Revisiting the Final Inning of the 2023 Season

The date is October 11th. The Twins are facing the Houston Astros at Target Field, hoping to stay alive in the ALDS after falling behind two games to one the previous day. Heading into the ninth inning of Game 4, Minnesota trails Houston by one. It all comes down to this.

Thinking back to my experience as a fan in the stands, memories of these final moments of the season are a bit hazy, and not only because I'd had a few hazy IPAs over the course of the day. Like many others in attendance, I was in a state of emotional turmoil, frustrated by the team's performance over the past two days and coming to grips with the inescapable feeling this fun ride was about to reach an end.

Sadly, that ninth inning played out pretty much exactly according to our worst expectation. As such, I haven't had much desire to think about it since. But now that enough time has passed, I'm ready to dive back into this last gasp for the 2023 Minnesota Twins. What does the manner in which this team was eliminated tell us about them as a whole, and how they can take the next step?

First, to set the stage: After suffering a painful blowout loss behind Sonny Gray in Game 3, the Twins decided to go all-out and empty their bullpen bench. They started Joe Ryan, but he only threw two innings before giving way to the reliever parade. Brock Stewart, Caleb Thielbar, Chris Paddack and Griffin Jax combined for five innings, and they were nearly perfect, outside of a two-run homer allowed by Thielbar.

That home run was enough to put the Astros ahead by one through seven innings. With Houston set to turn over the order in the eighth, the Twins turned to their bullpen ace, Jhoan Durán. He retired the side in order, but Bryan Abreu did the same in the bottom half. It all came down to the final six outs.

Top of the Ninth: Durán Keeps Dominating
In the previous inning, Durán quickly dispatched Martín Maldonado, José Altuve and Alex Bregman on a groundout and a pair of fly balls. Bringing Durán back out for another inning, given the stakes, was likely an easy decision for Rocco Baldelli. The flame-throwing righty had been Minnesota's workhorse in the bullpen all year long, and they needed him now more than ever, to keep this game within range.

Durán opened the frame with an excruciatingly tough assignment: Yordan Álvarez had terrorized the Twins all series long. Unfazed, Durán made quick work of him, striking out Álvarez on three pitches. He started by freezing the Astros slugger with a curveball, then got a whiff on a low splitter at 98 MPH before spiking a curveball that Alvarez chased. Beauty. 

One enjoyable thing about going back to this last game of the Twins' season was rediscovering a few genuinely cool highlights that I'd sort of forgotten. The quality of Paddack's outing (2.1 IP, 1 H, 0 BB, 4 K) is one of them. This dismantling of Álvarez by Durán was another. One titan overpowering another.

Durán followed up by inducing a weak groundout from Kyle Tucker. He then gave up a single to José Abreu, before retiring Michael Brantley on a lineout to complete his two clean innings. It was an emphatic finish to a spectacular first postseason for Durán. In five innings across four appearances between the ALWC and ALDS, Durán allowed no runs on two hits and one walk. He struck out six and induced a 23% swinging strike rate.

The 25-year-old has already established himself as one of the best relievers in franchise history. Regardless of what's been going on around him, he's dependably done his part since arriving in the majors. It's fitting that Durán was on the mound when they ended their postseason losing streak, and when they clinched their ALWC victory over Toronto. It's also fitting he was the last man standing on the hill when it all came to an end, doing his part, still giving them a fighting chance.

Bottom of the Ninth: Twins Whiff Their Way to Elimination
Naturally, the Astros sent out their closer, Ryan Pressly, to try and extinguish Minnesota's remaining life. Pressly and Durán have an interesting relationship in Twins history; Pressly was shipped out to Houston ahead of the 2018 deadline, on the very same day (July 27th) that the Twins acquired Durán from the Diamondbacks.

If the vision at that time was for Durán to eventually fill the same role for the rebuilding Twins as a late-inning dominator capable of shutting down any opponent, then the front office was quite prescient. Still, I think they'd like to take back the Pressly trade if they could. Instead of having him available to their division-winning team in 2019 (and maybe beyond), they've watched Pressly do what Durán just did in October, pretty much every year. In exchange for Gilberto Celestino and Jorge Alcalá, Minnesota gave up one of the best postseason relievers since Mariano Rivera–and sent him to the powerhouse they were trying to overcome in their own league, no less.

In 46 postseason appearances, Pressly has a 2.22 ERA and an 11.7 K/9 rate. He's never been tagged with a playoff loss and, perhaps most staggeringly, has allowed one (1) home run, while facing 181 batters in (mostly) game-deciding moments.  

That's what the Twins were up against. Their identity all year long had basically boiled down to "strike out or home run"--they tied for the AL lead in homers while setting the all-time major-league ounchout record--and so it probably shouldn't have been hard to guess how this was going to go down.

First up, Jorge Polanco. He presented a solid matchup from Minnesota's perspective; a switch-hitter who takes good at-bats and doesn't strike out a ton. Polanco had demonstrated his ability to jolt the Twins offense earlier in this series. But here, as he led off the ninth inning of Game 4, it wasn't meant to be.

Pressly got ahead with a called strike on a curveball, then kept feeding breaking balls, but Polanco didn't bite. He watched a slider, then two curveballs drop out of the zone, moving ahead 3-1. Pressly was in danger of a leadoff walk in front of the heart of Minnesota's lineup.

Instead, he found the zone with a backdoor slider for a called strike, and then came with another slider down and in, striking out the veteran infielder on a foul tip. Polanco, who slugged .636 against fastballs in 2023, never saw one in this at-bat.

That brought up Royce Lewis, who offered his own sense of fleeting optimism for Twins fans. Lewis gave us a spectacular postseason breakout, with four home runs through his first six games, including a first-inning bomb to open the scoring in this one. But the experienced and battle-tested Pressly knew exactly how to approach the excitable rookie, hunting for another big moment.

Like Polanco, Lewis feasted on fastballs all year, except to an even greater extent: he slugged .821 against four-seamers, with a .461 wOBA against all heaters. So what does Pressly do? Starts him out with a four-seam fastball at the top of the zone, right at elbow level. It was technically the kind of pitch Lewis wanted, but he couldn't catch up to the 95-MPH offering and swung through it. 

Having raised the hitter's eye level, Pressly did the classic pitcher thing, dropping a curveball over the plate at the knees for strike two. At this point, Pressly had Lewis on the ropes, setting the stage for another of those nice little subplots that had kind of slipped my mind: Lewis really battled here.

Knowing that he's an aggressive hitter to begin with, and emotionally primed to intensify that tendency in this moment, it'd be easy to see him chasing with a heroic cut as Pressly attempted to lure him out of the zone. I think that's what most of us in the stands were apprehensively bracing for. But Lewis held strong.

Granted, Pressly didn't quite execute in this spot. He bounced a couple breaking balls and then threw a fastball well outside the zone. But Lewis watched three straight pitches, to work the count full, at which point the Astros closer unleashed a devastating 83-MPH curveball that dropped to the very bottom edge of the zone. A perfect pitch. Lewis swung over it.

Up came Max Kepler, the longest-tenured Twin and last hope for the 2023 team. Following a resurgent second half, Kepler had reverted to familiar form in the postseason, with just five hits (three singles and two doubles) in 23 at-bats. Here, in his 49th career playoff plate appearance, Kepler was still looking for his first RBI.

He wouldn't get it. Like Polanco and Lewis, Kepler put forth a good AB but came up empty. After fouling off a curveball and then taking three chase-me changeups to get ahead in the count 3-1, Kepler fouled off a hittable slider and then took a fastball on the outside corner, ending the at-bat and the Twins' season.

Kepler erupted in anger as the home plate umpire punched him out, but the pitch was a strike, and I suspect Max knew it. His frustration surely stemmed from the overall situation–a big opportunity at home fumbled, a season brought to an end–as well as an earlier at-bat where he and the Twins truly WERE robbed, in pivotal fashion.

In the sixth inning, Kepler was called out an egregiously inside pitch from Hector Neris, leaving the crowd confused after seemingly watching Lewis steal second to move into scoring position as the tying run with a full count. That's what should have happened. But the mounting threat was foiled by this brutal strike call on a pitch several inches off the plate. Everyone gets bitten by bad calls, but through the annals of Twins postseason misery, highly consequential blown calls like these really are persistently glaring.

In this sense, Kepler's frustration was understandable. The fact remains: he stood with the bat on his shoulder as the Twins were eliminated, leaving Carlos Correa in the on-deck circle and extending his lifetime postseason record to 6-for-41 with a .505 OPS. Will that be our final memory of Kepler in a Twins uniform? It would be a bummer.

So, What Have We Learned?
A few things strike me as I revisit this last inning of Minnesota Twins action in 2023. One is that we probably don't talk enough about the Pressly trade, and how dramatically it helped shift the balance between Minnesota and Houston over the past five years. On the flip side, thank goodness for Durán.

Another is a reaction that many reading this probably share: MAN, this offense was on-script, with all the strikeouts that drowned out any chance of a rally or comeback. It wasn't just the ninth inning; Byron Buxton's meager popout to first as a pinch-hitter in the eighth inning was the only plate appearance out of the last eight for the Twins that didn't result in a strikeout. Here's how they closed things out: 

• Jeffers: K swinging
• Castro: K swinging
• Solano: K swinging
• Buxton: Pop fly to 1B
• Julien: K swinging
• Polanco: K swinging
• Lewis: K swinging
• Kepler: K looking

The strikeouts were completely out of control this year. The Twins have got to find a way to rein them in and lessen their susceptibility to these momentum-stifling stretches of fruitless at-bats. At the same time, the front office understandably remains focused on prioritizing power, even at the expense of contact.

"It would obviously be ideal if Minnesota had stacked lineups of superstar hitters who hit for power and don’t strike out, like those big-market teams," wrote Do Hyoung Park. "But here’s what the Twins do really well: They hit the ball hard and in the air, and they take their walks. And the way they see it, if that comes with a tradeoff of more strikeouts, they’re willing to make that trade."

The value of this general offensive philosophy is hard to quibble with; every run scored in Game 4 came on a home run, and the long ball played an outsized role throughout the playoffs. At the same time, there has to be some kind of balance. There comes a point where too many strikeouts is too many, and I believe we've seen it, throughout the latest Twins season and especially at its conclusion.

I'd love to hear from readers and other fans about what stands out to them as they think back to the final game (and inning) of the Twins season. How can the front office best make sure it comes later next year?