CLEVELAND - Pablo López threw the baseball 90 times during Wednesday‘s game, most of them sensational. Then he threw it once more — and essentially lost the game.
Pitch No. 90 was a low-and-away changeup that Carlos Santana lunged at, producing a high chopper about 40 feet up the third-base line. López grabbed it, turned and threw it behind Santana’s back as he neared first base. Twins first baseman Ty France couldn’t reach it, and the ball bounced into foul territory in shallow right field, giving José Ramírez time to score the game’s first run from second base.
The play triggered a four-run inning, and doomed the Twins to their second consecutive loss, 4-2 at Progressive Field.
“There’s no excuse [for] throwing the ball the way I did. I could have just not thrown it or I could have made a better throw,” López said of his third throwing error of the season. “I was a little slow off the mound, probably thinking too much about my leg, and then just didn’t throw it well.”
Though Santana was given an infield hit, an on-target throw by López might have retired his former teammate. Instead, It was the eighth error charged to a Twins pitcher, more than any other team’s staff, and the third time this year that the error led directly to a Twins loss.
Brock Stewart relieved López after the error, and he issued a walk, then struck out Daniel Schneemann for what could have been the third out.
Instead, the next batter, Bo Naylor, hit a Stewart changeup six rows deep into the right-field seats, a three-run homer the Twins couldn’t match.
“Once they hit the homer, the game’s a totally different game. Until that homer, we’re still right there,” Twins manager Rocco Baldelli said. “Pablo threw some good pitches to Santana, but we didn’t get them. The two-strike pitch that gets called a ball, it looked like a good pitch.”
