BOSTON – Of all the things that have gotten in the way of the Twins’ push for a postseason berth, first base and a first baseman have to be among the most unexpected.
A first-inning slow roller by Boston’s Romy Gonzalez collided with the bag, turning an easy out into a freak-play single, and that hit wound up extending the inning far enough to allow Red Sox first baseman Triston Casas to bat with two runners on base. Casas clobbered the first pitch he saw from Pablo López into the right-field seats, the first of a trio of blasts he hit in Sunday’s Game 1 of a doubleheader, and the Red Sox handed the Twins their 12th loss in 18 games, 8-1 at Fenway Park.
“There’s no sugarcoating it — not the performance I was looking for, especially with what this game means,” said López, who tied his season-high by giving up seven runs in only four innings. “Didn’t provide length, didn’t provide quality. I didn’t do my part.”
The loss knocked the Twins out of a playoff berth, at least temporarily, once Detroit completed a 4-3 victory in Baltimore, improving the Tigers to 82-74, a half-game ahead of the 81-74 Twins. Kansas City lost its seventh consecutive game on Sunday and also stands at 82-74, though the Royals hold a tiebreaker over Detroit.
No, it’s probably unlikely that the Twins would have won if not for the way first base prevented Carlos Santana from fielding Gonzalez’s ball, but it eventually played into one of López’s seasonlong weaknesses: He allows first-inning home runs. Casas’ shot was the eighth López has given up, one fewer than Crawford, the American League leader.
Casas proved it was no fluke two innings later, when he batted again with two Red Sox on base. This time he waited for a López fastball, and when he got one in the strike zone on a 2-2 count, he pounced, driving it into the second row of fans atop the Green Monster in left field.
“The 2-2 is always an action pitch. You want to make sure it’s quality, but you don’t want to put yourself in a 3-2 count and load the bases,” López said. “It’s a fine line of execution. … I didn’t make a quality pitch, and he’s got power to all parts of the park.”
In the fifth, with Brent Headrick making his 2024 debut for the Twins, Casas greeted the lefthander by smashing his second pitch into the center field seats just beyond the Red Sox’s bullpen, his third of the day and 12th on the season.
