The Minnesota Twins’ defense completed melted down in extra innings on Wednesday and cost them the game against the Oakland A’s.
The Twins gave up a run in the bottom of the ninth in Oakland to tie things at 10 and send it to extra innings. Minnesota took a 12-10 lead in the top of the 10th on a 2-run home run by Byron Buxton. They had the opportunity to close out the victory in the bottom half, but they made consecutive errors that cost them the game.
The first came down 12-10 with the bases loaded and two outs. Mark Canha hit a weak grounder to second, but Travis Blankenhorn wasn’t able to field it.
Travis Blankenhorn gets the grounder to potentially win the game can’t make the play and Oakland only trails by 1 now vs the Twins pic.twitter.com/j9UvZzT9zV
— MLB Walk Offs & Game Winning Plays (@MLBWalk_Offs) April 21, 2021
That allowed a run to score to make it 12-11 and left the bases loaded with two outs.
Next up was Ramon Laureano, who hit a grounder to Luis Arraez at third. Arraez fielded the ball but threw the ball up the line to allow two runs to score on lose the game.
WALK-OFF ERROR pic.twitter.com/ylQyc6eBjX
— A's on NBCS (@NBCSAthletics) April 22, 2021
That’s brutal.
Blankenhorn and Arraez deserve lots of blame for being unable to make routine plays. However, let’s not ignore that Alex Colome walked back-to-back hitters to load the bases, including Elvis Andrus, whom he started with a 1-2 count. And then you could look at Rocco Baldelli for overmanaging this one with some extra moves in the 10th.
Pinch-running for Josh Donaldson in the 10th inning, followed by moving Luis Arraez to third base and playing Travis Blankenhorn at second base, could not possibly have gone worse for the Twins.
Blankenhorn and Arraez both made errors on what would have been game-ending plays.
— Aaron Gleeman (@AaronGleeman) April 21, 2021
The Twins won 101 games in 2019 and have made the playoffs two years in a row. At 6-11 and playing defense like that, they don’t look at all like a playoff team this year.
