ARLINGTON, TEXAS – With the help of a couple of allies in the medical field, Byron Buxton finally got his way on Saturday. And it may have won the Twins a ballgame.
Buxton, whose weeklong campaign to be activated from the injured list succeeded after a couple of orthopedic specialists cleared him to play, used his newly restored speed to beat out a rather routine ground ball in the fourth inning. He didn’t have to run hard the rest of the way, not when Nelson Cruz followed with his 15th home run of the season, setting the Twins on course to pull off their third consecutive victory, 3-2 over the Rangers at Globe Life Field.
Those back-to-back hits amounted to half of the Twins’ output against Rangers righthander Koby Allard and a pair of relievers, but that didn’t matter to the Twins, who scored the game-winning run without putting the bat on the ball.
Max Kepler, 0-for-7 since returning from his own injury, drew a one-out walk from lefty John King, and promptly stole second base. When King tried to crowd Luis Arraez with sinkers, he twice nearly hit the batter, and both times the ball got past catcher Jonah Heim. Kepler moved to third base on the first one, and scored the tie-breaker on the second.
That was enough for the Twins, and especially for the bullpen, which is on a bit of a hot streak. Caleb Thielbar, Alexander Colome, Hansel Robles and Taylor Rogers all contributed a scoreless inning on Saturday, with Rogers earning his seventh save of the season. During the three-game streak, the Twins’ first in June, the bullpen has allowed three earned runs in 13 innings, a 2.08 ERA.
That’s almost as big a turnaround as Randy Dobnak‘s. The righthander, battered with 17 runs in his last three starts, this time allowed only two in five innings.
Those two runs followed one other pattern that Dobnak would like to break: He issued a one-out walk to Charlie Culberson in the third inning, then surrendered a long line drive to Isiah Kiner-Falefa that just cleared the fence in left field, his sixth home run of the season. Dobnak has now walked 12 batters in 2021, and he immediately followed five of them — four during his last three starts — by giving up a home run to the next batter.
But a couple of double plays behind him spared Dobnak any more runs.