BOSTON — Kenta Maeda reported some "general soreness" after his last start, and was given five extra days off to get completely healthy.
Red Sox roll past Twins 11-5; Kenta Maeda leaves after being hit by line drive
Starter Maeda was optimistic about his return after getting hit by a line drive in the second inning. Optimism about reliever Emilio Pagán may be harder to come by.
April 21, 2023 at 11:22AM
This time, the soreness will be much more specific.
A line drive by Boston's Jarren Duran smashed Maeda's left ankle in the second inning on Thursday, and the Twins pitcher crumpled to the ground in pain — though not until after he scrambled for the ball and threw Duran out at first base to end the inning, and his day.
Once the veteran righthander was helped off the field after lying on the ground for three minutes, the real pain began for the Twins. Emilio Pagán allowed six runs in the third inning, Jorge Alcala gave up three more in the fifth, and the Twins lost to Boston 11-5 in the finale of a disappointing East Coast road trip.
Yet the Twins, losers of four of their past five in increasingly ugly fashion, headed home to Target Field feeling pretty lucky, their manager said. X-rays found no fractures, only a bruise, and Maeda was walking around with only a slight limp after the game.
"I don't expect to be out for long," the righthander said. "There's no damage to the bone, so that's good news," Maeda added. "Swelling is expected as time goes by, but we'll see how I feel tomorrow."
He'll likely feel better than Pagán did after watching an encouraging start to his season — only one run in 6 ⅓ innings this year — blown up in a nightmarish inning that wouldn't end. Summoned to take over for Maeda in the third inning, Pagán surrendered seven hits, including five in a row with two outs, to balloon his ERA from 1.42 to 7.88 and sap the life out of the Twins' day.
"Five singles — singles generally don't beat you. It's frustrating," Pagán said. "You do everything we preach, get ahead of batters, get early contact, and they just found holes today. It's unfortunate."
Worse, after living that 31-pitch nightmare inning, Baldelli, who had used long reliever Brent Headrick for three innings the night before, asked Pagán to go out for another.
"I told him I know that's a tough spot to be in, to go back out there after throwing a ton of pitches and probably being a little gassed," Baldelli said. "But he knew we needed him to keep going. And he went out there and gave us everything he had."
Much like Maeda, who allowed a leadoff home run into the right field corner, a ball that appeared catchable but Max Kepler arrived a step or two late. Maeda retired six of the next seven hitters, only giving up his first walk of the season, an encouraging sign for a pitcher whose health has been watched closely.
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But Duran crushed a fastball 110 mph straight up the middle, and it struck Maeda's ankle flush. Yet he retrieved the ball and fired it to first just ahead of the runner.
"There was definitely a lot of pain, but I saw the ball drop right in front of me," Maeda said. "My first instinct was to grab the ball, throw the ball, get the out. It just happened."
Willi Castro made his professional pitching debut in the eighth inning, and he provided some offense, too, against Red Sox sidearmer Tanner Houck, who improved to 3-0. The reserve infielder, batting .158 entering the game, doubled and scored on Kepler's double in the fifth inning, then hit his first homer as a Twin in the sixth, a two-run shot.
"I was hitting the ball pretty good. I haven't been playing much, but I'll always be prepared," Castro vowed. "Just trying to help my team win. And cheer everybody up."
They needed a little good cheer after this one.
Major League Baseball switched a pair of series involving the Tampa Bay Rays to the first two months of the season in an attempt to avoid summer rain at open-air Steinbrenner Field, their temporary home following damage to Tropicana Field.
