Minnesota Twins defeat Texas Rangers 9-8 – MLB Update
Texas Rangers failed to carry their winning momentum on Monday, July 26 and lost to Minnesota Twins 9-8 at Rangers Ballpark in Arlington.
A night after the Rangers humiliating defeat of the Twins by 20-6 the Twins bounced back and compensated for their earlier loss.
"You forget what happened the night before," Gardenhire said. "The guys came in very professional ... and were up for the game. We scored some runs early and we were into the game the whole way."
The Twins, who were hardly expected to put on a defiant show against the Rangers, proved the antagonists wrong. Rangers had won 16 of their last 19 games and it seemed beyond the bounds of possibility that the Twins would prevail, but they eventually did.
"I think that's the biggest show of character from this team, we get our brains beat in last night and fall down 7-3 tonight and not give up, I think that's one thing we've proven this year," Nathan said.
Twins maintained a very aggressive posture since the start of the game on Monday. When Texas’ starter C. J. Wilson followed the Twins’ Carl Pavano, who pitched a shut-out first inning, Wilson was subject to hits.
Drew Butera, Alexi Casilla and Michael Cuddyer went for their respective one-run RBIs that gave an early 3-0 lead to the Twins in the 5-hit first inning. But before the Twins could cheer this eventful inning, the Rangers offence came into action.
Nelson Cruz doubled to right and Mitch Moreland also went for an RBI to add to the score of the Rangers, making it 3-2. Pavano and Wilson then pitched strong innings to keep the game in the favour of their respective teams. Everything changed in the fourth.
Texas’ offence sparked as Pavano was to face the big hits of Cruz, who drove in his second and Yorvit Torrealba’s three-run homer that took the score to 6-3 following an RBI single of Elvis Andrus.
The Twins came back hard with Danny Valencia’s two-run homer to make it 7-5. Tsuyoshi Nishioka’s RBI was another valuable contribution to help the Twins take it to 7-6. But Pavano allowed another run to Torrealba in the fifth that gave the Rangers an 8-6
lead.
Yoshinori Tateyama then pitched a strong seventh, as Darren Oliver went for a shut-out eighth for the Rangers to keep the lead at 8-6 until everything turned out against Texas in the ninth inning when Neftali Feliz came.
Nishioka scored an RBI and Joe Mauer hit a tiebreaking run to bring the Twins in a strong 9-8 position. It was Joe Nathan who went for a stronger ninth inning as a closer to turn the Twins’ 9-8 lead into a victory to also compensate for the 20-6 loss they
had to bear only a night ago.
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