Twins defeat Mariners, end losing streak with Joe Ryan’s strong pitching and just enough hitting

The rain stayed away Wednesday night at Target Field so the Twins played on, all the way to a 2-0 victory over Seattle that they so desperately needed.

It was just their second win in 12 games and the first one on a seven-game homestand that has just one game left.

Starter Joe Ryan pitched six scoreless innings, struck out eight, walked nobody, threw 93 pitches and confounded Mariners 32-homer slugger Cal Raleigh, striking him out three times.

Ryan did all that while working around two errors committed by teammates behind him.

The Twins broke a scoreless tie with a single run in the sixth, when Byron Buxton scored from second on Willi Castro’s single to right. An inning later, lefty Kody Clemens hit a two-out, opposite-field home run, homering in consecutive games for the second time in his career.

Three Twins relievers in three more scoreless innings finished out the game.

“That’s exactly what you’re looking for,” Twins manager Rocco Baldelli said about the game, played in a brisk 2 hours, 14 minutes. “It doesn’t get much better. There was a lot to like in tonight’s game.”

Wednesday’s game started nearly on time at 6:43 p.m. before an announced 15,850 after rain poured down on Target Field all afternoon. More was forecast, but no rain fell until after Wednesday’s final out.

The skies cleared more than an hour before the first pitch, the tarps were removed from the field and a late but loyal gathering of fans settled in for a game on a 66-degree summer’s night.

“All of us had in the back of our heads that we might get delayed,” Clemens said. “It rained all day from 7 a.m. to 5, but luckily it cleared up and they got the field ready and we played well.”

Ryan gave the Twins time to win with a performance he called more about the art of pitching than the data of modern baseball.

“I just think sometimes numbers can get in the way,” said Ryan, now 8-3. “Obviously, that’s a huge driver of the game and for a good reason. But at the same time, readying the game, there’s a science to it but there’s also an art about it. At the end of the day, it’s a competition and you can’t really put numbers to everything that goes into that.”

Ryan struck out Raleigh three times with what he called “front-door sinkers.”

“He is the best hitter in baseball right now,” Ryan said. “He looks confident at the plate. He looks great. He’s one of the best players in the game for a reason. I think using that to our advantage there is great. It’s just not something he is expecting all the time, It doesn’t mean I’m going to do it every outing. I might not do it for five more outings, but you just recognize certain situations where it’s a good time to do something different.”

The Twins chased Seattle starter George Kirby from the game in the sixth inning when center fielder Buxton singled, advanced to second aggressively on a slow rolling out to first and scored from second on Willi Castro’s sharp single to right.

An inning later, Clemens hit a two-out, first-pitch, 82-mph slider to left-center field, 389 feet away. It was his ninth homer this season — and his second in two nights. He also homered in back-to-back games with Philadelphia in Houston in 2023.

“I don’t go up there trying to hit a home run,” Clemens said. “Whenever you try, you never do it. It just works out that way. I got a pitch I was looking for and stayed inside. Those are the best. They feel really good. That’s all I can say.”

BOXSCORE: Twins 2, Mariners 0

MLB standings

Baldelli praised Ryan’s outing, his bullpen after that as well as Buxton’s smart baserunning and Castro’s determined at-bat that produced the game’s first run.

“Willi, he did a heck of a job right there and whacks one to right,” Baldelli said. “He gets us on the board. You have to get on the board. You have to score a run before you can score more.”

So Clemens then scored the next one, by himself.

“That’s a great swing, by the way,” Baldelli said. “It’s not easy to hit a ball that hard to the opposite gap and get it out of the ballpark. There’s a lot to like right now.”