MINNEAPOLIS -- Astros catcher Martín Maldonado walked over to relief pitcher Ryne Stanek following the Astros’ 3-2 loss to the Twins in 10 innings on Friday afternoon and apologized for not being able to catch a pair of fastballs that were scored as wild pitches and proved to be costly.
The pitches, both of which glanced off Maldonado's glove, helped the Twins push across the tying and winning runs in the 10th inning of the home opener at Target Field, which started at 3:17 p.m. CT. By the time the third inning rolled around, shadows began creeping from home plate toward the pitcher’s mound, making it a difficult afternoon to see the baseball -- for both the hitters and catchers.
In addition to the shadows, Maldonado said there was a glare coming from the center-field batter’s eye that made it difficult for him to see pitches up in the zone. Maldonado allowed a pair of high fastballs to ricochet off his glove, both of which moved a runner to third base in the 10th ahead of them scoring.
“It was hard to see all game, kind of anything up in the strike zone,” Maldonado said. “I should have caught those pitches anyway. I was expecting fastballs and I missed both of them. I told Stanek ‘My bad,’ on those two balls. It was hard on the slider, too. You couldn’t see in the [Jose] Miranda at-bat. It looked like I got crossed up, but it was hard to see, especially with the shadows.”
Stanek said an apology from his catcher wasn’t necessary.
“He’s been such a rock for us back there this whole time,” Stanek said. “[Stuff] happens. It was a tough day. The shadows are pretty ridiculous, it seemed like, for most of the day. He doesn’t have anything to apologize for. He’s as good as anybody back there. It’s not from lack of effort or anything. It just happens.”
After the Astros scored once in the 10th to take a 2-1 lead, Byron Buxton started the bottom of the inning on second base. Stanek struck out Carlos Correa, who went 0-for-5 against his former team, and threw a wild pitch to push Buxton to third. He wound up walking Trevor Larnach to put runners on the corners for Miranda.
Stanek threw a 1-0 slider up in the zone that Maldonado nearly dropped. It was a called strike, but Miranda singled on the following pitch to tie the game. Larnach went to third with another wild pitch on a fastball up in the zone that Maldonado couldn't catch, and he scored on Kyle Farmer’s walk-off single.
“In all the times I've thrown to Maldy, I’ve never seen him react like that on pitches,” Stanek said. “Whenever he says it’s tough to see, I’m going to tend to believe him. I think it was one of those days. You kind of grind through it and it didn’t end well and you move on. There’s nothing you can really do about it now. Just go out there and be ready to go the next time and get the job done.”
Maldonado said he called for fastballs on both wild pitches but just couldn’t catch them.
“At the end of the day, we get paid for this and you have to find a way, and we didn’t find a way today,” he said. “We had a chance to win the game right there. I [messed] up. Should have made those [plays] … two fastballs I should have caught.”
The presence of shadows earlier in the game appeared to help Twins starter Sonny Gray strike out a career-high 13 batters in seven innings. He struck out six of seven batters in the fourth and fifth innings, getting Jeremy Peña to whiff four times on sliders. The Astros struck out 16 times, tying their season-high from 2022.
“It was a tough day vision-wise, period,” manager Dusty Baker said. “The only pitches they really hit were fastballs, and the pitches we hit were fastballs as well. When there are shadows out there at that time of day, it’s tough to see and pick up any kind of spin because the ball doesn’t look white; it looks brown. Tough way to lose a game.”