Twins hold off Rangers 4-3 as Carlos Santana provides boost on offense and defense

ARLINGTON, TEXAS – Manuel Margot extended the longest at-bat by any major leaguer this season — while using a crayon. Ryan Jeffers hit his team-leading 18th home run of the season — with a pencil.

So let’s just assume that Carlos Santana’s three-run homer, the fifth time he’s broken a tie and powered the Twins to victory with a shot into the seats, was using a magic wand.

However he did it, Santana’s offense and defense were critical in helping the Twins win for the fourth time in five games, 4-3 at Globe Life Field. With the Guardians’ loss in Milwaukee, the Twins moved within three games of first place in the AL Central.

“He surprises me every day. This is one of the best first basemen I’ve seen in my life,” Margot said of Santana. “Everything he does is special.”

The game marked the beginning of Players Weekend in MLB, a promotion begun a decade ago but discontinued since the pandemic, in which players are allowed to break some of the normal rules about uniforms and equipment. Shoes, gloves and especially bats are creatively decorated.

Santana, the oldest player in the majors with more than seven homers this season, used his normal bat and shoes, but they were plenty good enough. He came to the plate in the fifth inning hoping to turn around his August slump, having hit just .195 this month, against tiring Rangers starter Andrew Heaney.

With Jeffers on second base and Margot on first, Santana worked the count to 3-2. Heaney tried a changeup, high and inside, then watched it sail into the Twins’ bullpen, giving the Twins a 4-1 lead that turned out to be enough.

Just enough.

Texas struck back 10 minutes later when Marcus Semien smacked a 2-1 changeup from Simeon Woods Richardson off the foul pole in left field. It was just a solo shot, though, because one batter earlier, Santana dove to his right to snag Leody Taveras’ hot line drive.

“It feels like every game, he does something like that, and you throw your hands in the air and say, ‘Wow!’” Twins manager Rocco Baldelli said. “He’s all over the place like a jumping bean.”

The Rangers got within a run by collecting three singles in the sixth, with Wyatt Langford’s hit to left driving in Nathaniel Lowe. But Steven Okert, Griffin Jax and Jhoan Durán retired eight of the final nine Rangers hitters to protect that narrow lead.

Still, it was a nerve-racking game, especially when what appeared to be the game-ending out was overturned by video replay — bringing Semien to the plate once more against Duran, who was pitching for a third straight day.

“That’s hard because he’s a [great] hitter. I needed to be concentrating, because if I missed one pitch, he’s got a chance to take the lead,” Duran said. “I focused on throwing strikes,” and it worked. Duran struck out Semien on a 101.2-mph fastball.

The Rangers hit six balls to the warning track, only for all to be caught.

“They did a bad job of hitting them to the wrong parts of the park,” Jeffers said. “I hit mine to the shortest part.”

That he did, and with a bat painted like a Ticonderoga pencil, complete with eraser on the end. He used it to loft a changeup just a few inches over the left-field wall, just 334 feet from the plate.

“The power of Ticonderoga,” Jeffers joked. “I thought the pencil was probably the coolest one. And I got a hit, so I stuck with it” — until he made an out, after which he changed to a purple crayon.