For the second time in a lost weekend, promising Twins reliever Ryan Pressly gave up a very costly home run to the opposite field.
Sunday afternoon it was Avisail Garcia, who has been hotter than Georgia asphalt in August, taking him deep on a 98-mph fastball. That two-run homer with two down in the 10th inning sent the Chicago White Sox to a 3-1 win and a series victory at Target Field.
“Just got to tip your hat to him,” Pressly said. “He hit a pretty good pitch. I thought the pitch was up. He was a little behind on the first one, so I thought I could sneak another fastball by him. He’s a dangerous guy. He proved that.”
On Friday night, Matt Davidson hit an 89-mph Pressly slider out to right in the seventh inning of a 2-1 loss. Ervin Santana’s complete-game one-hitter on Saturday kept the Twins from suffering their first series sweep of the season.
Moments before Garcia connected, Pressly (0-2) struck out Jose Abreu on a slider with the go-ahead run on third. That left the White Sox hitless in 17 at-bats this weekend with runners in scoring position and 0 for 32 in the clutch against the Twins going back to last weekend at Guaranteed Rate Field.
Davidson is hitting .370 with three homers on the year, so Twins manager Paul Molitor opted not to walk Garcia, who left town hitting .465 with a combined on-base/slugging percentage of 1.185.
“We all know how hot he is, but I’m not huge on walking guys to get to other people when I feel my guy has got the stuff to get him out,” Molitor said. “Obviously he left the ball up where he could handle it. Tough one to swallow. Not a good loss by any means because we had chances.”
Earlier, Brian Dozier showed his right knee is just fine, thank you, flying around the bases with the first inside-the-park home run of his career.
Rookie center fielder Jacob May failed to glove Dozier’s fifth-inning rocket to the warning track, and the ball caromed far enough away near the wall that third-base coach Gene Glynn never hesitated about sending Dozier.
In Target Field’s eight seasons, Dozier’s was just the second inside-the-park homer by a Twin. The other was by Eduardo Nunez last June 2 against the Tampa Bay Rays.
It was the 52nd inside-the-parker all-time for the Twins.
A resurgent James Shields limited the Twins otherwise through the first six innings. Byron Buxton’s bases-loaded strikeout in the fourth would be their only at-bat all game with runners in scoring position.
An 18-inning shutout streak for Twins pitchers ended with Davidson’s game-tying sacrifice fly off reliever Matt Belisle in the eighth. That scored Abreu, who absorbed a 3-2 slider with one out and took third on Garcia’s long single off the wall in right.
Buxton gloved Davidson’s fly in medium center, but his throw hit the mound and kicked right.
Left-hander Hector Santiago worked seven shutout innings against his original club on just six hits with six strikeouts. Santiago started 19 of 28 hitters with strikes and used a livelier fastball than normal to keep the White Sox from diving at pitches on the outer half.
The 28-year-old Pressly, he suggested, might need to make a similar adjustment.
“He was throwing 97-98 (mph) on the black,” Santiago said. “I mean, great pitches, but sometimes you’ve got to keep those guys honest and pound in. We talked about that in spring training. We worked on it in our bullpens where we were throwing to both sides of the plate.”
Santiago said he’s been there before.
“That was me sometimes last year,” he said. “You beat a guy and you want to beat him again. Sometimes you want to go, but you definitely have to get them off the plate. That way that pitch away is effective. He’s going to be fine. His stuff is electric.”