OAKLAND — The Twins had the matchup they were looking for with Jhoan Duran on the mound. Rocco Baldelli turned to his closer in the eighth inning earlier to face a more challenging part of Oakland’s lineup.
It just didn’t work out as they had envisioned.
The Oakland Athletics punched back last in a back-and-forth game on Friday when Shea Langeliers blasted the first pitch he saw from Duran for a two-run home run that lifted the Athletics to a 6-5 win over the Twins in the series opener at the Oakland Coliseum.
“That one was in the middle,” Duran said. “It wasn’t moving at all. … He’s a good hitter and he has power, so he took that pitch and he got a homer.”
It was also a splinker thrown at 93.7 mph, much slower than the 96.9 mph he averages with that pitch. Duran said he felt good physically but didn’t want to sacrifice control for velocity.
It came an inning after Willi Castro’s three-run home run had given the Twins (41-35) the lead, and a half inning after Austin Martin made an out on the base paths, denying Castro the chance to finish his at-bat with a runner in scoring position.
“I gave him the green light. He took the green light, which is — I want him to try to be aggressive and make a play if he thinks he’s got it,” manager Rocco Baldelli said. “And sometimes they pick when that happens. … Willi’s been swinging a good bat, and we just ended up making an out on the bases.”
The Twins had fallen behind in the fifth inning when Chris Paddack — who wasn’t his sharpest and said after the game that he was dealing with a bit of dead arm — left after allowing a pair of singles.
Both of those runers came around to score when Kody Funderburk, called up from Triple-A on Friday, allowed a double to fellow lefty Tyler Soderstrom, the first batter he faced. Langeliers followed that up with a single, pushing the Athletics’ (29-49) lead out to three at the time.
The Twins’ comeback started with Royce Lewis — who else? — hitting his 10th home run of the season in the sixth inning. He reached that number in just 16 games, becoming the fastest Twin to reach 10 home runs in a season in club history.
Castro’s home run pulled the team out of the hole and gave the Twins some new life, but their lead was short-lived, as was their first lead of the game, which came in the top of the first inning and disappeared in the bottom of the first.
The loss is the team’s third straight after winning six in a row last week. All three of those losses were one-run defeats.
“It wasn’t a smooth game,” Baldelli said. “We kind of had to fight through so many different innings both when we were in the field and offensively, too. Nothing really came easy today and we ended up just a run behind.”
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