Two teams in fourth place in their divisions limp into a three-game series when the Minnesota Twins of the American League Central face the Los Angeles Angels of the AL West on Monday night in Anaheim, Calif.
The key word here is limp. Both teams, once in contention for wild-card berths around the trade deadline, have faded badly down the stretch. And both took their share of lumps in salvaging the final game of a three-game series on Sunday.
Minnesota (63-80) was 51-57 at the July 30 deadline but, after trading away 10 key players, including Carlos Correa and closer Jhoan Duran, has sputtered to a 12-23 record since. The Twins enter Monday’s game 18 1/2 games behind the first-place Detroit Tigers and 12 games behind Seattle for the final wild-card spot.
Los Angeles (67-76) was 53-56 at the trade deadline and just four games out of a wild-card spot. But the Angels have gone just 8-14 since completing a memorable three-game Freeway Series sweep of the Dodgers on Aug. 13, and they are eight games out of a wild-card spot with 19 games to go.
Right-hander Simeon Woods Richardson (5-4, 4.53 ERA) won his only career start against the Angels, a 5-1 victory on April 26 when he yielded one run on four hits and no walks with seven strikeouts.
Richardson will face 21-year-old right-hander Caden Dana (0-0, 4.91), who will be making his fifth career major league start and first against Minnesota, in Monday’s series opener.
The Twins snapped a six-game losing streak with a 5-1 victory at Kansas City on Sunday as Byron Buxton led off the game with his career-best 30th home run and Kody Clemens hit a 451-foot homer.
Buxton became the second player in franchise history to hit 30 home runs and steal 20 bases in a season, joining Hall of Famer Kirby Puckett, who did it in 1986. But Buxton left the game in the sixth inning with a bruised left knee after getting hit with a 91.8-mph sinker by Michael Lorenzen in the fifth inning.
“I’ll be all right,” Buxton said. “It was more of a precautionary thing.”
“We’ll see how he is when he wakes up tomorrow,” Minnesota manager Rocco Baldelli said. “I think he’s going to be OK, whether it’s a day, I don’t know. I don’t see this being too much of an issue, but we need to monitor him over the next 24 hours and make sure he’s OK. … He’s having a pretty amazing season right now.”
The Angels ended a three-game losing streak Sunday with a 4-3 victory over the visiting Athletics. Travis d’Arnaud, who entered the game an inning earlier when starting catcher Logan O’Hoppe was hit under the chin with a backswing by Jacob Wilson, drove in the go-ahead run with a ground-rule double in the bottom of the eighth for the game-winner.
Beside’s O’Hoppe’s freak injury, which occurred when Wilson was wagging his bat while preparing for a Luis Garcia pitch, the Angels set a franchise single-game record with five players getting hit by pitches. Both Yoan Moncada and Chris Taylor were plunked twice. Oswald Peraza was hit by reliever Osvaldo Bido just before d’Arnaud lined his double into the gap in right-center.
“It’s motivating because they hit five or our guys today, and didn’t seem like they cared and kept throwing inside,” d’Arnaud said. “(I was) motivated to get the job done.”
O’Hoppe, who was down on the ground for several minutes before being helped off the field, was taken for concussion testing after the game.
“He seems to be OK right now,” interim Angels manager Ray Montgomery said. “We’ll see what happens. … They’ve got to go through the whole (concussion) protocol. Gotta make sure. Be careful with that stuff.’
–Field Level Media
