Twins can’t finish off sweep of Rays as Tampa Bay scores three in 10th inning

That old ninth-inning, walk-off magic finally failed the Twins on Sunday at Target Field, where Tampa Bay was the team that scored three times in the 10th inning to win 7-5.

The first two games of a three-game series ended with walk-off dramatics in the ninth inning for a Twins team that has seven walk-off victories at Target Field this season.

The Rays earned some payback Sunday, when they used a productive and opportunistic 10th inning off Twins reliever Justin Topa to take a 7-4 lead.

Yandy Díaz immediately put Tampa Bay back on top with a leadoff double that drove in ghost runner Danny Jansen from second to start the 10th. José Caballero followed with a sacrifice bunt right back to Topa, but the righthander’s throw to first sailed right between first baseman Kody Clemens and second baseman Brooks Lee, a three-base error that also allowed Díaz to score. Caballero then came home on Junior Caminero’s sacrifice fly.

The Twins, in turn, countered with just a single run in the bottom of the 10th after they had pulled off such drama each of the two games before.

Twins manager Rocco Baldelli called the game “very winnable,” adding: “We had our opportunities. We could talk a while about all the positive things. When you give up a handful of runs in the last couple innings, it does get challenging.

“It was a very tight series. The entire series was something you had to work for. Every inning was challenging. The vast majority of the series, we played excellent baseball.”

On Friday, it was Harrison Bader’s second home run of the game that beat the Rays 4-3. On Saturday, Lee’s safety squeeze scored Byron Buxton from third for a 6-5 victory. Their comeback ensured the Twins’ first series victory since early June.

On Sunday, Bader reprised his hero’s role, tying the score 4-4 in the eighth inning with a towering pinch-hit, two-run homer off lefthander Mason Montgomery just inside the left-field foul pole. It was Bader’s 10th home run of the season.

That drive was necessary after the Rays again used their small-ball tactics in the top of the inning. With the score tied at 2-2, Tampa Bay greeted reliever Griffin Jax with two singles, sacrificed the runners over, scored one run on a grounder that barely went a few feet in front of the plate and another on a high-chopping comebacker that Jax couldn’t field.

BOXSCORE: Tampa Bay 7, Twins 5 (10)

MLB standings

It all came on the day Baldelli took center fielder Buxton aside and told him he is headed to play July 15 in the All-Star Game in Atlanta in his home state of Georgia.

Starter Joe Ryan pitched six innings of two-run ball, then learned neither he nor reliever Jhoan Duran were chosen to play.

“I mean, another year,” said Ryan, who is 8-4 with a 2.76 ERA this season. “It’s not based on stats, so it is what it is. They make their decision how they do.”

Ryan or Duran still could be named to the team if there’s an injury or a starter or reserve has just pitched for his own team.

“I mean, it’s beyond me,” Ryan said. “I’ve got no control over that. It’s all it is. Just trying to win games.”

Buxton led off the Twins’ first inning with a 414-foot home run, his 14th career leadoff homer, tying him with Chuck Knoblauch for fourth in team history.

But it wasn’t enough to combat the late-game miscues the Twins committed.

“A couple plays late in the game today we don’t complete, and it ends up leading to runs on the board,” Baldelli said. “They’re really athletic. They run and they keep running around the bases. They’re not going to stop. Any space you give them, they’re going to take.

“We needed to be cleaner, closer to perfect to make that happen. We just weren’t late in the game. We had to be better than that.”