After a miserable start to his season, the Twins sent Matt Wallner down to the Triple-A St. Paul Saints to get himself right.

When the powerfully built 6-foot-4 Wallner is right, he’s hitting the ball out of sight. The last couple of weeks suggest that he is at least on the right track.

Wallner homered in both games of the doubleheader on Thursday at CHS Field as the Saints beat the Syracuse Mets 5-3 in Game 1 before dropping Game 2, 9-4. The Forest Lake native now has 11 home runs on the season, including six in his last 10 games.

“Just trying to keep it simple; get back to what worked last year and go from there,” Wallner said.

Despite the recent power surge, Wallner said he is focused on hitting the ball up the middle. The solid contact does tell him that he’s making progress.

“Just hitting all pitches,” he said. “Obviously, there’s going to be swing and miss in there, but if I can stay on a curve ball and hit the fastball with the same swing thought, that’s when I know that I’m better.

“Otherwise, it needed to be a fastball or it needed to be a slider; just when I can cover more pitches.”

The 26-year-old Wallner was hitting .080 (2 for 25) with the Twins when he was optioned to the Saints on April 16. Asked if any particular pitch was giving him trouble, Wallner said, “Kind of everything was.”

“The first two weeks (of the season), I was just trying to find my swing and not really care about anything that happened,” Wallner added. “That turned into thinking too much, and it led to a month of bad baseball.

“But now it’s just stick to the approach and let the swing come.”

Wallner appeared in 76 games with the Twins last season, batting .249 with 14 home runs and 41 RBI. Knowing he can succeed at the major league level makes him all the more eager to get back.

“It is what it is,” Wallner said. “I want to know that I can be the best player that I can be this year when I do go back.”

Despite the recent home runs, Wallner’s batting average is still at .214. Although there is less emphasis put on batting average in today’s game, that’s not where Wallner wants to be.

“A lot of that is from the first month, when I felt like I was getting one hit a week,” he said. “Crawling out of that hole is never easy, but just trying to take it a week or two at a time. I feel the past couple weeks have been the best by far.”

The Saints fell behind 3-1 in Game 1 after starting pitcher Adam Plutko gave up a solo home run in the second inning and a two-run shot in the fourth. But St. Paul took a 5-3 lead in the bottom of the fourth on the strength of three home runs.

Wallner got things started with a homer leading off the inning. A two-run home run by Tony Kemp and a solo homer by Anthony Prato followed.

Jordan Balazovic (3-3) got the win in relief, while Josh Winder pitched the final two innings, allowing one hit, to earn the save. Four of the six outs recorded by Winder came on strikeouts.

Louie Varland started Game 2 for the Saints and gave his fans plenty to “Lou” about in the first inning when he struck out the side in the first inning, needing only 10 pitches. The second inning was a completely different story.

The Mets sent 11 batters to the plate, scoring five times. Syracuse got the first two batters on base on a walk and an infield single. One out later, Varland gave up a three-run home run to Pablo Reyes. Three more hits and a bases-loaded walk brought in the fourth and fifth runs.

Varland (2-5) pitched three-plus innings, allowing six runs on seven hits. He walked four and struck out five.

Briefly

David Festa (1-2) gets the start for the Saints on Friday. The top pitching prospect in the Twins organization, according to MLB Pipeline, is looking to rebound after allowing five earned runs in four innings in his last start.

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NEW YORK — Yankee Stadium has been a house of horrors for the Twins in the recent past. A spell of rain that disrupted Thursday night’s game for nearly an hour in the sixth inning forced the Twins to be trapped there even longer.

At least the good news for the Twins after a prolonged night at the ballpark is that they’re done with the New York Yankees in the 2024 regular season.

And the bad news?

They lost all six games they played against New York, falling on Thursday 8-5 to the Yankees on a day where starter Pablo López was uncharacteristically out of the strike zone.

“I think it was just lack of feel for everything,” the starter said. “ … I just kept getting in a deeper hole, inning after inning. That’s exactly what I should not be doing.”

López walked six Yankees (45-19), the most in a single game in his career. The two batters he walked in the first inning didn’t hurt him. The other four certainly did, all coming around to score.

He began his third inning of work by issuing walks to Juan Soto, Aaron Judge and Giancarlo Stanton. Two scored when Gleyber Torres sent a single to right and the third scored on a sacrifice fly, turning a tied game into a three-run deficit.

“I’ve had games this season I walk away and I’m like, ‘Man, I wonder what could have been different today?’ It’s pretty obvious. Six walks. Hit by pitch,” López said. “That’s seven free passes right there against a lineup as good as this one. You’re just giving them fuel.”

An inning earlier, it was a pitch left in the heart of the zone that hurt him: Trent Grisham hammered a first-pitch fastball for a two-run blast.

All told, Lopez gave up seven runs. It marked the third game in his last four in which he has given up at least six runs. Two of those starts have seen him give up seven runs.

“It was really all about the command. It’s not like they hit the ball around the ballpark on him,” manager Rocco Baldelli said. “It was just when there’s that many baserunners out there, guys are going to score. They almost have to score.”

While the Twins (33-29) tried to claw their way back, they were never able to pull even after the third inning.
Carlos Correa and Christian Vázquez homered in the loss, a positive sign for the catcher who has had a difficult time of it at the plate but now has extra-base hits in each of his past two games.

Three more runs scored in the fifth inning, including one on a ball that Max Kepler hit to left that Judge seemed to give up on as he got closer to the wall. But though the Twins brought the tying run to the plate in both the sixth and eighth innings, they were unable to convert on either opportunity, sending them away from their perennial tormentors winless.

“Six games and you lose all six, that’s not easy to swallow,” Baldelli said. “You’re not going to take a lot of positives about it and feel good about almost anything.”

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NORTH MANKATO – Carter Raymond was as good as advertised in Thursday’s Class 2A semifinals.

The junior tossed a complete-game, one-hit shutout while striking out 11 batters. And yet the game was still a sweat to the final out – because St. Agnes’ star hurler was equally dominant.

Angela Proper allowed just four hits while striking out 13 batters for fifth-seeded St. Agnes, which fell 1-0 to the Randolph Rockets at Caswell Park.

Randolph will meet second-seeded Lake Crystal Wellcome Memorial at 2 p.m. Friday in the state title game.

The Rockets have been more battle-tested at state than they’ve been for much of the year. Randolph’s only loss of the campaign came in the section finals to Caledonia. That, Raymond said, may have been a blessing in disguise.

“It definitely took some stress off me, personally,” she said. “It’s kind of like a breath of relief, because yeah, we’re beatable. But we showed how we can come back after a loss.”

And it showed the Rockets (26-1) can take a punch and bounce back. That was required Thursday, because Proper was landing one blow after another. The semifinal marked the only time all season Randolph was held to fewer than two runs.

“I know my abilities, and I knew a little bit of theirs. It was going to be a battle going in. I knew it was going to be close. The other pitcher, she did just an amazing job, but I knew we were close in abilities,” Proper said. “Just taking it one pitch at a time, trusting my team, really.”

St. Agnes stayed error-free throughout the contest. Proper lauded her squad’s fielding countless times, noting how proud she was of all of her teammates.

“This is my favorite team I think I’ve ever played on, because everyone has spirit. Everyone is confident in each other,” Proper said. “When I can trust my defense as a pitcher, it just makes life so much easier. Because I’m not afraid to go throw those risky strikes, because I know the defense will pick me up.”

Randolph’s lone run came in the top of the third, when Ella Banks came through with an RBI single. That was the Rockets’ only breakthrough, as Proper escaped a pair of bases-loaded jams.

St. Agnes (23-3) had a couple opportunities, as well. Twice the Aggies ended the inning with runners in scoring position, including in the seventh, when they opened the frame with their lone hit – a single through the left side from – who else – Proper, who then stole second, where she was stranded as Raymond ended the contest with a pair of strikeouts.

“We did have some chances, but they’re just very, very, very hard to generate against a pitcher like that,” St. Agnes coach Dan Berthiaume said. “I’ll give them credit – they strung two hits together, and that’s kind of what it takes in a game like this. … If you can hit a double with a runner on base, that can be the game right there. We were a double away from tying the game up, or maybe winning it.”

St. Agnes also reached the semifinals a year ago, but this trip feels different. Because the Aggies were dominant in their quarterfinal win over Proctor, and they went toe to toe Thursday against the tournament’s top seed. Berthiaume feels good that positive steps continue to be made. St. Agnes’ softball program is in excellent shape, and it has a lot to do with who’s in the circle. The coach said Proper has been “transformational” for the program.

“She’s so good. She’s just a very, very complete player,” Berthiaume said. “Beyond all of that, she’s just a gamer. Every time that she hits the field, you know you’re going to get 100 percent effort. You’re going to get that sort of gritty, tough approach to a game. The high-pressure stuff, it’s never easy to be in that spot, but she deals with it as well as any sophomore can possibly do that. I just couldn’t say enough good things about Angela.”

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Robert Mechura and Eddie Snider completed rare doubles on Thursday.

Eight months after Mechura, a Roseville junior, won the Class 3A state cross country title and Snider, a Mounds Park Academy junior, won the Class A state cross country championship, both won the 3,200-meter state crowns at their respective track and field meets at St. Michael-Albertville High School.

Mechura’s time of 9 minutes, 6.85 seconds was more than 12 seconds better than Chaska’s Nolan Sutter, who placed second.

Snider’s race was far closer. He won with a time of 9 minutes, 31.95 seconds — just five hundredths ahead of Cotter’s Erik Semling.

LEWIS TAKES TWO TITLES

Math and Science Academy’s McKaylen Lewis won the Class A girls long jump by nearly two feet with a leap of 19 feet, 9 inches, the best jump in Minnesota this season.

That was one of two titles she won Thursday, the other coming in the high jump, where she cleared 5 feet, 5 inches to win the event by two inches.

OTHER RESULTS

-Forest Lake sophomore Alexis Fahey smashed the competition in the Class 3A girls discus, winning the state title with a throw of 154 feet, 11 inches — more than 20 feet better than her nearest competition.

-St. Croix Prep’s Joseph Arens won the Class A boys pole vault at a height of 14 feet, 3 inches, which was also cleared by Montevideo’s Braden Nelson.

-Cora Clough of Brainerd won the Class 3A girls high jump as four jumpers — including Stillwater’s Anya Williams — cleared 5 feet, 4 inches.

– Shakopee sophomore Samantha Carr won the Class 3A girls long jump with a leap of 18 feet, 8.75 inches — 3.25 inches clear of Roseville’s Jayda Wilson, who placed second.

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