Injury-riddled Twins scrounge up ninth-inning run without a hit to edge Rangers

ARLINGTON, TEXAS – It hit Tommy Watkins mid-answer. “There weren’t any outs, were there?” the Twins third base coach asked. “Ooo, that could have been bad.”

But it wasn’t. Kyle Farmer’s second-inning race around the bases that wound up scoring the tying run — the Twins broke the tie by scoring without a hit in the ninth inning, and walked off with a thanks-for-the-help 3-2 victory over the Rangers at Globe Life Field.

Bailey Ober allowed only two runs over six innings, Willi Castro smacked his 10th home run of the season, and Matt Wallner took four straight two-strike pitches out of the strike zone in the ninth inning, stole second base, moved to third on a wild pitch, and scored the game-winning run on Carlos Santana’s deep fly ball.

The most memorable play of the night, however, was Farmer’s 360-foot sprint — “It felt like 5,280,” he said — around the bases in the second inning. Farmer hit a Cody Bradford curveball to the base of the wall in left-center, saw it ricochet in an unexpected direction past center fielder Leody Taveras, and then squirt out of Taveras’ glove once he caught up to it.

Farmer was heading to third when Taveras made the error, so he was surprised to see Watkins frantically windmilling his right arm to send him home.

“I was in between a heart attack and needing oxygen,” Farmer said. “I heard the dugout before I even saw Tommy. I saw all the guys screaming. Tommy kept waving me and I was like, ‘Cool. Whatever.’ "

He slid head-first across the plate a second or two before the ball arrived.

“There are more interesting and weird angles in this ballpark than someone watching on television would be able to tell,” said Twins manager Rocco Baldelli, a former center fielder. “There are tricks to it. The field will take advantage of you and the ball will end up all over the place.”

The win allowed Minnesota to pick up a half-game on idle Cleveland in the AL Central standings, where they trail by four games with 41 remaining.

Ober wasn’t himself in the first inning, surrendering as many runs in that frame (two) as he had in his previous 27 innings combined. Marcus Semien greeted him by beating out an infield hit, and Ober walked Josh Smith on four pitches. Cleanup hitter Adolis Garcia singled home Semien, and Josh Jung hit a sacrifice fly to score Smith.

Actually, perhaps that is the real Ober, whose first-inning troubles aren’t new. Opponents entered the game with a .849 OPS against the tall righthander in the first inning, by far his worst.

“Just didn’t have my command today. I was struggling locating my fastball, pulling a lot of pitches,” Ober said. He kept telling himself, though, “That’s all they’re getting.” And it was.

Ober, though hardly spotless, reverted to his zeroes-on-the-scoreboard form from that point on. The Rangers collected seven hits against him, put a runner on base in each of his six innings, and watched three potential home runs drift just foul — “Long strikes, that’s what I like to call them,” Ober said with a grin. But they never got another hit with a runner in scoring position.

“It feels good to be able to bounce back after giving up two runs in the first and not allow the team to score again,” he said.

The Twins, though, could — thanks to Wallner’s discipline, and some more Rangers help.

“Putting two good at-bats together and a wild pitch, it’s great,” Farmer said. “And then Santana comes up, that’s like old-school baseball. Productive baseball, it’s what wins you tight games like that.”