BALTIMORE – Let's get out the heck out of Camden Yards, Phil Hughes was saying after the Twins' 4-2 loss to the Orioles, and good riddance. "It's not my favorite place," the veteran righthander understated. "This place plays tiny, and it never stops raining."
His point might be debatable, but it didn't seem so Thursday, because both conditions combined to doom the Twins to their third season-opening sweep in Baltimore in three visits. Manny Machado and Joey Rickard cracked home runs that barely dropped over the reachable outfield walls — and a patch of rain-dampened dirt might have altered the outcome.
Trevor May's plant foot skidded on the dirt and caused his second pitch after a 21-minute rain delay to squirt 18 inches off the plate and roll to the backstop, scoring Mark Trumbo with the tying run and moving J.J. Hardy into position to score, which he did moments later. The Twins never recovered, and dropped to 0-3 for the second consecutive season.
"I slipped back and [my arm] pulled across my body," May said of the errant fastball. "That's on me. If I'm slipping, I've got to say something and get that taken care of, especially after a rain delay."
Hughes had fallen behind both Trumbo and Hardy 2-and-0 to lead off the seventh inning in a 2-1 game, and each eventually jumped on a pitch for a single. As manager Paul Molitor headed to the mound to summon May, a sudden squall forced umpires to delay the game while the field was covered. When the game resumed, May didn't feel any slippage, he said, as he warmed up, mostly because "I don't throw 100 percent, I don't have near the torque" on warmup throws. He felt a minor slip as he threw his first pitch, but dug in the dirt and thought he had solved the problem.
Not quite.
"He didn't make any gestures or comments that there was a concern until after he threw the wild pitch," Molitor said. "Not much you can do at that point."
Still, the slick mound wasn't to blame for the real culprit in the Twins' third consecutive loss: their continued inability to collect a clutch hit. After going 1-for-6 with runners in scoring position in their opener and 0-for-6 Wednesday, the problem got worse against Orioles starter Ubaldo Jimenez. The Twins got one hit in nine opportunities Thursday — and that hit, a Joe Mauer single in the third, was smacked too sharply to allow Danny Santana to risk trying to score from second.
"One thing we were able to do last year is capitalize on opportunities when, comparatively, we didn't have as many as some other teams," Molitor said of the 2-for-21 start to the season. "It's one of those things that builds early. In the early stages in the season, you figure guys are up there trying almost too hard, even though we're only three games in."
Mauer did provide a run with his first home run of the season, crushing a ball into the seats in right-center in the first inning. And the Twins scored an unearned run when Orioles first baseman Chris Davis allowed John Ryan Murphy's line drive to bounce off his glove. But Jimenez, after working out of constant trouble through the first four innings, grew more unhittable as the chilly night went on.
Hughes was nearly as good, and he got some help from his defense, too. Byron Buxton jumped at the center field wall and pulled down Jonathan Schoop's fly ball before it could disappear over the fence. But Machado's home run carried just out of Eddie Rosario's reach an inning later, and the seventh inning became a muddy nightmare.
In all, it left the Twins 0-8 in their three season-opening series in Baltimore (2016, 2011 and 1967), and for the second season in a row, off to an 0-3 start.
"Each of these games could have gone our way," Hughes said after the Twins lost by scores of 3-2, 4-2 and 4-2. "The guys who have been through this last year, we're not going to panic."
