BALTIMORE — A small, almost unnoticed play in the fifth inning may have changed the Twins' 3-2 Opening Day loss.
After Joey Rickard doubled and Manny Machado singled, Adam Jones launched a long fly ball that bounced off the fence in right field. Miguel Sano raced to catch up to it, and retrieved it on an awkward bounce off the scoreboard, then whirled and threw to Brian Dozier.
While this was going on, Rickard scored and, as Dozier received the ball, Machado decided to try to score. It appeared the Twins might be able to throw him out, but the throw arrived a split-second late and bounced in the dirt, allowing Machado to score the game's second run.
The hitch in the play, manager Paul Molitor said, was that Dozier had trouble gripping the ball to throw home.
"It was mishandled, I thought, more than [Dozier being] caught off guard" when Machado rounded third, Molitor said. "The ball kind of died there after it came off the wall, and when your outfielders have to make a dead-legged throw, you try to get out there as best you can."
Dozier did that, shortening Sano's throw, but took an instant too long to relay the throw. "He didn't secure it right away to make the transfer on the relay," Molitor said. "We had a chance there, but the extra hesitation there, for whatever reason, kind of eliminated our chance to cut down the run."
Still, it was the lone (and subtle) defensive mistake on a blustery day that included some pretty good defense. Most notable: Byron Buxton's range in center field remains practically a weapon unto itself. Machado led off the Orioles' first inning with a blast that seemed headed to the center field fence, but Buxton caught it on the warning track with his back to the plate. Later, he made a nice running catch (and made it look easy) of Pedro Alvarez's sinking line drive to end the fifth inning and strand Jones at third base.
Eddie Rosario made a good catch of a long fly ball by J.J. Hardy that the wind pushed toward left-center, and Sano had no problems with the two fly balls hit his way.
