Twins’ inability to score in extra innings costly in wild 11-inning loss to Mariners

SEATTLE – A fire alarm blared and emergency lights flashed for 10 minutes just as the fourth inning was about to start at T-Mobile Park on Saturday. Maybe the Twins should have taken the hint and evacuated.

Three hours, two ejections and eight disappointing innings later, the Twins trudged away as the Mariners celebrated a 5-4 victory in 11 innings, their fourth loss in six games to end an otherwise highly successful May.

“We did about everything in the book besides score,” Twins manager Rocco Baldelli said after the Twins went 4-for-19 with runners in scoring position, with two extra-inning hits that failed to produce a run. “You probably couldn’t try to do what we did and find a way to not put a run on the board. It’s disappointing to not find a way to win.”

Especially with Bailey Ober laboring through four long innings and needing 97 pitches to do it, yet still managing to hold the Mariners to two runs. And Louie Varland rescuing him from a first-and-third, no-out jam in the fifth, keeping Seattle’s best hitters from driving in any of those runners. And Matt Wallner’s first big-league swing in nearly seven weeks driving a pitch into the right-field seats, an impressive way to drive in two runs and announce his return from the injured list.

“Big picture, I liked a lot of what I saw. Overall, we’re playing really well,” Baldelli said. “We couldn’t find a way to score. That’s life. If we play like that tomorrow, we’re going to score a ton of runs.”

By not doing so in the 10th or 11th innings, after tying the score with an unearned run in the ninth, they left themselves vulnerable to the first-place Mariners, who now own an identical 31-26 record. And it finally cost them when Seattle top prospect Cole Young, in his first big-league game, grounded a ball from Cole Sands up the first-base line as pinch runner Males Mastrobuoni raced home from third.

Ty France fielded the ball with his bare hand, but his throw was a shade too late to beat Mastrobuoni, ending the longest Twins game of the season (3 hours, 46 minutes) and setting off a celebration among the 37,457 in attendance that would have even drowned out those fire sirens.

For all the big plays and costly mistakes, the most amazing part of Saturday’s loss may have been that Carlos Correa wasn’t around at the end to see it. Correa was ejected, along with Baldelli, in the seventh inning for complaining — from the on-deck circle — about home plate umpire Austin Jones’ tendency to call low pitches strikes. It was Correa’s first career ejection.

Still, the Twins fought on, and pulled off another ninth-inning rally off reliever Carlos Vargas to send the game into extra innings for the second night in a row. This time, Byron Buxton hit a one-out chopper to the mound, where Vargas gloved it and then sailed his throw to first down the right-field line. Buxton hustled to third base, and scored on Trevor Larnach’s grounder past a drawn-in infield.

But unlike Friday night’s six-run outburst in the 10th inning, this time the Twins never could push across another run in extras. Wallner, beginning the 10th inning on second base, was thrown out trying to score when Seatle center fielder Julio Rodríguez fielded Kody Clemens’ single off Collin Snider and whistled a strong throw to the plate. Wallner also had another baserunning bust during his eventful day, getting doubled up at second base on Clemens’ line drive to shallow left that was caught by Randy Arozarena.

In the 11th, Ryan Jeffers led off with a single to left that advanced courtesy runner Harrison Bader to third. But Snider struck out Buxton on three pitches, retired Larnach on a line drive to first and got Brooks Lee on a groundout, setting up Young’s heroics in the bottom of the inning.

Ober gave up two runs over four innings, both coming on Cal Raleigh’s third homer in two days and 22nd on the season, moving the Mariners catcher into a tie with Shohei Ohtani for the MLB home run lead. It was only the second home run Ober had given up since April 15, and the first one given up in a Twins loss since his 2025 debut in March.

“I was trying to get a fastball in on him, to jam him. But he’s just on one right now,” Ober said with a shrug. “It’s hard to expect him to get a barrel to it, but he did. He’s seeing the ball really well.”

BOXSCORE: Seattle 5, Twins 4 (11)

MLB standings

When Ober gave up a double and a single to lead off the fifth and Raleigh coming up again, he was removed. Varland took over and struck out Raleigh and Rodriguez, and ended the inning on an Arozarena fly ball.

But then the Twins entrusted Jorge Alcala with a lead in a close game for the first time in more than a month. They were soon reminded why that caution was prudent.

Alcala pitched the seventh inning of a game the Twins led by a run, but that lead lasted only three batters. After a leadoff walk and a groundout, J.P. Crawford ripped a 3-2 fastball more than 400 feet, giving Seattle its first lead of the day.

The game marked the fourth time this season that Alcala has pitched with the score tied or the Twins leading by three runs or fewer. Had the Twins not tied the score in the ninth, it would have been the third time in those appearances he had been charged with a loss.