carlos Correa’s error. Gray quashed that threat with something even more rare. Gray picked Rays outfielder Jose Siri off second base, the first time in his career he’s successfully done that.
It helped keep the game close while the Twins tried to find a weakness in Tyler Glasnow, the former Pirates who was traded to Tampa Bay in a 2018 deadline deal for Chris Archer, who wound up with the Twins last season. Max Kepler turned on a first-pitch slider from Glasnow in the fourth inning and bashed it onto the plaza in right field, a solo home run that gave the outfielder the Twins’ lead in home runs with 22, one more than the injured Joey Gallo.
Two innings later, Edouard Julien and Alex Kirilloff led off the sixth with back-to-back singles, giving Royce Lewis an RBI chance — and he hasn’t missed many lately. The rookie infielder waited for a fastball, and on a 2-1 count, he got it. Lewis lasered the pitch a dozen rows up in the left-field bleachers, his 12th home run — that’s sixth on the team already — in only 50 games.
But the game was decided by the bullpens, and the Rays had the better group on Monday. Kevin Kelly, Jake Diekman and Pete Fairbanks each pitched a scoreless inning in relief of Glasnow, with Fairbanks earning his 23rd save in 25 opportunities.
Baldelli, though, chose to rest his most-used relievers, and turned the game over to Dylan Floro, Brent Headrick and Josh Winder. The former allowed a single and hit Siri, then surrendered a long home run to Taylor Wells.
Headrick’s second pitch wound up in the right-field seats, too, with Diaz connecting on a sixth-inning fastball. Headrick allowed three more hits that inning, too, though Tampa Bay’s seventh run scored on a bunt to first baseman Alex Kirilloff.
Winder allowed four of the eight hitters he faced in the eighth and ninth innings to reach base. But the righthander picked Arozarena off first base to prevent the Rays from turning those chances into a bigger lead.