BALTIMORE – Four pitches into Michael Pineda's start Tuesday night, his focus shifted from helping the Twins beat the Orioles for the 17th time in a row to the health and welfare of his catcher.
Baltimore snaps 14-game losing streak; Twins injuries continue piling up
Mitch Garver was hurt in the first inning and taken to a hospital, Michael Pineda reported forearm tightness and an improvised outfield was needed when Rob Refsnyder couldn't play.
June 2, 2021 at 1:13PM
"I [was] really worried because the way he looked, it made me nervous. It didn't look good," Pineda said of Mitch Garver, who doubled over in pain after taking a foul ball off his groin. Garver laid in the dirt for several minutes before being slowly helped to his feet and gingerly walking off the field. "I wasn't thinking about pitching, I was thinking about my teammate because the way he looked, it felt like it was a lot of pain."
That pain meant a lot more to the Twins than the pain of finally losing to the Orioles. Garver was taken to the University of Maryland Medical Center three blocks away, and he had not yet been released by the final out of Minnesota's 7-4 defeat, its first to the Orioles since March 30, 2018. It was also Baltimore's first victory in more than two weeks, ending a 14-game losing streak.
Kyle Garlick and Willians Astudillo each marked their 2021 debuts at new positions by hitting home runs, but the Twins blew several promising scoring opportunities, going 2-for-11 with runners in scoring position to make a harrowing night even worse.
In a season that has become remarkable for its near-daily roster shuffle and casualty report, Garver's emergency was just the latest and perhaps most shocking loss.
"It's probably unlikely that Mitch is going to be catching anytime soon," manager Rocco Baldelli said. "To be honest, he's in rough shape."
So is the Twins' roster. Rob Refsnyder was scratched an hour before Tuesday's game after crashing into the center field wall on Monday, forcing Kyle Garlick to play center field for the first time since college and Willians Astudillo to play the outfield for the first time since 2019.
After the game, Pineda revealed that he has experienced tightness in his forearm since his last start, and it acted up during Baltimore's four-run third inning that forced him out of the game.
"Mike left some pitches in the middle of the zone. I don't think he was very sharp or felt very good from the beginning," Baldelli said. "He had some mild lateral forearm tightness. He actually said, 'I can go out there and pitch if you need me to.' I thought we needed to get him out of the game."
Six other Twins are already on the injured list, so this team doesn't resemble the one they planned to use in spring training. But Baldelli wasn't entertaining any woe-is-us framing of the season.
"There are no excuses. You can go out there and still win a lot of games, even if you're not going out there with the group you started with," Baldelli said. "We have to win games in a number of different ways."
They appeared ready to rally against the last-place Orioles several times, but fizzled. They even brought the tying run to the plate in the ninth inning, but Orioles righthander Cole Sulser struck out Alex Kirilloff on a 95-mph fastball, then got Jorge Polanco on a fly out — after narrowing missing a home run that curved foul — to set off a sigh-of-relief celebration among the 5,337 in attendance.
That allowed the Twins to turn their attention to their injured teammate, and the moves necessary to field a roster again Wednesday.
"I know it's pretty painful for [Garver]. It's a sensitive area," Pineda said. "Hopefully he can come in [Wednesday] and feel a little bit better."
The speculation surrounding shortstop Carlos Correa’s availability in a trade was overblown this week, Twins officials indicated at the winter meetings in Dallas.
