No hits allowed is usually a reassuring line beside a relief pitcher’s name. Jakob Junis found the exception Sunday: four batters, three walks and one out. By the time Ryan Jeffers accepted ball four, Walker Jenkins was coming home without another swing.
The Minnesota Twins went on to beat the Texas Rangers 6-4 at Target Field, ending Texas’s season at 80-82. Houston finished 81-81 and won the American League West, while Texas’s final standings left it out of the postseason. That context gave the afternoon its finality, though it does not make the fifth inning a complete explanation for the season.
The trouble began before Jeffers reached. Tyler Alexander allowed Jenkins to single to start the inning, then Junis entered and walked Luke Keaschall. With runners at first and second and nobody out, Junis did get Kaelen Culpepper to strike out. Josh Bell followed with another walk, loading the bases.
Jeffers’s walk forced home Jenkins. It was Junis’s third walk of the inning; Culpepper’s strikeout remained his only out. He faced four batters, threw 21 pitches and allowed no hits, which is a particularly unhelpful way for a pitcher to look clean in the hit column. The traffic was the damage.
Jordan Montgomery replaced Junis with the bases loaded. Kody Clemens singled to center on Montgomery’s first batter, scoring Keaschall and moving Bell to third and Jeffers to second. That was the second Minnesota run of the inning, widening the lead to 5-1. The inherited-run accounting matters: Montgomery inherited three runners and one scored, but Junis was charged with one earned run and Montgomery with none.
The responsibility followed the baserunners. Junis supplied the walks and the bases-loaded run. Montgomery inherited a bad situation and could not prevent every consequence immediately. The Rangers’ deficit grew through three walks followed by one single, a sequence less dramatic than a big swing but every bit as costly.
Montgomery did what Texas needed after that. He struck out Royce Lewis and retired Brooks Lee on a fly ball to finish the fifth with Minnesota ahead 5-1 and three runners stranded. Then he worked scoreless sixth and seventh innings. His final line was 2 2/3 innings, three strikeouts, no walks and two hits allowed.
The control gap was striking. Junis threw 13 balls and eight strikes during his 21-pitch appearance. There was no extra-base hit to explain away, and no fielding error extending the inning.
Minnesota could let him keep pitching until either a hittable ball arrived or the count supplied first base. Three of his four hitters took the latter route. A reliever does not need to dominate every batter; he does need a way to make the next out possible.
The offense, however, gave the pitching very little room for error. Dean Kremer held Texas to one run on three hits over seven innings, striking out four without a walk while throwing 74 pitches. Danny Jansen’s solo homer in the third tied the game at 1-1, but the Rangers did not build a larger inning around it.
They finished with six hits, no walks and four runs, all supplied by home runs.
