Twins fans of a certain vintage were perhaps alternating between cold sweats and strange comfort on Wednesday night, as the Twins turned a certain victory into a possible defeat into a certain victory into a gut-punch loss.
At least that wasn't the worst 11-10 loss to Cleveland in Twins history
The year was 1984, and Ron Davis was at the heart of it as usual.
June 23, 2022 at 3:46PM
The final tally, 11-10 for Cleveland, was the first time those teams had played to that result since Sept. 28, 1984.
As bad as Wednesday night at Target Field turned out to be, it somehow did not match what happened that night almost 38 years ago.
To set the scene, the surprising upstart Twins had a 5.5-game division lead in late August before a major swoon. But they went 9-17 in their next 26 games, leaving them trailing Kansas City in the AL West race by two games.
A resurgent five-game winning streak followed that, though, pulling the Twins tied in the race heading into the final week. And then ...
The Twins lost two road games against the White Sox but still were within 1.5 games going into a four-game season-ending series at Cleveland (which was just 71-87 when the series started).
Game 1 of that series was the first kick in the teeth. The Twins led 3-0 going into the bottom of the eighth, but Cleveland rallied for three runs in that inning off of Mike Smithson and Ron Davis. Then in the ninth, Davis gave up a two-out home run to Jamie Quirk — the only hit and in fact the only plate appearance Quirk ever had for Cleveland — in a walk-off 4-3 loss.
Still, though, there was a chance going into the next game. And the Twins seemed poised to take full advantage when they built a 10-0 lead and had Frank Viola on the mound.
By the end of the sixth, it was 10-9. By the end of the eighth, it was 10-10. And in the bottom of the ninth, Davis gave up one more run — his 11th loss of the season — as Cleveland won 11-10 and officially eliminated the Twins from playoff contention.
Current Twins reliever Emilio Pagan, who poured gas on Cleveland's rally Thursday after giving up the tying runs in Wednesday's gruesome 6-5 loss, has some Davis-like qualities about him.
But as frustrating as Pagan can be, and as bad as Thursday's loss seemed in dropping the Twins out of first place, there are still almost 100 games left this year. And there may never be another reliever like Davis nor a 11-10 loss quite like the one on Sept. 28, 1984.
When he was hired after the disastrous 2016 season to reshape the Twins, Derek Falvey brought a reputation for identifying and developing pitching talent. It took a while, but the pipeline we were promised is now materializing.
