It was a night for records at Target Field on Saturday, just not the records the Twins would have liked to set. That’s what happens when you lose a game by 15 runs.
Will Wagner had five hits, with a homer, double, two RBIs and three runs scored to become the first Blue Jays rookie to record five hits in a game, and Toronto’s 15-0 win tied the franchise record for a shutout win in front of 30,517 fans, many of them rooting on the visitors.
The Twins weren’t left out of the record-making, either. Kyle Farmer pitched the eighth and ninth innings to set the record for innings pitched by a position player. He gave up three earned runs on five hits and a walk.
It was that kind of night for the Twins, who have lost 9 of 12 and will start the final month of the regular season 3 1/2 games behind first-place Cleveland in the American League Central, and 3 1/2 games ahead of Boston for the third AL wild card spot.
“You never want to be in that situation, but it’s always kind of re-living the kid’s dream there,” Farmer said. “It was fun.”
It wasn’t as fun for Zebby Matthews, the Twins’ rookie who was making his fourth major league start. The Blue Jays racked up a season-high in runs on 23 hits against five Twins pitchers, 10 of them off Matthews, who finally ran into some big league trouble.
Matthews (1-2) started the season at Class A Cedar Rapids and moved quickly to the big leagues. His first three starts were sharp, a combined five earned runs on 13 hits, 13 strikeouts and two walks for a 3.00 earned-run average. But he struggled to get anyone out on Saturday.
After hitting leadoff hitter George Springer, he pitched to 11 batters in the first and six in the second. In all, the Blue Jays pounded out nine runs and nine hits on Matthews before he got his fifth out.
He struck out five, didn’t walk a batter and saw his ERA balloon to 7.41 after just two innings of work.
“I tried to slow it down as best I could out there, but it’s all happening pretty fast,” Matthews said. “They were putting good swings on the ball. I wasn’t quite executing pitches the way I needed to. It all just kind of happened.”
Matthews allowed two-run home runs to Daulton Varsho, Spencer Horwitz and Addison Barger, and Toronto starter Jose Berrios — gifted a seven-run, first-inning lead — limited the Twins to three hits in six innings as the Blue Jays drew the three-game series even headed into Sunday’s rubber match.
“It’s obviously very frustrating,” Matthews said. “My job is to go out there and give the team the best chance to win, and I didn’t do that tonight. So, it’s obviously very frustrating. Come back tomorrow, get back to work.”
Berrios (14-9), traded from Minnesota to Toronto at the 2021 trade deadline, struck out five. He gave up a second-inning single to Edouard Julien then held Minnesota hitless until Christian Vazquez’s leadoff single in the sixth.
Asked when he thought he might have to ask Farmer to pitch, Twins manager Rocco Baldelli said, “In the first inning.”
“Farm picked us up, the way he threw the ball, we probably could have brought him in the seventh and he would have been fine and handled it OK,” Baldelli said. “You really start thinking of that in the first, second inning.”
Michael Tonkin gave up two runs on three hits and a pair of walks in the third. Horwitz’s RBI single made it 11-0. Scott Blewett allowed a run on four hits and a walk in three innings, and Caleb Thielbar pitched a scoreless seventh before Farmer came in to eat the last two innings.
He had pitched 1 2/3 innings in a loss to the Chicago Cubs in 2019.
“Javy Baez hit left-handed off of me, which was fun,” Farmer said. “What’s funny about it was that Chicago Cubs team was a veteran team, and they were having fun with it. These (Blue Jays) are all young guys over there, and they were taking it pretty seriously.”
Briefly
Manny Margot started in center field for the Twins but left the game with right groin tightness after grounding out in the fifth inning. He was replaced by Austin Matthews.
“Manny’s got a right groin strain, something he’s going to need an MRI on tomorrow morning, and we’ll see extent what we’re looking at,” Baldelli said. “He wasn’t moving very well.”