Gray dominates for 7 scoreless innings, but Twins fall to Guardians in extras

MINNEAPOLIS -- The Twins were one pitch away from effectively burying the Guardians in the American League Central with a series victory.

Instead, they’ve done just enough to leave the door open.

All the pieces were there for the Twins to extend their divisional lead back to seven games, courtesy of seven shutout innings by Sonny Gray and a two-run, go-ahead single by Jorge Polanco. But the back end of the Minnesota bullpen ceded a two-run lead, and a three-run blast by Kole Calhoun in the 10th inning sent the Twins to a 5-2 defeat -- one made all the more painful by the big picture.

“It’s tough, all around,” Gray said. “I don’t think anybody in that locker room feels good about it. For the most part, we played a good game. It just got away from us at the end. This is a tough one.”

Instead of a seven-game buffer for the Twins, their lead in the AL Central is down to five games with 28 to play, including three head-to-head matchups remaining next Monday through Wednesday at Progressive Field. The Guardians hold the tiebreaker with their 6-4 lead in the season series.

Seemingly all season long, the Twins have felt on the cusp of pulling away from the Guardians at various points -- and they’ve been unable to follow through. And on a more granular level, that’s what happened on Wednesday.

“Missed opportunity? I mean, no, there's always games that -- I'm sure other teams say that when we come back and win those games,” Royce Lewis said. “It's both ways. I think, obviously, of course you want to win any time you can win.”

This is the formula the Twins wanted -- a lead handed to their back-end bullpen core of Griffin Jax, Caleb Thielbar and Jhoan Duran -- but they fell short.

After Jax and Thielbar yielded a run in the eighth, Duran put runners on first and second with one out in the ninth and induced what could have been a game-ending double play grounder back to the mound, but he fumbled the comebacker and had to settle for the second out at first base.

Duran then got two strikes on pinch-hitter Bo Naylor but yanked a curveball behind his feet, resulting in a game-tying wild pitch. Though Naylor’s bat head appeared to do a full revolution, no umpire ruled that he’d offered at the pitch, and a replay review ruled that the pitch had not hit Naylor, preserving the run.

“I felt great. The only pitch that went wrong was the curveball,” Duran said through interpreter Mauricio Ortiz. “It’s difficult especially because Sonny did a great job. Yeah, it’s difficult.”

In the 10th, the Twins summoned Kody Funderburk for his second career MLB appearance to pitch a left-on-left matchup against Calhoun in a tie game with runners on the corners -- and Calhoun lifted a 3-0 fastball to the right-center field bleachers to give Cleveland’s season life.

“We gave Kody an opportunity that we might give him again at some point,” manager Rocco Baldelli said. “Last time he pitched for us, he mowed ’em down and looked great. So, I hope he’s not being too hard on himself.”

In contrast to another tough day from the bullpen, the Twins had flexed their starting advantage over the usually rotation-driven Guardians with a dominant Gray, who completed seven scoreless for the first time since April 24 and made his seventh quality start in his last eight outings. He was efficient through six innings, facing two over the minimum, but allowing a runner to third before he finished off the seventh.

The math remains overwhelmingly in the Twins’ favor, with Baseball-Reference having put the Twins at a 96% chance of winning the division before the game and FanGraphs having put them at 94.6%. But there was acknowledgement in the postgame clubhouse that this was absolutely an important series, with a challenging result.

“I feel pretty confident,” Duran said. “We lost this series, which was very important, especially with one month left, but I’m confident in everyone, and we’ll eventually overcome this.”

Nothing has come easy for these Twins this season -- and these battles against Cleveland over the years haven’t been easy, either. It’s looking like that could continue to the end of this season’s matchups between the rivals, too.

"Yeah, it does [feel like an important series],” Polanco said. “But like I said, we take it day by day. Today wasn't our day. We lost, but we are ready for the next day.”