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Walk-off redux

Lee’s bunt plates Buxton in ninth as Twins win in final at-bat for second day in a row

Twins infielder Brooks Lee lays down the game-winning bunt to score Byron Buxton in the ninth inning on Saturday against Tampa Bay in Minneapolis. ABBIE PARR — ASSOCIATED PRESS

Twins right-hander Travis Adams delivers a pitch to the Tampa Bay Rays on Saturday in his major league debut at Target Field. Adams allowed five runs in four innings pitched. MATT KROHN — GETTY IMAGES

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By Betsy Helfand

bhelfand@pioneerpress.com

Brooks Lee had bunted just once in professional baseball before Saturday. The infielder remembers it because he got yelled at for it.

That wouldn’t happen on Saturday.

The only yells Lee got on Saturday afternoon at Target Field were screams of jubilation from his teammates after his bunt up the first base line scored Byron Buxton and sent the Twins to a 6-5 walk-off win over the Tampa Bay Rays.

Lee said he had to go make sure that he was supposed to lay down a bunt. But once he checked that the instructions were correct, he was plenty comfortable with them.

“I thought I was going to get it down and I saw it happen in my mind and I did,” Lee said.

If his memory is correct, he bunted just once in college at Cal Poly, but head coach Larry Lee, his father, had his team practicing bunts “like every other day.”

With Buxton standing on third base, manager Rocco Baldelli decided to go for it with Lee, who, in collecting his second walk-off hit of the season, propelled Baldelli to the 500th win of his career.

“If Brooks can get the bunt down — and it’s not an easy bunt — but if he can get the bunt down, Buck’s going to be safe. I just simplified it in my mind like that,” Baldelli said. “He can lay a bunt down. … It was really well executed and honestly a perfect way to end the game.”

It was a game that saw the Twins (43-46) get a little bit from everyone, starting with Cole Sands, who kicked off a bullpen game. Sands and then Danny Coulombe each threw a scoreless inning before making way for rookie Travis Adams, who threw four innings in his major league debut.

Adams couldn’t hold the Rays (48-41) down in his four innings pitched, giving up at least a run in each of them. He threw four innings and allowed five runs — three of which scored on sacrifice flies — on nine hits.

By the time the Twins reached the bottom of the sixth inning, they were trailing by four runs, their only run at that point coming in the second on a Royce Lewis infield single.

But Lewis’s second RBI single of the day and then a Kody Clemens opposite-field three-run home run put the Twins right back in the game and from there, they turned to the back end of their bullpen. Griffin Jax handled the seventh and a day after Louie Varland threw two scoreless innings to keep the Twins in the game, they asked closer Jhoan Duran to do the same.

“It’s hard to throw two innings, but if I need to do it to help the team win, I’ll do it,” Duran said. “I feel good.”

Duran’s escape — at one point in the ninth, the Rays had a pair of runners in scoring position — set the table for the Twins to walk it off for the second consecutive day.

After Buxton drew a leadoff walk and Willi Castro moved him over, the Twins did just that with Lee’s rare bunt.

“You’ve got to give the people what they want and that is small ball apparently sometimes,” Baldelli said. “That was a great way to end the day.”