SEATTLE — Chris Paddack did everything in his control to lead his team to victory on Sunday. It wasn’t enough, because unfortunately for the Twins right-hander can’t control how much run support he gets. And lately, there hasn’t been much of it for Sunday’s starter.
The Twins, who showed in the first two games of the series they’re never out of it, came back in the ninth inning for the third straight day, using a Harrison Bader sacrifice fly to tie the game.
But after Kody Clemens could not handle a Julio Rodríguez ground ball that went for a single, the outfielder advanced to second on a stolen base and third on an error before coming home on Randy Arozarena’s single to push the Mariners to a 2-1 victory in the series finale at T-Mobile Park.
And that meant Paddack, in one of the best starts of his career, was not rewarded for it.
The only blemish on an otherwise dominant day for him came in the seventh inning when one of the hottest hitters in the game got hold of a low pitch beneath the strike zone and took it out of the ballpark.
It seemed as if that one would be all it would take.
Cal Raleigh’s fourth home run in three games against the Twins was the only run for either team through the first eight innings. That came on a day on which Paddack was nearly unhittable. He threw eight innings, gave up just four hits and struck out 10. He began his outing by throwing 15 straight strikes and kept attacking the zone throughout, making quick work of Mariners hitters.
It wasn’t until the seventh inning when Raleigh, now Major League Baseball’s home run leader with 23, unleashed on a low first-pitch curveball from Paddack that the Mariners broke through.
While the Mariners had one small breakthrough against Paddack, the Twins couldn’t do the same against Mariners ace Luis Castillo, who worked six innings, gave up four hits and matched Paddack with zeros inning after inning. The Twins couldn’t break through against the Seattle bullpen, either.
They had their chances — certainly more than Seattle did — putting at least one runner on in five of Castillo’s six innings, including two in the third, when they had a runner reach third base. But they couldn’t convert those runners into runs, and in the top of the eighth, they left another pair on with Carlos Correa striking out to end the inning before spiking his helmet into the dirt.
And after tying the game up in the ninth, the Twins couldn’t quite complete the job for the second straight day.
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