Ober's 10th straight QS Twins' longest run since Johan's 1st Cy season

ARLINGTON -- Twins starter Bailey Ober didn’t have his best stuff on Thursday. He was struggling to locate his fastball. He was pulling his cutter. Nothing was coming easy.

Somehow, though, Ober managed to get by and turned in his 10th consecutive quality start to help the Twins to a 3-2 victory over the Rangers in the series opener of a four-game set at Globe Life Field.

“Was trying to find it kind of the whole game, just trying to locate my stuff,” said Ober, whose quality-starts streak is the longest by a Twins pitcher since Johan Santana posted 21 straight during his 2004 Cy Young season. “I didn’t really have it the whole game, but I was able to get by and it was good enough.”

Ober struggled out of the gates as the Rangers took a 2-0 lead in the first inning. He gave up an infield single and a four-pitch walk to the first two batters he faced, both of whom went on to score.

Ober had runners reach the next five innings, but he escaped each time in what became a two-run, six-inning outing. He allowed seven hits with three walks and three strikeouts. Ober also saw three hard-hit balls that could have been potential home runs turn foul.

“Long strikes, that’s what I like to call them,” Ober said, smiling. “I got lucky a little bit today, but I got by. I gave my team a chance to win and we were able to pull it off late. Obviously, I need to be better going into the next outing, but we’ll take it for today.”

Ober is 7-1 with a 1.87 ERA and 75 strikeouts over his last 10 starts. Even though it may not have been his smoothest start, Ober liked seeing the final line.

“It’s always a good final line when you see those [innings and earned runs] numbers,” he said. “There’s other stuff in between those two numbers that I would like to work on. I try to learn something from every outing. Today, obviously it’s location and execution based. But, like I’ve said in the past, I’ll enjoy it for today but tomorrow I’m getting ready for my next start.”

On the offensive end, the Twins erased the early 2-0 deficit with two runs in the second inning. Willi Castro led off with a solo home run followed by Kyle Farmer rounding the bases on a triple to center and a fielding error by Rangers center fielder Leody Taveras.

“I was in between a heart attack and needing oxygen,” Farmer said.

Told he raced 360 feet on the play, Farmer responded: “It felt like 5,280 [feet].”

After Farmer's dash around the bases, the game stayed tied at 2-2 until the ninth inning. The Twins then pushed across the go-ahead run on a sacrifice fly by Carlos Santana.

“We needed everything today,” manager Rocco Baldelli said. “It took everything that happened out there that everyone saw to win the game. If we didn’t get all of that, we weren’t going to win.”

Baldelli praised the efforts of Ober and Farmer before closing his postgame news conference with another nod to catcher Christian Vázquez, who reached 10 years of service time in the Majors on Thursday.

“I would also say it was a perfect game behind the plate for Christian Vázquez,” Baldelli said. “Ten years in the league, we talked about it earlier, it was a great celebration today. Then he goes out there and catches a game like that – a tough game and he’s a tough customer. It was great.”