Better late than never, wasn’t the case last night for Phil Hughes and the Minnesota Twins.
After nearly a 90 minute rain delay, prior to the start of the game, the Houston Astros beat the Twins 5-4, on Friday night at Target Field.
Dallas Keuchel puzzled the Twins hitters, he struck out six and gave up five hits in six shutout innings, to pick up the win.
Hughes (6-2) was tagged with the loss. He worked six innings and gave up five runs, including three home runs. Coming into the game Hughes had only given up four home runs on the season.
It snapped a six start winning streak for Hughes.
First 3-homer start for Hughes since last July 13 vs. #mntwins at Yankee Stadium (Plouffe, Doumit, Florimon).
Also 4/13/13 vs. BAL.
— Mike BerardinoNDI (@MikeBerardino) June 7, 2014
Those three home runs by Marwin Gonzalez, Matt Dominguez and George Springer built a 5-0 lead for the Astros.
The Twins battled back to make it interesting with three runs in the bottom of the seventh and one in the eighth to cut the Astros lead down to one.
In the seventh, Danny Santana hit his first major league home run. The two-run shot cut the score to 5-3. The Twins then added one in the eighth to cut the lead to one.
Then in the ninth with two outs, Joe Mauer reached on an error, representing the game-tying run and bring Josh Willingham to the plate. Mauer then stole second to get into scoring position, but one pitch later Willingham hit a fly ball to left that hung up long enough to be caught to end the game.
It was the second straight loss for the Twins, who now drop back to three games below .500.
