Gant forgoes free passes; Duffey's magic act

MINNEAPOLIS -- So often this season, pitching struggles from faces old and new have been the cause of the Twins’ downfall on any given night. That was not the case Tuesday.

John Gant tossed his first walk-free start of the season and Tyler Duffey gave Minnesota a huge escape in the seventh inning, emerging unscathed from a bases-loaded, none-out jam. But the Twins’ struggles to capitalize on scoring opportunities carried to the end of a 3-1 loss to the Cubs in the first of a two-game set at Target Field.

“We had plenty of chances,” manager Rocco Baldelli said. “Different guys, different situations, but it felt like regardless of what we tried to do today, we didn't execute in the big moments and get it done. We certainly could have scored more than a run.”

As a 2-1 Minnesota deficit carried into the top of the seventh inning, the Cubs loaded the bases against Juan Minaya with a pair of hits and an error before the Twins turned to Duffey, who has often struggled to find the zone this year. This time, the right-hander was nails, flipping between his fastball and curveball to stymie Chicago’s 7-8-9 hitters and escape the jam -- a rarity earlier in the year for a bullpen that struggled to a historic degree with inherited runners.

Duffey has seen his walk rate and ERA (3.54) rise considerably this year because hitters now know to look for his curveball, on which the whiff rate is down more than 15 percent from last season. Part of that is batters chasing out of the zone at nearly a 12 percent lower clip from 2020. Duffey has had to adapt through mixing in more of a slow curve and mixing in his sinker slightly more often, among other tweaks -- but in the seventh, he found that balance better than he had all season.

“That's about as difficult of a spot to bring a guy in as you're going to find,” Baldelli said. “He came in with some of his best stuff that we've seen from him, and came in and he really pitched.”

Even before that, Gant held firm with his strongest start as a Twin, in which he allowed two runs on three hits in five innings and didn’t issue a walk as a starter for the first time since Aug. 14, 2018.

When the right-hander arrived in Minnesota as part of the Trade Deadline deal that sent J.A. Happ to St. Louis, walks were a huge issue, as he had issued as many free passes (56) as strikeouts (56) in 76 1/3 innings. But after the Twins worked with him to better direct his changeup, with which he’d been throwing too many non-competitive pitches, Minnesota has drastically cleaned that up to the tune of 25 strikeouts and six walks in 21 frames as a Twin.

“Got some good ones in there tonight,” Gant said. “Good outing to build off of and to keep working and be ready to go out there next time.”

It’s no guarantee that Gant will maintain his starting role through the end of the year, considering Michael Pineda will likely return to the rotation and the Twins have indicated that they prefer Gant as a reliever. But this marked improvement in his control certainly bodes well for a continued audition as a starter, especially now that he’s had time to settle into his routine.

Still, the Twins couldn’t take advantage of all of that pitching Tuesday.

Hitless with runners in scoring position since Byron Buxton’s first-inning single, the Twins loaded the bases in the eighth inning on singles by Luis Arraez and Jorge Polanco and a walk by Josh Donaldson, but hit (and ran) themselves out of a rally when Arraez made an aggressive attempt to tag up and score on Max Kepler’s popup to shallow right field, getting thrown out by a wide margin to kill the rally.

“I’m sure a little bit of frustration based on how the night had gone for us in a lot of ways,” Baldelli said. “He was trying to make something happen for us on the play.”

The Twins also put men in scoring position in the second, fifth and seventh innings without being able to drive them home in a close game, including a sequence in the seventh in which they sent three consecutive pinch-hitters to the plate with a man on base but still couldn’t find the big hit.