It was a tale of two starters on Saturday evening for the Minnesota Twins.
With six starters and five rotation spots, the Twins opted to piggyback Taj Bradley and Mick Abel, both of whom were acquired in trades at the deadline. The results could not have differed more.
Bradley was dominant in his five innings, giving up just one hit, touching 98.9 mph and getting 14 whiffs, including at least three on four different pitch types. Abel followed and needed 39 pitches to get through his first inning of work and departed after four straight hits to begin his second.
Those hits marked the beginning of a seven-run inning for the San Diego Padres in which they broke open what had been a tied game on their way to a 12-3 victory over the Twins at Target Field on Saturday night.
Abel, who gave up six runs in three innings in his Twins debut last weekend, didn’t fare much better on Saturday, pitching out of the bullpen for the first time in his major league career. His outing, which began in the sixth inning, started with Brooks Lee committing an error. Abel then gave up hits to three of the next four batters he faced, allowing San Diego to tie the game.
The next inning, he did not record an out, giving up another pair of runs before making way for reliever Brooks Kriske, who couldn’t stop the bleeding.
His outing stood in stark contrast to Bradley’s.
Bradley was also roughed up in his first start as a Twin, giving up seven runs in five innings pitched against the Chicago White Sox. But he settled down in his final three innings of work last weekend and looked good again on Saturday.
Bradley worked over a pair of walks in the first inning, getting out unscathed. Starting in the first inning and lasting until the fifth, Bradley retired 13 of 14 hitters he faced before catcher Elías Díaz hit a solo home run, tying the game 1-1 at the time.
It didn’t stay like that for long, as Byron Buxton launched an opposite-field two-run home run in the bottom of the fifth to give the Twins the lead back. The Twins had scored the first run of the game in the third inning when Trevor Larnach knocked in James Outman. But starting in the sixth, San Diego scored 11 unanswered runs.
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