The Twins had no answer for Chicago's Erick Fedde on Friday.
There wasn't much mystery to what went wrong for the Minnesota Twins on Friday night. Erick Fedde has been giving them problems all season, and even when Zebby Matthews made enough good pitches to keep the game within reach, Chicago found the mistakes that mattered.
Matthews had been one of the few steady parts of the Twins’ August, winning all five of his decisions and putting together a 2.90 ERA over 31 innings. His last start against Chicago had been even better, as he carried a shutout into the ninth inning.
Friday’s rematch went in a different direction, though the damage came on only a handful of pitches.
Miguel Vargas drove a low fastball over the wall in the first inning. Braden Montgomery did the same in the second, and Colson Montgomery’s two-run homer in the fourth gave Chicago a four-run lead. Matthews had not allowed more than one home run in a game during August.
Still, his comments afterward did not suggest he believed the entire outing had gotten away from him.
"I thought we had a really good game plan going in," Matthews said, via Betsy Helfand of the Pioneer Press. "Two of the three pitches I thought I executed pretty well, but they just happened to go over the wall. That's baseball."
Derek Shelton's explanation was a little more revealing.
The Twins manager pointed out that Chicago is leading the American League in runs and has spent the season making opposing pitchers pay when they miss. Even a ball that looks harmless can turn into extra bases in this ballpark, which Shelton said made the margin for error particularly small.
That doesn't mean Matthews was at his best. But it helps explain why three home runs turned a five-inning start into a difficult night without necessarily undoing the progress he's made over the last month.
The bigger problem was happening on the other side of the ball.
Minnesota collected only six singles through the first eight innings, with Kody Clemens accounting for three of them. The Twins had chances early, putting runners on base in both the second and fourth innings, but they couldn't turn either opportunity into a run.
And once again, Fedde was at the center of it.
"He's been tough on us all year," Shelton said postgame, via Twins TV. "That's the third good start he's had against us and we have not figured him out."
That's becoming increasingly difficult for Minnesota to ignore.
Fedde entered Friday with a 1.36 career ERA against the Twins in six starts. He added another five scoreless innings to that record, bringing his total against Minnesota this season to just two runs allowed across 15 innings.
Josh Bell finally broke through with a 460-foot home run in the ninth, but even that wasn't enough to spark a comeback. The Twins finished 0-for-6 with runners in scoring position and left Royce Lewis and Walker Jenkins stranded after Bell's homer.
The timing makes the loss feel heavier than it might have earlier in the year.
Shelton admitted that himself. A game like this in May could be chalked up as one night when the opposing pitcher simply had it. With the calendar shrinking and Minnesota's postseason margin already thin, those games become harder to absorb.
The Twins will now turn to Taj Bradley in the hopes of evening this weekend series against the White Sox.
