An announced crowd of 15,256 took to Target Field on Saturday night to take in a game that began as wintry precipitation fell. As they sat through the cool April conditions, there wasn\u2019t much for them to cheer about.<\/p>\n
After an exciting home opener on Friday during which the Twins had a seven-run outburst punctuated with a Tristan Gray grand slam, they followed it up with a forgettable 7-1 loss to the Tampa Bay Rays in which they fell behind early and really never mounted much offensively all night.<\/p>\n
The Twins finished with just three hits, and only one after the second inning when Brooks Lee, back after missing two days with an illness, knocked in Matt Wallner for the team\u2019s only run. \u00a0They didn\u2019t collect another hit until Luke Keaschall singled in the eighth inning.<\/p>\n
Tampa Bay left-hander Steven Matz finished with eight punch outs in his six innings, at one point retiring 12 straight Twins batters.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe did a good job of kind of mixing and matching,\u201d manager Derek Shelton said. \u201cJust kept us off the barrel the entire night. We just didn\u2019t have a ton of hard contact.\u201d<\/p>\n
Matz pitched with a lead for much of the day as Mick Abel, making his first start of the season, surrendered three runs in the second inning.<\/p>\n
After pitching into and out of trouble with a pair of outs in the first inning, Abel allowed a leadoff hit to begin the second, followed by a walk. He later hit a pair of batters, one with the bases loaded to force in Tampa Bay\u2019s first run. Jonathan Aranda\u2019s double brought home another pair of runs.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe wasn\u2019t sharp,\u201d Shelton said. \u201cI think the free passes there, whether it was the walks or the hit-by-pitches, we allowed too many baserunners. We can\u2019t put ourselves in a deficit where we have that many free baserunners.\u201d<\/p>\n
Abel said the conditions were tough in the first couple of innings and he over-adjusted was trying to make some small changes on the mound. He gave up one more run in the third inning and finished after four frames having allowed four runs on six hits while walking three.<\/p>\n
It was the second straight shaky outing for the young starter who looked so impressive in spring training that he came out and won the final spot in the Twins\u2019 rotation. In his first, he came on in relief of Bailey Ober and gave up five runs in 3\u2153 innings against the Baltimore Orioles.<\/p>\n
Abel said he planned to watch his whole outing on Saturday night and then get back to work on Sunday.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s definitely tough, because I do know how strong of a spring I had,\u201d Abel said. \u201cBut \u2026 it\u2019s not a wake-up call or anything, I think it\u2019s just I\u2019m recognizing what my strengths are, I\u2019m recognizing what my weaknesses are. And it\u2019s time to go.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An announced crowd of 15,256 took to Target Field on Saturday night to take in a game that…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":664685,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2388],"tags":[5,19,822,60,3190,4,148],"class_list":{"0":"post-664684","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-minnesota-twins","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-major-league-baseball","10":"tag-minnesota","11":"tag-minnesota-twins","12":"tag-minnesotatwins","13":"tag-mlb","14":"tag-twins"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116352532158711700","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/664684","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=664684"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/664684\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/664685"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=664684"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=664684"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=664684"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}