By La Velle E. Neal III, Star Tribune (Minneapolis) –
ARLINGTON, Texas — Kyle Waldrop tried to bury his sinking fastball down in the strike zone to Nelson Cruz, but “I didn’t execute it,” the young reliever said.
Cruz sent a shot to left that Twins outfielder Josh Willingham mishandled. By the time he got the ball in, Adrian Beltre was waved in and beat the relay throw.
(PHOTO: Minnesota Twins catcher Joe Mauer, left, takes the throw too late and watches as Adrian Beltre of Texas Rangers scores the winning run off a Nelson Cruz double for a 4-3 win in the tenth inning at Rangers Ballpark in Arlington on Saturday, July 7, 2012, in Arlington, Texas.)
It was the final play of a disappointing 4-3 loss to the Rangers in 10 innings. The Twins got enough from starter Samuel Deduno and enough from the bullpen to give them a shot to win, but they couldn’t come up with any more runs after the sixth inning.
“Both teams misfired a little bit offensively,” Twins manager Ron Gardenhire said. “But the pitching was pretty decent.”
Waldrop, who entered the game in the 10th, took the loss.
“It stinks. I couldn’t get the ball to sink out of the zone when I wanted it to,” he said.
Former Twin Joe Nathan won in relief, pitching two innings. It was his longest outing in almost three years.
The Twins rode Deduno’s untested arm as far as they could. Given the circumstances — it was his first major league start, the Twins were using their 11th starter of the season and the Rangers have some dangerous hitters — Deduno wasn’t bad. He pitched into the sixth inning and left after Texas tied the score at 3-3 on Beltre’s solo homer.
It could have been much worse, but the fact that Deduno is a breaking-ball guy seemed to be a good matchup against the aggressive-swinging Rangers.
The Twins scored twice in the second on a RBI grounder by Trevor Plouffe, followed by Brian Dozier’s RBI single. Texas got one back in the bottom of the inning on Cruz’s RBI double.
Hamilton greeted Deduno with a long home run to left in the fourth, and became the first Rangers player with 27 homers and 75 RBI by the All-Star break.
Willingham gave Deduno hope for his first major league win when he hit a 408-foot homer to center in the sixth, giving the Twins a 3-2 lead. A fan scurried onto the grassy batter’s eye behind the center field wall, scooped up the ball and threw it back on the field almost immediately.
Deduno took the mound for the sixth, but Beltre drove a fastball out to center to tie the score at 3-3. As Twins manager Ron Gardenhire went to the mound to remove Deduno, members of the Twins’ infield took turns patting Deduno on the back.
He showed a sharp curveball and a good slider, but misfired with his fastball at times. His best fastball hit 93 miles per hour on the radar gun, and one had to wonder why the 29-year old has been unable to harness his talent.
He had some hairy moments — he needed double plays to get out of the third and fourth innings — but in 5u2153 innings, Deduno gave up three earned runs, six hits and three walks with three strikeouts.
Rangers lefthander Derek Holland — making his first appearance since June 5 because of shoulder fatigue — held the Twins to three runs on six hits and two walks with four strikeouts in six innings.
It became a battle of the bullpens after that. The Twins escaped a major jam in the seventh when Jeff Gray gave up singles to put runners on first and third. Gardenhire went to lefthander Tyler Robertson to go after the lefty-hitting Hamilton.
Hamilton walked on four pitches, and Gardenhire was back on the mound to bring in Alex Burnett, who got Beltre to ground out to end the inning.
