Twins' Willingham wins one duel, but falls short in late rally

There were 284 pitches thrown Thursday night, and 54 outs recorded. The game lasted nearly three hours, and thirty players took part.

Yet for the Twins, it sure felt like their 2-1 loss to the Rangers at Target Field came down to one pitch.

Tyler Scheppers threw it, and Josh Willingham hit it. The Rangers had the pitcher they wanted for that situation, and the Twins weren't complaining about having their best run producer at the plate. And when Willingham's bat made contact with Scheppers' pitch, the ball was hit as hard, Willingham said, as the home run he cannoned out of the park one inning earlier.

But this time? Bottom of the eighth, bases loaded, one out, 3-and-2 count?

"He hit a bullet," Twins manager Ron Gardenhire said. "Just right at them."

Right at Elvis Andrus, to be precise, who seemed to swallow up the smash to avoid being maimed by it, then turned it into a deflating 6-4-3 double play. And just like that, the Twins' first one-run loss of the season (after winning all five of their previous close ones) seemed sealed.

"It was bad hitting," Willingham joked afterward. The shortstop "has been playing there for 100 years."

"He's a professional hitter and he didn't miss it," Texas manager Ron Washington said. "He did exactly what he wanted to do with it."

The same couldn't be said for Twins starter Vance Worley, whose two-runs-in-five-innings outing looks a lot better on paper that it did on the mound. The righthander needed 51 pitches to labor through the first two innings, 37 of them in the second inning alone. He was over 100 pitches in only five innings, and left, as he had in each of his first four starts, without a lead.

But Worley kept the Twins in the game, giving up only an RBI single by Nelson Cruz (who was cut down by Chris Parmelee trying to stretch it into a double), and a run-scoring double by Andrus in the fifth that bounced away from Willingham, allowing Leonys Martin to score from first.

That meant that, as great as Tepesch pitched, the Twins weren't cooked.

And when Wilkin Ramirez hit a pinch-hit single in the eighth off Scheppers and Brian Dozier followed with a double, the Twins had a situation they liked. Washington weighted his options, and chose to intentionally walk Joe Mauer.

And just like that — well, after Nathan retired his old team in the ninth for his seventh save — the Twins were back at .500 at 9-9.

"One hit away," Gardenhire shrugged. "We had our chance."