Twins can’t get final out, lose to Dodgers 4-3 on Freddie Freeman’s two-run single

LOS ANGELES – Exactly three weeks ago, umpire Emil Jimenez helped the Twins capture a game they probably shouldn’t have won. On Wednesday, the Twins believe Jimenez cost them a victory they thought they had wrapped up.

So … do we call it even?

The first base umpire’s decision that Mookie Betts successfully checked his swing at a 1-2 sweeper from Griffin Jax extended Betts’ two-out, bottom-of-the-ninth at-bat, and two pitches later, Betts hit a three-hopper toward third base and beat Willi Castro’s throw to first base. That sparked a shocking Los Angeles Dodgers rally that ended with Freddie Freeman hitting a looping line drive to left that Harrison Bader dove for but couldn’t glove. Betts and Shohei Ohtani scored, and the Twins’ road trip ended with a painful 4-3 walk-off loss at Dodger Stadium.

“I definitely feel like he went,” Jax said of Betts’ not-quite third strike. “I think the replay pretty much shows a clear swing there. But that’s baseball.”

“I think he swung,” Twins manager Rocco Baldelli agreed. “We might have missed out on a call, probably a close call, but a call that would have probably [ended] the game.

“That happens a lot in our game. It’s not the only time that that’s going to happen this year both in our favor and against us.”

True, and Baldelli was careful not to pin the loss on Jimenez, who helped foil a Miami Marlins rally against the Twins on July 2 when he was struck by a ground ball, sending sure runs back to their bases. The Twins still had plenty of chances to end the game, but couldn’t, he pointed out.

Jax threw two quick strikes to Freeman, too, but couldn’t finish him off. The 2024 World Series MVP eventually put the ball in play, just a step out of Bader’s reach, and the Twins, on the verge of winning a series at Dodger Stadium for the first time in their history, instead have now lost six consecutive road series.

“It’s frustrating. I just feel like that’s kind of a representation of my season so far,” said Jax, now 1-5 on the season. “It’s so close, but I’m just not putting all the pieces together to get that consistency day in, day out.”

Walking Ruiz, who had entered the game as a pinch-runner and was forced to bat because the Dodgers had used their entire bench, was the glaring mistake, one borne of “me trying to be too careful,” Jax said.

Baldelli said his confidence in the reliever wasn’t shaken by the Dodgers’ sudden rally, and he was grateful that the team has continued to compete despite its up-and-down results.

BOXSCORE: L.A. Dodgers 4, Twins 3

“We played a damn good series out here. We played a heck of a series, played a lot of good baseball against one of the best teams in the game,” Baldelli said. “I’d argue we didn’t just compete, but we outplayed them for a good portion of the series. And that’s what I want to see. I want to see more of that as we go forward.”

Who knows whether he will see Jax or Bader or Chris Paddack after next week’s trade deadline? Paddack, whose contract expires in November, pitched six strong innings against the Dodgers, giving up four hits and making only one mistake. That was an 0-2 curveball to Ohtani what rather predictably wound up near the top of the left-field bleachers, his 37th homer of the year.

“I talked to my agent yesterday. I’m here until they tell me otherwise. I’m still excited to be a Twin,” Paddack said. “After the deadline, everybody can kind of be humans again. Hopefully having success against such a good team, I can build off that and take it into my next one.”

Royce Lewis also homered, his third of this weeklong road trip, and doubled against Dodgers righthander Tyler Glasnow, who had allowed only two other extra-base hits to righthanded hitters this season. Then he drew a walk off reliever Kirby Yates to ignite what appeared to be the Twins’ game-winning rally in the eighth.

Yates also walked Brooks Lee and Byron Buxton, loading the bases with nobody out. Castro hit into a double play that scored pinch-runner DaShawn Keirsey Jr. with the tying run, and Bader bounced a chopper off home plate that carried over the mound for a hit, scoring Lee with the go-ahead run.