Twins come back to oust Mariners in “one of the best wins” in recent memory

The Twins scored nine runs in the final two innings of the game to beat the Seattle Mariners on Friday night.

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SEATTLE — Maybe it was the result of the adjustments he made in the batting cages in recent days that Carlos Correa referenced. Or maybe it really was the power of his positive thinking, like he believed.

But either way, Willi Castro was well aware of the fact that Mariners closer Andrés Muñoz had yet to allow a run and told himself that he would be the one to change that. And with two outs in the ninth inning, down three runs, he sure did.

Castro’s two-run home run off Muñoz, his second long ball of the night, brought the Twins back to within a run. A couple batters later, the Twins had tied it, using hits from Byron Buxton, fresh off the injured list, and Trevor Larnach, who finished with four on the day, to tie it up. An inning later, Carlos Correa jumpstarted a six-run 10th inning with his third home run in seven games, this one helping lift the Twins to a 12-6 win over the Seattle Mariners at T-Mobile Park.

“It was as much fun as we’ve had playing baseball this year,” Correa said. “Probably the best game of the year right there and it felt great.”

It sure didn’t start out that way for the Twins (31-25).

Zebby Matthews, making his third start of the season, allowed a pair of singles to lead off the bottom of the first. Shortly after, Mariners catcher Cal Raleigh teed off on the first pitch he saw from Matthews. The two North Carolinians hail from the same town, Cullowhee, and attended the same high school.

“Anybody (else) would have been great,” Matthews griped, after lamenting that he knew Raleigh “too well for that to happen.”

Raleigh’s home run — the first of two on the day for him (the other coming off his former Florida State teammate Cole Sands) — was the first of two in the inning off Matthews, plunging the Twins into a four-run deficit. But Matthews recovered quickly, throwing six scoreless innings after that, giving up just two hits and cruising through the Mariners’ (30-26) lineup quickly and efficiently. His seven-inning effort marked the longest outing of his major league career.

“I got pretty pissed off there, I can’t lie to you,” Matthews said. “Nobody wants to go out there and give up a four spot that early. … We stuck to the report and it worked out better.”

Sure did, as Matthews, who gave up four runs within the first five batters of the game, settled in well, as his teammates started chipping away at Seattle’s lead. The Twins scored a pair of runs in the fourth, one on Larnach’s eighth home run of the season. Castro’s first home run, which came in the seventh inning, brought the Twins back within a run.

But things looked bleak when Sands allowed the two-run blast to Raleigh in the eighth, putting the Twins down three once more. And they looked even bleaker when Muñoz, who had thrown 23 2/3 scoreless innings heading into Friday, got the first two outs of the ninth inning, their win probability in the game at that point infinitesimal.

“In the world, there’s very few guys that come out of bullpens that are as good a pitcher and with the stuff he has,” manager Rocco Baldelli said. “It’s excellent stuff but we had excellent at-bats. … Hard not to like what you watched there in that inning.”

Or what they watched in the 10th, too, when the Twins piled on. Correa’s home run preceded two-RBI hits each from Buxton and Larnach as the Twins kept being rewarded for their good at-bats. All told, the Twins scored nine runs in the final two innings of the game, using contributions from up and down the lineup to do so.

“We put up a lot of runs but the way we did it, late in innings, two strikes, some homers, some missiles, some just good hitting, some using the opposite field — there was a lot going on there,” Baldelli said. “I think that’s got to be one of the greatest wins that we’ve had to this point and one of the best wins that I can really remember in recent memory.”

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