Twins frustrated but not too mad after fan catches Brewers home run

Austin Martin might have made the catch of the year Sunday, a well-timed leap to reach over the planters atop the left-field wall and “a snow-cone [catch] off the end of my glove,” he said, to keep Rhys Hoskins’ deep fly from turning into a tiebreaking home run.

“But we’ll never know.”

That’s because a fan in a Twins jersey reached out with his glove and made a far easier catch, standing in the front row of the bleachers. It wasn’t quite a Jeffrey Maier moment — that’s the 12-year-old who reached over the Yankee Stadium wall during the 1996 playoffs and caught a Derek Jeter fly ball before Orioles outfielder Tony Tarasco could — but the Twins asked the umpires to have the play reviewed.

“That’s a boundary call, we get a free ask on those,” manager Rocco Baldelli said. Did he think the fan interfered with Martin?

“I really, truthfully, couldn’t tell, not from where I’m at it,” Baldelli said.

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That was Martin’s opinion, too. “I’d like to say I had an opportunity to possibly get there. I was up there, I thought my glove was right where the ball was coming down. … But I don’t know,” he said. “When I jumped up, I looked up and saw it go into his glove before I came down. So it was just frustration after that.”

The frustration only increased when umpires ruled that the fan didn’t reach into play and interfere, so the home run, which put Milwaukee ahead for good in its 8-7 victory, stood.

Griffin Jax, who had given up only two home runs in 43⅓ innings this season, gave up the blast, the first time since Sept. 13, 2023, when Tampa Bay’s Randy Arozarena got him, that Jax had served up a homer at Target Field.

“I made my pitch. It was a four-seam [fastball], top of the zone. I’ll live with it,” Jax said. “It’s not a pitch I regret throwing. He just got it.”

But shouldn’t Martin have gotten the chance to catch it? Jax said he can’t be too angry. “It was a Twins fan,” he said.

Injured righthander Chris Paddack said the mental stress of wondering whether his twice-replaced elbow ligament was damaged again was worse than the actual pain.

After facing the San Francisco Giants last Sunday, he went home to Texas for the All-Star break, and everything seemed normal. “Then Thursday, I woke up, and the elbow kind of locked up on me,” he said. “I’d be lying to y’all if I said I wasn’t worried.”

An MRI on Friday, however, showed no damage, just a muscle strain and some fluid in the elbow.

Paddack’s theory: The pain was simply his body wanting a break from all the work he’s been putting in this year.

“The body is so weird, man. You can run a couple of marathons, and then one day you wake up and you can’t walk. It’s like your body just naturally responds, like, ‘Hey, that’s enough. I’ve had enough,’ ” he said. “And that’s what it was. ‘Hey, I need a breather, man. You’ve been beating yourself to death.’ ”

The Twins played a man short Sunday, though it didn’t come into play. Before the game, they put lefthander Kody Funderburk on the 15-day injured list because of a strained left oblique.

Funderburk last pitched July 12, so the problem caught the Twins off guard. They summoned Class AAA righthander Ronny Henriquez from Toledo, where the Saints were completing a three-game sweep with a 10-3 victory, but his flight didn’t arrive in time for him to get to Target Field before the game ended.

Henriquez didn’t give up a run in three innings over two games with the Twins earlier this year. Funderburk is the 11th Twins player currently on the IL, and the sixth pitcher.