The Twins end the streak!
It's over! The Twins now have a 0-game post-season losing streak!
It feels like the Twins won a trophy.
I think most Twins fans recognize how silly it is, ultimately, to celebrate a Game 1 win in a wild card series with such fervor, and yet I don’t think any of them are about to stop. It’s been 19 years. 19 YEARS. 19 YEARS! Just about everyone - players, fans, everyone - has seen major life changes since the last time the Twins won a playoff game.
Royce Lewis was in kindergarten in 2004. Caleb Thielbar, the graying old man of this Twins squad at 37, was a senior in high school. I was in graduate school; since the Twins won a playoff game, me and of my friends have lived our entire lives, have earned college degrees and done decades of marriage and seen their kids grow from babies to college students, all in that span of time between Johan Santana pitching the Twins to victory and Pablo López doing the same.
Lewis will be remembered as the hero. Frankly, he may have secured his overall Twins legacy. He homered in his first two playoff at-bats, something that only two players have ever done before - one of them another Twins third baseman, Gary Gaetti in 1987.
Lewis provided 40% of the Twins hits, and all of the team’s runs, with two swings; he was quite literally the difference between losing and winning. Phil Miller, the Star Tribune’s great Twins beat writer, had the line of the day: “Now we know why the Twins let nearly 7,000 days go by with nothing but losses in the postseason. They were waiting for Royce Lewis to grow up and win one.”
Lewis has had a Kirill Kaprizov-type season for the Twins this year. He’s gone from “promising prospect” to “soul of the team, and most popular player” in the span of a few months. At 24, with 280 major-league plate appearances, he already feels like Minnesota’s leader - maybe alongside Carlos Correa.
Amazingly, the win will also be remembered for defense. Michael A. Taylor made a pair of outstanding catches, one coming in and one going back, the second of which prevented two runs from scoring. Correa pulled off one of the more memorable defensive plays ever for the Twins, picking up a slow roller that had eluded a charging Jorge Polanco and firing to the plate to retire Bo Bichette, who’d charged from second and was attempting to catch the defense napping.
Correa played hurt all year, didn’t hit a lick, and bounced into 30 double plays, and it feels like he was still worth having in the lineup every day, just because it was so nice to have a competent shortstop.
Heck, even 400-year-old Donovan Solano came up big on defense in the top of the ninth, making an excellent diving stop at first base for the final out.
Even the justly-maligned Twins bullpen ended up with a perfect outing; Louie Varland, Thielbar, Griffin Jax, and Jhoan Duran combined to shut the door on the Blue Jays, an occurence that has rarely felt likely at any point this year.
Honestly, once Lewis’s homer left the park in the bottom of the first, they could have put a graphic on the screen: 24 OUTS REMAINING. Every time the Twins took the field, and Pablo López or one of the relievers stepped on the mound, you could feel the tension radiating throughout the state; the Twins’ halves of every inning felt like quick interludes, before they could go back out into the field and try to get the remaining outs. But López, and then the relief train, mostly plowed through the Jays, and that number on the theoretical graphic just kept dropping.
In the end, the five pitchers allowed five singles, a double, and three walks. Nothing was perfect, including an offense that managed just three singles to go with Lewis’s home runs.
But: who cares? It’s a great day for Twins fans, a great day for Minnesota.
The Twins could lose 17-0 today, and it’d all be fine.
I got a chance to write an advance Loons analysis/column type thing for the Star Tribune today, setting up tonight’s game with LAFC. Please go read that too. It’s about Teemu Pukki, who’s scored five times in his last six games, and on whom the Loons are depending.
TODAY’S SLATE
TWINS vs Toronto, Game 2, 3:38pm, ESPN
LOONS at LAFC, 9:30pm
ON DECK
WILD at Chicago (preseason), Thursday
TIMBERWOLVES vs Dallas (preseason), Thursday
GOPHERS VOLLEYBALL at Maryland, Friday
GOPHERS WOMEN’S HOCKEY, at RIT, Friday and Saturday
GOPHERS FOOTBALL vs Michigan, Saturday
GOPHERS MEN’S HOCKEY vs Bemidji State, Saturday, exhibition VIKINGS vs Kansas City, Sunday
Hang the banner