Cleveland gets to Gibson, beat Twins 3-1

Miguel Sano has never clouted a walk-off home run in his young career, but he's always eager for his chance. And so it came to pass in the bottom of the ninth on Monday, with the Twins trailing by two runs, Eddie Rosario standing on third base and Max Kepler on second. As he dug in against Indians closer Cody Allen, what was the 23-year-old slugger thinking?

"If he throws me a breaking ball in the middle," Sano said, "I swear to God, I crush it."

Good plan. But Allen knew it, too. Cleveland's closer pitched carefully to Sano and their tense, dramatic showdown ended in an anticlimactic walk. Joe Mauer ended the game two pitches later with a fly ball to center, sending the Twins to their fifth loss in seven games, 3-1 to the Indians at Target Field.

Mauer has 50 plate appearances without an extra-base hit, the longest streak in the majors this season. He had two singles Monday night to raise his batting average to .213.

Perhaps the Twins wouldn't have had to try to crack the Indians' superb bullpen had they cashed in a few of their other opportunities along the way. Minnesota collected five hits and a walk over the first two innings, and turned all of that into only one run, on a Rosario single. They left the bases loaded in the first inning, and after Rosario's hit put runners on first and third with no outs in the second, they couldn't move either runner.

"We left too many guys on," Twins manager Paul Molitor complained. "You leave 12 men on base, that's not a good sign."

Neither is Indians righthander Danny Salazar settling in after the early trouble; the Twins didn't move another runner past first base until the ninth inning, and Salazar, second in the AL in strikeouts, whiffed seven in six innings.

Kyle Gibson pitched an even more messy game, allowing a baserunner or two in every inning. Gibson managed some damage control that limited the Indians to three runs, one of them coming on Michael Brantley's towering home run into the seats in right-center. But Taylor Rogers and especially Tyler Duffey — who retired eight hitters without allowing anyone past first base, his fourth spotless relief appearance of the season — kept the Twins within range.

But winning the game meant denting that Indians bullpen.

They couldn't do much against Bryan Shaw in the seventh inning, or Andrew Miller in the eighth. That left Allen in the ninth, and the Twins gave it a try. Rosario smacked a one-out single, and Kepler lined a two-out double to the wall in right-center, putting the tying runs in scoring position.

Up came Sano, easily the Twins' most dangerous hitter through the first two weeks of the season, with the chilly Target Field crowd roaring.

Allen pitched Sano brilliantly, alternating 82-mph curveballs at the bottom of the strike zone — pitches Sano swung at and three times fouled off, one of them just missing an extra-base hit down the line — with hard, low-90s sliders that darted out of the zone. Sano let each of them go by.

"He's a good closer, had good slider. I looked for a fast one, but I don't see it," Sano said. "At that moment, I was looking for one pitch to hit. Not looking for two or three, only one. A fastball. I don't see it."

"Obviously, they pitched him carefully. He didn't get a fastball to hit," Molitor said. "He's just trying got get [Sano] to expand [the strike zone] a little bit there."

Allen faced Mauer instead, and while the Twins' cleanup hitter had two hits on the night, Allen got him to lift a 1-0 fastball to center.

"Typical Cleveland game," Molitor said. "They went to their three [bullpen] guys at the end and were able to hold on."