The Minnesota Twins aim to record a season-best fifth straight road victory on Thursday when they vie for a four-game sweep of the Cleveland Indians.
The Twins (62-77) have posted a trio of three-run victories against the Indians (68-69) in the series, with the last two coming via a 3-0 decisions. Minnesota produced back-to-back shutouts for the first time since May 6-7, 2019.
Rookie Joe Ryan secured his first career win in near-historic fashion on Wednesday. The 25-year-old retired the first 19 batters he faced before allowing Amed Rosario’s clean single to left field with one out in the seventh inning.
The Twins will now hand the ball to Randy Dobnak (1-7, 7.64 ERA), who authored his best performance of the season on May 21 at Cleveland. He scattered three hits over six scoreless innings in a 10-0 win.
The 26-year-old right-hander owns a 2-1 record with a 1.13 ERA in six career appearances (four starts) versus the Indians.
Dobnak, however, is coming off an uneven performance in his last trip to the mound, which was his first since late June after sustaining a strained middle finger ligament. He surrendered five runs on six hits in seven innings of a 5-3 setback to the Tampa Bay Rays on Friday.
“This is probably the first time I’ve had this much time off during these months of the year since I was 3 or 4,” Dobnak said. “The arm’s built up, the finger feels good. I just go out there and do what I do.”
Cleveland right-hander Cal Quantrill (4-3, 3.15 ERA) will get the nod on Thursday.
Like Dobnak, Quantrill yielded five runs on Friday — and he also surrendered three homers over six-plus innings in an 8-5 setback to the Boston Red Sox.
Quantrill, 26, is 0-0 with a 7.43 ERA in five career appearances (two starts) against Minnesota, with four of those games coming this season.
Rosario has hit safely in 11 of his last 13 games for the Indians, who have dropped five of their last six contests overall and 10 of 15 meetings with Minnesota this season.
Cleveland acting manager DeMarlo Hale said he isn’t interested in messing with what works when it comes to Rosario. That includes possibly moving the shortstop to another position — say, second base.
“I do think you could run him out there in the outfield in an emergency because he’s done that,” Hale said, per Cleveland.com. “It would be hard for me to put him over there at second base not only because of the group we have, but because he hasn’t worked at it.
“I think he’s good enough that in an emergency, maybe we’re in the 13th inning, you could run him over there. But I think he’s established himself as a shortstop. Moving forward that’s a decision … who plays shortstop? If (the front office) think something different, than he has the offseason to look at it.”
